MORE Music Technology at NAMM 2008
Pages: 1, 2, 3, 4

Notion Music Progression

Another big help for people just beginning with their music-computer connection is Notation Music's Progression ($149.99). With a fascinating history—it was designed by a composer who moved to India to have it coded and then to London to record orchestral samples for it—Progression could overcome several obstacles for the tyro.

See and hear your scores play back with Notion Music Progression. This version handles guitar and bass; there's an orchestral version as well. (Click to enlarge.)

What it does is record what you play on your MIDI guitar or keyboard, and then display the performance as a standard score or guitar tabs. You can edit and play back your performance using the included guitar, bass, drum, clav, and piano samples. You can also record music in step time using the computer keyboard. So it becomes a backup band; composition tool; and supplier of scores, lead sheets and tabs for the band.

Progression can also play back through built-in guitar and bass amp simulators or any VST effects you have in your computer. The guitar samples were recorded by guitarist Neil Zaza; the bass and drums samples are from Victor Wooten and Roy "Futureman" Wooten.

www.notionmusic.com

Dave Smith Instruments Prophet ’08 Module

In the mid-'70s, the synthesizers of choice for major-league artists were the Prophet-5 and Prophet-10 from Sequential Circuits. Musicians loved the Prophets for their rich, vibrant timbres that echoed strings and brass, but with an electronic edge that seemed to announce a exciting new world of musical sound.

On the technical side, the Prophet-5 was the world's first microprocessor-based musical instrument, and the first polyphonic and programmable synth. You can still hear the Prophet sounds emulated in nearly every hardware and software synth/sampler around today. Dave Smith, the man who founded Sequential Circuits, coined the term "MIDI" and was instrumental in writing the original MIDI specification in 1981.

Smith's present company, the eponymous Dave Smith Instruments, is continuing his pioneering spirit in reverse, by flying in the face of the current trend toward software synthesizers. Instead, DSI offers new and improved versions of vintage hardware synths. Last year, the company released the Prophet '08, a 21st century version of the Prophet-5. NAMM '08 saw the premiere of the Prophet '08 Module, a desktop/rackmount version of the Prophet '08.

From the man who masterminded MIDI, the all-analog Prophet '08 Module is a worthy target for your digital music data . (Click to enlarge.)

The Prophet '08 Module is an analog synthesizer offering all the knobs and buttons of the Prophet-5's user interface and all of the digital controls of the Prophet '08, without the keyboard. It's meant to be used as a single MIDI module or to double the polyphony of another Prophet '08.

To achieve the original Prophet sound, the 8-voice Module employs a 100% analog signal path using two analog oscillators per voice, classic Curtis 2-pole and 4-pole lowpass filters, and analog VCAs. To give the instrument the stability and flexibility demanded by contemporary players, all-digital controllers complement the analog signal path. The extensive modulation matrix is a timbre-tweaker's delight; the unit responds to MIDI velocity and aftertouch, has four LFOs per voice, three five-stage envelope generators (one looping), a gated 16x4 step sequencer, an arpeggiator, and four keyboard splits and layers, with separate stereo outputs for each layer.

The Prophet '08 Module is expected to ship in April with an MSRP of $1,649.

www.davesmithinstruments.com

Peavey ReValver Mk II

"Finally," the blurb says, "guitar amplifier modeling software from a company that actually builds tube amplifiers!"

Not a bad idea, especially since Peavey bought the software from a company that knows plugins.

The new ReValver lets guitarists play virtually through great-sounding models of several different tube amps, preamps, power amps, and speaker simulations, and adds lots of stompbox effects. Naturally, Peavey amps and cabinets are strongly represented, but they're complemented by emulations of other popular amps.

Don't just settle for twisting virtual knobs on your guitar-processing software. The Peavey ReValver lets you tweeze the innards of the modeled vacuum tubes themselves. (Click to enlarge.)

For those interested in the real basics of guitar sound, there's even a "Tweak Module GUI" in which you can adjust an amplifier's very tubes, or if that's not enough, replace every tube in every amplifier with any of 17 different types of tubes. No amp modeler is complete without giving the user the ability to modify the actual rectifiers, output transformers, and tone stacks of a power amp, and the new ReValver does not disappoint. It works as a standalone or a VST plugin.

www.peavey.com/products/revalver