What Games Can Teach You About Music
What Games Can Teach You About Music Games and music have always been intricately intertwined.  Red Brick highlights how music completes the video game experience through sound symbolism as well as movement. It would be difficult to separate the ominous setting of Dark Souls from its soundtrack. Or to experience the speed of Super Mario Odyssey without the melody that follows in the background. The 8-bit era of games is a rabbit hole worthy of exploring. These original game sounds were some of the first to be synthesized using computer chips as opposed to samples of audio recordings imported into the game. These sounds have become iconic and have weaved their way through pop culture for decades. With nostalgia for 8-Bit era aesthetics and sounds at an all-time high, we are seeing musicians draw inspiration from these vintage games and sounds in new and innovative ways. The genres …
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Event Recap Round-Up March 2020
Event Recap Round-Up May 2020 We’ve had our fair share of masterclasses at Beat Lab in the past, but we wanted to really make a big splash this year. We’ve had a heck of a year with our live workshops, and we’re still hosting virtual masterclasses until the coronavirus curve is officially flattened. So we wanted to take a moment to summarize a few of our past events for those who missed them. We’ll go over past events, then tell you about a few upcoming! Read on below. su_divider Intro to Ableton Workshops January of this year we started hosting free workshops to entice community members old and new. We’ve always welcomed prospective students in for class visits but felt that a monthly event would allow the whole community to flourish. Our first workshop covered the basics of Live. We’ve held multiple of these each month and have been …
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Beat Lab Reviews – Fresh Tracks of the Week October 19th, 2018
Beat Lab Reviews – Fresh Tracks of the Week October 19th, 2018 Hello hello! This week we’ve got some impressive features and we know you’ll find something you want to listen to again. We’ve got some really powerful female voices featured today, along with some Lo-fi magic, an awesome indie electronic song, and an energetic electronic beat. Enjoy, scroll down to listen to this week’s fresh tracks. su_divider top=”no” divider_color=”#d2d2d2″ size=”1″ ZØYA – So Far Away Zoya’s voice is incredibly powerful on this newest single, So Far Away. Zoya has a history in making church music, her faith is tangible in this song. The production is beautiful on the instrumental side and never detracts from her vocals, it only enhances. This is the display of a pure professional – clean production, shining vocals, and emotion bleeding from every note. Zoya utilizes modern production techniques in the song but her …
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Regrader – FREE Lo-Fi Delay from Igorski
Regrader – FREE Lo-Fi Delay from Igorski Igorski has released Regrader, a Lo-Fi Delay plugin, for free in VST format. We’ve covered Igorski’s tech before with an article on the VSTSID plugin he released a bit back and we’re excited to see what he has done this time! Regrader comes with a user interface reminiscent of an old Windows system that it has 5 sections – Echoes, Gravel, Horror, Warble, and Filter. The Echo section is the main control section for aspects of the delay like time, feedback, and mix. Gravel, Horror, and Warble all contribute to the effect’s more unique elements that will warrant crazy sounding results. Here’s what Igorski had to say about it, Regrader provides a delay effect in which the repeats degrade in various ways to provide a malevolent twist on the ears. Echoes disintegrate, are decimated, piercingly oscillate and are finally mangled into a sound reminiscent of a …
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That Guitar – FREE LoFi Hip-Hop Style Guitar Sample Pack
That Guitar – FREE LoFi Hip-Hop Style Guitar Sample Pack Electronic music producer Arrogant Beggar and Reddit user ThatguyTarlung recently dropped a post on reddit offering his fellow music makers a wonderful gift – a free sample pack featuring guitar samples designed for use in Lo-Fi Hip-Hop. Anyone familiar with the multiple Youtube channels dedicated to sleepy laid-back beats will recognize “That guitar”. Arrogant Beggar’s original post is copied below, Unless you have been living under a rock or have been avoiding Lo-Fi Hip-Hop radio stations like the plague (I wouldn’t blame you), you have probably heard “That guitar”. Jazzy electric chords that sound like they have been recorded via Polaroid pictures. Here’s my take on it. Featuring my very own “SILO” (Strat in look only) recorded in my bedroom through a knock-off USB interface. Processed by the finest fake-analog gear my money can by (so… mostly free stuff). Originally intended …
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Free Mellotron Choir Instrument Rack | Beat Lab Exclusive
The mellotron is now a classic, vintage instrument that made its mark on legendary tracks like The Beatles' "Strawberry Fields Forever" and David Bowie's "Space Oddity". The instrument had a spacey and haunting vibe that hadn't been heard before in the 1960s. It behaved like a pre-cursor to our modern samplers as well. Sound was created by a section of magnetic tape connected to the keys that would playback when a key or keys were depressed, and playback would then stop when the keys were released. This allowed for a variety of sounds depending what instrument or sound was recorded onto the magnetic tape. The mellotron was designed to replicate the sound of the original instrument, but replaying a tape created minor fluctuations in pitch and amplitude.
So a note sounded slightly different each time it was played. How hard a player hit a key affected the sound as well. Another distinction in the sound of the mellotron was that each "sampled" note was recorded in isolation and so the sound had hints of being natural and unnatural at the same time.
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