Groove Blox Live Virtual Instrument - 30 day demo now available for download

[Spitfire31]

This sounds like a really cool app! The website is a bit sparse on tech details, but I assume I can use it as a VST or AU in Mac 10.6.8?

I'll download the demo, but I can already see this as being a fun and inspiring building block in my mental studio, so if everything works as I expect it to, I'll definitely buy it.

Best,

Joachim

[Karmacomposer]

This sounds like a really cool app! The website is a bit sparse on tech details, but I assume I can use it as a VST or AU in Mac 10.6.8?

I'll download the demo, but I can already see this as being a fun and inspiring building block in my mental studio, so if everything works as I expect it to, I'll definitely buy it.

Best,

Joachim

I have not put up any info on Groove Blox Live yet on the website.

However, it is for PC only (made with synthedit), but since the footprint
is really small, you can run it in an emulator on Mac.

Groove Blox, the sample set, can be used with anything on the Mac since they are made of wave files (and, if needed, can be converted to aiff).

If I can figure out a way to create a similar vsti in Mac format, I will, but it won't be anytime soon.

Thank you for your interest.

Mike

[Spitfire31]

Aha. Seems I didn't read the thread carefully enough - didn't realise there was a distinction between Groove Blox and Groove Blox Live.

We'll see, then.

Best,

Joachim

[Karmacomposer]

Aha. Seems I didn't read the thread carefully enough - didn't realise there was a distinction between Groove Blox and Groove Blox Live.

We'll see, then.

Best,

Joachim

Groove Blox is a sample set (a set of 350 drum grooves, arps, bass and effect loops) that can be used with each other to create complex grooves or simple rhythms with no fuss.

A lot like Stylus RMX, the Groove Blox sounds can be used to layer grooves together in your sequencer or DAW. They would feel right at home in Acid Pro, for example.

Groove Blox Live is a virtual instrument that will allow you to load in the Groove Blox (or any wave files) and play them in a live performance (either in front of people or in front of your computer monitor).

Groove Blox Live can be used with your MIDI keyboard or control surface. It has 8 layers and each layer can have its own MIDI channel (but LIVE playing is reserved only for channel 1), so you can layer your grooveblox in a sequencer. It has a graphical keyboard that you use to 'latch' your grooves - which means you press a note and it keeps playing till you mute it or turn it off. This allows you to play the various layers in a performance style.

Using a control surface, you can play most any part of Groove Blox Live with sliders, buttons, knobs and pads. Almost everything is MIDI learnable. So, you can use your control surface to mute the channels on and off, use the rotary knobs to mess with the LFO or other effects in realtime.

Also, Groove Blox Live's layers not only show the waveform, but also allows you to section them off and change the looping in and out points in realtime! Essentially, you can SLICE your grooves any way you want to.

The other stuff I did not mention is envelope control (ADSR), groove timing (move the groove a bit up and down for alignment) and pitch shifting - all per layer.

I hope that clears up the differences.

Mike

[xamido]

These are my opinion about your product and why i haven't bought any til now :

1. The audio demo is not to my taste. I want to listen to how your product can be used for a mainstream composition. Maybe some sort of normal pop arrangement made entirely from all of your product will be good.

2. It's not really what the majority will appreciate. Nowadays it's the era of big synth and heavy drums. I'm not saying that you should change your direction, but i think the market doesn't have that much of potential buyer for your product. Though i really wish you well for the future of your product.

3. The price is okay, i find it's already good enough.

[Karmacomposer]

These are my opinion about your product and why i haven't bought any til now :

1. The audio demo is not to my taste. I want to listen to how your product can be used for a mainstream composition. Maybe some sort of normal pop arrangement made entirely from all of your product will be good.

2. It's not really what the majority will appreciate. Nowadays it's the era of big synth and heavy drums. I'm not saying that you should change your direction, but i think the market doesn't have that much of potential buyer for your product. Though i really wish you well for the future of your product.

3. The price is okay, i find it's already good enough.

You are right. The audio demos only show off about 1% of the grooves in Groove Blox, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that you could just as easily create a pop or rock drum beat as you could a trance, dance, techno, house, rnb and rap groove. Some of genres you cannot create a groove with with Groove Blox is reggae and jazz - yet. Also, dubstep may be a bit hard unless you speed the tempo all the way up. Simply put, there are a lot of styles of music - Groove Blox can be used to create a zillion possibilities in many of them.

I also included a nice smattering of ethnic grooves to spice things up. Once things have settled down, I will see about creating more demos to show off various beats.

