Ableton Live can be a fantastic tool for playing live, for improvisation, and for studio work. But while some people put together very effective DJ sets, it doesn’t always stack up to other software out there in terms of satisfying certain significant DJ techniques. And that’s too bad. Because if your DJ aspirations include lots […]

iPad creation tool Auxy may have come with a lot of fanfare touting its simplicity and elegance when it launched. The piano roll-turned-touchable music maker first launched on the merits of doing less, better, then turned into something more of us might use with the addition of MIDI. But a rather significant upgrade has come […]

Apple Music, the company’s streaming / social / radio service, rolls out today. So you’ll see plenty of people talking about how it looks to listeners. But how does it look to artists? If you followed my previous advice about signing up for “Music for Artists” via Apple Connect, you may already be having a […]

Audiomux already changed how we use our iPhones and iPads. Out: juggling cables and audio interfaces just to record an app. In: using apps seamlessly on your computer via just a Lightning or (30-pin) Dock cable. Well, if that didn’t make you interested in plugging your iPad into your DAW, this should. Using an app […]

All those pads – it took virtuoso finger drummer Mad Zach to take advantage of them. Mad Zach’s five free Drum Racks accompany today’s release of Ableton Live 9.2. Since he, frankly, makes most of us look bad with his agile use of the Push hardware, I wanted CDM to talk to him more about […]

A free update to Ableton Live, version 9.2, is now available and out of beta. We covered this in some detail before: Live 9.2 Answers Your Warp, Automation, Tuner, and Pad Wishes Hands on with the Ableton Live 9.2 Tuner [Video] But today, in addition to the release, we get a closer look at the […]

As the transformation of music heats up, the discussions are heating up, too. Case in point: yesterday’s report on Eternify certainly earned some angry responses. I was of the opinion that Eternify was a decent gimmick – a way of showing just how small fees from streamed music are. Imagine if the music you bought […]

What initially seemed to be a conversation about streaming revenues for artists more or less this week became a conversation … about Taylor Swift. But it’s the debate behind Apple Music that is somewhat puzzling. Taylor Swift wasn’t the only one focusing concerns on Apple Music’s quarterly free trial. Labels were fixated on the same […]

This is the way DP – Digital Performer – looks in version 9. The tried-and-true Mac DAW now has Retina Display support on that platform, and looks like a viable option on Windows, too. DP9 may not get the amount of attention on the forums and such as some rival DAWs (Logic, Cubase, Ableton), but […]

On a very personal note, I’m saddened this week to learn of the news of the death of the great film composer James Horner. See him talk about his approach to scoring Field of Dreams at top for some of his approach. Best of all, you get to see him at the piano. When I […]