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Just Released! Kid Nepro Arturia Jupiter 8V Collection. A hot mix of 100 new virtual analog patches that will kick start your Arturia Jupiter 8V. The Arturia software has received great reviews for its sound quality compared to the original Jupiter-8 and adding our new sounds to the software package brings out it’s best.

The Kid Nepro Jupiter 8V Collection is available as a download via free e-mail delivery. Available for only $25. USD. Or all five of our Arturia V collections for only $100. Get Kid Nepro’s Arturia Bundle Collection containing new sounds for the Minimoog, ARP2600, Moog Modular, Prophet V and Jupiter 8 sound libraries for only pennies per patch! 500 new sounds for only $100. USD.

CLICK FOR MORE INFO & DEMOS

Now that there are many cool apps available which will let you record whatever is happening on your computer desktop, we decided to make good use of them to present some demos of our patch and sample collections. Not only can you hear what the patch sounds like, but seeing what’s being played on the keyboard and controllers opens up whole new dimension to the sound. No overdubbing or multi tracking was done. Everything is played live. Drum sounds are from our Korg M3 “Hit Factory” collection.

The first demo that we did for our Arturia Prophet V collection worked out well, so we decided to continue along those lines with a demo for our Moog Modular V collection. We hope you find them both entertaining and useful in showing what these cool software synths are capable of doing. Stay tuned for many more demos from our software synth and sample sound libraries including our Reason and Kontakt collections.

More info on all our Arturia sounds can be found HERE

The very first time I had really “heard” a synthesizer played on a record was in 1970, when I picked up Emerson, Lake & Palmer’s first album. Sure, I had already heard many synthesizers played on classic albums from The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Beach Boys, but on those records the synthesizer was used mostly as a background to the vocal track – so I really did not take notice of just how cool a synth could sound. That was before I heard Keith Emerson’s solo on Lucky Man. When I cranked up my old Bose 901 speakers it just blew my mind. I can still remember saying “What is that”????? “That” was Keith playing a Moog Modular Synth. One of those defining moments.

Moving ahead forty years, I was (almost) able to get my hands on a Moog Modular synthesizer and create a library of sounds for it when Arturia released a virtual version of the classic synth. It may not sound quite a good as the original, but for a software version it does sound very good. It also did not cost me nearly as much as what the original is going for these days. I just noticed one on ebay going for 30K! For those kind of prices, I’ll be happy using the software version.

More info on our Moog Modular V collection can be found HERE.

A new video to demo our Arturia Prophet V Collection. Click Here for more info on our Prophet V Sounds.

The winter NAMM show has started out with a big bang with Korg announcing their next generation workstation, the Kronos. Looks like us synth programmers will have our work cut out for us with no less then NINE different synth engines combined into one instrument. All that plus the combination of KARMA and One Gig of sampling memory adds up to one very powerful instrument.

Kid Nepro has been working with Korg’s synths since 1985 and has programmed sounds for nearly every Korg workstation since the groundbreaking M1 was released in 1988 – so we just wanted to let everyone know that we will be continuing our support for Korg’s next generation workstation and creating several new sound libraries for Kronos. Stay tuned for announcements later on in the year. Get on our mailing list and we will keep you posted with more details on what’s coming for Kronos. It’s going to be awesome!

More info on Kronos can be found at Korg’s web site.

Many people might not know the name Vince Guaraldi, but I’m sure they have heard and loved his music since Vince is the one who composed and performed all that great music for the Charlie Brown TV specials back in the 60’s. “A Charlie Brown Christmas” being the one most beloved by millions.

Vince was a great jazz pianist and composer and could swing with the best of them. He even had a hit on the pop charts with his cool “Cast Your Fate Into The Wind”, which (I guess) is how he got the Charlie Brown gig. Hiring a jazz trio play as the background for a cartoon was unheard of at the time and CBS should be credited with trying something new. Turned out it was a match made in heaven. The specials greatest legacy is that they are still being played today, nearly fifty years later. I, like many others look forward to seeing “A Charlie Brown Christmas” on TV this time of year. Just one of those things you never get tired of watching.

If I had to pick a favorite moment in the Christmas special, it would have to be the part where Linus tells Charlie Brown “what Christmas is all about”. The universal theme of “Peace On Earth – Good Will Towards Men” is something that we can relate to – especially in todays troubled times. Many years ago I picked up  The Vince Guarlidi Trio Charlie Brown Christmas CD and always have it on this time of year. It’s some of the best arrangements of classic Christmas music that you will ever hear – so if you have not has the pleasure be sure to pick it up. Great stuff!

As a pianist and composer, I’ve always been influenced by Guaraldi’s work. His music is probably one of the first things that I can remember hearing, having grown up watching those specials on TV way back when. Before I even knew who Guaraldi was, I loved his music – so it was a real treat for me when I finally went out and picked up the sheet music to Guaraldi’s arrangements of “A Charlie Brown Christmas” early this year. I’ve been having a blast playing through all the songs on my old acoustic piano.

After learning most of the arrangements (some of them are pretty hard), I wanted to pick one which I could re-arrange, record and add a bit of my own style to – so I decided to go with “Greensleeves”. I booted up my Korg M3 and Yamaha Motif workstations and went to work recording everything in MOTU’s Digital Performer. Once I had the drum and bass parts recorded everything came together easily. The piano part was a bit tricky since the original arrangement was in “three” (a jazz waltz) and I changed the rhythm to a “slow four” (pop feel), but eventually it came together.

Once I finished recording the music I thought a video would be nice as a Christmas message so I surfed around YouTube and found a bunch of video from the special. I grabbed a few clips and edited everything together on my Mac using Apples Final Cut Express. The project was lot’s of fun from start to finish. I hope you enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.

