Rebirth

A three-part American Transformers cartoon miniseries, substituting for what would have been a fourth season of the show.

This miniseries involves a group of Autobots and Decepticons crashing on the planet Nebulos, and discovering how to turn themselves into Headmasters and Targetmasters. (Powermasters are never explored; presumably that might have come later on, if the show had been renewed.) Also seen briefly (for about ten seconds each) are other new toys, such as Sixshot and Punch/Counterpunch.

This show is regarded as at least somewhat bad by TransFans, largely due to the habit of depicting Headmaster and Targetmaster conversions as making the robots little more than giant sentient mecha, with the pilot sitting in the head or flying a little gun-shaped spaceship around. There was also the plot device of Daniel Witwicky getting critically injured and, thus, turned into a Headmaster to survive. With Arcee.

rebirth (6/27/00)

from birth to rebirth
you squirm
against darkness
pillowing you
into flames

stitched eyes shed


golden radio waves
of perpetual emotion
of pain
of non life

they echo off a shadow
into your arms
holding a ray of velvet
scented hope

crystalled
bulletproof as your spirit

we drink the broken light bulbs
and celebrate their
impotency

Windows Software for emulation of drum and bass patterns (16 and less steps only). Emulates the TR-909, TR-808 sets, samples, and anything else you can find through a plug-in type interface and something called Rewire, which I am unfamiliar with.

Created by Propellerhead Software and distributed by Steinberg.

A lot of templates and so on, but I found that often most annoying, as there was no template for a blank set. :-(

Rebirth in Buddhism is distinctly different from Reincarnation or Transmigration of an immortal soul.

For the Buddha, there was no soul to move from one body to the next, and so the idea of such a soul migrating in such a fashion was a logical impossibility.

Instead, Rebirth in the Buddhist sense of things can be looked at in the following way: we go through our lives, each moment passing by. The person who we are now is affected by the karma (kamma) we have generated in this and previous lives. Furthermore, the person we are now is different than the person we were, say, ten years ago, but there is something which binds those two beings together.

Much in the same way, as we are the same being we were in the last moment, and the same being we shall be in the next, so too are we the same being we were in the last life, the same being we shall be in the next.

From the Propellerhead Software website (www.propellerheads.se):

It's a well-known fact that the sounds of the TB-303, the TR-808 and the TR-909 - once combined - form the backbone in every techno musician's arsenal of sonic weaponry. Unfortunately, owning any of these machines still remains a dream for most of us. They stopped manufacturing those awkward, beautiful, great sounding boxes over fifteen years ago. The handful of these artifacts still in existence are collector's items and would cost you an arm and a leg.

ReBirth emulates two of the classic TB-303 monophonic bassline synths, and the TR-808 and TR-909 drum machines. Each machines has its own 16-step, 64-pattern sequencer, and the output from any of the machines can be routed through compressor, distortion, delay and pattern controlled filter effects.

Reason is not a sampler. Each synth uses a mathematical model of the components of its real-world equivalent. Of course, the tuning instabilities that plagued the analog oscillators of the TB-303 have been eliminated, but all the eccentricities that came from its unusual design have been retained.

Like its big brother Reason, ReBirth is designed to look like the real-world synths it's emulating. Fire it up and you're confronted by a host of realistic-looking buttons, knobs, sliders and flashing LEDs.

Programming the synths is reasonably easy, using only a mouse and keyboard. The 303s use a step sequencer (select pitch and attributes for one note, hit the Step button, select pitch and attributes for the next note and so on) while both the drum machines feature a grid of sixteen buttons, one for each sixteenth note.

Hit the Record button, and ReBirth will kick into automation-recording mode. Every change that you make to any control is recorded and will be duplicated every time the song is played back.

ReBirth features the ReWire inter-application audio transfer system, which allows it to be integrated into Reason to complement Reason's already impressive array of sound modules. ReWire can also be used to integrate ReBirth into any multitrack recording software that supports it, for instance Cakewalk's Sonar or Steinberg Nuendo.

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My main gripe with ReBirth is that the interface is very small (about 650x500 pixels) and cramped. It's sometimes hard to read the button labels without moving closer to the monitor. Using the 303's point-and-click step sequencer is incredibly tedious when using a mouse (especially as the controls are quite small and easy to miss) but luckily there are keyboard shortcuts available to make your life easier. Unfortunately they're not covered in the online help. If you have a MIDI control surface or keyboard with lots of knobs and sliders on it, you're in luck - ReBirth allows you to map almost any MIDI controller number to any ReBirth control, for the ultimate in real-time tweakability.

Apart from that, it's great software that should be a part of any electronic musician's kit - although if you do use it, use it discreetly: the 303/808/909 sound has been so widely used that it can approach cliche status at times.

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Keyboard shortcuts for 303 programming:

• The bottom row of keys (from C to /) controls the note
• White notes - the bottom row of keys (from C to /)
• Black notes - the middle row of keys (F,G,J,K,L)
• Down - ;
• Up - # (on a UK keyboard; on a US keyboard this would be the right-most key on same row as the ;
• Accent - P
• Slide - [
• Note/Rest toggle - =
• Step - Return
• Back - Backspace

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I do not condone the use of pirated software, but a note to anyone who is tempted to download ReBirth for free: although you can download an almost-fully-functional version of the software, only the full retail version has mod and ReWire support.