Music Production
Excision Is Creating a Scholarship Program to Fund Promising Music Producers
With each new venture, it becomes more and more clear that Excision‘s influence extends far beyond the confines of his rail-shaking music. Excision recently opened up about his new album Onyx in a candid interview, telling Forbes that the 17-track record is a reflection of the increasingly polarizing nature of society. He also said the album, which dropped in mid-January, was inspired in part by iconic electronic music groups The Prodigy and Noisia, among others. But it was Excision’s comments about a new scholarship program that sent ripples through the EDM community at large, which is replete with young, hungry producers who look up to the dubstep virtuoso as a role model. Excision. Paradise Blue Recommended Articles According to Forbes, Exc...
Casio Brings Seamless “Singing Robot” Vocal Synthesis to the Bedroom Producer’s Fingertips
The Casiotone CT-S1000V is empowering music producers with next-generation vocoder technology. As Casio’s GM of Marketing Mike Martin says, the product “will give a new voice to your music.” And after seeing the features, we can’t say they’re overselling it. The CT-S1000V’s approach to vocal synthesis is built for the fast-paced life of a producer on the go. No microphone is needed to maximize the keyboard’s defining qualities. Simply by leveraging the Casio Lyric Creator app, creators can type in their desired lyrics into their phone and upload them to their keyboard via USB. Once in the system, musicians can play their lyrics polyphonically using 22 unique vocalist settings to give the music a choral or robot-like flare, among ot...
Richie Hawtin Teams Up With AIAIAI On World’s First Wireless Headphones Designed for Music Production
Richie Hawtin and AIAIAI have introduced the world’s first wireless headphones for music creators, the TMA-2 Studio Wireless+. Headphones and their technologies have changed drastically over the years. Wired headphones have long been the go-to for music producers and creatives alike, but being tethered arguably doesn’t allow for maximum versatility or creativity. “In 2021 it feels archaic to be wired to a piece of hardware just to guarantee pristine audio quality,” Hawtin said in a press statement. “The TMA-2 Wireless+ headphones give you the freedom to step further away from your devices allowing you to capture creative and expressive ideas while immersed in perfect sound. Disconnect and dive deeper into your moment of creativity.” TMA-2 Studio Wir...
Three Musicians Took 100 Years of Climate Change Data and Turned Them Into Songs
Climate change is causing the planet to evolve at an alarming rate. Thanks to musicians and instructors at Full Sail University in Winter Park, Florida, climate change can also be heard. Musicians from Full Sail have teamed up with USA Today to construct music based on more than 100 years of data on climate change in various U.S. states, including Arkansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Iowa. The data found that east of the Rocky Mountains more rain was falling than ever before, but in the west rain is becoming more scarce. Each composer approached the project differently with various musicalities. They all used real rain sounds throughout their pieces. Pennsylvania by Dr. Timothy Stulman In Dr. Stulman’s composition, he used a melodic line that represented p...
Kaskade Is Releasing a Reimagined Version of His Iconic “Fire and Ice” Album
Kaskade‘s Fire & Ice album from 2011 is getting reworked in a big way. The iconic “Room for Happiness” producer took to social media last week to announce version three of his seminal Fire and Ice album, noting that some of the songs will include vocals from the original singer-songwriters. “If you remember or if you were here in Southern California, I had a Fire & Ice 10-year anniversary party,” Kaskade says in his video. “In preparation for that show I was at the studio one day all stressed out. I was here trying to figure out the vibe for what I was going to do that day. In that process I started thinking, ‘What if I just remade the record? What if I made new versions?'” “I’ve been road-testing a bunch of new...
Beatport and Microsoft Surface Unite to Empower Musicians With Remote Collaboration Tools
Beatport has announced a unique partnership with Microsoft Surface to empower creators with the latest tech developments from the touchscreen-based device brand. The alliance will enable musicians using Beatport’s leading electronic music platform to harness the tools of Surface’s innovative products and collaborate remotely in real-time, regardless of where they are. The two powerhouses recently announced the launch of a dedicated campaign, dubbed Originals2, which will kick off with a series of educational events featuring world-famous DJs. “In a world where collaboration between music creators is accelerating online, it’s critical that technology hardware and software keep innovating with frictionless experiences,” said said Chris Beeby, Director, Integ...
