Oberheim TEO-5 polysynth released at Superbooth Bearing the initials of company founder Thomas Elroy Oberheim, this compact synthesizer has been designed to offer a perfect blend of classic analogue warmth and modern versatility.

Oberheim TEO-5 is the most affordable Oberheim synth ever: “The culmination of a synth pioneer’s vision”Oberheim has announced the TEO-5 polysynth, a compact analogue-digital synth with a lower price tag than any other Oberheim instrument in history.
In our interview with Tom Oberheim — which goes online this week (sign up for updates) —the legendary synth maker says that TEO-5 is the synth he’s dreamed of making for five decades. Oberheim adds in a press release that he’s “so proud to be able to make a synth like this… compact and affordable, the Oberheim sound for 2024.”
Tom Oberheim and the TEO-5. Image: Oberheim
The five-voice synthesizer takes its name from the initials of Thomas Elroy Oberheim but also takes cues from one of the maker’s colleagues. Keen synth fans may liken the TEO-5 to Sequential’s Take-5, one of the final synths created by the legendary Dave Smith, a friend of Oberheim. Like the Take-5, TEO-5 was produced under an alliance with UK brand, Focusrite.
So what’s it packin’? The TEO-5 boasts analogue VCOs and VCFs that are distinctly Oberheim. “But,” assures the brand, “TEO-5 isn’t just a tribute to the past.” More modern features include through-zero FM, which is a new take on the oscillator X-Mod feature found on other OB synths. Plus, a host of digital effects will help you create inspiring patches, with chorus, delay, reverb and recreations of classic Oberheim Ring Mod and Phasor effects.
Elsewhere, a 64-step polyphonic sequencer and multimode arpeggiator let you swiftly build patterns for a track. If you prefer to play the notes yourself, the Fatar keybed ensures “a responsive and inspiring playing experience,” says the brand.
Oberheim TEO-5, image: Oberheim
Crucially, the TEO-5 is the most affordable entry to Oberheim hardware. At $1,499/£1,499/€1,699, the brand says it’s a synth primed for “the creative enthusiast who wnats pro sound quality on a budget.”
We’ll have a review of the product up next week, too, to let you know how the synth really plays.

But why is the TEO-5 making an appearance now — apart from it being Superbooth week?
“There was a huge surge of interest when Oberheim returned in 2022 with the historically
inspired OB-X8,” says David Gibbons, CEO of Oberheim. We can attest to that — the triumphant synth was crowned MusicTech’s Best Product Of The Year when it was released.
“But Tom and the design team were keen to show that the magic of Oberheim can be within reach for everyone and can bring a distinctive modern flavour. TEO-5 is an exciting addition to the Oberheim legacy.”
Learn more at oberheim.com.
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Slate Digital just made its online mastering platform, VIRTU, available to all usersSlate Digital has announced VIRTU 2.0, a new version of its VIRTU Online Mastering platform. It’s now available to all Slate users, not just those with an All Access Pass of Complete Access subscription.
With a simple user-friendly interface and workflow, VIRTU 2.0 allows users to upload a WAV file of their mix and select a Style profile that best fits the track, choosing between Universal, Pop, Rock, Hip-Hop, EDM or Instrumental.

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Next, users select a loudness target, before being given the option to play with more advanced controls, including frequency balance, compression and stereo width of the master.
It’s even an option to upload a reference track, which VIRTU will use to shape the EQ curve and loudness of a track.
“With the help of curated Style profiles, a user-friendly interface and a newly added Reference Track feature, VIRTU makes it easy for users of all experience levels to achieve a professional, polished sound,” says Slate Digital.
You can watch the new VIRTU platform in action below:

VIRTU 2.0 is a browser-based mastering platform, and accepts WAV files only, with sample rates of either 44.1 kHz or 48 kHz recommended.
In terms of availability, free users who aren’t signed up to Slate Digital’s All Access Pass of Complete Access subscription get two free masters upon signing up, with subsequent masters priced at $4.99 each.
Those with All Access Pass or Complete Access subscription get three free mastering credits per month, with additional masters priced at $2.99 each.
For more information, head to Slate Digital.
The post Slate Digital just made its online mastering platform, VIRTU, available to all users appeared first on MusicTech.

