Cyberhythm Blog

Up in the Clouds

2010-12-15T08:13:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note to say we are quite impressed by a new site we found called Soundcloud. It has the same sort of feel that the original 'mp3.com' had when it first started. Nothing is ever likely to equal that original site for us underground types but it is nice to see a new site springing up which also supports hosting for tracks produced under a creative commons license. So it's thumbs up from us and we have a couple of tracks on there which are not available anywhere else.

Cyberhythm lend a helping hand

2009-09-17T07:58:00.000-07:00

We were recently approached by someone close to the cyber-camp who wanted some music for a Youtube video which wouldn't result in a blocked audio track due to Youtube's legal agreement (or non-agreement) with the UK music licensing authorities. Since this was to enable a 2 year old lad to get some video files about bin-trucks out to the world, we agreed without hesitation and allowed the use of a pre-release version of one of our new tracks.

The video is here:

So good luck to Binman Harry with his video clips and we wish him success with his pocket-money generating website at: http://www.bin-trucks.co.uk/. Incidentally we also provided a few on-the-fly compositions of about 30-60 seconds for some of his other clips but these are nothing to do with the next album.

At last it's here !!!

2009-09-17T07:46:00.000-07:00

No, not the new album. We are referring to the new version of FL studio. During testing of 8.5 beta we discovered a few problems with some of our soft synths. These problems did not exist in FLv8.0 however we recognise that the developers are working hard on fixing things like this so we decided not to use 8.5. This halted production for us because v8.0 has a lot more bugs than v8.5 but there was no guarantee that anything we created in v8.5 beta would work in the final release. Now that version 9.0 has been officially released we are busy testing out all of our tracks and soft-synths before we give it our official thumbs-up and say ok lets get on with CH-19.

For anyone thinking of buying FLStudio, just do it. We bought in at version 6 so this will be the third upgrade we have had since our one-off payment back in whenever it was. I challenge you to get a better deal from any other digital workstation manufacturer.

What happened?

2009-06-11T07:57:00.000-07:00

Ok so we failed to meet our own deadline. We are human and sometimes things get in the way of progress. Rather than release an unfinished work we opted to delay release inevitably. It is a bit of an ambitious project but rest assured we are still working on it. Some of the tracks are even finished but we may decide to rework the final mix-downs. There's still a lot to be done to acheive our conceptual ideas for this project.

At least we have now completed our soft-synths collection (Cyberstring, Cybergroove, Cybergroove2, Cybersample, NaturalDrums, CyberTB and CyberSpaceFX) although they are not yet all available on the website. A couple of them have been a bit buggy in FL studio 8.5 even though they worked fine in version 8. Keep watching this space.

Cybergroove update

2008-04-18T06:35:00.000-07:00

If anyone has downloaded the cybergroove vst it might be worth getting a fresh copy. It seems the original version copied onto the server filtered out sysex requests which means you may not be able to record changes to the cut-off and resonance sliders during performance. Not good for a bassline synth so I've uploaded a new version which should allow your sequencer to record changes during a performance. So far I've only tested it with Fl-studio and although Fl doesn't show the slider movements as recordable with the red dot below the help menu, it will track the changes as long as you choose to record either score & automation or everything.

The controllers used are: 11 (expression) for cut-off; 2 (breath) for resonance; 7 (volume) for master volume and 1 (modulation) for pitch tuning (linked to both oscillators so could be interesting).

CyberGroove bass synth released

2008-04-16T05:46:00.000-07:00

Yes the 32-preset CyberGroove bassline VST synth has now been released as freeware on our own website. It's been a busy time at the Cyberstudios. Steady progress is being made and track 9 is now completed except for the final mixdown. It's a very simple track but effective; It reminds me of 'Hypnosis' by Psychotropic. I remember being in a club called 'Regimes' in Stoke when the Dj played that track. There were loads of chilled-out people standing on the steps all around the dancefloor just moving in time to the music and with track 9 we have tried to make a tune which might inspire the same effect. Time will tell if we've succeeded or not.

We are now slowly getting used to FL Studio and since discovering how to work with audio clips we are finding it a lot more intuitive. It's certainly a lot more powerful than the Atari ST version of cubase 2.5 which we used on many of the last album tracks. There's hardly a midi cable to be seen as well. We are now keen to explore the synthmaker plug-in which has appeared in FL-8 but it seems we would need to pay $225 for a license which allows us to distribute anything we create. For now we will be sticking with synthedit which I'm sure still has a lot of extra functionality we haven't explored yet. Keep watching the website.

First Soft Synth Released

2008-04-11T06:01:00.000-07:00

Well thanks to a great little utility called knobman we have rapidly put together an improved skin for the CyberSpaceFX synth. We decided to release this one first as it is designed for a particular niche unlike the others which hold more generic instrument patches. This first synth is now available from our website and more will hopefully follow soon.

We may lose our cuurent website hosting during the next few months. It may be unavailable for brief periods over the next few months which is why we are looking into alternative hosting. If anyone out there has access to a Viglen MPC-L I'd be interested in hearing what you think of it. We are considering using one as our host server but I have not yet heard whether it is possible to install apache on the optimised version of Xubuntu which it comes pre-installed with. We are keen on green technologies and with a power consumption of only 5 watts we think this little gem could cost less to run per year than most hosting companies charge per month. Definitely a gadget for out wishlist.

The Deadline Approaches

2008-04-10T06:25:00.000-07:00

We are getting ever closer to that end of June release date and the album is still not finished but we are progressing although not as quickly as we would like. There just seems to be so much to do. For instance we are now legitimate owners of Synthedit which means we can now distribute our own soft synths. Since registering though it became apparent that we can now have more than 16 presets so we spent a lot of time adding more. Yesterday the CyberspaceFX synth was finished but we need to develop a nice looking skin for it before we make it available for download. This may be something we leave until after the album is finished.

Also the website is progressing well with the randomised content adding lots of background information about the group and the futuristic setting which forms the backdrop and inspiration for the whole album. I want to get this live A.S.A.P. as it will replace the old cyberhythm.co.uk site (although the old content will be archived and available). There is a definite difference between the old amateur sounding 'Flame War' album and the forthcoming 'Cargo Hold 19' album. Our new sound is more punchy and polished which is the difference using one good DAW really makes. We are looking into new hosting options at the moment as the new site needs it. One option we are keen to look into is hosting it ourselves using a very economical server. At this point we don't expect a vast amount of traffic but we do need a lot of storage space.

Cyberblog takes off

2008-04-03T03:07:00.000-07:00

It seems a long time since we started this project way back in 1996. Since then we have been busy doing our thing with a casual and laid back ethos. We started as a group of amateur musicians donating tracks to a collective project. Now we are working together to create an epic soundscape.

Inspired by legendary works such as Pink Floyds "Dark side of the moon" and Mike Oldfields "Tubular bells", we decided our next project would be an equivalent dance music album based on a futuristic story set 6 centuries into the future. Fusing our own styles of breakbeat, trance, house and techno into a 9-track epic digital masterpiece. The tracks are in various stages of completion along with story line inserts, 3D artwork, the web-site, our very own ringtone and half-a-dozen virtual synthesisers which we made ourselves. We are busy bunnies and hope to release this album at the end of June 2008 if all goes to plan. As we are less than three months away, the countdown has started.