FireBird 2, “Harmonic Content Morphing” Synth Plug-in, Now Free [Windows]

With so many choices, some beautiful software synths simply fall through the cracks – or fail to keep up with tastes and attentions. TONE2, maker of a number of nice soft synths, has therefore decided to put its FireBird synth out to pasture, releasing an update and marking down the price from $79 to free […]

Windsor Hum Gets Its Own Synth, in Latest Ableton Pack; Read About Mysterious Humming

Residents of Windsor, Ontario widely report hearing a humming sound – one no one has been able to identify, but at least some claim to have recorded. And now, for the first time, you can get that hum as a synth for Ableton Live (or any other environment, via the audio files). It’s the latest […]

Reading List: The Best of the Web, from Vintage Grooveboxes to APC Sequencers to Indeterminism

There’s a beautiful river of information for electronic musicians out there, if you can only navigate its currents. In our new series, we pick out some of the best selections, since we can’t always squeeze in a full article of every terrific gem out there. It’s like a window into our inbox. And for the […]

From IKEA and Audi, Augmented Reality That's Actually Useful [Metaio]

Billy the bookcase says hello. Augmented reality has sometimes seemed like a solution in search of a problem. But two new apps suggest some degree of utility. And as Google struggles to convince people they want Google Glass, smartphones and tablets are proving just fine for occasionally overlaying visual information on an image. At top, […]

From IKEA and Audi, Augmented Reality That’s Actually Useful [Metaio]

Billy the bookcase says hello. Augmented reality has sometimes seemed like a solution in search of a problem. But two new apps suggest some degree of utility. And as Google struggles to convince people they want Google Glass, smartphones and tablets are proving just fine for occasionally overlaying visual information on an image. At top, […]

Krake, Killekill, and the Growing Appetite for Experimental Electronic Music [Listen, Pictures]

Summertime may conjure images of Ibiza and middle-of-the-road festivals in Europe and America, “summer jams” and the musical equivalent of the beach book. And there’s nothing wrong with that; anyone who would deny people the pleasure of listening and dancing to music they love is kind of a jerk. But this stereotype can also obscure […]

MPC in Your Pocket: iMPC Comes to iPhone [Hands-on, Gallery]

Say “MPC,” and what comes to mind is a big, solid piece of hardware – a pickup truck of a drum machine, all metal beneath its rubber pads. And yet, a whole lot of what an MPC can do is now on your phone. Akai’s iMPC is available now for the iPhone. At a US$2.99 […]

Star-Studded Music DIY Projects, with Make Magazine’s Maker Camp

Musical instruments remain some of the best ways to learn about the wonders of electronics, physics, and more. Our friends at Make are showing that off with a week of DIY projects at what they’re calling Maker Camp 2013. Staged in Google+ Hangouts, so anyone can participate. Friday’s guests include some of our favorite electronic […]

Automated Time: Vezer Meets CoGe in Dynamic Visual Composition [Reader Video Demo]

Vezer vs CoGe circuit bended MIDI from vargasz abolcs on Vimeo. Last week, we saw VezĂ©r, an application for visual control with an elegant timeline interface. We asked what you were doing it – and here’s one example. Creator Vargasz Abolcs calls it “MIDI circuit bending.” The notion: use control messages to make visual events […]

Melodyne Isn’t AutoTune: New Video Shows Drum Loop Dynamic Manipulation [Tutorial]

Apple, Steinberg, Cakewalk, and others have begun adding audio manipulation tools to their DAW, and some of those tools are decent enough in a pinch. But there still isn’t any one application – as a plug-in or built into a DAW – that offers the amount of audio tweaking powers as Celemony’s Melodyne products. The […]