Not everyone has an expansive amount of studio space for recording and listening to their productions afterward. As well, not everyone has a huge budget to spend on gear or an endless amount of help to take supplies to a gig. But even when these factors appear to limit what [...]
Blending house and techno elements, Belgian duo Cactus Twisters garnered a bit of attention recently with the Temporada EP. The title track seamlessly transcends subgenre boundaries, adding a bit of a deep house groove to a minimalist techno foundation. Over the course of their career, members Jey and Ka have [...]
Last year, we reported on Akai’s iMPC mobile application for iPad, an innovative beat-generation platform that combined the usability of the iconic MPC series with the portability of a tablet. The result was a superior sketchpad for musical ideas, and SoundCloud integration made rapid content generation easier than ever. The [...]
If, despite the massive amount of hype and press leading up to its launch, you haven’t heard of Bitwig Studio, you really don’t know what you’re missing. While most major DAWs have been around for years (and have consequentially benefitted from years of user feedback and refinement), it isn’t often [...]
For many years, the Akai MPK series of keyboards has been one of the most well-known and trusted options for affordable, quality MIDI controllers to help studio musicians unlock the full potential of their virtual instruments and production software. The MPK 225, 249, and 261 are three new offerings for [...]
When I saw the M-Audio Trigger Finger Pro at this year's NAMM Show, its stunning good looks made quite an impression, but I had no real idea about its underlying functionality. It has RGB LED pads, a slick silvered look with blue lighted accents, and a large LCD screen - [...]
As a professional producer, or even an amateur one, how many hours per day do you sit at a desk? Out of that time, how often are your hands angled awkwardly at a keyboard, your back hunched, or your neck strained to reach the right angle? It’s no secret that [...]
In the age of the VST, dance music synths and synth patches are a dime a dozen. With all of the free (or rather unfortunately free-to-pirate) options out there, I mean that quite literally! For a hardware synth to capture the attention of today’s producer, it often must be stylish, [...]
Drum machines have played an important role in the history of modern dance music. Originally designed to accompany practicing musicians or to replace session drummers in the studio, the drum machine was adopted by electronic dance music in its early years and has been a staple of the genre ever [...]
Ableton Live 9’s release was a big deal, but rocking new features that the community has wanted for quite some time apparently wasn’t enough. Alongside with the release of the software came a brand new piece of hardware called Push, which works hand-in-hand with Live 9 almost flawlessly to create [...]