Why Hayla is ready to be more than the ‘featured vocalist’ on your favourite DJ’s biggest songsHayla’s voice has been heard by millions. Her soaring, operatic vocals are essential to some of the biggest songs in modern dance music.
Over the past few weeks alone, the Liverpool-born, London-based artist has dominated the stage at world-famous festivals and venues. She sang Shiver with John Summit to close out the Sahara tent during the second weekend of Coachella. Then, across the following two weekends, she performed deadmau5 and Kaskade’s charting single Escape at the Hollywood Bowl and the Brooklyn Mirage as a part of deadmau5’s 25-year celebration, restro5pective.

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In the years prior Hayla, real name Hayley Williams, performed these songs at other major venues such as BMO Stadium in Los Angeles, the electronic mega fest EDC Las Vegas, and Kx5’s set at the LA Coliseum. The latter was crowned “the largest single-day concert headlined by an electronic music artist in North America,” according to Pollstar.
But Hayla is so much more than a headline DJ’s accompanying singer. On top of the extreme power of her voice, she is a songwriter who co-writes all of her major vocal collaborations. She is also adding “producer” to her resume, as she continues to experiment with making music from scratch.
Now, with her debut (currently untitled) album dropping this year, she is standing firm in her identity as a solo artist.
Hayla
“It’s my time to try something for me. I’ve found the confidence,” Hayla says in a strong and expressive Northern English accent. “It’s so nice to have complete creative control over something.”
I’m sitting with Hayla in the dimly lit and effortlessly chic lobby of the Moxy Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. We’re chatting in the days leading up to her debut performance at Coachella. She was in Southern California for a couple of weeks before the show, working in studio sessions all around town.
When Hayla works on a track, she’s in the room building the music from the ground up, whether she’s the featured vocalist or the primary artist.
“The nice thing about this album is I’ve been in the room exactly when we’ve been creating it from nothing,” Hayla explains. “It’s great to be in the room and have that electric feeling.”
Hayla
One artist with whom Hayla has shared that spark is the UK dance DJ and producer, Will Clarke. Hayla and Clarke first connected when they wrote Escape, which was originally going to be Clarke’s song but, through the nature of the industry, ended up in the hands of Kx5. Since then, they’ve had multiple sessions and written 20 songs together.
“The thing I love about Hayla is every session is like a therapy session. I have a really good relationship with her. We can both open up and talk about life, which for me, in a studio session in music is super important,” Clarke says from his studio in London. “That means even if you come out of the session and the record’s not that great, you’ve had the best day. There’s no pressure — that’s important for when I want to write for people.”
“[Will is] so great at what he does. Working with him is great because we can bounce ideas. I feel very confident and comfortable with him. That creative energy and flow—It’s very easy to work with him,” Hayla says.
As Clarke describes, he and Hayla work rapidly during their sessions. He comes in with some foundations – “like four or five ideas, and I mean ideas like very bare-bone chord progressions.” She creates the vocal melody and they hit record. From there, they write lyrics and form up the song. The whole process can be as fast as 30 minutes.

Clarke calls it standard songwriting, but he acknowledges that Hayla brings something to the sessions that no one else can:
“Her voice is just fucking amazing,” Clarke says. “It’s dangerous because her voice is so good that you can rely on the voice too much. It can make everybody lazy in the room on making the actual best song because her voice is so good.”
Hayla records her voice completely dry with no reverb. Once they have the recording down, Clarke adds what he calls “fairy dust” on the back end. He does slight tweaks with a few plugins such as the Waves JJP Vocals and TAL Reverb 2. But for the most part, he lets her sound exist as he heard it in the room.
“I want to hear the rawness of vocalists singing. I want to hear the dips in their voice. I want to hear when they go out of tune. I want to hear all the imperfections of the human voice is beautiful for,” Clarke says. “She’s not demanding as a vocalist. She just gets in and gets it done.”
Hayla was getting it done as a singer years before she was working with Clarke, deadmau5, Kaskade, or John Summit. But she never led her own project either.

