Wow, seems like it’s been a long time since i’ve updated! A lot has happened in the last week, and i’ve been going crazy with all sorts of new stuff! 

I was listening to something on TV when i heard this song which had a little cheezy electronic drum loop mixed in. Every time i hear those distictive percussive sounds, it reminds me of my very first electronic keyboard–A Casio VL-1. It has a small white plastic keyboard with a built in speaker and the chiklet piano keys with numbers and rhythm pattern names labeled on it–the numbers are there when you need to switch it to calculator mode

So I sampled It, and I programmed the demo RBS with the same rhythm patterns preset in the VL-1. There are only 3 sounds used for these rhythms combined with the monophonic lead sound. It’s more a less a novelty, but one never knows when they need some cheeze. It seems like people use it occasionally on their tracks:-) 
The CHEZIO VL-1 rbm only modifies the 808 section. There is also an “adaptor” version, which will be available soon.

As far as the mod “adaptors” go, i’ve done a whole bunch of them. I really liked LoopTech 1.5, so i started to fool around with mixing and matching the 909 sections from 2.0 mods with it. Orbit 2.0 really complements LoopTech well.

There were a few very cool “unofficial” 1.5 mods that i liked, “Blackfish” and “Binary” and “Fatboy” to name a few. Through all this i’ve noticed one thing. All the mods sound better with the new RB2 909. The combination of sound pallettes is really fantastic. 

If you haven’t already tried this, I recommend converting some of the old 1.5 mods over to RBM’s. Use ReNovator or whatever, and drop the samples into a MOD folder and for the 808 graphics, make sure to get 12520.jpg - 12525.jpg and include them in the mod folder. I’ve been reducing the 1.5 splash and have incorporated it as well into the adaptor mods.

Since there are already about 10 of these that i’ve packed, i’ll put a list of links on the adaptor page for download.

PhaseII mod is put on hold indefinitely since the components for it were lost during my HD Crash. This is unfortunate since it seemed to be quite promising as a “useful” type of mod, too.

Dejenerate MOD has had some sample updates, however i’ve been having problems with the demo song. Something happened while i was cutting and pasting loops in song mode which made the file grow to about 230K in size. The synth samples have been compressed and equalized a bit so that they aren’t so loud and bassy. The loops have been adjusted a little and they sync better now. I will post it as soon as i can retrack the demo song.

=Peff

I’m just curious as to when these other great 1.5 mods are going to be updated to 2.0 RBM files. Until then, I think i’m going to go ahead and start adapting some of them for the creators so that the drum sounds can be used with ReBirth 2.0

With the forthcoming 2.0.1 update which will feature the “Vintage” ReBirth Sound on the 303, having the 1.5 sounds in the RBM format will be pretty cool especially for playing your RB1.5 MOD tracks on ReBirth 2.0

If you are a 1.5 mod creator and have something against me doing this, please email me. Otherwise prepare to be assimilated…well in this case “adaptor”ed!
hehe;-)

=Peff

Oh, one other thing: I’ve signed onto the V3 DNS fowarding service, so you can reach this site by navigating to this new domain address:

http://move.to/the-beat

AAAAAHHHHH!!!!!
HD Crash!!!! Lost all my MOD Projects….Oh, well, good think i had just finished up AXIOM peace:-)

I lost all my webpage stuff, and email stuff. So I’m starting from scratch. Oh well, this is kinda nice –in a way. I get a new fresh start and other optimistic–bright side-crap like that.

Well, i have put an MP3 of “Peace for Sideways” online. you can download it from the AXIOM_peace splash screen page. But if you already have ReBirth 2.0 just download the mod. It sounds much better;-)

=Peff

-=cIRCLE=- and i have been collaborating on a rebirth track.  He did some very nice drum work with the Axiom mod.  A bit of bad news came cIRCLE’s way in the passing of his beloved canine, “Sideways”.  This track is posthumously dedicated to Sideways. 

I worked out a little chord progression with strings and sampled them into the 808 section of the AXIOM Mod. This music combined with cIRCLE’s drum tracks (i beleive he had a bit of help from another friend, Cipher–co creator of the FatBoy Mod) resulted in a very stunning track.  I can’t beleive it’s just rebirth 2.0!  I also dropped in a big waterphone sample and some other effects.  The results were quite amazing, IMHO (in my humble opinion) 

The piece is kind of an ethereal dnb track.  So download the AXIOM_peace.rbm mod and take a listen to “Peace for Sideways”. I will make an MP3 available soon too.

my condolences to Davey for his loss

=Peff

I’ve been busy fooling around with overclocking this new processor.  I had it clocked up to about 333MHz, but ran into some extension conflicts when booting into a normal system…oh well it still smokes at 300MHz:-)

Peff Edit of the Standard Components is available, and a demo MP3 is also online.  I ended up pitching a few of the 808 samples and Compressing the 909 kicks for the final edit version.  Feel free to check these out.

I also worked out another little track for the PhaseII Mod, and did some more graphic changes.  I’m trying to find an aesthetically pleasing look for the knobs without altering the background, but everything looks wierd and out of place with these square background frames and a round knob–the old round peg in a square hole problemmo.