This Wearable Device Lets You Play Music Out of Thin Air—Without an Instrument
Learning a real instrument these days is outdated. Mictic‘s newest wearable device allows users to turn their movements and creativity into a playable “air instrument,” which can also be connected to digital audio workstations like Ableton and played like any other MIDI controller. To use the device, the user simply attaches it to their wrist like a watch. The wearable connects to a phone via Mictic’s application and its sensors measure movements to play user-selected instruments. For example, select a piano and use your hands to simulate playing the keys, and voilà—you’re Beethoven or Mozart or Stevie Wonder. Mictic will offer 15 sounds and soundscapes in a variety of musical styles and genres. Recommended Articles “We hope that people will ...
Watch Ducks Feast to Make Beats In Experimental Project By Benn Jordan
Oftentimes the opportunity and inspiration to make music exists where you’d least expect it, from the shockwaves of a Tesla coil to a vacuous black hole billions of miles away. Meanwhile, Benn Jordan set out to determine whether ducks could make music. On the surface, it seems like a fowl proposal, but with an Arduino tethered up to three aluminum containers filled to the brim with duck feed, Jordan was willing to test his hypothesis. Despite the odd feeding arrangement this flock didn’t try to duck the opportunity to get their bread. Around a dozen ducks gathered around the food, digging in feverishly and triggering various drum and percussion loops as they gorged. Initially the output of the ducks’ feeding process was cacophonous, off-beat, and sure to ruffle some ...
Celebrating 25 Years of Psytrance: Infected Mushroom Talk Virtual Reality, NFT’s, and New Album
After two decades of pioneering the psytrance genre, Amit “Duvdev” Duvdevani and Erez Eisen of Infected Mushroom are somehow just getting started. Having formed in 1996 at the height of the electronic music boom, Infected Mushroom have since released over a dozen albums and earned a reputation as one of the best-selling groups in Israel and the dance music scene at large. Over the years, we’ve heard high-profile collaborations with Lady Gaga, Steve Aoki, Matisyahu, Paul Oakenfold, Jonathan Davis of Korn, Ray Manzarek of The Doors, and many more. Now the two are scheduled to head back home to where it all started to celebrate 25 years as a group at Israel’s Yarkon Park, in an annual gathering with their hometown fans. “We love going back to Israel where we started produc...
Ableton Launches Live 11.1 Update Beta
The team behind the popular digital audio workstation Ableton always seems to be making improvements to its software, and now the Live 11.1 update has been launched in public beta to make the program even more user-friendly. The new update sees a myriad of features added to streamline the music production process within Ableton, including native support for Apple brand computers running on the recently introduced M1 Silicon chip. Ableton’s Frequency Shifter received a new mode for real-time monophonic pitch shifting, along with an added envelope section, delay, LFO, and glide functionalities. The public beta for Ableton’s Live 11.1 update is now available. Ableton Recommended Articles Align Delay and MIDI Shaper are two of the new utilities being added with ...
Latest Splice Update Features Three Exciting New Plugins
Esteemed music production utility Splice has just released its latest update, and it’s making integration with digital audio workstations (DAWs) easier than ever. Sounds+, Creator, and Creator+ subscribers will gain access to three new plugins after the platform shared the first major update to its playable sample library. Among the new plugins is Bridge, a tool that deepens Splice integration with DAWs. Bridge is built for streamlining sampling and enabling a new function that allows users to “audition” samples directly from the Splice browser. Samples can be transposed and synced to the user’s project before being dragged and dropped into the project, saving time and making it easier than ever to select the perfect sample. Splice has also introduced a new mu...
You Can Make Beats By Bouncing This Innovative MIDI Ball
The music hardware market isn’t lacking in creative instruments that make for a unique songwriting experience. A few years ago, Roli delivered their modular Songmaker Kit, which included their Seaboard Block, Lightpad Block, and Loop Block. This time around, ODD has developed a feature-packed MIDI instrument that provides a unique beat-making experience. The ODD Ball is fairly self-explanatory. It’s a spherical device that can be tapped, hit, or bounced to produce a sound. It connects via Bluetooth to a compatible device and is controlled by its own proprietary app. Through the app, users are able to record samples such as kicks, claps, and snares as well as loops or entire beats. Those songs can be shared with other users, allowing for easy and efficient c...
