What does it take to make snares hot again? This free Live rack, that’s what. Dial F aka David Abravanel has been cooking up new music and more sounds – and stick around for exhaustive kicks. Notes and download for Live 10 are all on Google Drive: Snare Synth download, Rack, and demo project It […]

Software modular just keeps getting better. Cherry Audio’s Voltage Modular looks like a top contender, with a major (free) 2.0 update and changes to support free and affordable module add-ons. https://cherryaudio.com/news/2020-05-19/voltage-modular-2-0-is-here Where Cherry fits Just think how rich and accessible the modular world is in software – and Cherry just made it more so. VCV […]

Life post-apocalypse is mysterious, but somehow comforting – a digitally generated, AI-assisted woven blanket of sounds. There is calm in uncertainty – once you adapt. At least that’s the feeling I get personally, listening to the glitching electro-acoustic ambiance of Microohm, Infinita Incertidumbre. There are yawning caverns, gently shuffling rhythms, persistent electronic rattles and beeps […]

Here’s a different sort of compilation and synth collaboration – KORG Germany in Berlin invited the likes of Joan La Barbara, Suzanne Ciani, Alva Noto, Dave Smith, and a lot of us relative newcomers, too, to make a cookbook. And it’s free to download.

Simone Angel from MTV Party Zone did an extended set of interviews with the Detroiters in 1997. And it’s honestly about as many people from this scene as you can cram into one place. If I had posted this this time last year, it might have felt like nostalgia. But now 1997 feels roughly the […]

How big is it? The latest from developer Sean Costello has networks of delays up to two seconds – as in, each delay – for lush shorter reverberation all the way to epic stretches of minutes at a time.

Arturia today has unveiled a software reproduction of the epic OB-Xa – and it might feel as powerful in 2020 as the original did in 1980. I would presume there are two major markets for remakes and clones of past synths. You’ve got people wanting to use the instruments of some of their favorite artists. […]

FL Studio just never slows down. The latest free update offers new MIDI scripting features opening up more hands-on controller support – and new powers to make your own music videos, among other add-ons. FL is funny, in that it just does so much. There are tiny little toys that wind up proving to be […]

Unless you have brand new Mac hardware, it’s likely you want to run macOS Mojave for now for greater compatibility. Here’s how to do it (including links to advice for when your App Store isn’t cooperating).

Akai’s recent 2.8 software offers some powerful new features – and a revised MPC Live II could be a sweet spot in hardware, with expanded connectivity and built-in speakers. And finally, you get MIDI multi capability, like on the classic MPCs. Here’s the rundown. The demands for a digital drum machine/production workstation are now pretty […]