Also, i can’t seem to decide on a final soundset.  The latest sampleset should come with a parental warning with a mature content label.  Not that anything is explicit, but very suggestive.  I took a sample of a female voice moaning and put it on one of the tunable tom/conga’s on the 808 and tweeking the pitch creates an interesting sound effect;-) 
Check out the track for yourself: Peff–Destiny.mp3

=Peff

Just Upgraded my System! with a 300MHz/300MHz bus 1Meg backside Cache from PowerLogix, and this baby is rockin!!! Prices were just slashed-Ridiculously low on these puppies, and I couldn’t resist! I guess the next generation of PPC 750’s are going to be coming out soon so the prices are falling fast;-)

Anyways, Just to let people know, ReBirth 2.0 is Running amazingly fast on this sucker. It takes about 3 seconds to switch between mods! Unbeleivable just click and boom! Instant Love. ReWire is smokin too!

Oh, after installing the new processor i lost some of my authorizations and had to reinsert the ReBirth 1.5 CD and 2.0 CD to reauthorize the upgrade. So as a warning to people performing the upgrade, this might happen to you as well. I suggest pulling out those authorization floppies and deauthorizing your software from your system before you do this upgrade.

Well, I’m off to overclock this sucker!

=Peff

I’ve been fooling around with different samples in the the Phase II MOD, I took some really clean Dry Tom Samples and compressed them externally for a nice round fat feeling. 

I’ve upped a little MP3 Sample of what the Phase II sounds like. It’s mostly the Same Samples as the RedShift MOD but i’m changing the vocal samples.

Hmm, no new mod ideas, yet…so i’ve put links up to other ReBirth 2.0 MODs Pagez around the internet.

Actually, that’s not completely true, i’ve been tweeking out the standard components for a track. It’s all the same samples, just different tunings on a select few so that the overtones harmonize when run through the distortion:) 

And i’ve been messing around with the RedShift Graphics and exploring the wonders of high res graphics for the ReBirth 2.0 GUI. 
Side Note: I got ahold of a copy of MacOS 8.5b7 and ReBirth 2.0 Runs great on it But I guess nothing less should be expected! 

=Peff 

RedShift Mod is online and ready for Download. The oversized graphics check out on Both Platforms. 

It seems that rebirth checks the graphics by taking the total horizontal length of the jpeg then divides it by the number of steps. It also takes into account for a 1 pixel separation between each frame. The Vertical size is arbitrary, and the active area for mouse control is the entire frame, not just the area of the original graphic:-) 

enjoy RedShift 
=Peff

I’ve Uploaded a new screenshot of RedShift MOD for ReBirth 2.0. It’s pretty much done, but because of the resized graphics, I’m asking a few friends to test it out first before i release it.

There is an undocumented feature of rebirth 2.0 mods seems to allow one to change the button and knob graphics to various sizes. I’m not sure if this feature works fully cross platform yet, so until i’m certain that it will work without problems on Windows machines, it wont be available for download. 

Until then, you can take a listen to the MP3 demo that i just threw together using the mod;-) Click on the RedShift Splash Icon to view the GUI and download the MP3 file. 

Take it easy, 
=Peff

I have finished the graphics — whatever that means — for the RedShift MOD. Now I’m just tweeking the samples out. I’ve sorta learned my lesson. I’m not going to release versions until i’m really satisified with the product. One interesting note about RedShift…It requires 24bit graphics capabilities to see the detail. (Millions of Colors) anything less will look kinda crappy. I might go back and dither all the graphics down to 16 bit…eh but why bother! It’s almost Y2K and if you’re using rebirth 2 you should have a system that will view in 24 bit graphics! 

I’ve made a couple of versions of the “Alpha” MOD for rebirth 2.0 available for download from here. (for those of you who haven’t grabbed it from the ftp site directly). These are still kinda rough. I’m not quite satisfied with the sample sets just yet, but feel free to play with them and let me know what i can change. The graphics are pretty much done. This MOD is really rudimentary with very little labelling and simple graphics. 

Also, Dejenerate_Oxydized version has had a minor graphics update. The 909 knobs weren’t locking in quite right.
The RBM Autotyper Utility for MacOS has been stuffed so there should be no problems with downloading it from the ftp. Sorry about this problem before. You can also Download a copy by clicking here:

The Autotyper is a drag and drop utility for changing the type/creator codes of downloaded .RBM files so that they have the proper icon and are recognized by MacOS. (Note: RBMs with the netscape icon should still work fine on ReBirth 2.0 for MacOS)

You might also consider adding the .RBM and .RBS extensions to your Internet Config setup or your MIME types in your Browser so that your system will automatically recognize them when you download them. You can even configure IC to automatically start up ReBirth when you download an RBS file. Another thing you can do is to write an applescript which moves a file to your MODs folder, and configure IC to run the applescript when you download .RBM files

Well, back to the drawing board for me:-) Ive gotta finish up some graphics!

=Peff