Tool Much Fun 4
Here’s your latest batch of things to know about. Just a reminder that I have generally not tested or tried these items. Sometimes I have watched a promotional or demonstrative video. The descriptions are my thoughts and/or copy from their websites.
Samples
Drum Kits and Sample Packs. There are a couple of freebies there.
Sound Effects library including vehicles, home, braahms, gym, risers, combat, whooshes, nature and more.
Web tools
“One click to save everything with AI.” Yep they gotta use that buzzword. This is a browser plugin currently only available for Chrome — as usual, they’re the iOS of browsers — for curating stuff you find on the web. I was fond of these type of things a few years ago, and used Clipix a bit. Compare with Milanote (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) and Fusebase (Chrome, Firefox, Edge), and of course the oldie Evernote.
An add-on for Firefox that lets you migrate your followers from your Twitter to Bluesky.
“Follow the best people with AI. Targeted Growth, Smart Analytics” Although X has become problematic since it was bought, there are still many people there and I suppose this promises toincrease your follower count. I’m doubtful it will be a good spend of my money but I thought it was interesting. I wonder if they will do the same type of thing for Threads.
Music distribution site. Upload to Apple, TikTok (is this really a valid music platform?) Amazon, Instagram and Pandora (which I don’t think works in Australia)
Music
These folks have done the unenviable job of letting you use their analog hardware over the internet. Pay via credits or a subscription. It’s not hard to imagine an alternate universe where this was the norm and using a digital model of hardware as a plugin was the weird way to do things.
A plugin with a detailed model of drummer Conor Denis’s Gretsch USA Custom kit. I hadn’t heard of him, but then again I haven’t heard of a lot of people.
A deep dark reverb with lots of texture. Lots of other freebies available. I had heard of Witch Pig but didn’t realize how many freebies there are.
They call it a “Vintage Venomous Fuzz” to make it sound meaner I guess? They have a shall we say unique interface that I initially thought was for hardware pedals.
Honestly I’d never heard of v1 so where have they been? This appears to be a romper with “Basses, Pads, Plucks, Synths, Keys, Chord Shots, Chord Progressions, Textures and more”. Includes onboard Reverb, Distortion, Chorus and Delay for your convenience. Four expansion pack are available if you’re fascinated by it.
Proton MultiFX pedal No link here — Nino from ninobeatz posted a tweet about a yet-to-be released collaboration from Soundware, Audiotechhub and Prototype audio.
Welcome the fuzzy cobra
Nonlinear physical modelled string instrument. Further develop the sounds with onboard effects such as Compressor, EQ, Distortion, Drive, Fuzz, Phaser, Tremolo and Wah.
Vocal tuning app. Compare with Antares Auto Tune, who I just saw have released their own De-Esser.
Kontakt
Drum machine with samples recorded with Ribbon mics from 1955.
“For creating ambient and atmospheric music”. Very cinematic and dreamlike.
A grab bag of lost of traditional Indian instruments. I already bought SOLO and some of the SwarPlug stuff so I will probably skip this one, but if you don’t have anything like this then it’s worth a look.
I imagine when they describe this as “organic” they mean warm and reminding one of things that exist in real life rather than the coldness of abstract digital sounds.
Freebie for getting deep with the famous bovine bell.
While researching it has come to my attention that there are a wealth of Indian instruments available that don’t make it into the western audio news sites. One vendor I found offers freebies, but in order to download them you must watch their demo videos in their entirety in order to obtain a password. I assume this is to gain some revenue from Youtube, rather than just giving the items away as a promotion. If I find out these are safe and somehow easier to obtain I’ll post about them.
Video
Easily record and transcribe audio files — handled locally on device. If you get the free one there is a link to get 20% off the full version. It has a lot of features that I don’t need at the moment.
iOS
For developers who need to make screenshots of their apps for uploading to the App Store.
Journalling apps are like a specific type of blogging product, and if you like writing them then they can be handy. A search of the term “journal’ on the app store will show that they went almost 100% subscription model as soon as they could, much like plant-identifying apps. I’m still not sure why some categories did this and others didn’t. My suspicion is that their audience has enough income to sustain a few subs such as media consumption, and they don’t have a heap of other apps demanding their dollars.
FM Synths are arguably the hardest to wrap your head around. This one allows you to use the sounds without getting caught up in the complexity.
A vocal harmoniser designed to allow up to 5 simultaneous harmonies.
I’ve been using a night light so the new cats can see their litter box in the dark, and I stumbled across this app which claims to be the only one of its kind with a timer for turning out the light.
Odd analoggy broken circuit type sounds.
Vocal tuners coming to iOS is a good sign that the tools have started to mature. One more reason to try making music on iOS!
Writing
For Writers of screen, stage and other text, musician, academics(?), journalists, game designers. Share your creative content with a video pitch, video and audio clips then be seen immediately by Industry Professionals.
To paraphrase an old politician whose merits I won't discuss here: Who are these professionals, what are their names? I know, this is more a promotional site than a writing tool, but I haven't found any recently.
Fonts
Here’s a few freebies I saw that I hadn’t encountered. I tend to find these more often when I am doing graphics work but I haven’t done any recently.
Could use some tighter kerning IMHO.
IBM Plex sample. Remember IBM? I’m not sure about the t and l glyphs,
That will have to do for now. I tried working with Markdown blocks this time to save time formatting the links, and I can’t tell you how much of a first world nightmare it’s been. The formatting side works fine, but there have been heaps of bugs with the Markdown text blocks and I’ve recorded a quick screen recording to demonstrate one of the issues. It made heaps of dud Markdown blocks and I had to delete them all one by one. I have reached out to Squarespace support on X so we’ll see if they have any comment. Back to normal text blocks for the next one.