There’s a beautiful quote attributed to Bob Moog on the Moog site today: “What you do with our instruments helps us to be more human too, and I want to thank you all for that.” Sometimes I actually find this very sentiment is hard to express in words. You get into a lot of abstractions. […]

Ableton Loop in its second year was a vastly expanded event, with more people, more interactions, and a greater sense of community. And it was more hands-on. The workshop with Skinnerbox, the duo that makes such robust use of Live, well, live, was overflowing. But now there’s a gift for everybody, not just those lucky […]

Having a live video source for visuals can be as valuable as having a microphone in audio. But now you can add iOS devices to the realm of possible input devices. On the Mac, you’ve got several means to do this. Wired: With a recent version of iOS / macOS, just connect your Lightning cable, […]

Good timing. Sweden’s Peder Mannerfelt delivers a triumphant single, “EQUALITY NOW” as the opening salvo of a 3-track vinyl/digital coming beginning of December. And it’s splendidly forceful. But wait, there’s more. Mannerfelt is a prolific producer and artist, solo under his own name, as The Subliminal Kid, or working alongside Van Rivers on production. That’s […]

The MeeBlip project reaches some important milestones this year – and we get to say thanks, and celebrate with a sale. And, really, why do that for one day called “Black Friday” or “Cyber Monday” or “Arbitrary Discount Saturday Dusk Hour”? Let’s just do it for the whole rest of the month. MeeBlip quietly turned […]

We’re in a strange time, as we big farewell to a great generation of pioneers of electronic music. French composer Jean-Claude Risset’s work can still tickle our perception and challenge what’s possible. He helped expand the frontiers of what digital synthesis can do for our ears, and brought the technology to the European continent. And […]

If you want a nice, pristine, versatile delay/reverb, then … this isn’t it. It’s called the MotherF***er 2 for a reason. It’s the creation of Ewa Justka, engineer and musician born in Poland and based in London. (Ewa was also nice enough to co-host the MusicMakers Hacklab with us at CTM Festival this year, where […]

Here’s an unexpected twist in the plot: Final Cut Pro, the product that perhaps more than any other earned ire from users for not being “pro,” might be the thing that sells you on the Mac. Why? Final Cut Pro is really, really fast. After all, paper specs don’t matter. It’s really world performance in […]

Assemble, cosmonauts: Dasha Rush is an artist whose musical worlds merit repeat visits. She represents the best of what an artist straddling techno and ambient can be – with ambient sets that pulse and live, with timbral and structural freedom rather than resorting to dreary droning grays. So let’s take a break from her better-known […]

Effortless wireless sync everywhere has arrived with free software, too, thanks to Ableton’s new open source SDK. And it’s incredibly easy – enough so that anyone with even rudimentary patching skills will probably want to try this out. Pure Data, the free and open source cousin of Max/MSP, looks ugly but does great stuff. And […]