reFX Vanguard Presets from Joel Bisson

I’ve been doing music my entire life and I started Computer Music in 1996 via Commodore 64 and 4kb Six Inch Floppy Diskettes. The term made on the computer was one from the decade previous with such software used to playback midi notes driven to outboard Rack Synths or Synthesizer/Samplers but there were Softsynths then and The Apple IIe and the Amiga were capable of such sounds but then there were also Trackers with most notable OctaMED if you were on the Amiga or other platforms had their niche but Steinberg has Pro-16/Pro-24 before Cubase which were Midi driven sequencers for which the data was sent to hardware. The whole thing took off in 1996 with VST technology but DXi Software Synths were still popular but stuck on Windows computing since DX stood for Direct-X Instument. The 2000’s and 2010’s saw their hayday as many computer software companies became widely known to ditch Direct-X in favor of Audit-Units (via MAC) and VSTi Plugins via Windows while stuck in the dark to this day Linux was left not widely known at the time about WINE, an API for running cross-compatible Windows Software. To Date the WINE work-around isn’t sound on certain Windows standards but it does use a lot of older VST2.4 and Digital Audio Workstation software. Linux had Ardour and also other software of which in the 2010’s was ready for a lot of mainstream usage as some companies made their software compatible with linux. Now it is a thing although made and Designed in 2002 for a 2003 release by the chaps who ran TONE2 at commission for reFX a local company from British Colombia were about to release the most known VSTi synth in regards to my Music friends and scene! Electronic Body Music’s successor which was Dark Electro and Futurepop. The likes of Suicide Commando or VNV Nation and yet Agonoize was stated to have used this plugin as a main sound in conjunction with Protools for Mastering! I was intrigued with it’s power on the CPU whilst at that time I was sporting a 686 architecture and couldn’t afford any better until much later from 2003. I started using this Vanguard plugin in 2004/2005 and release a few packs of sounds in which I remembered I had learned how to design presets via disassembling others sounds on FM synthesis plugins. Eliminating the easier step which was Analog Synths. This is semi-modular in design due to the fact that it does have routing and menu’s although I found FM7 at the time to be Menu Hell later the easier was DX7-V by Arturia or FM8 by Native Instruments. I was great at Sytrus which then wasn’t popular for a reason that people in my community which was user-groups, forums and circles stated that FL Studio was a toy and only cubase or emagic logic was worth if not Protools or the likes. I still have fond memories since I had once learned how to use cubase and then I released that the folks in these circles were on to something. FL Studio at the time was in it’s infancy and routing any midi channel wasn’t pretty as it was much easier for cubase to perform such duties. I never knew that so many have a niche that works but I was all about experimenting and learning as well as trying new and creative things when it came to composing. Designing presets was easy for me but I was known for recreating certain sounds either famous or non-famous or lesser-known to most! I grew up in the 1980’s which was a decade plagued by Synthesizers and Pop. Disco wasn’t really my thing but Italo Disco and New Beat were popular and intrigued my ears to want to reproduce such results. I heard Latin Freestyle and New Jack Swing. I grew up on Classical, Baroque as well as R’n’B from the 1960’s to 1989 and Country as well as Rock, Hard Rock and Heavy Metal while alternative genres that stray from the limelight like Thrash or Death Metal. I knew that Slayer was my favorite band and I actually ended up learning guitar by the end of the 1980’s as to which I knew that I had to get a guitar. Back at the end of the Twentieth Century was 1999 and my dad came through with a Guitar for Christmas. I know that is when I really practiced and I ended up staying up late and playing my Stratocaster copy from Quest Guitars in the ages of the early 2000’s so much that I entered into a talent show just to try out playing in front of people to see their reactions! I soon learnt that I have a knack for putting on a performance. I ended up ditching this for computer music while still playing for myself and writing songs on the guitar and by the end of the summer of 2003 took up the piano! I had a Casio MT-240 keyboard which I took from the heart of my background from which I was enticed to play both instruments as a friend once stated I am good at bass and play guitar well but are easier to get things on the bass as guitar is a lot of theory behind soloing! I then took to the books to learn certain ways and came up with my own! I had a past in which I hung around Musicians in the late 1980’s and Early 1990’s that I knew more then when I started. In 1996 I went to the Royal Ontario Conservatory of Music. I had known a few things but in my past I wrote lyrics, poetry and stories as well as screenplays! I knew I could do better but that came in the later half of the 2000’s when I decided to go my own! I made my band’s Electronic Noise Terror’s well-known song “SEX KILLER” which had been since stolen from intellectual copyrights to some jerk in the eastern part of Europe!

Fast Forward to 2013, I primarily used only software VSTi Plugins for my sound while still using Guitar Pro a Tabulature software from Arobas Music! I used this in conjunction with FL Studio although I did buy Cubase 4 in 2009 but never to this day used this software! I do know that I wasn’t expecting the praise I received when I came into these circles again. I ditched the internet in 2004-2007 only to join social media which to be frank was a mistake but it led me to meeting new and exciting/cool people. I posted my sound design work as I had been hoarding found sound samples that I’ve been working with and recording since 2004-2005 and continued to date in building a vast library whilst always losing some here and there when reformatting the hard disk drive due to malware via malicious website exploits or social media bogus links or in turn by my own doing installing cracked software! I didn’t see it as fruitful as I do now with these things being able as they were not in 2004 to just install the cracked software via VMware or Virtual Box instead of ruining my own system! Back in 2018 I had the Ransomware attack known as Crabware via fourth iteration on my ex-girlfriends birthday July 12th. It was almost as if the thing said I wasn’t liked by her! She wasn’t relevant to career although the music that had been spared was actually the songs I wrote about her; so I did not take it too personally!

In the year 2019 to 2021. I really was unhappy and worst when my Mother died in December of 2019 but this led on to me being self-aware to such flaws of Human Beings as Hindsight and Outlook for the Future as I’ve been despaired on what to do. I wrote a bunch of musical stuff but as my family’ social circle were difficult that I ended up destroying various hard drives to cover the fact that they were plagued with malware or the fact that their bullshit was on it or mine. In turn what ever was left I decided in early 2021 to share everything with anyone at all costs!