I'm curious - what will the MAJORITY appreciate and who is this majority? Heavy drums? Please explain heavy drums? You could easily use my Klang product along with Groove Blox and get some SERIOUS heavy cinematic drums and stomp-like grooves.

You guys are going to be pleasantly surprised by the price of Groove Blox Live - very pleasantly surprised.

Mike

[Karmacomposer]

I finished Groove Blox Live and created a few presets to show off the Blox that come with the demo.

I also added full EQ (Low, Medium and High) per channel and a all new reverb that sounds a zillion times better than the previous one.

Here is a more current picture of the synth:



Full size version:

http://www.supersynths.com/extimages/gr ... ive_v1.png

The demo is ready to go. It allows you to play with all features - nothing crippled - for 30 days. After 30 days, the instrument will mute and you have to purchase it to continue using it.

Instead of giving you 25 grooveblox, I opted for 28 (24 grooveblox from drums, bass, arps and fxfills and 1 full grooveblox set).

When you purchase GrooveBlox, you get the full 350 Groove Blox. I may also be creating a few more blox in the near future. Some will be free, others will be full expansions so you can grow your Groove Blox library.

I am altering my website and once that is done, Groove Blox Live goes on sale and will be available for download. I am trying to finish it up tonight, but it may take me into tomorrow to fully finish.

Mike

[glokraw]

A default install path of C:\GB might allow for the patch names to be seen
in the track window, that shows only C:\Program File in the screenshot,
at least enough of a title visible to prevent memory meltdown from
tweaking the synth part, only to find you just modified your
perfect bass sound by mistake
Look forward to trying this when it's ready
Cheers

[Mikelo]

Hi Mike,
I will give you my honest opinion.

I purchased SuperCore a few years back and I must admit, I couldn't get it to work at all, even after contacting you. Its was very frustrating.
I remember you saying there were limitations or certain work arounds to make it work correctly? Correct me if I am wrong.
I want to purchase a synth/plug and use it straight away without hassle.
Secondly, I do look at GUI's and find yours very clunky. I know it's only cosmetic but still, to me, it's important.
Mike, please don't take offense as I take off my hat to you and other developers who make sacrifices and take up considerable time creating these wonderful tools for others to use.
Kind regards,
Michael.

[Karmacomposer]

A default install path of C:\GB might allow for the patch names to be seen
in the track window, that shows only C:\Program File in the screenshot,
at least enough of a title visible to prevent memory meltdown from
tweaking the synth part, only to find you just modified your
perfect bass sound by mistake
Look forward to trying this when it's ready
Cheers

Yeah, I have the sounds in the GrooveBloxLive folder. Theoretically, you can get rid of the path info and just show the name of the wave file and it should work if it's in the same folder as the synth's required files.

It's a synthedit thing.

Mike

[Karmacomposer]

Hi Mike,
I will give you my honest opinion.

I purchased SuperCore a few years back and I must admit, I couldn't get it to work at all, even after contacting you. Its was very frustrating.
I remember you saying there were limitations or certain work arounds to make it work correctly? Correct me if I am wrong.
I want to purchase a synth/plug and use it straight away without hassle.
Secondly, I do look at GUI's and find yours very clunky. I know it's only cosmetic but still, to me, it's important.
Mike, please don't take offense as I take off my hat to you and other developers who make sacrifices and take up considerable time creating these wonderful tools for others to use.
Kind regards,
Michael.

Yes. The major difference between SuperCore and Groove Blox Live (and Klang Drum Machine) is that only SuperCore used a proprietary multi-sample format that made it IMPOSSIBLE to use. I gave up on it, TBH. It was just more trouble than it was worth and there simply was NOTHING for me to fix. It's just the way that system worked.

Klang Drum Machine and Groove Blox Live, although looking like SuperCore, is not SuperCore. They load standard wave files and both are SUPER EASY to use, especially Groove Blox Live.

I just load in a Groove Blox (a wave file that is looped), set a couple of things and I am ready to go.

I will create a video illustrating how to use Groove Blox Live tomorrow.

Please do not judge my other synths and sounds based on SuperCore. They're apples to oranges and I will NOT ever again use that system.

My next project will be a synthesis project for creatings pads and will not use samples at all. However, I am re-creating PRIZM and all sounds (except for a small few) will be converted to soundfonts and will be pretty easy to use.

As far as presets - well, sample-based synths made with synthedit are tough on presets when you move the samples. Non-sampled synths' presets work 100% because there is nothing to move.

