All those pads – it took virtuoso finger drummer Mad Zach to take advantage of them. Mad Zach’s five free Drum Racks accompany today’s release of Ableton Live 9.2. Since he, frankly, makes most of us look bad with his agile use of the Push hardware, I wanted CDM to talk to him more about […]

It seems synth guru Richard Devine couldn’t resist revealing something about upcoming Yamaha technology. In an interview earlier this month, he let slip that the instrument includes “alien” new tech: Usually when I work with a company – for instance I’m working with Yamaha on a project right now; I can’t say what it is, […]

Okay, we hit some sort of nerd singularity just now. Start with David Hasselhoff’s cheeky, cheesy “True Survivor.” Remake it on the 8-bit SidTracker 64 app. You’ll swear all of this actually happened in the 80s, even if it didn’t. Retrorgasm. And yes, this gem is included in the app. Musical arrangement: Fredrik Segerfalk Graphics […]

Say what you want about what’s real or what’s authentic. The beauty of digital sometimes is that it lets us do things that would otherwise be impossible – or at least far out of our reach. I don’t know about you, but I certainly can’t my hands on an EMT 140 plate reverb. Practical, though, […]

Here’s something cool, and something depressing – all in one. What’s cool: Paul Lemere, participating at Cannes’ MIDEM Hack Day, built a tool that magically figures out where “the drop” is in a song. What’s creepy and depressing – uh, to me, at least – it knows this because some of you apparently can’t resist […]

It seems Apple Music isn’t just about consumption. Not surprisingly, Apple’s own GarageBand/Logic family appear to figure into the company’s plans. Accordingly, GarageBand will get an update on June 30, the same day Apple Music (and Apple Music Connect) are scheduled for launch. And for anyone who says the company is “abandoning” pros, here’s the […]

Summertime. You certainly can’t complain about your options in electronic music festivals. But in some of the best festivals, there’s also a sameness – talented lineups, repeated from weekend to weekend. That predictability is part of the draw, part of the commercial viability of many of these events and of the artist industry they support. […]

Watch as a Yakovlev Yak-42 jetliner* was transformed last month into a giant percussion instrument, allowing a unique duet between vocalist (our friend Jekka) and machines. As part of last month’s Polytech Festival in Moscow, the performance is one of a number of international collaborations taking place around the museum’s art programs. A small army […]

The latest limited edition sound instrument animal has been born, and it’s a sampler delay … thing. Daedelus, the California producer who first popularized the monome, is teaming up with John-Mike Reed aka Dr. Bleep of Bleep Labs (designed in Austin, Texas and produced in America) to invent the Delaydelus. (Say that ten times fast.) […]

Writing about music feels stupid sometimes, even to me. It’s a cop-out to say that, but it’s true. So I hope you first hit play; the magic of music journalism today is that you can actually hear the music (something that I don’t miss about print is its inability to do that). And yet… I […]