ShakeABeat has been released to the world!  ShakeABeat is the latest app from Engine Audio for your  iPhone or iPod Touch device. Have you ever wanted to make music with a flick of your wrist? ShakeABeat IS IT!

After diving deep into iPhone SDK I came up with an app that uses the accelerometer of the device to trigger a wide array of beat and loops. Each variation of the beat is tied to a particular direction the device moves.  Up-Down, Left-Right, Front-Back…will trigger one of three different variations of the beat.  Each loop is tempo matched and only switches on the downbeat to stay in time.  Shake your device in all directions to easily play a wide variety of the funkiest beats and loops. FLIP, TWIST and SHAKE your device on any of the three axis (X,Y,Z) to control the mix. Collections of beats are programmed to stay in time, start it up with a shake and let ShakeABeat do the rest. Just make sure to keep shaking to keep the music going.

Search ShakeABeat in the iTunes App Store to try it on your own device.  Hours of fun for only $.99! Best dollar you’ll spend today.  Wanna try before you buy? Check out ShakeABeat Lite for FREE!

–== 3 HIP HOP BEAT PACKS ==–        –== 3 ELECTRONIC BEAT PACKS ==–
Each pack has 3 HOT loops plus 3 ShakeFX sample pads use.

–== 3 ROCK DRUM KITS ==–
Some apps give you a single sound to shake. ShakeABeat has 6 sounds in EACH KIT! All drum kits consists of a Kick, Snare, Crash, Hi Tom, Mid Tom, Lo Tom.

–== OVER 40 SOUNDS TOTAL!==–

–== ADVANCED SHAKEFX TECHNOLOGY ==–
Hold one of the ShakeFX Pads and shake the phone in that direction to play unique real-time samples. Holding a ShakeFX pad will cause the beats to continuously loop in the background.

–== ADJUSTABLE SENSITIVITY FOR YOUR OWN CUSTOM FEEL ==–
Make sure you check the settings page to adjust the sensitivity to your liking. Higher sensitivity will make it more difficult to fire off sounds, but will reduce the number of false hits you may be getting.

–== DRUM SOLO MODE ==–
Lowering the sensitivity most of the way will cause all drum samples to play furiously like your own personal drum solo!

–== COLOR CHANGING BACKGROUND ==–
The background of the app flashes Red(X), Green(Y), Blue(Z) to match the direction you shake the phone. A great reminder to know what beat is coming up next.

–== PLAY ALONG WITH YOUR IPOD LIBRARY ==–
Use ShakeABeat to play along with your favorite music tracks from your library

FOR MORE INFORMATION:  WWW.SHAKEABEAT.COM FOLLOW ON TWITTER:@SHAKEABEAT

Check out the Demonstration Video on YouTube:

My partner Chris has recently decided on a daily affirmation. He was going to record at least one sound every single day, and catalogue it. Well in solidarity, I have come up with my own affirmation. I will take some of the recordings that Chris captures, and process the living daylights out of them. My plan is to use only stock or freeware plug-ins. I will post up my results, and give a description of the plug-ins I used.

Hopefully more people will join the ranks of those who are producing, creating, and sharing the results with the whole community. Please send us any thoughts you might have about recording and processing sound.

In this first batch, I used the same sounds that Chris put into the player above. I started with a combination of stock plug-ins from Logic Audio 9, as well as the freeware plug in package “SoundMagic Spectral” from Michael Norris. Spectral processing can give you some wild results, and Michael Norris created a gold mine of Sound Design options.

http://www.michaelnorris.info/soundmagicspectral/index.html

Here is a list of what was used, to create spectral mangling.

1. Packing Peanuts Squeeze = VocalTransformer (Logic) and Spectral Pulsing
2. Shop Vac Hose Tones = Spectral Gate and Hold
3. Stretching Low End String = Spectral Freezing
4. Hematite Magnets = Chorus / Limiting (Logic)
5. Shop Vac Shut off = Spectral Shimmer
6. Blender Revs = Reversed the File / Spectral Bin Shift

May5th by Tom@engineaudio

Listen to the sounds here:

We here at EngineAudio have been recenltly inspired by the amazing new recordings coming from ChuckRussom at ChuckRussomFX.com and Tim Prebble at HissandaRoar.com. While we aren’t creating professional libraries for sale like those guys, we wanted to make sure we are recording at least one new sound a day.

The recordings were made with a Rode NT2 Shotgun and Zoom H4N Stereo Recorder 16bit 44.1k (will be going to 24bit/96k next week).

Here is a summary of the sounds from the past week April 25th – May 1st 2010.

1. Packing Peanuts Squeezes

2. Shop Vac Hose Tones

3. Stretching Low End String

4. Hematite Magnets Buzzes

5. ShopVac ShutOff

6. Blender Revs

A new promo video from the Tim Prebble at HissandaRoar.com. Vegetable Violence is a new sound fx library perfect for all of your Action and Horror genres. Great video but what a mess!

Jalopinik has released an excellent article on the audio guys from Turn 10 Studios, the team behind Foreza Motorsports.  They recorded engine sounds for the games over 400 unique cars. The article mentions the team used an average of 8 mics on each car, and used a dynapak roller system to allow all sounds to be captured in a garage.  They used a portable recording rig centered around using ProTools.  The team had to fly all over the country to record specific vehicles that were rare or held by collectors.  The article gives some interesting tips on how they setup and captured their engine loops. Check it out!

Inside Forza Motorsport, Part II: Making The Cars Sound Awesome