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Novation Unveils New ULTRANOVA Keyboard

October 28, 2010 in Gear, Music, Photos, Video

The cool new ULTRANOVA synth has its roots in Chris Huggett's SuperNova II

Novation debuted a cool new keyboard today at Sweetwater called the UltraNova.  Created by Chris Huggett, famed OSCar inventor, it features a built-in mic for the very hip Vocoder function as well as true conductive-rubber pots for accurate and instant programming.  Three intense oscillators that can multiply themselves and stack them on top of each other for thickness and, of course, a K2BShow favorite, wackiness!  Matt Darbyshire, Product Specialist for Novation, showed it off in the Sweetwater Morning Meeting and trained the Sweetwater sales engineers on the vast and powerful features of this new 37-note wonder.  The factory sounds are thick and rich and of course, tons of knobs to tweak away, including a “Tweak Mode” button that lets one control any parameter from an extra bank of 8 soft-knobs. See a video about that here.  Also, the patch selector is an iTunes-style  browser that makes it easy to pick any of the over 300 factory sounds AND it comes with a free patch editor/librarian software too!
Check out more about it here, but please don’t hurt yourself, this baby packs a punch!  :)

Here’s a video of Matt doing a short performance on the new ULTRANOVA!


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Shawn Phillips Reveals the Future of Musicians

October 26, 2010 in Updates

OK, Wow! 70s icon Shawn Phillips recently came to Fort Wayne and blew us away with his current music and his familiar chestnuts too!   (Thanks, C2G Ministries, for a great show with great sound!)  He had a ton to say about the future of music and musicians, check out the full interview here very soon. Suffice it to say that his talk included how right now, not in the future, musicians are controlling virtual instruments and physical instruments with nothing but brainwaves, via encephalograph-style sensors hardwired directly to the brain. Oh Wow! Check back for the full video interview, will be posted soon (Did you know Shawn gave Joni Mitchell guitar lessons in the 60s?  Betcha didn’t know Shawn gave sitar lessons to George Harrison way before The Beatles met Ravi Shankar!)  What a great musical gem, check out Shawn’s site too!

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COOL New Moog synth – The Slim Phatty is unleashed!

October 14, 2010 in Gear, Music, Updates

OK< Wow!  Check out this great new, AFFORDABLE, true-Moog synth.   The Slim Phatty was just announced today!  At under $800, with free shipping from Sweetwater, this is probably the most synth-for-buck that is on the market today.  Great modulation and CV options, small, light and DID WE MENTION – it’s only $795 for that really fat and satisfying Moog sound?   Check it here –  http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/PhattySlim

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TheK2BShow helps Michigan Commission for the Blind!

October 12, 2010 in Updates

Recently TheK2BShow host, KennyKenny Bergle, travelled to Detroit to the studio of blind gospel musician Bruce Smith to setup and train him on ProTools and Ableton Live software and a Sweetwater Creation Station music computer.

This is an ongoing program by The Michigan Commission for the Blind, supporting audio production and music creation for its charges that are music- and production- oriented.  See more about the Commission here – http://www.vi-info-center.org/Page_19.html

Mike Ellis Enterprises, an audio and video production house that serves the blind community, is also integral in the Commission’s program and KennyKenny has been training the employees of M.E.E., Inc., for several years now.  Their website is here – https://www.meewebsite.com/Default.aspx

This is not the first time KennyKenny has been in Detroit on a training mission.  In 2008, he setup the Detroit branch of The Salvation Army’s recording studio and trained the workers there on how to run ProTools and various audio hardware.  See more about The Salvation Army and their mission here – http://www.salvationarmy.org/ihq/www_sa.nsf

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Ableton Live 8.2 update is FREE!

October 8, 2010 in Gear, Music, Updates

Ableton announced its latest upgrade to Live8 – 8.2! It’s free and worth doing (painless really) so if you own Live8, go to the Ableton site and download the 8.2 free update. It fixes several pesky bugs and gives you some more cool stuff! Here’s the link – http://www.ableton.com/latest-versions

If you don’t own Ableton Live, Man, you are missing the coolest creative boat in the industry!  It’s such a gas to make music with Live!  Check it out for yourself – here’s the link to the FREE trial version of Live8 – http://www.ableton.com/download-suite-trial

Also check out The Bridge software by Ableton, which allows you to see and control Live sets inside Serato Sratch and vice versa.

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