Love your audio gear so much you wish you could wear it around your neck, but a loudspeaker on your throat would a) strangle you and b) make you look like too much of a dork to attend high-society functions? Complete Technique jewelers feels you. From sterling silver turntable cartridges plated in gold with embedded […]

Video is increasingly part of performance, and you’ll notice the major VJ hardware makers — Roland/Edirol and Korg — also happen to be musical instrument manufacturers. Roland and Edirol are even building in automatic communication between their keyboards and their VJ hardware, from low to high end. I think video will increasingly become part of […]

It’s the full SuperCollider synth, without the installation. You can add it to any site (self-hosted). It performs seamlessly via WebAssembly. But most importantly, it’s fun, colorful, and comes with examples and an OSC API so it can interface with live coding tools like Tidal (or your favorite). And you can mess around with it right now, for free.

For the final episode in this trilogy on learning Max for Live and Ableton DSP Objects, we’re going to keep the focus on working fast. We’ll learn how to use Ableton DSP to prototype instruments quickly, play expressively, and hack them with some tricks and mods beyond what the stock Live Instruments provide.

The concept prototype Project LYDIA by Roland Future Design Lab uses machine learning tech from Neutone to turn any input into a “tone.” But this isn’t just about “modeling” — far from it. It lets you process anything with anything else. Beatboxing, field recordings — anything becomes an input. That emphasis on sampling and messing around in the real world might make it the opposite of genAI sound. This is tech that demands you go out and play.

A perfect 1U row doesn’t exi– oh, okay tubbetec. You got us. Add a row of big, clicky keys (or more “tactile” ones) and get your step sequencing in a row on Eurorack. It’s called “Drummertime.” Genius.

In case you missed Noon, the first collaboration was a brain-bending, organic, and exquisitely unpredictable analog drum machine. Its 4-channel sibling Moon has opened to preorders, and in this new compact descendant, it’s even more apparent that this is like a breathing, squawking lifeform of a device.

It’s long past time to start talking about scenes in Egypt, Palestine, and elsewhere not just like some exotic foreign treat, but dead-center in the history of hip hop experimentation. ZULI casually drops his second Habibi Loops for free, and it utterly slaps. To quote one clip, “that’s sick, man — that’s dope.”

Akai’s MPC Live III hits the same week as Roland’s new analog-digital flagship. This new standalone box has an updated 8-core processor and specs, enabling new features — but the biggest story here is expressive pads with 3D sensing.

Ableton Live 12.3 hits public beta today, with stem separation and Splice integration, the ability to bounce groups as well as paste bounced audio, there’s a redesigned Auto Pan-Tremolo effect, and you get some new MIDI Tools and Pack updates, plus some extras you might miss like, finally, A/B parameter changes in devices. Oh, and Push has an all-new layout and more. Here’s what’s new.