Ableton could someday make their own iPad app for controlling Live. But it’s getting increasingly tough to imagine how to outdo what third parties have already created. TouchAble 2, the anticipated update to one of the most popular iOS control apps, is nearing release. (“A few weeks” is the timeframe.) The developers have always made […]

When we last saw the Bass Station II, Novation’s affordable analog monosynth celebrating the company’s 21st birthday, Novation still had a prototype. Some stuff on that instrument simply didn’t work – or didn’t sound the way we might expect. But there was still reason to anticipate learning more. Novation had something at the $500 street […]

Life on the grid gets better and better. Yes, these blinky, lighty arrays of squares do continue to proliferate. But musicians are also hacking away to make them more useful. And they do that with perhaps nothing as much as the Novation Launchpad, a kind of workhorse of the grid world. While one of the […]

TightLight: Automatic 3D Projection Mapping Method from Grady Sain on Vimeo. It seems like visual software is only just working out how to talk to an external display, how to recognize that it needs to be distinct from your computer display. And yet, we seem on the vanguard of a generation of tools able to […]

Mega-Bass 2020 – Teaser Performance from Icebreaker Audio on Vimeo. Look through that VHS fuzz, and listen as a Casio VL-Tone and synth go ultra-retro – they even play a cover of Jan Hammer. But that’s not what this story is about. This story is about using more simple grid techniques to create something that […]

Ableton’s Push, like other colored, light-up grids, may sometimes seem like just a big, flashy Lite-Brite. So – heck, why not use it that way and have a good time? Tama Rhodes writes us to let us know about a project that exploits the shiny colors to visualize live sound data. The results are screaming […]

Chasing Rainbows (Festival Edit) – Fhloston Paradigm from King Britt on Vimeo. Fhloston Paradigm is King Britt’s project from last year on Kode9’s Hyperdub label, dripping with all-analog sound and sci-fi afro futurism. And now it has the music video to match. It could well inspire you to get up and dance, survivalist style. The […]

For some, there’s the step sequencer you dream of. Maybe it has a massive array of buttons for patterns, capable of spreading musical ideas across a lit grid. Maybe every last rhythm is visible, maybe it juggles layers and patterns with ease. Ryan B just went and built what he wanted. Under the moniker RNInstruments, […]

We’re not worthy. Japanese site Digiland has published a review of KORG volca keys. And when they do sound demos for their review, they go a little crazy. This video is the result: it’s a cover of Die Roboter (“The Robots”) by Kraftwerk that’s spookily-good. (Actually, it almost improves upon the original.) The synth sounds […]

Augmenting keyboards with additional expression is a tradition that goes back nearly a century. Inventors have tried keys that bend and wiggle, add-ons from pulleys to ribbons, wheels and pressure sensors, and more – anything to extend the piano and organ beyond their on/off playing methods. But now, the Web has accelerated the ability to […]