I have been a user of the fantastic Native Instruments KOMPLETE since quite some years now. Some months ago, our friends at NI launched the Komplete 11.

If you are looking for some inspiration of what you can do with KOMPLETE 11, have a look here. Truely amazing, and refreshing at the same time. Enjoy.

After my last blog on this feature - integration of Maschine into Cubase 8 - I did some further simplifications. I realized that the Maschine is just another VST instrument with 16 MIDI channels - one sound on each channel. The best way to proceed is therefore as follows:

1. Create a Maschine Rack instrument
   
2. Enable all audio outputs of the Maschine rack instrument
3. In Maschine, create 1 group. This group has 16 sound slots. Add sounds to the slots, either in Kit mode or Sounds per slot. Adding other groups does not make sense, since you are not going to be able to switch Groups from Cubase. If you need another Group, just create another Maschine rack instrument instance.
4. Put the Group MIDI settings as follows: MIDI enable, root note = C3
   
5. Set the Sound MIDI settings for each Sound in the Group as follows: source=host, MIDI channel = channel of your Cubase MIDI track, MIDI thru = off
   
6. In Cubase, create up to 16 MIDI tracks, and send them to the Mashine instrument
   

Here's how I integrate Maschine as a VST instrument into Cubase 8 projects.

1. Create a Rack Instrument, and select Maschine
2. add MIDI tracks, and route their output to Maschine

3. In Maschine, right-click on the group and select 'sounds to MIDI notes'

4. Set the Group MIDI input as shown below (important: set Root Note to C3):

5. Select all Sounds in the Group (ctrl-A) and put the MIDI input setting as shown below:

6. Set the Sound MIDI output settings as follows:

And you are done. The only disadvantage I could not get rid off, is that recording only works when CLICKING the record button in Cubase. When using the keyboard command ('*' in my case), the Maschine also goes in Record mode, leading to double recording both in Cubase and in Maschine. If anyone out there knows how to fix this - pls let me know by replying to this post.

This is where the magic happens. Having a comfortable creation environment that is to your liking is key in my experience. So yes I invest quite a lot in my home studio. More upgrades will be coming soon, but for now I particularly like the 3 screen setup. I use Cubase 8.5, where the leftmost screen has the channel mixer, the middle screen the project view for arranging, and the rightmost screen shows the Media Bay - this is where the sounds come from. And for creating new stuff, I often use the Maschine MkII. The home studio is acoustically treated with Gypsound gyproc against walls and ceiling, and double acoustic glass in windows.

The pop-rock band Quartier Nord has won a Best Song award in the category Latin Pop on the Akademia website. This is what Akademia writes about the song:

"Quartier Nord has created an anthemic Latin pop classic that effortlessly alternates between saturated instrumentality and brilliant vocal harmonies."



Check it out here (http://www.theakademia.com/december2015_bestsong_latinpop8.html)

As the producer of this song and the Quartier Nord album 'New World', I remember having spent quite some time on the 'saturated instruments' and the 'brilliant vocal harmonies'. 

It is always nice to get some recognition.
​And congratulations to Quartier Nord, of course!

Proud to announce the release of DoctorD's long awaited album 'Missa Electronica'. Available on ReverbNation and soon on iTunes.

Has DoctorD invented a new genre - "Christian electro-pop"? Has he become insane?

Some words of explanation:

DoctorD is not a huge fan of religion, to say the least. As a true atheïst, he can but observe the cause and effects of religions throughout history and across our planet – mainly Catholicism and Christianity in the region where DoctorD is from. Sometimes it’s not a pretty sight, and sometimes it’s a beautiful sight. Religious feelings have brought up the best in artists in the past, and gave us great music, painting, architecture and literature. And the same religious feelings caused mass extermination in South America and throughout the world, wars in all of Europe, oppression, and much more ugliness.

This was the starting point of the “Missa Electronica” project. DoctorD’s mixed feelings about religion and Catholicism has been translated into 6 tracks that bring together church songs from his childhood (before he turned atheïst) with modern urban sounds.

Most of the tracks are tracks to dance to. In DoctorD’s vision of the near future, maybe even under Pope Francis, church buildings are transformed into dance clubs, altars replaced by DJ booths, and candles by massive sound and light systems. Places to celebrate life. Herein lies the true goal of Missa Electronica.

Mastering audio for publishing is an intimidating task. When you read the literature, most people say that you need to leave the mastering to the professionals, if you can. In my experience, they are right: whenever, in past project, I relied on professional mastering engineers to produce my masters, I was astonished by the result. However, there are situations (zero-budget projects being one of them ;-) where you will want to master yourself.

Enter the world of the mastering plugins. There are 3 or 4 excellent mastering plugins in the market, and Izotope's Ozone5 is one of them. Since I'm an Ozone5 user, let me share 2 experiences with you - I hope they can help or inspire someone. Enjoy.

Matching EQ: if you want your production to sound like this or that reference track, the Ozone5 Matching EQ is your tool. It's dead easy: you create 2 snapshots - one from the reference track and one from your track that you are producing. Set the first snapshot as 'reference' and the second one as 'target'. Click MATCH, and Ozone5 will propose an EQ curve (the red one in the figure to the left), which you can soften and smooth (you don't want to apply an EQ curve that is too edgy during mastering). I've used a lot of matching EQ on my last project, and it gives great results.

Maximizing. Or: fighting the loudness war. A lot, and I mean A LOT, has been written about the subject of loudness. In Ozone5, you literally see the compression happening (upper pane in the figure to the left), and you just play with your threshold to control the amount of maximizing compression. I used a peak of -0.6dB and an average RMS during the signature parts of the track of -4.0dB. I'm still way above the K-12 norm, I must admit, but hey I was producing club tracks - right?