RAW VEGAN AGAIN. Getting in shape is helping my mind stay fit and be able to really start cranking out music again. So far it is a software binge. Studio is torn down, renovations. I am on the go, making music anywhere that I can, with Ipad, and my toshiba satellite a665 I can run a ton of plug ins, and with renoise, I don’t need a real keyboard to play riffs and write drums. Renoise is the only software that makes things sound good in the way that I like. I am actually really connecting to it more on a serious level, the last two toxic coma lps were written with renoise, and I loved how the production of psychophreak and the self titled turned out, loud, punchy, mean, distorted, warm. Not perfect, but good enough for my style. So far I am making an electronic LP, I don’t think there will be any guitars on this lp, I don’t have a way to record them right now any how. So all my new material is going back to that Calling of the dead meets fun with knives style, dance, industrial. I hope to capture rage on this LP. Something that has been sorely missing in the last 3 VAC lps. I feel pretty pissed off these days so I need to let it show. I have learned a lot of tricks in renoise to get me some glitchy drums finally. So I am very happy with my drum production in side of renoise, its perfect sample accurate timing as well, even with VSTs. Not using any midi or hardware this time. Honestly, with trilogy, atmosphere, and a couple of software synths that I like, largo is great, I love superwave as well, along side the jupiter 8 soft, Prophet vs is ok too, I am able to get sounds I am happy with. On Ipad I really dig the IMS-20, Rebirth, Ielectribe, and Electrify for basic sample based beats on the go. This stuff does not replace hardware, I hope to get back to using hardware again when time and space permits. Financial hard times have lead me to cut back. I had no choice. I am really happy with the results so far. Sound quality is fine and I can get it super loud with out mastering. The tricks and built in FX on renoise are so cool. I am actually having fun with this. I dreaded stepping down to software, but now, I am very happy with renoise, it is worth every penny and it is so much easier to use for me.

New Toxic Coma Video.

VAC lives because Toxic Coma Lives. The beating heart of my musical desires rest and get all their power from Toxic Coma. So far the currant incarnation of Toxic Coma is Myself, Lunggravy, and krztov. Krztov has yet to add a damn thing other than a sample of Lunggravy snoring from gravy’s iphone. Toxic Coma is like what I do to warm up and get non VAC ideas out of my head. I am generally a class clown, who has to fuck around and joke and act like an ass so all the seratonin runs out then i become the angry pissed off depressed asshole who makes VAC. Its my process. The social aspect of toxic coma also drives me, being alone and miserable all the time really can zap all the creativity out of you. I think that is the VAC Lul, If i don’t have friends and love in my life, I wilt, as does my music production. Things are looking up. At the same time though money is so tight, I am looking for more work to make more money so this sucks. Life goes on, must make due with what I have. I am blessed to have you fans, to have a music career, and to have people who give a shit about me. I thank all of you for that. I am also adding a food blog to the EDT blog. I will post some of the stuff I make and give recipes. Any how. Happy Holidays, Enjoy the free toxic coma, oh and btw at the top of the page there is a toxic coma link you can click on, this is now the official toxic coma page :) Also, please go to my official forum, or my facebook page, to ask questions for the new Toxic Coma Interview I am working on for the EDT blog. You ask a question, and Toxic Coma will answer it.

#VAC irc is back. To login use pidgin or another irc client for mac or windows, and login to this sever: irc.mibbit.net, then join #VAC . type /j #vac at the prompt. You should join the Official Velvet Acid Christ Chat, I go in there now and then. Lots of cool people.

I am now adding new articles weekly on the media blog, Reviews, and shining the spotlight on things I like. VAC writes all of these reviews and articles..

Intro: Saw some videos of this over on Matrixsynth, yes again, my Ipad news source for audio apps. I needed a mpc like app to load in my samples and make beats. Something easy, with a good interface and straight forward. Electrify fit the bill with a couple of short comings.

