Category Archives: Uncategorized

BeatCleaver for Windows XP and Bonus Breaks

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I’ll admit it: I underestimated how many people still use Windows XP. 

Windows XP is especially important to many musicians because it’s used on a lot of studio computers. These computers are kept clean of any unnecessary software, and can easily run for a decade without issues. They’re serious work machines, and an upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 might not actually bring any real benefits, but will definitely bring downtime. 

So to the musicians out there still rocking Windows XP: I’m sorry BeatCleaver left you behind, but I hope we can make it up to you.

I’m pleased to announce the release of BeatCleaver 1.2 for Windows XP.

This version zooms, slices, and dices just like it does on other platforms, but it can only open WAV and AIFF files. As before, purchasing BeatCleaver allows you to use it on any of the available platforms, so if you do decide to upgrade Windows, you can always download BeatCleaver again to get MP3 and M4A support.

A trial version is available for download from the BeatCleaver site, and existing registered users can download BeatCleaver for XP from the downloads page.

I’m also pleased to announce that all versions of BeatCleaver now come bundled with a selection of 13 royalty-free drum loops graciously provided by the awesome people at MPC-Samples.com. They’ve got loads of great loops, breaks, and samples for hip-hop production available on their site, so check ‘em out!

What’s Cooking at Oscillicious?

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Though it’s been more than a month since my last update, fear not, I’ve been working on Oscillicious products non-stop.

First off, I’ve managed to produce a version of BeatCleaver 1.2 that’s XP compatible, which needs some beta testing. It’s separate version because it doesn’t have the fancy MP3 / M4A slicing that BeatCleaver has on other versions of Windows and OS X, but it still slices and dices WAV and AIFF files just fine.

Interested?
Download BeatCleaver 1.2 for Windows XP here and try it out! (Leave a comment if it works for you!)

Next, I’ve got a 64-bit version of SodaSynth VST and AU in the pipeline. The Mac OS X is available for testing for registered users (email me!), and I hope to have a 64-bit Windows version available for testing soon too.

Now on to something totally new: We’re working on a pretty funky analog synth sample pack that we’re hoping to share with you by the end of August. As I hope you’ve come to expect from us, this sample pack is going to be a little bit different. We’re going to do this sample pack the Oscillicious way: Fresh.

Lastly, we’ve got one more big product in the pipeline, and I hope to release some more information about it soon. Development is progressing very well so far, and it’s what I’m spending almost all of my time on these days. I’m really excited about it because it’s totally different from anything else out there, and I think it’s going to be a very distilled expression of what Oscillicious is all about – Creating awesome, easy to use tools for musicians. Stay tuned!



BeatCleaver receives a 5/5 from Sounds And Gear

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I feel like I’m preaching to the choir by posting stuff like this, but here’s a BeatCleaver Review by Sounds And Gear, which includes a great video as well:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVVgmufBH8Q]

This application is 15 bucks, there is really no reason ANYONE that does ANYTHING with samples, shouldn’t have this.

Check out the whole review for more where that came from!

🙂

BeatCleaver 1.2 Released: Sampling Made Easy

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After several months of development, Oscillicious is pleased to announce the release of BeatCleaver 1.2!

This release is available as a free upgrade for existing owners of BeatCleaver, and is available on our downloads page.

BeatCleaver is a beat slicing tool for sampling from drum loops, recordings, and songs. Aimed at hip hop and electronic artists, its intuitive design and fluid user interface create a fast, frustration‐free workflow. One‐click slice templates and quick export help artists spend less time editing and more time writing music.

With new support for MP3 and AAC formats, sampling from existing songs and recordings has never been easier. DJs can now easily save loops from songs to use with sampler decks and artists can cut samples for remixes and mashups. The new Advanced Slicing menu facilitates slicing audio by fixed bars or beats, perfect for chopping multi‐track exports for live resequencing.

Whether you’re creating DJ samples, loops, sampling for hip hop, or slicing music for something different altogether, we think BeatCleaver can help you get it done faster.

A free trial version is available for download from the BeatCleaver site and the full version can be purchased from the Oscillicious Shop.

Lastly, a full press kit is available here.

Advanced Slicing in BeatCleaver 1.2

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Leading up to the BeatCleaver 1.2 release, we’ve talked about what’s coming next and gone into more detail on the new fluid zoom we’ve implemented. The next feature we’re going to talk about came as a suggestion from bleo. 

Bleo’s problem was that he had written a song on his guitar and recorded it, but now he wanted to use parts of it for live sequencing in littlegptracker. He wanted to be able to open up his recording, specify a tempo, and have the recording sliced up into 4 bar segments. He could then trigger and remix those segments in littlegptracker, Renoise, or Ableton Live.

I’ve run into a similar dilemma myself. I’ve written many songs in energyXT2, and I wanted to export soloed segments from each track so I could reconstruct the song and resequence it live using littlegptracker. This turned out to be incredibly labour intensive. I had to set loop points in XT2 around each segment I wanted, then solo the track or try to do a multitrack export from that point. It started to get frustratingly difficult, and I eventually gave up.