Groove Blox is so small in size, there's no reason to move the samples anywhere. You can if you want, but then you have to find them again with the presets. I only made 4 presets to show off the included presets (28 total blox) in the demo. So, no big deal if you move them. However, even with the full 350 Groove Blox, they are under 400 MB, so it's a fairly small sample library in size.

Mike

[braj]

It looks like Supercore is still for sale on your website though, should it be removed if it is no longer supported?

[munchkin]

I think you have some very interesting plugins. The price point is very good because it's the level at which I would impulse buy and I imagine others would too.

My reservations about buying your products are to do with your GUI's. I find them under-designed. By that I mean too simplistic and boxy. You do have a particular style but imo it's not attractive or distinctive enough. My advice is to check out the GUI's of other developers and see how they create a 'look' that is coherent across their product range.

Plugin designs tend to look either 'old school',



'futuristic',



or 'realistic',



I think you need to make your plugins look much more slick and try out different layouts on people that you know to see which one is the most intuitive and user friendly. The user has to look at and interact with the plugin for a long time so products rely heavily on how they look to capture a consumers attention. That's why Adobe have completely revamped Photoshop CS6 for their next release. Even though Photoshop is ubiquitous Adobe know the power of design on selling their products.

I'm an artist and have studied the influence of design and advertising on consumers and I can't emphasise enough how important design is in enticing consumers to buy products. Consumers like to lust after a product and feel they can't do without it. They never knew they needed it until it came along. There's no dishonesty in cultivating a bit of buzz around a new product and design helps to achieve this. If you improve the design of your products and the web site as well as get everything ready for your sales campaign before you release your product then I think sales will improve.

A sales campaign usually starts with a teaser announcement in forums and in the music press, then a beta release (sometimes not necessary) and then the full onslaught of product release. At this stage it's crucial to have everything prepared such as a plugin demo, demo audios and videos, an initial promotional price and as many announcements and adverts for your product in as many places as possible. Make sure your website is fully updated ready for the product launch. Using Adobe as an example again they have a product development schedule that takes all this into account. They spend up to a year preparing for the release of a new product. I'm not saying you need to copy Adobe but the point I'm making is that strategy is everything with releasing a new product.

These are my opinions and others may disagree but I hope you view this as constructive criticism because I really think you make interesting plugins and unfortunately a few things are holding them back.

[Spitfire31]

Mike,

Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation of the difference between GB and GB Live. It's very clear to me now.

You also wrote, enticingly:

"Some of genres you cannot create a groove with with Groove Blox is reggae and jazz - yet."

I'm very interested in those two genres, so I do hope that 1) jazz (acid jazz?) and reggae GBs will appear sooner rather than later, and 2) that you can find a way (maybe collaborating with someone?) to port GB Live to Mac OS.

In the meantime, I'll download the GB Live demo and see what it can do in my Win 7 Pro Bootcamp partition.

Anyway, even though I do have a Win partition, my main DAWs and plug-in environment is firmly on Mac OS and I don't think I'll change ingrained habits easily, especially since Rayzoon Jamstix is promised for Mac later this year…

Best,

Joachim

[Spitfire31]

I think you have some very interesting plugins. The price point is very good because it's the level at which I would impulse buy and I imagine others would too.

My reservations about buying your products are to do with your GUI's. I find them under-designed. By that I mean too simplistic and boxy. You do have a particular style but imo it's not attractive or distinctive enough.
…

I think you need to make your plugins look much more slick and try out different layouts on people that you know to see which one is the most intuitive and user friendly. The user has to look at and interact with the plugin for a long time so products rely heavily on how they look to capture a consumers attention.
…

These are my opinions and others may disagree but I hope you view this as constructive criticism because I really think you make interesting plugins and unfortunately a few things are holding them back.

Being a photographer since half a lifetime, I agree completely with munchkin's assessment. I think he hit the head of the nail. At least a major one (nail, that is).

In the absence of real h/w buttons and controls, a GUI is almost ridiculously important. In fact, I was initially repelled by the look of GB Live because the GUI looks clunky and amateurish and I almost passed it by because of that.

Now that I saw the full size GUI png, my impression was reinforced. All that horisontal striping makes it hard on the eye. And why imitate segmented LED:s, whose shape was originally a cost compromise, but are not comfortable to read at a glance?

I realise that consulting a designer professional may be difficult because they tend to be expensive, but there are quite a number of gifted 'hobbyists' around KVR - just witness the plethora of skins that have appeared for Tyrell N6 lately! Maybe some quid pro quo could be arranged.

Bottom line: a smart, functional and attractive GUI not only generates interest but is also inspiring when in use.

Best,

Joachim