Novation’s Circuit is a budget marvel. As a drum machine alone, it’s a steal – particularly with the ability to load your own samples. But also hidden inside are two synths based on the Novation Nova. There’s one piece of software that really lets you maximize all these capabilities: the Circuit Editor plug-in from Isotonik. […]
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Novation’s Circuit tools now work without needing the Internet
Just in time for all of us to retreat into a bunker and cut ourselves off from the world — erm, uh, I mean just in case you don’t have an Internet connection in your studio, now Novation’s Web-based editor for Circuit works offline. We’ve waxed rhapsodic about the Circuit Components before – as it […]
Moog talked to The Haxan Cloak about the visceral quality of sound in air
Isn’t it weird how oddly superficial and fashion oriented talking about music can get? Let’s remember what we’re doing: we’re moving sound particles in air and then seeing what happens to our physical body and mood when they disrupt tiny bits inside our ear. To quote Keanu Reaves: whoa. So it’s refreshing that a recent […]
Now, DJing with a giant touchscreen using djay, Surface Studio, Surface Dial
So, Algoriddim’s djay has been quietly morphing from “nifty entry-level Mac DJ tool” into “holy, crap, this is actually kind of better than the other DJ software.” And now, a ground-up rewrite for Windows 10 points to where music software might go on that platform – namely, touch and other novel input. I’ll review the […]
How Dutch archives turned into a Lakker AV show about water
Wade in the water, indeed. Set the Irish duo Lakker loose in a Dutch film archive, and what you get is a dense, heavy experimental techno album and a live show exploring the Netherlands’ ongoing battle with the sea. It’s a 2016 album, but even if you caught it before, now we get some insight […]
KOMA’s Field Kit, connecting contacts pickups, and motors, is now reality
So much of the idea of signal and the definition of an audio “mixer” is fixed, we’ve begun to take these concepts for granted. Microphones plus line level, into some faders — that’s what a mixer is. But why does it have to be that way? By creating a new instrument around connecting to contact […]
The new Arturia keyboards work with anything, under $300, with sounds
“Someone has introduced a new MIDI controller keyboard” ranks right up there with “an off-price mall big box retailer is now doing basic solid color tees.” It’s potentially still useful (as in, my luggage got lost in Dallas and I have no clean clothes), yet not exciting. But Arturia have deserve special mention here, because […]
Turn that MacBook Pro Touch Bar into a MIDI controller, free
Let someone else debate whether the Touch Bar is a useful innovation or not. If you’ve got a new MacBook Pro, why not put it to good use? And, in fact, if you think of the Touch Bar as akin to precisely what it replaces – a set of shortcuts above the keyboard – it’s […]
Audiobus 3 is like having a modular environment for iOS apps
The original appeal of the iPad as a musical tool, for many, was just doing one thing at a time. Not using a DAW or advanced environment, but a single app. Now here’s the question: can it be just as appealing when using multiple apps? Audiobus 3 asks that very question. It certainly has a […]
Waveform woos DAW switchers with clean UI, features, Raspberry Pi
The struggle to make an all-in-one computer production tool that’s different continues. Tracktion, a lesser-known “indie” DAW that has seen a rapid resurgence in recent builds, is now back in a new generation version dubbed Waveform. As usual, the challenge is to make something that kind of does everything, and necessarily needs to do all […]