For a long time, she sang in different cover bands in bars around the UK. She was a backup singer. She sang at weddings. She also spent many years as a ghostwriter for other artists and taught vocal lessons (she still teaches a 65-year-old man as she has for the past four years).
All of these experiences allowed her to express her love of different genres, but she also struggled to find her own voice.
“It took me a long time to figure out who I am and what I really wanted to say —if there was anything that I could put down on paper that people would be interested to hear,” Hayla says.
Now after writing songs that hundreds of thousands of people sing back to her, she knows beyond a reasonable doubt that people are interested in what she has to say on her album.
The two singles she’s released so far — Embers and Fall Again — live within the same melodic four-on-the-floor realm as her big collaborations like Escape, Shiver, and Where You Are, the last of which is another co-write with John Summit (that former President Barack Obama listed as one his favourite songs of 2023).

But overall, the album reflects Hayla’s comprehensive love of music.
“It’s a little bit eclectic, this album. It fits into the mould of who I am. Being able to show different levels of what kind of music I’m personally into. Also my journey in emotions throughout different things in my life. It’s gonna hopefully make people feel a bit closer to me as an artist on my own rather than me as a featured artist.”
Another reason listeners will feel closer to her on this album is because she is sharing original productions. She made the bulk of the tracks on the album with other producers, but she produced one of the tracks entirely on her own.
She describes the song as “ethereal,” “keys-and-synth-based,” and “very vocal harmony-led.” In the song, she layered 15 vocal tracks, recording them in her bedroom with an NT1A RØDE mic into Logic Pro X.
“It’s not a song. It’s more of a feeling, I suppose. It’s a nice breather.” Currently, she says she can produce well enough to get an idea across, but she wants to improve her production skills; she is holding herself accountable through the album. “I wasn’t sure if I was actually confident enough to put it on there, but I’ve just decided that I’m going to do it.”
Hayla performing
Hayla gives a lot of credit to her collaborators (whom she describes as “kindred spirits”) for helping her build her confidence. She thanks Summit and Kx5 for their support in welcoming her to the stage. But more than just her personal benefits, singing in these massive venues has allowed her to connect with an audience in a way she never had before.
“Being on those stages and being in front of that many people — you get addicted to that feeling,” Hayla says. “Something that I wrote and sang in a room far, far, far away from here is being played out and resonates with so many people. If I can share that emotion with people and that collective energy, it’s amazing.”
It might have taken years, but now Hayla is ready to share her most authentic emotions. She made her upcoming album with other people, but these songs represent who she is as an artist in her own right.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
The post Why Hayla is ready to be more than the ‘featured vocalist’ on your favourite DJ’s biggest songs appeared first on MusicTech.

Erica Synths & Richie Hawtin introduce Bullfrog XL Sharing a similar design to the recently released Bullfrog educational synth, the new Bullfrog XL is three times larger in size and features some additional extras.

Price analysis 5/15: BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, XRP, TON, DOGE, ADA, AVAX, SHIBRisky assets, including Bitcoin and altcoins, received a boost following today's CPI report.

Senate study proposes ‘at least’ $32B yearly for AI programsThe AI industry moves faster than the rest of the technology sector, which means it outpaces the federal government by several orders of magnitude.
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Designing A Quality Camera Slider Can Be Remarkably SatisfyingCamera sliders are great creative tools, letting you get smooth controlled shots that can class up any production. [Anthony Kouttron] decided to build one for an engineering class, and he ended up mighty satisfied with what he and his team accomplished.
As an engineering class project, this wasn’t a build done on a whim. Instead, [Anthony] and his fellow students spent plenty of time hashing out what they needed this thing to do, and how it should be built. An Arduino was selected as the brains of the operation, as a capable and accessible microcontroller platform. Stepper motors and a toothed belt drive were used to move the slider in a controllable fashion. The slider’s control interface was an HD44780-based character LCD, along with a thumbstick and two pushbuttons. The slider relied on steel tubes for a frame, which was heavy, but cost-effective and easy to fabricate. Much of the parts were salvaged from legendary e-waste bins on the university grounds.
The final product was stout and practical. It may not have been light, but the steel frame and strong stepper motor meant the slider could easily handle even heavy DSLR cameras. That’s something that lighter builds can struggle with.
Ultimately, it was an excellent learning experience for [Anthony] and his team. As a bonus, he got some great timelapses out of it, too. Video after the break.

