Yamaha steps in subscription #musictech with "Creator Pass" for #Musicians with #AI tools, etc. and the company has equipment history ofc.

The MacBook Neo is ‘the most repairable MacBook’ in years, according to iFixitApple’s new MacBook Neo isn’t just the most affordable MacBook — it’s also the company's most repairable laptop in “about fourteen years."

Take Pi for a Spin in this Orbital SimulatorIt’s Pi Day, and while we know that many of you celebrate privately, those that take a moment to put aside their contemplation of all things circular and join us on this mathematically-significant day will likely know the name [Cristiano Monteiro]. Since 2022 he’s made it a yearly tradition to put together a themed project every March 14th, and he’s just put the finishing touches on the 2026 edition.
Generally, [Cristiano] sends in some interesting hardware device that visualizes the calculation of pi, but this year he surprised us a bit by delivering a software project. His Orbital Pi Simulator allows you to see what would happen to an orbiting spacecraft if it’s navigation system suddenly believed the value of pi was something different.
In broad strokes, we can imagine what would happen. If you plug in something significantly higher than 3.14, the orbit becomes elliptical to the point that the craft can fly off into deep space. Drop the value down, and the orbit will intersect with the Earth — a guaranteed recipe for a bad time.
The Kerbal Space Program players in the audience will no doubt point out that in the absence of drag a spacecraft in a stable orbit would more or less stay on that same trajectory indefinitely and not need to manually adjust its velocity in the first place. Further, they would argue that said spacecraft suddenly firing its thrusters retrograde because a flipped bit in its computer resulted in the value of pi suddenly being 1.2 isn’t very realistic. Those people would be correct, but they would also be no fun at parties.
Fans of math and/or circles will no doubt be interested in the previous devices [Cristiano] has built to mark this date. Last year he put together a robotic hand that counted out pi with its 3D printed fingers, and in 2024 he used the Pepper’s Ghost illusion to great effect. For those wondering, not everything he does is pi-related. The portable GPS time server he sent out way in 2021 was a particularly slick piece of hardware.

fy_niceworld releases fy_nicetape (beta), a FREE tape plugin for Windows
fy_niceworld releases fy_nicetape (beta), a FREE tape deck/delay and reverb plugin for Windows. fy_nicetape is a new plugin that brings a classic lo-fi vibe to your drums, keys, and synths. The plugin comes from fy_niceworld and is now available for free. There’s no tedious download process, no hoops to jump through, and you don’t even [...]
View post: fy_niceworld releases fy_nicetape (beta), a FREE tape plugin for Windows

Atlas DSP DI KEN stompbox-style overdrive and pitch shifter plugin is FREE for a limited time
Atlas DSP is giving away its DI KEN plugin for free for a limited time. It normally costs 29.99 euros. To get it for free, you can sign up with your email and first name on the Atlas DSP website. DI KEN is a stompbox-style effect that combines overdrive, pitch shifting, and a noise gate [...]
View post: Atlas DSP DI KEN stompbox-style overdrive and pitch shifter plugin is FREE for a limited time

Get Baby Audio Parallel Aggressor for $5 (exclusive BPB deal)
Plugin Boutique is offering Baby Audio’s Parallel Aggressor to BPB readers for just $5 until March 20th. The plugin normally costs $69, so this is a unique opportunity for BPB readers to get it with a huge discount. Use the coupon code bpb-pagg at checkout. Parallel Aggressor is a parallel processing plugin that combines compression [...]
View post: Get Baby Audio Parallel Aggressor for $5 (exclusive BPB deal)

HISONG announce the AirStudio S1 Said to be the world’s first “all-in-one recording capsule” for musicians and content creators, the compact system combines a 'high-quality mic with a 'USB-C audio interface, and includes a 'pair of wireless IEM ear buds that can be neatly stored the mic’s body.

Digg lays off staff and shuts down app as company retoolsDigg laid off a significant number of staff and shut down its app, but says it's not giving up on the startup.

Truly Wows the Moroccan Lounge, TrulyThis writer can remember when Seattle trio Truly's sophomore album, Fast Stories... from Kid Coma dropped in 1995. Happening upon it by accident, the opening tracks "Blue Flame Ford" kicked in like a buzzsaw--all fuzzy fury, drone and sludge, but blessed with poetic, incisive lyrics.

The knowledge that bassist Hiro Yamamoto was a founding member of Soundgarden came later, and it proved to be a nice little info-nugget. But Truly was an excellent stand-alone band, and that's still true following Truly's comeback.

That said, it was wonderful to see Yamamoto included when Soundgarden was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame last year. His contributions to the Ultramega OK and Louder Than Love albums certainly warranted the honor.

Truly's last album, Twilight Curtains, was released in 2000 (26 years ago, incredibly), and the criminally light crowd at the Moroccan Lounge suggests that they have some work to do to remind people of their existence. New material can't come soon enough.