Peace On Earth – Good Will Towards Men. We need it more then ever now.

Merry Christmas From Kid Nepro!

Just about every week, we get several e-mails from someone looking to buy our sounds on the old RAM cards. I usually respond and explain that the cards have not been made in many years and are no longer available. I also mention that all our sounds are available in other formats including system exclusive (sysex) or standard midi files and that all you need to load them into their synth is a “midi interface”.

All of those old RAM cards have a battery inside of them. It’s usually a small “lithium” battery about the size of a US nickel. The battery usually has a lifespan of about five to ten years. After that, they go dead and whatever data you have stored on the card is lost.

A midi interface is not as complicated as you think. As you can see in the picture, It’s just a little USB device that you connect to your computers USB port. You then run a midi cable from the midi interface “midi output” to your synths “midi input”. Takes about two minutes to set up everything. There are two types of midi interfaces. One is a actual piece of hardware consisting of a small box or rack mount device that has midi inputs and outputs. You only need a simple one that has one midi in and out. However, if you have a lot of synths and samplers and plan on recording them using midi, you can purchase a larger midi interface which can have up to sixteen in’s and outs. The second kind of interface is just a simple USB to Midi cable. This should also do the job for simple sysex dumps, but I have not had the opportunity to test this yet so it’s possible you may run into problems with certain midi devices if you go this route. A USB to mid cable can be purchased for under $20. Midi interfaces are a bit more, but you can find a simple one that will do the job for around $75. USD. That’s about the same amount of money that you would spend on one or two RAM cards!

As I mentioned, we provide you will a software app with your order that lets you load in the sounds from the computer to your synth. The apps are available for both the Mac or PC users. We also provide instructions on how to set up everything to get your computer and your synth talking to each other. This does take a bit more time to sort out everything, but most users have things set up within an half hour or less. The set up is a bit different depending on which synth or computer you have, but most synths are pretty easy to deal with – the older ones only have a few midi parameters so it’s easy to access the midi section and see what’s going on inside.

If you do wind up having a problem once you get our sounds, we don’t forget about you. I’m happy to answer as many e-mails or phone calls as it takes to get you up and running. Our customer support is as good as it gets.

3- Once you have your midi interface up and running you will now be able to do lots of cool stuff with your computer. Not only can you now load our sounds into your synth, but you can also use the software that we give you to “save” whatever sounds you have in your synths memory to your computers hard drive. The midi interface and software app will work with just about any synth that has midi, so you can now do a “bulk dump” to load and save sounds from any synth you happen to have in your rig that has a midi port.

After you get used to using our app to load and save sounds you can then take the next step and get yourself a “librarian” or “editor”. A librarian is a software app which lets you take several banks of sounds and choose the ones you like most to create your own “custom sound banks”. Need a bank of sounds with just organ or piano sounds? No problem. Just use your librarian to drag and drop all your keyboard sounds into one custom sound bank. Some librarians are sold by music software companies, but there are also lot’s of free ones that can you can download online. An “editor” not only lets you set up your own custom sound banks, but you can also access all your synths parameters and “edit” them to create your own sounds. This is what we use when we create the sounds that we offer for sale. Who knows, maybe you can become the next Patch King! Just like librarians, editors can be purchased or found online for free. The ones that are for sale usually have lot’s more features. Some of them, like Mark Of The Unicorns “Unisyn” or Sound Quests “Midi Quest” are both librarians and editors and work with hundreds of different synths and are the top choice among musicians who want to store and edit sounds with their computers.

Unlike the old RAM cards which will just hold a small number of sounds, your midi interface lets you store all your sounds on your computers hard drive – so you can now store an unlimited number of sounds on your drive and access them with a few click of the mouse. You also don’t have to worry that the battery is going to go dead (like on the RAM cards) and you will lose all your sounds. Also remember that your synthesizer has an internal battery with a lifespan about the same amount of time (5-10 years) as the RAM cards. When your synths internal battery goes dead, just like the cards, you lose all the sounds in the synths memory. When this happens, all you have to do is replace the battery and reload the sounds again using our software app and your back in business!

There are many other good reasons for purchasing a midi interface that I won’t go into at the moment. Your welcome to call or e-mail us if you need any more info and I’ll be happy to fill you in.

Click Here To Get To Our Main Catalog Page

This has always been one of my favorite Beatles tunes, so it was a real treat for me when one of my Facebook friends posted the link. As a recording engineer and Beatles fanatic, I wondered exactly how this was done. My best guess was that someone got hold of the master tapes and was able to isolate the four tracks. I didn’t think it could be done with software ripping apart the stereo mix. It sounded too good. And that ending – It blew my mind! No way you can do that with software. I’ve been listening to the track for 43 years and never heard that ending before. What a great find.

I also thought about how The Beatles catalog has always been guarded by tons of lawyers and if someone did indeed use the master tapes without getting any authorization then I wondered how YouTube would allow this to be posted. Something just did not seem right. I asked a couple of my friends about it and they were like, “Oh Yeah, when they did the remixes for The Cirque De Soleil shows, they actually made everything into Pro Tools Sessions and one thing led to another”. I was like “ohhhhhh right”. Sometimes I’m a little slow.

Anyway, I guess it’s OK with the powers that be that this is allowed to stay online. I’m sure glad it is. To be able to see how George Martin and the boys set up the tracks is a real treat. It’s also a great learning tool. Amazing how they were able to create this landmark recording with only two four track machines. It just proves what you can do with limited resources if you know what your doing. Of course, at the time it was all state of the art. We’ve come a long way in 43 years!