Sometimes, tech looks stylish in the way you’d expect it to look on the deck of a starcraft. So if Eurorack makes you think “old-fashioned,” meet the Klang, a chord creation module from Norway.
Music
Lists aside, these 2024 albums are personal must-listens
Music Reviews Stories December 31, 2024
Saying goodbye to 2024 with music and reflections: David’s picks
Music Reviews Stories December 31, 2024
Tbilisi’s music scene is still out in the streets, defiant
Music December 27, 2024
Get a powerful spectral delay, free, in MSpectralDelay plug-in
What makes a delay more interesting? A delay that’s combined with spectral controls. What makes that better? Getting it for free. MSpectralDelay is here – and looks like a must-download.
FL Studio 20 for Windows and now Mac, with Hell-freezing functionality
FL Studio aka Fruity Loops has hit a version the developers are dubbing FL Studio 20. At age 20, the software still includes lifetime free updates – and a bunch of new features, including freezing of audio, and Hell freezing over.
Listening, the secret of sound design: Francis Preve at Loop
To master sound design, no technology can top your own hearing. That’s the message from Francis Preve, who gave a gripping talk at Ableton Loop. Now we’ve got video – and more discussion. Nothing is sacred – not even the vaunted TB-303 filter.
The Touché, adding expression to synths – just in time for Moogfest
After years of somewhat similar wheels and pads and keys that wiggle, we’re finally seeing the ability to get physically expressive with sound in new ways. The Expressive E Touché is one of the most compelling cases of that – but to understand, you have to watch, and listen.
Speaking in signal, across the divide between video and sound: SIGINT
Performing voltages. The notion is now familiar in synthesis – improvising with signals – but what about the dance between noise and image? Artist Oliver Dodd has been exploring the audiovisual modular.
All the details on Moog’s new Grandmother semi-modular synth
Moog’s Mother line have all had patch cables. Now, the Grandmother adds something else – keys. Oh, and a heck of a lot of colors. We talked to Moog to get the inside scoop on the new Grandmother.
This Stylophone business card is the best music nerd handout ever
Short of handing out a self-built Eurorack system with your phone number scrawled in metallic ink on the back, it’s tough to beat this all-in-one working Stylophone as a calling card that says “yeah, I’m a music tech nerd.”
8BitMixtapeNEO is a glitchy hackable synth the size of a cassette tape
It’s the size of a cassette tape, has buttons and pots so you can play it as a handheld instrument, it’s open and hackable – and it sounds like 8-bit mayhem.
iZotope adds modeling features to Vocal Synth, makes a creative bundle
Singing – it’s the simple most important human instrument, but it’s too often overlooked in technology. iZotope has doubled up on innovations there with Vocal Synth 2 – and in case you haven’t been keeping track, they’ve bundled all their production tools together into the new Creative Suite.