I debated about which blog to post this to, the “blog” or to Geartalk. It’s a general artist video, not about gear per se…but this video is mostly of interest to gearheads, since it’s a time-lapse video of Logic running this song. So I opted for GearTalk. And you know what? If you want to know what sort of instruments and software artists use to make various sounds, this is a good video to use as a guide.

And the music’s good too!

I have long been a fan of Waldorf synthesizers. One of the vary first virtual analog synths I ever bought was the Waldorf Q—in fact, you can hear it prominently on the Ember After songs “Paradise” and “Change” on the album Grasping At Straws. I was very interested when the Waldorf Blofeld came out, but ultimately I decided that the Access Virus TI Snow integrated better into Ember Studios.

Waldorf, however, has just released a software synthesizer called Largo that combines many of the great algorithms and features of their hardware synthesizers.

Largo offers much of what the Q and the Blofeld offer as far as oscillators, wavetables from the PPG and Wave, and LFOs, filters, modulation options go. The spec list is intense; go to the website to check it out.

Needless to say, I’m very interested in this instrument, and intend to check it out as soon as possible!

Normally, I talk about reviews that I’ve written of stuff. But I wanted to bring to your attention a review I didn’t write, in a magazine I don’t write for. Why? Because I agree with it completely.

If you’ve looked at the links on the right sidebar of this blog, you know I love GForce Virtual Instruments. GForce is the second listed software company. In the May 2008 issue of Sound on Sound, there is a glowing review of GForce’s recent softsynth, Virtual String Machine. If you subscribe to SOS, give the review a look. To sum it up, the reviewer had lots of positive things to say. As he should, it’s one of my all-time favorite instruments. It’s inspiringly, elegantly simple to use, sounds amazing, is cheap ($149), and is unique.

I highly recommend everyone check out VSM. The first day I had it, I used it in a song (the intro to the song Change; please check it out on the Sounds page in the Nimbit player). Really, it’s that good.