Wednesday 18 November 2020

2020 - The Lockdown Rhythms: Volume 1

Well who could have predicted that our governments would tell us all to work from home if possible this year. Although this generally doesn't apply to the Cyber crew, the initial break while everyone figured out how to become Covid-secure (sic) was productive and we have now released the first in a series of mini-mixes resulting from the collectives commuting holiday. You can find it on Soundcloud by clicking the link. Mixed by Pewi, the tracks are as follows:

01) K@t7 - Scratch & Post

02) JD - Fandom of the Operators

03) Dj Pewi - Piano Chant

04) Holladex - Buzzin' 

05) Cyberhythm - Runway 2

06) Iron Bouncers - Your Name's Not Dan (no MC edit) 

07) Ep1q - Deep Underground

08) Two Chordo - Piano in the Vortex 


It's always refreshing to revisit this project but quite a few things have changed out there in the real world which affect us and we haven't fully caught up with yet. Steinberg (of Cubase fame/notoriety) would like us to hand over personal details in order for us to continue distributing our collection of VST instruments. To save them the hassle of spamming an infrequently checked mailbox, we have decided not to continue developing them further (including upgrades to VST3 format). This is also partly because there have been multiple updates to Buzz since we created them and it's now difficult to track which version of which plug-in can still be loaded into which version of Buzz (yes cloud-based version control would have been a great idea if it had existed back when we initially created & released them).

If there's a computing & music undergrad out there looking for a project idea, the world needs an open format for virtual instruments and some good sound design software for creating presets. We've speculated for years that this will come and eventually you will be able to play a piano preset on a harmonica (our Retorca idea) or play synth sounds via your physical guitar. We also expected drum-sets to be replaced by smart drum-sticks with different presets for different kits and allocating zones in real space as virtual pad triggers. What an exciting world we've imagined. :)

More music coming soon as we'll be retiring some of the old tracks on Soundcloud and continue releasing more of the Lockdown Rhythm sessions.  

 

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