Maze at the KIA Forum, L.A.For almost 50 years, Maze ft. Frankie Beverly has been one of the most iconic R&B groups. Before Maze, the band was known as Raw Soul which Beverly started in 1970 and he is the last remaining original member with the group. Original keyboardist Sam Porter and percussionist McKinley “Bug” Williams have both passed.

For Mother’s Day, the KIA Forum in Inglewood, CA hosted a special show with After 7, Anthony Hamilton and Maze ft. Frankie Beverly on their farewell tour. The last time Maze played L.A. was at the Greek Theater in 2019. For years the group closed out the Congo Square stage on the second Sunday of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. The majority of the crowd was dressed in all white as the band has for years. Between '77 and '93, the group released nine Gold albums. Although it has been 31 years since the last release, Maze has quite a catalog of hits to perform having over 30 charting singles and two which were number one on the US R&B chart. 

Maze took the stage around 9:30 P.M. and played an hour 15 with a set of classics like “Before I Let Go,” “We Are One,” “Golden Time of Day,” and “Happy Feelings.” Beverly, now 77 still sounds great and the band is incredible. Towards the end of their set, Beverly was presented a proclamation from the city of Inglewood marking May 12th Frankie Beverly day. There are just five shows left with the next one being in New Orleans, LA May 25th which the band has a long history with the city being the first group to sell out the Superdome back in 1982. The final show will be in Philadelphia, PA where the group formed July 6 at the Dell Music Center.

Photo credit - Ashley Osborn / Kia Forum Photos

How AI Large Language Models Work, Explained Without MathLarge Language Models (LLMs ) are everywhere, but how exactly do they work under the hood? [Miguel Grinberg] provides a great explanation of the inner workings of LLMs in simple (but not simplistic) terms that eschews the low-level mathematics of how they work in favor of laying bare what it is they do.
At their heart, LLMs are prediction machines that work on tokens (small groups of letters and punctuation) and are as a result capable of great feats of human-seeming communication. Most technical-minded people understand that LLMs have no idea what they are saying, and this peek at their inner workings will make that abundantly clear.
Be sure to also review an illustrated guide to how image-generating AIs work. And if a peek under the hood of LLMs left you hungry for more low-level details, check out our coverage of training a GPT-2 LLM using pure C code.

Google unveils ‘Music AI Sandbox’ with the help of Wyclef Jean, Justin Tranter and Marc RebilletWith these tools, "you’re able to move at light speed with your creativity," says Wyclef
Source

Sun Label Group launches under parent company Primary Wave Music, bringing together Sun Records, Gaither Music, Green Hill Music, Rural Rhythm and emeraldwavePaul Sizelove will oversee Sun Label Group as President
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Vavra Is A FREE Emulation Of The Waldorf MicroQ Synthesizer
Vavra, from the developer The Usual Suspects, is a plugin that supports emulations of the Waldorf MircoQ.  I’ll come out and say I have a heavy bias regarding the work being done by The Usual Suspects. Osirus, OsTirus, and Vavra, today’s focus, all feature quite heavily in my productions. There is something about the sounds [...]
View post: Vavra Is A FREE Emulation Of The Waldorf MicroQ Synthesizer

Spotify hit with ‘Cease & Desist’ from US Music Publishers Association: Read the full letterSpotify received a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday from the National Music Publishers Association regarding its use of lyrics in newly launched video functions and a remix feature that enables users to speed up and edit songs to create derivative works.....
The post Spotify hit with ‘Cease & Desist’ from US Music Publishers Association: Read the full letter appeared first on Hypebot.

iZotope launch major updates in RX 11 The latest iteration of iZotope's audio repair suite features innovative machine learning capabilities and tools tailored for music streaming.