Arturia has a big update for their flagship polysynth, the PolyBrute. V3 adds 7 types of distortion, expanded effects routing and tuning, a new stereo layer mode, and more. Also, I’m sorry, you’ll again be hit with the Arturia drinking game – it’s another Arturia news item that mentions “Germanium.” (Maybe we should play a […]
Music
Utrecht’s Le Guess Who? festival chronicles a broken visa system
Music November 7, 2024
Arash Azadi’s music returns to primordial states of human existence
Music November 6, 2024
What the future of the NUC platform means for Ableton Push standalone
One of the big features of Ableton Push is its standalone mode and upgradeability, enabled by the Intel-developed NUC platform. Over the summer, Intel discontinued that platform, raising some questions about where NUC was headed. Now, with Asus officially taking over NUC, here’s a look at the platform and what it could mean for Push 3’s future, with Ableton’s head of hardware weighing in.
Thump One is a hard-hitting wavetable-kick-supersaw synth – and it’s free
What if you could take the essence of a melodic 808 kick, a wavetable synth, the thick supersaw from a JP8000, and an edgy percussive synth and mash them all together into one magical lead-kick-synth? And then what if you made that free? Well, that’s just what Toybox has done with the Thump One. It’s the deluxe banana split covered in whipped cream dessert treat of synthesizers – and you deserve it.
Squeeze is a free upward compressor for Ableton Live – subtle to intense
We are awash with various dynamics tools these days, but don’t sleep on this. GMaudio is a deceptively simple upward compressor that you’ll want in your Ableton Live arsenal, as it can scale effortlessly from nuance to extreme. And it’s remarkable that it’s free; it almost feels like it fell out of an Ableton Live upgrade from a parallel universe.
Draw rectangles on spectrum, animate them: free Sektor for Max for Live
Sektor is a beautiful Ableton Live freebie, a graphical tool for capturing bands of a sound’s spectrum and then looping and sampling them. Here’s a quick play.
Playing the space of Kraftwerk: Rabon Aibo’s sound art at Atonal
In fragmented materials and process-based performance interventions, this year’s Atonal exhibition seems to breathe life into debris, a deconstruction of ruined objects. But most striking of all is the work of sound artist Rabon Aibo. With mechanical constructions, he makes the cavernous Kraftwerk power plant into an instrument – and makes use of gas canisters that resonate with dark moments in Kurdish and European histories.
How to support relief in Morocco and Libya: resources
This month has brought unimaginable suffering atop thousands of deaths in both Morocco and Libya. To readers whose communities and loved ones have been directly impacted, we’re thinking of you. As music makers and instrument makers, I hope we continue to connect to remain tuned in and responsive. News can be overwhelming, but we live in a world where connections – and action – is never far away.
Resolume 7.17: easier recording, more copy & paste, and more
Resolume continues its update churn – and expands its ubiquity as the go-to live visual tool. New in 7.17: a new recording panel with more features, expanded copy and paste, Akai APC Mini MK2 support, and still more functionality packed into its patchable modular Wire environment. Here’s the latest on Arena and Avenue:
Live radio today: Refuge Worldwide with Moe Nagasi
Fresh, unexpected, unreleased music – we’re back with the regular series Post at Refuge Worldwide. This month’s special guest is Donbas, Ukraine native Moe Nagasi, our conduit to the Donbas-Berlin connection. Tune in 1pm local time (UTC+2 ) / 7am NYC time / 8pm Tokyo.
VCV Rack patches in a module? 4ms explains their Meta Module
It’s the prototype that ate Chicago’s Knobcon. 4ms showed their new “Meta Module,” which lets you put patches inside a hardware module. The new module can run compatible VCV Rack patches with full hands-on and CV control. An image went viral, but without all the details. So here’s 4ms to get meta with us and explain exactly what’s going on.