First things first, I've just uploaded a new track called 'People Are Evil'. Please check it out!!

Been a while since I blogged – but have good reasons. As hinted at in my blog, I was working a Lucasfilm on the Clone Wars game. Well – our relationship has ended, somewhat messily and I found myself in Singapore without a visa, without a job.

The good news is I'm working again at a great company here called Real U, Lead Designing the MMO Otherland. You can see a very early preview of the game here:

http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=249125

They say you should never meet your heroes. You should never work for them either. I'm proud of the work I did at Lucas and I hope the DS game does great. It was just time to move on and now, with Real U, I feel like I'm back in Kansas. Yup – it's been a very Wizard of Oz year. Sometimes it's best not to look behind the curtain :D

If you want to check out the game I just finished, GameSpot just posted a new movie.



But you don't care about all that personal stuff! You just want to know what cool VST's I've been using lately!

Let's take a look in the plugin folder!

So the chip tune remix I did of the Public Enemy track 'Bring the Noize' featured a bunch of old computer emulation synths. Predominant in the mix are a couple of C64, SID chip emulators.

The main two I use are 38911 from OdO Synths (http://www.odosynths.com/) and Basic 64 from the always excellent De La Mancha (http://www.delamancha.co.uk/basic.htm).

I have to say I mainly used presets. Some synths I love to tweak, others I just overload with addition FX to screw with the base preset. This is weird to me because as a kid the C64 was my musically instrument of choice and I would spend hours writing tunes and trying to get new and interesting sounds out of the SID. Now – I guess all this excellent technology we have has made me lazy. Either that or I just spent an unhealthy amount of time slaved over the old C64, time I don't have now!

The drums on the track came from Tweak Bench's Toad (http://www.tweakbench.com/toad). Lovely, lovely plugin! Lots of classic NES sounds mapped all the way up the keyboard.

Also featured in the track is Cosmic Boy's Icecream. This is a great little synth and my new fav for crazy sci-fi sounds. It's really simple to use and you will want to screw around with the controls to personalize those presets. It's designed to sound like Chip Tune fodder but is more flexible than your average straight up emulation.

Highly recommend grabbing a copy from Cosmic Boy's MySpace page. http://www.myspace.com/cosmicboymusic

There's a good thread on KVR if you want to try out some more. The Magical plugin is great. http://www.kvraudio.com/forum/printview.php?t=168873&start=0

You might not have noticed, but I use a lot of these synths in track that don't have such a chip tune edge. I just love interesting sounds and mashing them together.

In other (even more) news I bought a MacBook Pro (which means there will be a newer, faster, cheaper model any day now) and an iPhone.

I'm officially Job's bitch ☺ I love the Mac. I'm running both Vista (I know – I know) and OS X with Boot Camp. I am still doing music in Vista because of all the free Synth Edit plugins I use. If they were out for OS X I probably wouldn't be dual booting.

I've been tempted by a new Mac since I bought my wife a MacBook for her course last year. I always said (many years ago) that I would buy a Mac if I could run windows on it – so I guess I'm true to my word!

Love the iPhone too. I used to work for a mobile games company in London and I've always had phones that are more than phones. Frikkin love the iPhone. Love the apps, love the interface, love that finally there's something small that does all this good stuff. You should see the size of some of the phones I've had in the past!!

Till next time!

Dante Jones