Photo courtesy Eigenlabs. Novel instruments come and go; futuristic ideas appear in demos, wow crowds, and then vanish just as quickly. In order to really become part of musical practice, they require practice. And with something as unusual as the Eigenharp – a digital music controller that looks like the love child of a bassoon […]

The Bridge, the software resulting from collaboration between Ableton and Serato we first saw in January, is available today. The integration is free, provided you have the right software: you need both a copy of a full version of Ableton Live or Live Suite 8.2 or above and Serato Scratch Live 2.1.1. (Live LE, for […]

Dirty and minimal – that’s how I’d describe first impressions of Amp, the just-announced Ableton amp modeling add-on for Live, available a la carte or free with Live Suite. It appears at first glance to be just what you’d expect: it’s a radically simplified user interface for modeling amplifiers (“Amp”) and cabinets (“Cabinet”). (Hey, shouldn’t […]

amoeba v kazantip_Z17/Z18_thee darkside from amoeba on Vimeo. Ukraine knows how to rave – really. kaZantip is an extraordinary techno party in Eastern Europe, and the talented amoeba design — aka Scottish-born artist Hagbard Celine — was there to show off his stuff. You can check out the reel above; more info below, including their […]

amoeba v kazantip_Z17/Z18_thee darkside from amoeba on Vimeo. Ukraine knows how to rave – really. kaZantip is an extraordinary techno party in Eastern Europe, and the talented amoeba design — aka Scottish-born artist Hagbard Celine — was there to show off his stuff. You can check out the reel above; more info below, including their […]

Summit co-chairs Ayah Bdeir (left) and Alicia Gibb (right) are hoping to galvanize a community around open source hardware, from NASA to Arduino. And that could have an impact on music and audio – if creators of gear for musicians get onboard, that is. Open source software has proven itself in technological, economic, and cultural […]

There’s not much to say about this news: if it’s the kind of thing you’ve been anxiously awaiting, you’ll know you’re in luck just from the screenshots. First, for anyone with a recent MacBook and a copy of Max for Live, Juan Pablo Carrascal has come up with a lovely solution for on-the-go production. Using […]

Music or games – free speech is free speech, say legal, advocacy, and industry groups. Photo (CC-BY-SA) FHKE. A California ban of the sale of violent video games to minors may not seem relevant to the world of music on first blush. But the music industry, joining everyone from software makers to legal groups to […]

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross working together in their home studio, in 2006. Photo (CC-BY) Aaron Tait. Lots of music hitting the inbox this week, from Reznor scoring a movie about Facebook to Ghostly giving away rarities. Trent Reznor and bandmate Atticus Ross have scored The Social Network, and created a shadowy, throbbing musical landscape […]

Photo (CC-BY-ND) verityatthedisco. Remember the music industry? We used to talk about radio play and record deals. Now, we’re talking developers, APIs, and analytics. Of course, the test, now as then, is whether there’s actually substance for music listeners and artists. On Friday, we looked at Apple’s Ping and how, via TuneCore, artists who aren’t […]