Synth is a great way to learn about using a synthesizer to make and produce music. The basic version of this app, available for free from iTunes, allows you to experiment with several different synthesized sounds, adjusting the octave, pitch, and modulation. Different filters for delay amount, time, feedback, and [...]
Nostalgia is a two-way street for an electronic musician and producer: The preferred, and now classic, sounds are in one direction, but antiquated technology and cumbersome playability is in the other. Getting those ‘80s synth washes is contending with a lack of touch sensitivity and with equipment that has a [...]
Ableton is considered one of the quintessential programs for DJing and making electronic music. Yet, if you’re not fully skilled on the hardware aspect of either, using Ableton ends up being a daunting task. Ableton and Novation, for making Ableton Live more accessible, introduced the Novation Launchpad. Designed for DJing, [...]
Trance duo Tritonal has experienced a nearly-meteoric rise over the past five years. Chad Cisneros and David Reed, living at the time in Austin, Tex. and Washington, D.C., respectively, formed Tritonal in 2007, but both already had their own EDM projects: Cisneros remixing for some of the genre’s bigger labels [...]
Of all the production tools available to modern DJs and EDM enthusiasts, only one is truly suited to seamlessly integrate creation and performance in a single fully-featured package: Ableton Live. With its many built-in instruments and effects, a unique method of managing song clips, and superbly intuitive integration with almost [...]
Propellerhead Balance is designed to be an all-in-one music production package. For those musicians who need a fast and easy way to get their instruments hooked up to their PC so that they can record, it should prove suitable. The package comes with Reason Essentials, a popular software solution for [...]
As far as MIDI keyboards go, there doesn’t tend to be much variation in feature sets, but rather differences in styling, layout, build quality, and overall feel. With Novation’s Impulse series of keyboard controllers, all of the most popular DAW control methods are implemented in one keyboard that is a [...]
Musical party provocateur Barry Ashworth is well known as front-man for the Dub Pistols, a London band whose highly-danceable mash-up of dub, rock, electronica and hip-hop has taken them from the brink of multi-million dollar international success to the edge of destruction and back again. Ashworth is also a sought [...]
One of my favorite things about Propellerhead’s Reason is the small (but certainly not lacking) collection of interesting and adaptable instrument modules. Today I’ll be focusing specifically on the Kong Drum Designer, the innovative and endlessly useful drum machine with a user-friendly layout and incredible sonic possibilities. The most immediately [...]
IK Multimedia announces iRig MIX The first mobile mixer for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad for DJ’ing anytime, everywhere January 2012 – IK Multimedia is proud to announce iRig™ MIX, the first mobile mixer for iPhone, iPod touch or iPad devices. iRig MIX offers the same controls you would expect from [...]