2019 – it’s a year when many of us are, let’s say, having some trouble chilling, relaxing, or … uh sleeping, to say nothing of meditating or studying. Fortunately, if you want a Eurorack modular solution, your ship has come in. “Life can feel too fast sometimes,” say the creators. Yeah, no s***, especially with […]

The population growth of producers may make musicians nervous. But here’s one potential upside – there’s now a growing market for your sounds, not just your tracks. The latest deal between Loopmasters and Beatport points in this direction. Follow along here, because this partnership is a little tricky to explain. (CDM was given an exclusive […]

“Underground romantic engineering” is the motto of up-and-coming gearmaker SOMA Laboratory. Here’s a look at the Russian-Polish foundry creating wild new electronic instruments – and their latest creation. Music store All For DJ has become a badly-needed new hub for Moscow’s electronic producers. Despite the name, they’re host to all kind of electronic instruments. I […]

Amsterdam collective Dance with Pride’s launched an eight hour takeover of Red Light Radio over the weekend. It’s worth a listen, covering the gamut from sex worker activists to “cheap Moroccan music”. Dance with Pride got its start as a way of bridging activism around LGBTQIA+ pride with the dance music community. Apart from taking […]

It started as an artist tool, but it could become yours, as well. Grainstation-C is a free and open source sound creation workstation that’s playable live and supports ambisonic spatial sound. And the music its creators makes is ethereal and wonderful. Micah Frank, noted sound designer and toolmaker as well as composer/musician, produced Grainstation-C for […]

Novation are going patch crazy, with 1000 free artist patches for their Peak synth and newest Summit. And they come from some of our favorite artists. “Presets,” “artists,” blah blah… but wait, the lineup here includes Legowelt, Craig Williams, Lightbath, Hinako Omori, Emily Sprague, and Shawn Rudiman, plus others to be announced. Novation use their […]

Hardware or software? Yes. Modular synthesizers, of all things, are blurring the line between the two. The popular Vult line of software modules for VCV Rack is going hardware, just as Erica Synths offers its popular hardware in a free software form on the same platform. VCV Rack has rapidly established itself as a platform […]

Interactive visuals in the browser now make stunning eye candy live that used to require whole server farms to render. cables.gl – now in a free open beta – lets you harness that, without even knowing how to code. cables.gl is a dataflow (visual patching) development environment that runs entirely in the browser – using […]

It’s liberating – just take your phone or tablet, plug in a USB cable, and you can make music on this hardware synth anywhere. Here’s how to do that, with our MeeBlip geode, plus some tips on the best apps for both iOS and Android. Inspiration is a funny thing, and somehow in the process […]

Sony’s Walkman turned 40 earlier this month. But look to the TC-50 before it for some of the technology and usability innovations that changed the world – and joined the Apollo mission – plus a glimpse of where music might boldly go next.