How St. Vincent Plays Live, ‘Through the Looking Glass’ [Video...
At the end of the day, what motivates extra technical preparation is the same thing that drives musicians to practice scales or work long hours in the studio: that extra discipline can pay off in real...
View ArticleGet Inside the Musical Brain of Machinedrum [Free Ableton Downloads, Listening]
“Blah, blah, I use Acme MusicStation Pro because it sounds completely dope – I love that compressor.” Okay. Before we begin, you’re not alone. Yes, a lot of artist profile endorsements, even some...
View ArticleThe Bee and The Stamen: Complete Live Stream, King Britt Interview, As Nature...
King Britt, performing in the garden. Photo: Inna Spivakova. For just a moment, take your mind somewhere a bit different. First, imagine the computer as part of nature, not something separate from...
View ArticleMake a New Sound: Scanned Synthesis on Wablet for iPad Features Utterly Mad...
It’s a good sign when you need to invent a new verb to describe using a music tool. And so, get ready for some wabbling. Feel like there aren’t any new synthesis techniques? Scanned synthesis is a...
View ArticleAdvanced Ableton Only: A Master Class in Live Music Making, from NYC, DJ...
Jace Rupture, the man who makes plug-ins mystical. Definitely counts as Advanced Ableton. Photo: Xabi Tudela, courtesy DJ Rupture. Tekserve is known to many New Yorkers as the place they go when their...
View ArticleGood Reading: Matmos, In the Studio, In and Out of Boxes, with XLR8R and Ableton
Actually, they’re not just DJing. Matmos in Seattle in 2009; it’s the gap between the all-in-the-box synthetic world of the laptop and the endless possibilities of sampling their basement of toys where...
View ArticleMelodies in Triangles: Christopher Willits on Playing Grids of Push [Tutorial...
Above us, only sky. Christopher Willits playing the Overlap + Ableton show at Public Works early this month, San Francisco. You can think about melodies and harmonies in geometric shapes. In fact,...
View ArticleVladislav Delay, In Nearly an Hour-long Live Performance, Demonstrates...
Perhaps part of what you need for laptop music to evolve into an appreciated live performance art medium is simply time. Finnish artist Sasu Ripatti is a good candidate for mastery of the form. Honing...
View ArticleFour Tet Walks Through His Unique Live Rig for Red Bull Music Academy [Video]
Four Tet at work. Photo (CC-BY-ND) Jonathan Fisher/fishplums. Playing with laptops can become performative in conventional ways, just by adding instruments – voice, guitar, live drums, ukelele, or...
View ArticleDaft Presets? Reason 7 Effect is Instagram for Music; How to Use – or Misuse...
Propellerhead’s latest cheeky tutorial makes no apologies. Reason 7′s Audiomatic Retro Transformer is, they say, the equivalent of tapping a filter on a phone camera app like Instagram, bundling lots...
View ArticleDown with Sequencers: The Age of Glass Finger-Drums Through Their Beats, Live...
No kit – but no sequencer. Using the ZenDrum controller, musician Nick Froud (left) is one of a handful of growing artists using finger dexterity to trigger electronic sounds in an entirely human...
View ArticleGrid Tricks: Japan and Jeremy Ellis Show Us How Maschine, MPC Can Be An...
They’re two alternative universes with musical wonders in them, places we wish we could live. They both begin with the letter ‘J.’ One is Japan; one is … Jeremy Ellis. Each might as well be their own...
View ArticleAbuse Sampling for Sound Design: Free Tutorial, Rack in Ableton Live
The response to the breaking Live 9.1 news this week was fast and furious; we were honestly surprised at the vast readership of the story. A lot of you must have multiple displays or virtual desktops...
View ArticleAn All-Hardware Elektron Set – and Chat – with Experimental Techno Maestro...
The Mr. Bill Show, live at Krake Festival. Photo by Marco Microbi; courtesy the artist. With over a decade in experimental techno (working with the likes of Jamie Lidell and Cristian Vogel), and years...
View ArticleStirring Solo Vocal + Ableton Push: Thomas Piper, Live at Webster Hall
Grid and human. Photo courtesy Thomas Piper, live at Webster Hall (New York). If the computer can do one thing, it is to vastly expand what a single musician can do live. Whether you rise to that...
View ArticleCops on Fire: Crazy Russian Hip-hop-opera Theater, Played Live on Novation...
Imagine combining sampling, controllerism, opera, hip-hop, rap, cops, live theater, sound effects, school-play cardboard props, and radio plays, and then doing it all in Russian, and you’re getting in...
View ArticleDJing with Step Sequenced Traktor: Remix Decks Meet New Hardware
Step-sequenced Remix Decks make for a different level of Traktor performance – as much live as DJ. But it took an independent designer, not Native Instruments, to really push the concept. Images...
View ArticleRoland Meditation: TM404′s Amazing 303s and Machine Live Sets [Video]
Acid techno is transformed into dub-y trance in the masterful hands of TM404, aka Andreas Tilliander, aka Mokira (under Type and Raster-Noton). In a beautiful video released this month, a lineup of...
View ArticleBitwig Audio Clips Video: No Need for Bland, Endless Loops
Yes, you know the phenomenon – loops sometimes get repetitive, cycling without variation. You can’t really blame the tool; Ableton Live, for instance, certainly allows loads of variation with...
View ArticleWatch Frenetic Beatboxing and Live Electronic Music in a Video Album by Ryo...
Music into 2014 continues with about the wildest live vocal and electronic virtuosity you can imagine… If what “beatboxing” means to you is just someone sputtering drum sounds out of their mouth, Ryo...
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