Emptyset: Fragment from The Wire Magazine on Vimeo. Through a thick layer of electronic grunge, “Fragment,” a track from the forthcoming Emptyset album on Raster-Noton, is transformed into hard-edged analog geometries. This is analog generation from some post-apocalyptic civilization, it seems: aggressive, percussive glyphs. The machines seem … angry. But it’s also the latest example […]

Our inbox is full of fun stuff Ableton lovers can download, so we’re pronouncing it “Ableton Goodies” day. Enjoy! Open up a platform to making custom tools, and the user can become the upgrade. They can devise new ways of making music – small inventions to spark creativity. And that’s happened in the case of […]

Zoom has done a lot to popularize field recording, but perhaps equally impressive is how its products have improved. The first H4, for instance, earned the name “handy” recorder, but it was the successor H4N that finally provided dedicated controls, a body that better handled noise and that felt more professional, that didn’t require diving […]

We’ve been seeing wave-your-hands-in-the-air gestural controls for music since the early part of the last century – thank you, Leon Theremin. But one of the more wholehearted efforts to make it useful has come from the makers of Hot Hand. Initially they peddled the idea to guitarists and bass players, who were already accustomed to […]

Imagine combining sampling, controllerism, opera, hip-hop, rap, cops, live theater, sound effects, school-play cardboard props, and radio plays, and then doing it all in Russian, and you’re getting in the ballpark of what “Cops on Fire” was like. As described in English for the 2010 Moscow trailer (translated by uploader Sasha Pas): The “Cops On […]

Monophonic analog synths are all the rage these days. Unfortunately, so too are tiny keyboards or few octaves. The Mopho is what you’ve been asking for. It has 44 keys, semi-weighted, with not only velocity but aftertouch, too. That means you don’t need to relegate your monosynth to tiny basslines and carry another controller. You […]

Through years of struggling with mice, keyboard shortcuts, and the like, stacks of hand-written notation alongside the computer, this was what I imagined – and probably you, too, if you work with handwritten scores. NotateMe promises to take hand-written notation from your fingertip or stylus and recognize music, from simple lead sheets to full orchestral […]

MIDI Clock Sync Vezér to Ableton Live from luma beamerz on Vimeo. Vezér is not a tool for making visuals on its own, but instead uses powerful envelope tools to let you shape ideas in time. And being as it is focused on time, more connections to sync and audio were understandably a big feature […]

Hypnotic and chant-like, this Christian Carrière composition hums and vibrates with what sounds like a chorus of electronic synthesizers. But that’s not what you’re hearing. It’s actually all a “no-input mixer” – a rig that makes use of controlled feedback rather than any other source of sound. It is, as Montreal-based composer Christian describes it, […]

Discchord has an insightful video that pits the KORG volca bass – that beautiful, affordable wonder – against a 303 bass (in this case, a Cyclone clone). It’s in my view a completely fair comparison, just because the Roland TB-303 has become such a template for basslines, particularly in acid music. And understanding what the […]