Tweaking with physical knobs is part of the joy of gear like the KORG volca series. But when you’re ready to automate parameters, try new sound design, recall presets, or simply work simultaneously to experiment with volca parameters alongside software tools, it can be handy to have a remote control. It’s the producer’s equivalent of […]

Our inbox is full of fun stuff Ableton lovers can download, so we’re pronouncing it “Ableton Goodies” day. Enjoy! And this one has audio samples you can adapt to other software, too. Like taking a photo or painting a picture, somehow you can transform the way you see a synth by sampling it. And one […]

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 […]

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 […]