Apple tends to avoid commenting outside its famously-watertight public relations apparatus, but executives sometimes get personal. That appears to be the case for Xander Soren, Director of Product Marketing (and a key player in their pro audio apps). Xander has been in my experience an outspoken and articulate individual. Here, he dispels notions that Apple […]

Use a great effect app to process another app. Record your favorite app in another tool. Make apps work together, and maximize the potential of your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch. At last, Audiobus promises the ability to take the constellation of apps appearing on Apple mobiles and use them together, easily. We’ve known why […]

Tekserve is known to many New Yorkers as the place they go when their Mac is in trouble and need of repair – a place so infamous, it made an episode of Sex in the City, with a waiting room as tense as that in any hospital. But it can also be a terrific hub […]

We live in an age of finger drumming virtuosos, where drum pads are instruments. And so, while much of production is anything but real-time, here it makes perfect sense for three tracks to have accompanying live videos. The songs are each performances, something to be seen as well as heard. Peppered with samples from Bollywood, […]

It’s a good sign when you need to invent a new verb to describe using a music tool. And so, get ready for some wabbling. Feel like there aren’t any new synthesis techniques? Scanned synthesis is a reasonable example. Fundamentally, it involves wavetable synthesis – producing new sounds by playing back recorded wavetable content – […]

Sometimes, an idea is so beautifully elegant, it just seems obvious. That’s the feeling I get from Koma’s newest prototype. The Kontrol Surface is a touch controller device. In its Light version, it’s an X/Y touch controller with CV output. The Pro version adds MIDI so it works with both analog and digital gear, and […]

Digital or analog, it doesn’t matter: any sound you hear is heard in the real world. The playback device, the environment, all impact the sound. For evidence, try playing a record with a single frequency and nothing else. That’s the case with WOW. Perhaps the best recorded equivalent of John Cage’s legendary four-plus minutes of […]

Got a copy of Reaktor 5, perhaps via Komplete, or an instrument or effect based on Reaktor (running in Reaktor Player)? Got an iPad, and want to start touching sounds with OSC? Great! We’ve got some powerful tools and references that will make it easy to get going – and, for those who want to […]

With any instrument, getting your hands on the sounds is essential. Reaktor is a platform for all kinds of strange and wonderful instruments and sound makers. It’s been that for Reaktor DIYers in particular, but it also powers a variety of creations used by Komplete owners and built in Reaktor Player. Today’s update to Reaktor […]

Doing more with less, and embracing limitations: it’s oft-repeated advice in music making. Maybe it’s repeated so often that it ceases to mean anything; I can find no harm in making music using the massive possibilities of a packed studio of gear or the endless depth of a computer. So, instead, doing more with less […]