Functions: 6.0
When you buy this, there are some sounds that you get with it, in my honest opinion for the style of music that I write, it is rather disappointing if you want to make industrial, dance, techno, goa, ebm, idm, or glitch. If you like hip hop and slow tempo stuff, yes the sound set is great. The thing is, when you have your Ipad connected to your pc via itunes, you goto the ipad, then to the apps section, then select the electrify folder, you can drag and drop .zip files that you make with your sounds, .wav files you wish to use. I have a really great library of drum sounds, as you can see from the video, I have gold baby and my custom kits that I have made since the beginning of Velvet Acid Christ from the roland w-30, asr10, asrx, emu e6400, akai s5000 samplers. I was able to load all of mine in it no problem, converted all my sounds with chicken systems long ago into .wav format from all my gear ages ago. What sucks is, there are not kits premade, you have to just load in all your sounds for each song project you make. It’s pretty easy to do. Once you do this, you can make this thing sound amazing. I can do any style with my sound libs. I have almost every drum machine sampled and a ton of custom fx drenched drums I made myself over the years. You can only load 8 drum sounds per song. This is pretty limited but I found it adequate for basic beats. Every voice has its own filter, pan, pitch and fx send settings, you can normalize sounds, but I found this not to work very well, it seemed to do very little and the display did not get filled up after I normalized sounds. There are 2 master fx, you can make one fx a run into fx b as well to chain two. There is no performance pads or drum triggers that you can trigger with your fingers, so you cannot play beats in while recording. THIS SUCKS. Basically it is like a tr808 with out being able to play it live. You can push in the notes on the 16 entries on the music screen on the bottom half of the screen. Above that are controls for volume and pitch, you have to toggle between, pitch, decay, filter, volume etc etc. Above that are the instrument slots that have mane rows for making different patterns for each instrument, this is very well done. You can have up to 8 patterns for each sound that you can switch to in real time. It is easy to mute and solo tracks, there are only 8. You can also export the mix to a .wav file and copy it from Itunes onto your desktop and into any daw you might use.

Interface: 8.0
Getting around is very easy. This app is laid out really well and looks pretty cool. Its neat that you can control the filter for each sound with your finger like a koas pad. Its easy to load up a sound, and you can preview them before you load them. This is very cool. Tweaking knobs works well, but you have to get used to its orientation. I wish the editing when putting notes in the sequencer was more responsive like on the Ielectribe. Some times it feels really sluggish when programming it. It is pretty easy to get a beat up and running if you know how to use a 808 style hardware sequencer.

IndustElectrifyHexfix93 by Hexfix93

Sound: 9.5
This is what matters over all. With my drum libraries, I was able to get really good sounding renders out of this. They blew the Ielectribe and IMS20 out of the water on sound quality. More full, more bass, more solid and punchy sounding. I load these loops I make into renoise, throw on a bus compressor and some eq, and WOW this is it. This sounds better than battery on the pc, hands down, it sounds better than Idrum vst. The filters sound so usable. The fx are pretty great as well. It sucks that there is not more individual fx for each sound, and the lack of a really good distortion, and the complete lack of limiter/compressor really makes me scratch my head, these are essential for drum processing. Still, I am able to get great sounding stuff out of this if the sounds I put in it are top notch. It sums the drums pretty damn good. About as good as renoise does. I do like the verb ok, and the delays. The chorus and phaser flange stuff was meh, as was the distortions. The distortion never gets mean enough. The electribe has way better fx, way better.

Overall: 8.5
I really hope that he updates this app, adds real time recording mode into it, this is a must. Add some compressors and tube saturation stuff. This is really easy to use, and it really renders top notch audio quality for a software app. I think it sounds much better than logic and cubase for drums :) I think the sound quality is great. Love this for taking all my custom drum libs, and making beats ANYWHERE ANYTIME. I like to program drums, so this is cool, I just hope they update this and add more features. I highly recommend this app!

