Keyfax NewMedia Releases Sound Advice Analog Synthesis and Digital Effects Instructional DVD

Everyone needs to be a synth programmer or engineer nowadays. And not just keyboard players, either. Guitarists and songwriters using copies of Cubase LE that tumble out of the box along with their computer interface, drummers with a new DTX e-kit, remix artists running Reason, live DJ/musicians running Live!, videographers running Final Cut Pro or even iMovie. Garage Bandits...the list goes on and on.

Almost every music-involving program now offers filters, envelope generators, and LFOs for tweaking your music, along with reverbs, EQs, delays, and compression modules or plug-ins that are essential in order to raise your audio to the 'professional' standards that modern music and video software enticingly now permits.

But actually using these new-found tools takes a far wider level of understanding than any host program or general tutorial or DVD is going to spend time on.

The Solution

Enter Sound Advice - a DVD almost 9 hours in length providing 'no parameter left behind' information and expertise on analog-style synth programming and digital effects.

Written and presented by top sound designer Dave Polich, who has crafted waveROM and presets and for some of the world's most successful music hardware and software products of the past ten years, Sound Advice's 3 DVDs encompass:

• Synth programming techniques
• An exhaustive parameter-by-parameter guide
• Everything you could possibly wish to know about digital effects

The DVD's navigation system allows you to use Sound Advice in many different ways: As a complete master class tutorial, as a work of reference (you can search individual sound parameters), or as an encyclopedia of techniques and sound types (creating pads, modifying sound FX etc).

"All you need to know about oscillators, filters, envelopes, dynamics and effects that will enable you to produce the sound that you are looking for on your synth - totally from scratch," says legendary producer and 2007 GRAMMY nominee Alan Parsons.

DVD Contents

Using the popular Yamaha Motif ES as its demonstration platform, Disc 1 starts with how to create simple sounds; breaking down examples into three main categories: decaying sounds, sustaining sounds, and non-pitched sounds. The next section shows you how to tweak a series of classic sound types: brightening up a piano, changing the tone of an electric guitar, modifying the envelope of a brass patch, and many others.

Disc 2 comprises an exhaustive look at all the major analog-style synth parameters from Amplitude Scaling to Velocity Curves. Perfectly watchable from start to finish, with diagrams, text boxes, and plenty of real-world musical examples, Disc 2 is primarily designed as a reference guide.

Disc 3 is entirely devoted to digital effects - now an integral part of the sound design landscape. All major DSP effects - from reverbs and delays, to chorus, flanger, and phaser, to EQ and compression - are examined in minute, parameter-by-parameter detail.

Who Needs It

Produced by KEYFAX NewMedia, who has been making instructional videos and DVDs on music technology for more than 15 years, Sound Advice is filmed in a clean and uncluttered style, with supporting text boxes and simple diagrammatic material.

Talking 'in plain English,' Sound Advice is aimed at the novice to intermediate user who has a keen potential interest in sound, but who doesn't exactly want to study the subject at college. Applications include computer-using musicians of all persuasions, technology-enabled DJs, to students and teachers in music education.

"There's so much scope for creating new sounds today between powerful workstations like Motif, software applications, and plug-ins," says KEYFAX founder Julian Colbeck. "But programming has become a dark - or at least lost - art for most people. We hope that Sound Advice will inspire a whole new generation to experiment with sound and unleash the full creative potential of the tools now at their disposal."

Sound Advice is available in all good music stores, or can be purchased direct from www.motifator.com/soundadvice.