Computers speak digital signal. Analog synths and modulars speak control voltage. (It’s sort of a “men are from Mars, women find these metaphors insulting” kind of situation.) What if you could bridge the two elegantly and graphically, using a drag-and-drop, modular interface with calibration and control features? MOTU has developed a solution called Volta. It’s […]

  From top: ComputeHer, 8 bit Weapon. You’ve heard the chip hype. But there’s something behind it: vintage digital chips can make wonderful sounds. And I’m thrilled that someone has painstakingly reproduced those sounds in an upcoming package. Emulating analog circuitry, from amps to classic synths, has been long understood. But we’ve finally reached an […]

When Ableton refers to controllers, they do use “controllers,” plural. So you can expect more Ableton-official controllers coming soon. Ableton does have a video where you can see more in action. (Video via the terrific audioporncentral.) What I need you to tell me is what you can’t see in this video, so I can sit […]

Photo: Derek K. Miller (penmachine) catches some Live action from friend Paul. Updated: Rewrite. We in fact had several users successfully upgrade from Live 6 to 7 overnight, for free. That seems to have been either some extremely particular circumstance or a server glitch. (Pointing to the latter, Ableton took their shop down for maintenance […]

Jitter screen grab by droolcup, which is what you’re about to need. I’ll give you a second to let that headline sink in. Max for Live, announced at the NAMM music trade show, adds Max/MSP/Jitter to Ableton Live, including – in a move that really caught me by surprise – Jitter. In addition to the […]

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 […]