Pros: Amazing Audio quality, Good interface, can load your own sounds in via Itunes, Easy to get beats up and running if you know how to use 808 909 style hardware sequencers. I am using this for Velvet Acid Christ, and Toxic Coma.

Cons: No real time record and playing of sounds, everything is programmed.
Some of the FX are Lackluster. It is missing a lot of key features for a percussion box style sequencer. I am also bummed out that no one makes sequencers with 32nd and 64th note capabilities for doing glitch and super fast percussion rolls. Pisses me off I am always stuck in 16ths. This is a problem with most all apps these days. You can cheat, double the tempo and make 2 bars 1, and then you can have 32nd notes, but still, I find this annoying.

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I am now adding new articles weekly on the media blog, Reviews, and shining the spotlight on things I like. VAC writes all of these reviews and articles..
NEW ARTICLES:Clothing: Cryoflesh., Models: LollyODiamond., Music: Meatbeat Manifesto: Armed Audio Warfare, Hexfix93′s take.………….

Wow. My jaw dropped when I saw this app on Matrix Synth blog. I left Apple a year ago for Android and the future of touch tablets only to find an extreme lack of 3rd party software. I missed the iElectribe a ton. My envy grew and grew when Gravy showed up in Denver with his, making beats with it for the newest Toxic Coma track “DIGITAL GRAVY”. Already jonesing for an ipad for the iElectribe, seeing the ims-20 videos on Matrix Synth sent me over the top (I HAVE TO SELL STUFF TO PAY FOR THIS NOW). I bought an ipad again. And immediatly bought the ims-20 app. This is a xox style sequencer drum synth groovebox app.

Functions: 9.0
Think of this as rebirth. Except this time it’s a pure synth engine doing all the work. Not pcm sample drums, but rather that all the drum sounds are made with the ms20 VA sound engine. This rocks. The iElectribe was a hybrid engine, half VA and half pcm samples, which does offer more variation for the percussion, but for some reason I really love how this synth engine sounds. Then there is one dedicated true mono synth engine that replicates the ms20 vintage analog synth from korg. I have actually used the ms20 a bit at a friend’s house years ago and thought it was over rated next to my sh2 for bread and butter sounds. The thing is, for out there sci-fi, buzzy, aggressive in your face sounds, the ms20 can scream bloody murder in the right hands(think old aphex twin, and most goa trance). Although it still retains most of it’s sonic character, the VA ims20 is not as beefy or as raw sounding as the real thing. The synth is very easy to use. The mono synth that is. It’s straight up like a real analog synth. The drum parts are pretty much the ms20 engine as well, and you can edit the sounds for each drum sound by hitting the edit button in one of the sections of the drum edit sections. So essentially this is a 7 voice VA. You can use the drum parts for synth sounds and sequence them as well. Some of the demos that it comes with show this off. There are only two fx engines. Very limited. The typical korg fx, delays, chorus, verbs, and grain shift etc. The effects can change from pattern to pattern as well. They sound pretty good though. The sequencer is modeled after the old korg sequencer that came out about the same time the ms20 did, the Sq-10. Except you get 16 steps instead of 12. This took me some time to get used to. You have 3 knobs. The bottom one is the gate, which determines the length of the note. The middle knob is the octave, which controls which octave to play. The top knob is the note to play. As you turn them text appears on the screen and tells you what the value is. There is no slide and accent like on the 303 and rebirth, so no super acid for you here. You get those 3 knobs for each step of the sequence, which is 16th notes for one measure. There are also patterns, and you can make songs out of the patterns. While in pattern edit modes you can use the utility button on the top right of the screen to copy patterns which contains the seq for drums and synth parts for one measure. You can also render the patterns to a .wav file and import them into your favorite daw and do whatever you want to them, loop them etc. In order to accomplish this you have to connect the ipad into a mac or pc via usb, then run itunes, under apps you should see if you scroll down the files section for the different apps, there you can drag and drop the .wavs to any dir on the computer. This app also supports Soundcloud, so you can export to Soundcloud from the app itself. Below is a clip I made for Toxic Coma. It will be in one of the new songs I am working on.

