Komplete Kontrol adds scales and modes, cooler chords, Reaktor Blocks

If you just want a nice MIDI keyboard, frankly, you’ve got loads of options. So Native Instruments’ Komplete Kontrol S-series of keyboards has got to do more. The 1.8 release that came out yesterday takes a step in the right direction, with enhanced scale and mode support and enhanced integration with both Reaktor Blocks and […]

Amazon S3 outage hit SoundCloud, reminds us dangers of centralization

Those of us in music more or less noticed today, “hey, my SoundCloud audio isn’t loading” — while the rest of the Internet went crazy because lots of things were broken. But the reason was Amazon S3, the “cloud” storage service provided by the retail giant. Early indications appear, though, that SoundCloud’s audio playback and […]

Someone at Bitwig is working with Ableton Link on GitHub

One postlude to the Bitwig announcement – yes, someone at Bitwig has forked Ableton Link support. Have a look: Thanks to one sharp-eyed Twitter reader for catching this one! https://github.com/bitwig/link The reason is interesting – ALSA clock support on Linux, which would make working with Link on that OS more practical. Now, Ableton has no […]

Dieter Doepfer made the Nintendo Power Glove work for Kraftwerk

German YouTuber “studentsmusic” has come across the Nintendo Power Glove mod used by none other than Eurorack originator Dieter Doepfer. And he had a hell of a client – Kraftwerk. Now, whether you have any desire whatsoever to don some gloves and wave your hands around, the peculiar category of music glove has a long […]

Bitwig Studio 2 is here, and it’s full of modulators and gadgets

Go go gadget DAW. That’s the feeling of Bitwig Studio 2, which is packed with new devices, a new approach to modulation, and hardware integration. Just a few of these on their own might not really be news, but Bitwig has a lot of them. Put them together, and you’ve got a whole lot of […]

Modstep iPad sequencer is now packed with drum kits, MIDI templates

There are apps, and then there are apps with a studio soul. Modstep feels like it uniquely qualifies as the latter. If you’ve just got your iPad, it’s built with lots of interoperability with other apps in mind. And then combine it with hardware, and out of the box, it makes all that outboard gear […]

Now you can sync up live visuals with Ableton Link

Ableton Link has already proven itself as a way of syncing up Ableton Live, mobile apps (iOS), and various desktop apps (Reason, Traktor, Maschine, and more), in various combinations. Now, we’re seeing support for live visuals and VJing, too. Three major Mac apps have added native Ableton Link support for jamming in the last couple […]

Dispersion makes it crazy easy to get that bouncing ball delay sound

You know the sound. Bah bah bahb bh bh bhbhbbbbdddd… And you’ve heard in … some track. Somewhere. Okay, you know, words really aren’t the greatest thing for describing particular audio effects. So just listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IZ6vxWpRWpg The “bouncing ball” delay is just one of the sounds available in Dispersion, a new thirty-dollar audio effect plug-in […]

Watch a talk explain perfectly why humans make music with technology

Why do you make music? You make music because you feel something – and you found it because you felt something. And what’s the point of music technology? It’s to put us in that space, to give us access to those feelings, and then to translate them to others. That’s the message in a TEDx […]

DU-VHS = what TV would be if it were glitchy, nerdy, and underground

Our friends at the hypergeeky, futuristic Detroit Underground have built an app. And it’s full of videos, layered in a VHS-style retro video interface. DU-VHS is available now for iOS (iPad and iPhone both), and as a Web app accessible through any browser, all for free. Step inside, and you’re treated to an explosion of […]