With BeatCleaver 1.2, we now have a solution to both problems. Via the new “Advanced Slicing” menu, you can have BeatCleaver slice your song by some beat or bar interval, given the tempo. For Bleo, he can load his guitar recording, specify the tempo and slicing he wants, and then instantly export the slices for sequencing. For me, I can now do a multi-track export from any DAW and slice up each track with ease. I can then resequence or remix my own tracks live using hardware samplers or even throw them into the sampler decks in Mixxx.

We’re now very close to a BeatCleaver 1.2 release, so you should be able to try out this new feature for yourself in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Zoooooooooooooom

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To continue showcasing what’s new in the next version BeatCleaver, here’s a peek our next big feature: Zoom!

Zoom, seriously? Why is that exciting? Why didn’t BeatCleaver have this before?

Zoom in BeatCleaver 1.2 is exciting because it’s slick, intuitive, and incredibly easy to use. We spent a lot of time carefully considering how to implement zoom because we think it’s the first place where the design of other wave editors starts to go wrong. To continue to make BeatCleaver easy to use, we wanted to take a different approach.

BeatCleaver’s waveform zoom is better because it’s completely fluid, “tool-less”, and frustration-free.

See for yourself:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo1NB3bBn_M?rel=0]

There’s no juggling between tools, holding modifier keys, or jarring “snapping” of the zoom. To zoom in BeatCleaver, just:

  • scroll your mousewheel,
  • do two-finger scrolling on Mac trackpads, 
  • or grab the zoom bar at the bottom and drag up. 

(The two-finger scrolling works both horizontally to scroll and vertically to zoom in/out – it feels fantastic!)

So why didn’t BeatCleaver have zoom before?

Initially, our primary use case was slicing short WAV drum loops, for which zoom wasn’t essential. We also thought that MP3/M4A support was a more useful feature, and that zoom would make the most sense after BeatCleaver could handle bigger files. So for the next release of BeatCleaver, we’ve added all of that!

In the video above, you might also notice our revamped our file loading code, which renders files as we load them, so you never have to wait. Need to load a 20 minute long song to slice from? No problem. Want to slice up some cool sounds from your last epic jam session? Piece of cake.

As we touched on before, there’s now an overview waveform at the bottom which can be grabbed and dragged to control scrolling and zoom. We spent a lot of time tweaking the exact feel of this “zoombar”, and we think it beats the pants off everything else out there. When our new release is out, give it a shot and let us know what you think!

We’re now starting closed beta testing for this new version of BeatCleaver, and if that goes well, we should be nearing a release. But before that, we’ve got one more little feature to reveal here on the blog before we launch, so stay tuned!

SodaSynth AU Released

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[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJFhmuhtBIk?rel=0]

Good news for GarageBand and Logic Pro fans – We’re pleased to announce the release of SodaSynth AU!

The SodaSynth Audio Units plug-in brings our clean, classic sounds to a variety of new music production workstations on Mac OS X. SodaSynth can now be used in GarageBand, Logic, MOTU Studio, and other workstations in addition to those that support VST plug-ins (Ableton Live, Cubase, Reaper).

To help GarageBand users get started, we’ve uploaded a short screencast above demonstrating how to add SodaSynth as a new instrument in GarageBand.

SodaSynth is available as an instant download from the Oscillicious shop for only $23.

For existing SodaSynth users, the new AU plug-in is now included in the SodaSynth for Mac OS X download alongside the VST version. The installer conveniently installs both versions, and is available on our downloads page.

BeatCleaver: What’s Next

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BeatCleaver 1.1

The design of the current BeatCleaver (1.1) release was deliberately kept simple. It loads WAV files like drum loops and allows you to place slice points along the loop, then export them in a snap. Moving slice points is a breeze – you just drag them around.

The simplicity of the tool makes the workflow very fast.

But what if we wanted to take BeatCleaver to the next level? How can we add new features but keep the workflow fast and simple?

This has been one of my tasks for the last few months, and I’m excited to start sharing what we’ve come up with for BeatCleaver 1.2. In essence, we’ve improved the core functionality across the board, but there’s a story behind each new feature, so I’ll explain the new features across several blog posts.

Without further ado, the first new feature in the upcoming BeatCleaver 1.2 release is: 

MP3/M4A support

We want to be able to not just slice WAVs, but also be able to open up full songs and sample directly from there. So to sharpen our beat slicing skills, we’ve teamed up with the Mixxx Developers and created libaudiodecoder, a piece of code that will allow us to harness the native MP3/M4A decoding capabilities built into Windows and Mac OS X. BeatCleaver’s upcoming support for these formats is based on libaudiodecoder, which we’re developing concurrently.

So what else did we add then? What would be useful if we suddenly made BeatCleaver able to open up larger files?   

We’ll give you a few days to ponder…. and then we’ll be back with the answer. 😉

Moved to Tumblr!

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Well, it looks like we’re going to try moving the Oscillicious blog to Tumblr. 

As a long-time Blogger user, I have to say what finally killed them for me was their lack of well-designed templates. I hate to be shallow like that, but it’s the truth. I couldn’t find a single stock template that had sensible whitespace, good readability, and fixable colours, so I said nuts to this, let’s try Tumblr.

What’s important is that our blog allows us to effectively communicate to our fans about what we’re working on and stuff that might be interesting to them. Having a blog that’s easy on the eyes is very much a part of that. 🙂

So here’s to the start of something new, cheers!