toxiccomaims20.wav by Hexfix93

Interface:9.5
This is where the Ipad apps always shine: the ease of use, being able to tap the screen, use your finger on a knob and tweak it more like real hardware, in some cases better. In this case, I am floored. It’s a little strange at first look. At the top of the of the screen there are tons of these buttons, like synth, drum, effects global utility, etc. These navigate you to all the sections you need to jump to. What is really cool is that this is a semi modular synth, and you can tap and drag to connect virtual cables to the cv matrix on the right hand of the synth. You can really jack the sound up if you know what you are doing. You can also cv in and out of the seq to get really cool results. There are two virtual keyboards, a small one that is default and a bigger one you can call up; and two, yes, two, koas pads to tweak the sound. TWO KAOS PADS. You wont find that on any real MS20. You scroll the screen on the synth screen to scroll up and down to and from the seq. Its laid out pretty well. Because the Ipad is multi touch, you can mess with two kaos pads and tweak the knobs at the same time. KILLER for tweaking stuff. You can record all the tweaks into the pattern so it plays back your tweaks! This is AMAZING. You can play live into the seq then edit and tweak, or you can use the step editors. The drum sequencer is cook. It’s like the Roland tr808 etc.

Sound: 8.5
This is where I was surprised. I thought the iElectribe could sound a little hollow in the 60hz to 200hz, but this is a little thicker and more present down there and in the midrange. I love both of these Korg Ipad apps. They both sound pretty good. With enough post production you can get it to sit in a mix pretty well, but only when you render it to .wav and bypass the ipad’s DAC headphone/line out. The Ims20 sounds like the little brother of a real ms20, I can make it scream and sound aggressive, especially with the fx. The ms20 was always more of a lead/ sound fx acidic synth. It can do bass pretty good on this version. I thought the real version was a tad weak on bass compared to the ms10. This thing can do dance lines and aggressive industrial no problem. It still has that plastic sheen that most software VAs have, but if you put enough saturation vst plugs on it, you can make it sound more like the real thing, just a tad fainter with less juice on the resonance. I think this is the sound of trance / techno and old school industrial / glitch. This is not a super fat synth. This is good for melodic, weird acid lines, and grooves. What makes this better than the iElectribe is the 2 osc setup, hp and lp filter at the same time, ring mod, and the mod matrix with the semi modular patch bay. You can really make strange and messed up sounds with this synth engine. The lame synth presets don’t even scratch the surface. The main character comes from the two resonant filters, hp and low pass, mess with them just right and you can make it scream in this really cool way that no other synth or VA can.

Overall: 9.1
Because this is on the Ipad it makes it so easy to pick up and use anywhere to get ideas out, simple beats and synth lines. I find this a very inspirational tool. The iElectribe is more for beats. There is no real synth engine with a keyboard. This is the game changer. This is for real. Delivering on both fronts of a drum machine that is highly customizable and uses a real analog synth style engine. The sound is pretty good for a software VA.

Pros: Very easy to use, sounds great, laid out very well, touch screen, Soundcloud support built in, can export seqs to .wav files. This is a powerhouse seq, drum machine, synth with the ms20 character.

Cons: Not as good as a real ms20 sound wise. Sometimes the timing is glitchy when switching screens and doing certain actions while using the program. Hope they fix this in a future update. Lacking presets compared to the iElectribe. What is there does not show off the beef of what this has to offer.

Bottom line: If you have an Ipad, got it for music, and are into dance style anything, this is a MUST HAVE. I am very impressed. Right now it is $15.99, Sixteen dollars. WOW, this will only last until jan 2011. So get this soon, before the price goes up to 30 bucks!!!