It Seems that the Virtual Instruments Magazine is back to life. They have a new issue with nice content, including a great interview with Eric Persing, sound designer, composer and founder of Spectrasonics, one of the best companies in the would of virtual instruments. Check:

What led you to sound design?

I never really pursued being a sound designer, because at the time there wasn’t such a thing-you were a synthesizer player. Growing up, I always thought there were two aspects to it. One was that you play, the other was that you create your own sounds. I pursued both and loved both aspects of it.

It wasn’t until 1980 or so when I came to Los Angeles and started meeting a lot of my heroes, when I was really surprised that there were very few people who actually knew how to create sounds-how to use the gear. So I found myself with a unique skill that I didn’t realize I had.

And then I ended up working for Roland and going to the NAMM show in Chicago in 1984 just a little after MIDI was introduced in 1983. It was a big show-the SBX-80, the introduction of Octopads, the whole idea of MIDI modules, controllers-a lot pretty big things. That was how I got my gig with Roland, kind of introducing MIDI to everyone.

A lot of the Japanese engineers were creating the sounds, and they weren’t even really musicians or sound designers. Most of what they’d put in would be sounds that made them laugh! There would be cow sounds and cats, that kind of stuff. They had no idea what people in the United States were interested in. The American synthesizers were doing much better because they had presets that were designed more seriously.

I had created my own sounds for the JX-3P and some of the early MIDI synthesizers…

Continue reading…

vía @aandersen

Electronic Musician has published a useful article called Going Beyond Presets, with five top Sound Designers offering tips for getting the most of your synths.

In the late ’60s and early ’70s, there were probably fewer than 20 synthesizers on the market, all costing in the tens of thousands of dollars. Today, life is good: There are hundreds of electronic musical instruments available, both virtual and hardware-based, employing a wide variety of synthesis and sampling technologies, and costing somewhere between nothing and a few thousand dollars. Yet, with this embarrassment of riches lying at our metaphorical (and, occasionally, literal) feet, most people barely do more than choose a preset closest to their needs at the moment.

Read Full Article Here.

Vía Kreativ Sounds @ Twitter

Danny Elfman, a Grammy Award-winning musician and compositor responsible of the well known “The Simpsons” main theme and music of films such as Spider Man 3, Hulk, Bettlejuice, and many others. This time, Danny discusses scoring of the Terminator Salvation, with Spectrasonics Omnisphere.

Elfman often used two Omnispheres for up to sixteen possible sounds at once. He says “I would have to say that discovering Omnisphere this last year has been one of my greatest pleasures. I’m always looking for new sounds and new plug-ins to run with my sequencer, which is Digital Performer. Using Omnisphere along with DP is fantastic for several reasons. First, there’s a great core library to choose from and Eric Persing has, along with all the Spectrasonics sound designers, done a really vast and thorough job. It’s great, finally, to have sounds organized so well with the many ‘tags’ that they provide. Secondly, it’s really easy to program your own custom sounds. My first day, I already had several dozen edits that I really liked and put them in a separate ‘Favorites’ folder. The Omnisphere browser system made it super easy to find them as I needed them.”

“When I began Terminator Salvation I knew I was going to do a lot of synth work and so I began with a bank of their sounds and a slew of my own variations that I thought I could use, and use them I did. On almost every cue,” continued Elfman.

“More specifically, I found myself diving into the ‘Psychoacoustic‘ sounds a lot, frequently in the ‘Experimental’ and ‘Film’ genres. I also found myself often going to the ‘Distortion’ category, also in the ‘Experimental’ and ‘High-Energy’ genres.”

The Sounds

“An example of what I did would be taking the ‘Buzzord’ sounds, which I had half a dozen custom variations that I came up with. Several variations on the ‘Big Boomer Trash Strike’ from the ‘Impacts and Hits’ category was used a lot. From the ‘Pads + Strings’ group I went to the ‘Sweeping Pads’ and ‘Quirky’ tags a lot. The patch ‘Secondary Strike’ from the ‘SFX and Noise’ category and ‘Sound FX’ genre was very useful and like the others, I had a number of variations on it. Finally the ‘Hybrid Organic’ category gave me sounds that I would use both as hits and pads and sometimes a cross between them,” Elfman explained.

“I can’t say enough good things about Omnisphere,” said Elfman. “I love doing my own synth editing, but I’m no programming genius and I have very little patience for new plug-ins that require steep leaning curves to start really ‘working’ the patches I like. Omnisphere was really easy and intuitive. And for each file in DP, I’d make all the edits and variations on my sounds as was required, and having them attached to that file for later use made my life easier.”

“My compliments to Eric and all the folks at Spectrasonics. Good work.”

Terminator Salvation – Trailer 3

“Terminator Salvation” official website
Spectrasonics website
Danny Elfman at IMDB