Garage Breaks is now shipping, and it promises guitars, drums and basses.

This inspirational library is packed with heavy pounding guitars, buzzcut basses, and the sharpest, most crunchy and funky drum breaks you’ve heard this millennium. 40 construction kits come in WAV, REX, Apple Loops and RMX format. Garage Breaks is the sweaty, dark place you always knew existed, where headbangers and clubhoppers find each other for a hot evening of pummeling. So crack open a loop or two and get pounding!

Big Fish Audio

This first video got a little messed up so I had to cut it. It’s really short but describes the essence of the ProPack.

This video was shot by George Necola and is a little more detailed.

Vintage Design

Spam

After coming back from Musikmesse, I have something like 5x-10x as much spam! This makes me wonder who I gave my card to in Frankfurt that could be the guy that

a) sells email addresses to other companies

- or -

b) is a viagra dealer

A chat with Malcolm Toft

I had a chance to talk a little with Malcolm Toft about his board – the ATB. Besides giving a great tour of the ATB, he talked about the upcoming meter bridge which he now had a prototype of (but not up for display), as well as some minor changes he will make to the current board lineup. He also told me that he planned on introducing a new board as well. It will be fully modular and a step up in the price range from the current Toft boards. I don’t know how big of a step though, so I have no idea what it’s supposed to compete with.

The crap between Oram and Toft has really left a bitter taste in me for both of these companies. Actually meeting and speaking to Malcolm changed that a bit. Malcolm gave a good introduction to the board, and just seemed like an overall nice character.

Random photos

Loyal camera woman enjoying the sun from the other side of the lens

Orange’s wall of noise

Here’s a (long) video interview from Sonicstate about Venue.

Since electronic drums are a popular topic among readers here at ProTooler, and since these new ones seem to quite honestly kick ass, I decided to shoot a demo video of them at Musikmesse. Enjoy!

2Box

They did have a C|24 up to give a go though. I took the opportunity since I’ve never actually touched one before. I was a bit surprised, I thought it would be much more 003-like in feel, but it actually felt better built. The faders felt much the same, but the transport buttons as well as the overall feel was way better than the overgrown 003 that I had imagined. I also ran across a Venue system… But not at the Digidesign booth! More about that in the console post. No ICON however.

Last but not least, a little hello all the Digidesign employes there that I got to chat with. It was nice meeting you guys… And even nicer to find out that you read this blog

Here’s the third and final part of my video diary. Hope you enjoyed it, despite my nonsense ramblings

It almost seems surreal when you’re running around with your girlfriend, almost racing through a section of the guitars, and bam! There stands Kerry King signing posters. I’m a Slayer fan, and Kerry King is of course a legend, but I’ve never been someone chasing after stars, and could never understand the whole idolizing bit – so I didn’t bother with standing in the autograph line.

The next day we walk up to the Slash autograph session. It’s so crowded that we don’t even consider sticking around for taking a picture of him. Nothing against Slash, he’s a good guitar player and all that, but I’ve never felt the craze about him that some people do. When we’re walking away from there, we again run into Kerry King autographing! A lot less people there this time (Slash didn’t sign the day before like King did) so I figure “what the hell, might as well get the poster and the handshake”. Kerry seems to be in a great mood. In fact, the line takes much longer than expected because he stands joking and laughing with some other guys at the booth. When I ask him if he doesn’t get tired of standing there writing his name he just says “no man, it’s a good day” (or something along those lines).

Why’s the security guy in the back so damn suspicious!?

Continuing the stroll around the guitar area, I come across another signing. This time I couldn’t resist myself. Paul Gilbert – one of my all time favorite shredders is sitting there (any longtime readers that remembers the Paul Gilbert Test?). The line is longer than the one to Kerry, but at this point I couldn’t care less. The line is actually moving pretty fast, and Paul seems to be the same easy going good guy type in real life that you might’ve seen in any of his videos.

Wait a minute! Whatever happened to the guy who wasn’t a fanboy and didn’t care about crap like this? I guess he took a break that day…

Here’s a clip of Boris from M-Audio talking about the new interfaces. We intended to do a video of the keyboards as well, but some other company was doing a demo right next to them, so it was just too noisy.

Here’s the second part of the video diary. It was taped the third day, but since I missed the first day, it was actually the day after my first day (did you get that?).