Music in the Age of Democratization: Gerhard… by SMWBerlin Music as social medium is perhaps as profound as any connection as we can have between people. And it’s a unique pleasure to get to reflect on that with someone like Gerhard Behles or Matt Black. Yesterday, we got both at the same time. I’ll even […]

Music is all around us, yadda, yadda – we hear these aphorisms all the time, but to most, making music is still about the classical idea of instruments. Not so for this Madrid-based artist, who has transformed his body and all the objects around him into an instrument. The results are mad and magical – […]

The iPod Classic is dead, sure. Now it’s really dead. And the cassette player outlasts its shiny Apple hipster-fashion-accessory counterpart with the non-removable battery – by kicking its sorry ass with a giant mecha fist punch to the face. Hold on… if it seems we may be losing our grip on reality, that’s just because […]

Updated: the video stream is over, but we have archived audio and video: Listen to/watch the entire discussion Today is Social Media Week in Berlin and various other cities across the world. I’m fortunate to get to join Gerhard Behles, co-founder and CEO of Ableton, and Matt Black, co-founder of Coldcut and Ninja Tune, in […]

The electronic music calendar makes the shift of seasons readily apparent. It’s not unlike the movies. Gone is summer blockbuster season, sequels and comic book movies, Ibiza and confetti cannons, big-budget special effects. Now, as in the cinemas, it’s date night dinner and a movie, trip-out night, delicious chin scratching, voyages to other worlds. And […]

All the light-up colors and built-in displays on the upcoming NI Komplete Kontrol keyboard may be aimed mostly at users wanting plug-and-play access to instruments in Komplete. But for the DIYer, there’s potential, too. Komplete Kontrol is the first hardware interface built with Reaktor patchers in mind. It’s not likely to be a feature of […]

While everyone has been pouring over leaks of Native Instruments’ new Traktor controller, few took notice that one enterprising engineer has made his own touchscreen prototype – an entirely DIY effort, from the guy who first took controllers to the market. Kontrol-Dj, the decade-long, one-man engineering shop for DJs, over the summer quietly showed a […]

Music tech videos need to be made like this again. (via dylan digits in comments) You don’t need a private Ibiza pool party and some slow-motion to make you look cooler when your keytar makes lightning strike in your face. Until then, we’re down-voting that s***. Consider yourself on notice. The Honda scooter ad at […]

Numark may have announced this week that it’s shipping the Numark NV controller, adding two displays with a window on Serato. But Native Instruments, for their part, appear no longer to be satisfied letting you hear about their upcoming Traktor Kontrol S8 via leaks on forums and social media. (Yes, uh… some of you noticed […]

For digital DJs, the computer often still trumps the iPad. You get (much) more storage, more flexible use of hardware, more features. But wouldn’t it be nice to use a tablet for X/Y control of effects? TKFX does that, and nothing else – but it does it damned well. It works on Android and iOS […]