Tag Archives: specimen

new track: frozen summer

The Tunestorm02 reveal was today, so I can now post my submission for it: a breezy little tune that, for want of a better title, I called “frozen summer”. In accordance with the rules, it’s made entirely from sounds sampled around my house — there’s our doorbell, a blown beer bottle, and a stretched out balloon that I strummed to get a bass sound, along with percussive sounds from hitting various things (mainly my coffee machine).

Software-wise, I used Specimen for the melodic samples, Hydrogen for the drum samples, and seq24 for sequencing, before recording and mixing in Ardour. I’ve also uploaded my Hydrogen kit in case anyone’s curious.


mp3 / vorbis / flac: 2 minutes 48 seconds

Posted in Releases | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

linux synth tutorial: part 6

Another long one! In part 6, I jump from Xsynth to Specimen, a simple sampler, which is ideal for when you want to take a simple sound and quickly transform it in to a playable instrument. Specimen does much more than just playing samples, though — it can sculpt and shape them with envelopes, filters, and LFOs, just like you’d find in Xsynth.

Hi-res Ogg Theora version is here, or watch the Youtube version after the jump!

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Posted in Linux, Music, Technical, Tutorials | Tagged , , | 2 Comments