Attention please!
Dear
Coffee in a teapot, green hypermonsters, sporks, spfoons, drumsticks, fire hydrants, steelo sponges, octophonics, the ultrasynthesizer and Tree(3) vs multidimensional Ursell-Array functions.
And, now that I have your attention, please let me introduce myself. My name is Mr. Sarn Richard Ursell, and I am emailing you from Wellington, New Zealand.
May I please make a suggestion to you, as an avid reader of your magazine? Have you ever considered making a total package, of each and every and all Computer Music magazines that you have ever done? You know, for sale as one, complete package?
And also, have you ever done an article on microtonal music? If so, what issue? If not, please consider doing an article on microtonal music. I will be making more of it later on, this year.
Mr Sarn Richard Ursell
Both very good points Mr Ursell, or may I call you Sarn? Certainly the first would be a huge download, especially if we included all of the DVD/FileSilo downloads to go with it. In the meanwhile, the far more manageable bitesized monthly nuggets (a mere 4-10GB a pop) are available at FileSilo.co.uk. And a microtonal music feature sounds like a job for our very own Dave Clews…
The sound of weed
Dear
I made this noise/drone album from the sounds of smoking weed. It’s about a wizard and his travels. I don’t have a job. Please post about it or tweet or something happy.
Disbong (disbong.bandcamp.com/releases)
Demonstrating there that, in this day and age, attention-grabbing
COMPUTER MUSIC
OBXD: version 1 is freeware but you can donate for v1.5 should you wish tactics/bonkers emails are indeed vital weapons in a DIY PR armoury to get your music heard. And as to the album? Interesting, terrifying, clever and a one-off.
Donate now
Dear
First of all, thank you for a fantastic magazine. I really like the way you present new and old gear and software. Keep up the good work! Now, this is just a little thing, but I’ll mention it anyway. In your May 2020 ( 281) issue on page 20, you named five of the best freeware synth emulations – among these the discoDSP OB-Xd. There were some questions about the plugin being free or not. The version 1 is free for sure – I found it on the vst4free website. I then went on to visit the discoDSP website, and the v1.5 does have a price tag. There’s an iOS version too.
But strangely, when you go to the plugin’s ‘About’ section, you can read this: “OB-Xd Desktop has no restrictions and is free to use. Buy to support further development, thank you!”
So I wrote the author about the price. He answered this: “Hello, thanks. OB-Xd Desktop can be purchased to contribute for further development. I’m thinking about a pay-what-you-want model starting next week, to avoid confusion.”
I’m not quite sure if this falls under the ‘free’ tag, so I installed the v1.5 from the discoDSP website and tested it. No nag screen or any “buy me”, “Activate”, “Demo” button or red light showing up anywhere. So I guess it is free – or maybe rather donationware. Andy, I thought this might be useful to some of your readers. And yes, the OB-Xd is awesome. Best wishes in these strange social distance times.
Claus Lindeskov Hansen,
Denmark
Thanks Claus, we don’t like to include donationware in our freeware roundups per se, so that certainly clears that up.
A possible new team member writes
Dear
And welcome back Andy (which I think I can say even though I only started getting at issue 59!). I am pleased that you are running a series on Voltage Modular by Scot Solida; that was an idea I suggested to Joe a few months ago. And, of course, you could always persuade Cherry Audio to come up with a free bonus module every so often.
I’d like to offer a few other suggestions:
1) It seems to me that the
Plugins pages are of most use to new readers, and that most readers will look at them only sometimes. Perhaps you could have a single summary page (and mentioning any new/updated ones) in the magazine and put all the details in PDFs on FileSilo? Then the number of pages in the magazine could be reduced (keeping your print costs down) without losing any content.
2) Similarly, most readers will not need the Plugins on the DVD. The packs can be downloaded from FileSilo at any time. If the plugins are not on the DVD, then other content could be put there – the month’s videos and tutorials, for example. This could reduce your Internet traffic costs and the costs for readers with monthly broadband quotas.
3) How about one or more articles about using tablets with DAWs, acting as an external FX processors or even synths?
4) Dave Clews’ Easy Guide series has now finished (by the way - the last one was #88, as in keys on a piano – serendipity?). Perhaps you could collate all the articles into a
Special (remember them?). There is a mountain of good clear guidance in them and to have it all in one place would be great. A premium price would be quite justified £9.99? £10.99? £12,99?) and I would even buy one myself.
Stephen Faherty
PS Is Shea Stedford coming back? His Studio Strategies were great, and very informative.
Some great ideas there Stephen, most of which I’ve already actually nicked.
1) We’ve done this from this very issue, but may bring it back every other month or so.
2) We started doing this a couple of months back to get different content on the DVD and (in more truth) because the collection has now become so large in size. 3) Yep, another good idea and… 4) Yes, another. In fact we’re thinking of bringing back the Specials so this could make a good one, and
5) Do you want a job?!
PS We’ve emailed Shea and he’s gone darkside. “Calling Shea, come in Shea…”