Creating digital music is all about the business of mucking about with sounds. But somehow, the actual sounds themselves have been tangled up in immense grids and spreadsheets and mixers and things called piano rolls and so on. Blocs Wave is the latest attempt to use mobile apps to get back to basics. Here, whether […]
Music
Arash Azadi’s music returns to primordial states of human existence
Music November 6, 2024
Peak 90s Opcode in a Vision training tape, NIN music video
Motion Music Music tech Tech November 4, 2024
Quincy Jones in four essential interviews
Music November 4, 2024
Lesley Flanigan’s ethereal music mixes singing and vibrations
There’s no oscillator quite like your voice. And sometimes the simplest techniques can yield elaborate textures. Lesley Flanigan has built a body of work out of an elemental approach to electronics, and her new release Hedera is to me the most beautiful yet, transporting us somewhere truly sublime. The source, in addition to singing, includes […]
‘Gaze’ is a surreal, face-melting AV mirror for your browser
The interactive mirror has been a long-running staple of digital art, but its form came in galleries – Mac minis and the like stuck to walls. Now, transposed to the browser, the form becomes oddly personal and intimate. We stare into our computer screen all day. For a fleeting moment, it can look back.
2020 is a crazy complicated beat machine app from Japan
Want to go from four on the floor to, sort of four thousand all over the place? Yotaro Shuto is a Japanese electronic musician who performs in DUB-Russell, and he’s decided to turn his monster Max performance patch beat machine into a product. That’s meant taking it to Kickstarter.
Inside SoundCloud, the move to revenue begins
SoundCloud has become a popular punching bag for the music press. The formula runs something like this: choose a screaming headline predicting the company’s doom, run some out-of-context business numbers and some negative quotes by an unnamed source, then (presumably) rake in clicks.
Remembering Keith Emerson and his titanic synth legacy
In news reverberating with synthesizer lovers and keyboardists everywhere, Keith Emerson died last night in his home in Santa Monica at age 71. Mr. Emerson’s impact on the world of keyboards and synthesizers is hard to overstate. And that impact may be wider now than ever before. If the musical idiom in which he worked […]
This amazing video proves that live techno is always better
So, today one of the Internet’s targeted millennial marketing conglomerate – cum – music press outlets decided to ask if anyone likes live techno sets as part of a series that could be titled “We Troll The Internet to Increase Click Revenue.” I really wanted to argue with the content of the article, but – […]
KORG volca FM is here – and does some unexpected tricks
KORG’s runaway-hit volca series has proven small can be fun. But the volca FM promises more power in a small package. The volca FM, teased in California in January and demoed in early prototype form, is now official. And part of why we’re eager to get our hands on one is that it’s more than […]
Ableton just released every last detail of how Push 2 works
Wish granted, hackers. The full specification for Ableton’s Push 2 hardware is now online on GitHub, after passionate Live users clamored for its release. And there’s a lot. This isn’t just a MIDI specification (though that’s there). Every minute detail of how colors appear on LEDs gets covered. (The color “white” has its own section. […]
Google are giving away experiments to teach music and code
Technology’s record in the last century was often replacing music making with music consumption. But in this century, that might turn around. Google seems to hope so. Today, the company posted a set of free sound toys on its site, all running in your browser. They’re fun diversions for now – but thanks to open […]