CDM readers heavily lamented the loss of Roland’s AX-7 “shoulder keyboard” (better known to the world as a “keytar”). Sure, the keytar has a reputation for being dorky (bad news, chaps, the keyboard has a reputation for being dorky). But putting instruments on your shoulder is also a simple way to make them easy to […]

If you could have an ideal drum machine and sample-slicing workstation, taking the physical control of hardware but the flexibility of software, what would it look like? We talk a lot about hardware control of software, but hardware usually comes second – software gets designed first, and then either you have to figure out how […]

The new Live: perhaps no one needs it, but I’ll bet a lot of people will want it. Ableton’s site is now live with all the Live 8 information. But let’s cut straight to which bits are likely to be really significant in the new version of Live (aside from the new Akai controller and […]

It’s been a long, long wait, but it’s now official: Ableton and Cycling ‘74 have collaborated on Max for Live, which integrates Max/MSP with Ableton Live. There’s tons of information on the Cycling ‘74 site, and I’ll be doing some follow-up interviews for CDM soon with more details, but here’s the overview. What is Max […]

MOTU’s new drum machine is a new software sampler/synth workstation for drums, clearly influenced by beat production workstations like the legendary Akai MPC and EMU SP1200. With all today’s hardware/software talk, I initially thought this was hardware, too, but it’s not – meaning it’s got an uphill battle against integrated features in hosts like Live […]

Today is set to be an orgy of computer music-y, Abletronic, drum machine-loaded, Max-patching news, so let’s throw one out to the guitarists. IK Multimedia has two new announcements today that are actually quite cool. The StealthPedal is a Wah pedal that’s actually an audio interface, sort of like a James Bond pen that’s also […]

I was able to get additional clarification from Ableton on the Akai APC40. Specifically, it’s worth talking about what makes this unique as a controller. It’s not for everyone – that’s what’s wonderful about computers, that you can control them with lots of different devices. And using Max for Live (more on that today and […]

I do promise that CDM will have up-to-the-second coverage of the stuff you care about (that is, when we’re not getting scooped by early print runs of Electronic Musician or the Akai website), but for those of you who are reloading our page every few moments, here’s an alternative: Follow us on Twitter. cdmblogs @ […]

The APC40 is physically completely unlike the monome, but one important way it did learn from the experience of Live users’ desire to hack: you’ll be able to make your own, custom setups, using Max. Ableton founder and CEO Gerhard Behles explains to Akai in an interview released this morning: Owners of the APC40 who […]

It’s been eight years since Ableton Live introduced its signature screen layout for live performance: clips, scenes, sends, tracks, and devices. For the first time, a single controller combines all the basic elements of that Live set in a single hardware layout. Akai’s APC40 is a plug-and-play, driver-free hardware controller developed with Ableton. The APC […]