Another expansion just dropped for NI Maschine and Mikro! This is a perfect expansion for hip hop heads with a Maschine in their arsenal. The True School expansion for Maschine comes with amazing kits, synths and patterns that are perfect for laying new foundations for the future of beat making.

True School comes with both acoustic and electronic drum sounds that are enhanced with sonic embellishments and artifacts while keeping the organic room sound intact. Vintage as well as modern pianos, strings, and brasses have been resampled, processed and filtered for a a vibrant tone and hard attack.

This latest Maschine expansion from Native Instruments has sampled hard to find modern as well as vintage synthesizers too.  Some examples of these are the Moog Minimoog Model D, Arp Quadra, and the Rhodes Chroma. All synths were recorded through a Trident analog console and processed to fit perfectly in the mix. Steven Slate fox preamps were used for the Basses and leads produced by the ATC-1 and SE-1 from Studio Electronics.

If you’re looking for where it’s at  for the hottest hip hop sounds out there, check out the new True School expansion for Maschine now!

The world of Native Instruments Maschine just got a little larger with the announcement of the Maschine 1.7 software update, Maschine Mikro, a more compact hardware controller for the Maschine software, and iMaschine – a mobile beat making app for iPad 1 and 2, iPhone and iPod Touch.  The 1.7 update is available now, while the MIKRO and iMaschine are due out October 1st.

I have to say, I was a little disappointed with the 1.7 update, and apparently I am not alone on that after viewing some forum posts over at Native Instruments.

The list of features in this patch are:

Advanced sound browsing and parameter mapping for KOMPLETE 8,  Support for the Maschine Mikro controller, iMaschine project import, New Controller Editor 1.4.0, as well as various minor improvements and fixes.

This is all good, but so far no word on heavily requested features such as built in time stretching.  Whats the deal, NI?  You can check out the video of Jeremy Ellis rocking out on the new MIKRO controller below.

6 new acoustic drum samples were just added to the snare drum download area on pages 2 and 3.

10 new hip hop sounds have been added for downloading. Today’s samples include a Rhodes piano with FX, some Juno 106 Sub Basses, a few Juno 106 Synth Basses, and some dark sweeping sound effects.

Sorry for the delay at getting new sounds up, I have been super busy but I am back on track and will be adding a few sounds daily from now on. Today I added 2 very nice bass sounds, a splash cymbal, an 808 kick drum,  a cool vintage guitar sound to the stringed instruments section, and an echoing bell like sound effect.  As always, you can post comments requesting samples and sounds you would like to see here.

My search for the ultimate drum machine / sampler is finally over! I went to Guitar Center yesterday and picked up MASCHINE from Native Instruments.

NI MASCHINE combines the power and flexibility of computer music production with the ease of an MPC like groovebox into one powerful creative tool. Utilizing Maschine’s huge sound library or your own samples, loops, and sound files, The combination of hardware and software you get when you buy Maschine not only ensures a fast and fun workflow, but helps you easily turn your ideas into professional productions.

This thing is amazing. I haven’t had a lot of time to play with it yet, but after I do, I’ll be sure to post about it here!

According to his twitter feed, Capone is looking for beats. Anyone with bangers should send them to caponebeats [at] gmail [dot] com and/or check out http://capone-qb.com/

I just added a few kick drum samples, some snare drums, and 3 piano sound samples! New samples and wav sound files are going up constantly, so keep checking back!

The first few samples are now online.  I have uploaded a few bass samples so far, and I am working on creating more. You can get to the samples using the menu bar at the top. There are preview players for each sound, and five sound file download links per page. Keep checking back -  I will be adding tons of new hip hop sound files of all types.

I know I am probably a little late on this, but I just found a great place for artists / producers to get their stuff heard. If you haven’t joined or heard about it already, check out GrooveShark Radio. It is a lot like Pandora or Slacker radio, but so far I am digging it more than those two.  It has a ton of good tracks. Grooveshark also allows artists and record labels to promote themselves with both advertisement and paying for listens from Grooveshark users. All data and analytics relating to an artist (or group of artists) are freely available to promoters, such as the number of times their content has been listened to, along with demographic and geographic information about the listeners. All you have to do is sign up here: After you sign up, (which is 100% free) all you have to do is add your tracks. You can then grab your referral link and pass it around to your friends.  After 5 referrals, Grooveshark will play your track(s) on Grooveshark Radio. You can also pay for plays. They use the following structure for referral plays: 5 referrals = 2,000 targeted Radio plays + 1 month VIP 10 referrals = 4,000 targeted Radio plays + 6 months VIP + chance to win site skin 15 referrals = 6,000 targeted Radio plays + 1 year VIP + chance to win site skin 20 referrals = 20,000 targeted Radio plays + lifetime VIP + chance to win site skin Top 10 referrals overall = Featured on Grooveshark social media (50k+ readers) Top 5 referrals overall = Custom banner ads featured on Grooveshark Winner will receive a free custom site skin on Grooveshark ($10,000+ value) Seems like a great place to get your stuff heard. Dont miss out on this exposure!