We say “play” music for a reason – synths are meant to be fun. So here are our favorite live jams from the MeeBlip community, with our triode synth.

This one’s too good to wait. Gustavo Bravetti, the Uruguay-born producer and DJ, is already something of a maximalist. He’s the sort of person who can rock alternative controllers live on a mainstage in front of massive festival crowds – the powerful counter-example to the notion that such high-pressure gigs have to be press-play. And […]

Gustavo Bravetti is indeed a man of mystery. The Uruguay-born artist is a live virtuoso of dance music, pulling out all the stops. And in his latest feat, he tackles a trio of Elektron black boxes. Fortunately, it’s not all mysterious. The Ableton Push-controlled, Max for Live-based tool that gives him these octopus-like powers over […]

Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools: tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to […]

iproducer #4 – Unlink and Conquer + Bonus from Gustavo Bravetti on Vimeo. Exclusive to CDM (and Vimeo), Live guru Gustavo Bravetti offers a deep tutorial in sound creation in Ableton using “unlinked envelopes.” He assembles quasi-modular routings of effects into one another to create some unusual sounds. I think there are some inspiring techniques […]

You’ve seen the splashy “sound just like –” headlines in various music magazines. But imitation is, after all, an essential form of musical development. Something magical happens as you try to imitate something – you begin to hear it differently. Sometimes you wind up nailing something exactly, and in the process discover how you might […]

Photo: Lara Sobel plays with naturally-synthesized fractals by burning into wood via high voltage. Fractals, those wacky self-similar, rough geometries that resemble so many patterns in nature, were once all the rage. Ravers and digital artists embraced them, only to get bored with them, apparently. To billions of years of evolution and natural phenomena, they’re […]

Our friend and interactive hero Gustavo Bravetti must have been inspired by all the talk of hexagonal sequencers, because he’s come through with a brilliant prototype of a new interactive sequencer design. He writes: I just wanna share mi first very unfinished and at ultra alpha stage, hexagonal sequencer prototype! Between many things, I have […]

Our friend Gustavo Bravetti is back with more Ableton Live tutorials. Looks like good fodder for working on some music making this weekend — especially if you’re not familiar with some of these techniques. First up: cascading follow actions can break up endless looping repetition by triggering complex patterns. Gustavo throws in some "dummy clips" […]