For now, we'll have to enjoy the back catalog, and the band performed the old songs impeccably well in L.A. on a late-Winter Wednesday night. The only complaint was the brevity of the set. They started at 8 p.m. and played for less than an hour. One can only assume that they had to get on the road fast for the next gig.

But the aforementioned "Blue Flame Ford" and other tunes from that second album ("Hot Summer 1991," "Chlorine," "Hurricane Dance") went down beautifully. Frontman Robert Roth can still hold a smooth note, belting out vivid lyrics when required. And both Roth and Yamamoto were visibly thrilled to be briefly joined by keys-man Don Randi (Wrecking Crew, Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Nancy Sinatra's "These Boots Were Made for Walking," much more).

A new song (we didn't catch a title) hinted at good days ahead. But it's just great to have them back. Truly.The post Truly Wows the Moroccan Lounge, Truly first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

BPI targets August for BTC tax relief, but warns time is running outThe Bitcoin Policy Institute said the bipartisan support for a de minimis tax exemption for smaller Bitcoin transactions is "encouraging."

No More Paperweight: This Vintage Brick Phone Is Back OnlineRemember those brick cellphones in the 1990s? They were comically large by today’s standards. These phones used the 1G network to communicate and, as such, have been unusable for decades now. However [Alan Boris] has resurrected this classic phone to operate today.
Originally costing as much as today’s top-of-the-line phones, but instead of weighing just a few ounces this classic Motorola DynaTAC 8000 Classic 2 tips the scales at a hefty 1.5 lbs. [Alan Boris] decided to not just bring the electronics back to life, but to even stuff a modern cellphone inside it to make it fully functional. Given the size of this phone, finding room for the new innards wasn’t much of a challenge. In fact, after the retrofit there was less in the phone than when it started life.
Using a perfboard and some tactile switches he was able to sense the button presses on the phone’s keypad and relay those to a Raspberry Pi Pico 2. The Pico in turn drove a small color LCD to replicate the original screen and controlled a pair of ADG729 boards used to dial the BM10 cellphone within this cellphone. The BM10 is a cellphone about the size of a 9V battery, making it easy to put inside the DynaTAC and bring the handset back to the modern cellular network.
Thanks [Alan Boris] for the tip! Be sure to check out our other cellphone hacks as well as some of our other retrofit hacks.

Animated Instruments Animated EastAn instrument for exploring. Animated East invites you to slow down and design sounds one module at a time. Drag-and-drop modulation, 3D visualization, and menu-free navigation make sound creation intuitive. Microtuning and per-module drift offer up the unexpected. Key Features: 3D Navigable Tunnel: Scroll or use arrows to move fluidly through the signal chain. Dual Oscillators: multiple wave types with dedicated gain, octave, detune, and drift controls. Noise Generator: Level and density (color) controls. Dual Filters: Low-Pass and High-Pass including drive, resonance, drift, and cutoff. Dual Envelopes: ADSR and Auxiliary AR (Attack / Release). AR is loop-able, doubling as a free-rate LFO. LFO: Includes sync and free-rate modes, rate control, and shape (four shapes). Microtuning: 5 selectable modes for moving beyond equal temperament. Why Animated East? Visual Synthesis: 3D interactions on most parameters. Flow-State Design: A user interface that encourages single-module focus. Intuitive Modulation: Drag and drop three sources onto sixteen parameters. Classic Foundation: Built on a classic subtractive synthesis architecture. Read More

UVI introduce Mosaiq 26 Available for the UVI Workstation and Falcon platforms, Mosaiq 26 comes loaded with more styles and more sounds, and kits users out with the tools to create everything from ethereal atmospheres to club-ready grooves.

BRITs Producer of the Year PinkPantheress on how she produces using just her MacBook keyboardGot a laptop and an idea? Then there’s nothing stopping you from becoming an award-winning producer. This year’s BRITs Producer of the Year, PinkPantheress, has shared her creative process when creating 2025 single Tonight – and she just used Logic Pro and a standard QWERTY keyboard.
That’s right. PinkPantheress – real name Victoria Beverley Walker – didn’t hook up a MIDI keyboard or any fancy plugins, just Logic’s Musical Typing option to create the track’s now-iconic chord progression. And even her use of Logic is fancy for her – she was previously crowned Billboard’s Producer of the Year in 2024, when she was still just using GarageBand.

READ MORE: “You can learn how to be a better producer but you can’t learn how to be a genius”: PinkPantheress opens up on the best mentors she’s worked with

The Bath born songwriter and producer shares the process behind the making of Tonight, the lead single from her 2025 mixtape, Fancy That, in a new video. In the video, she explains: “The first thing I start off with is figuring out the chords like this… as you can see, I put them in manually”.
She then adds how “MIDI controllers can be expensive! Inputting [chords] into whatever software you use works just as well”.

The artist also explains that the track’s bassline was put together by tapping out the chords on her laptop.
In the past, PinkPantheress also shared her process working on GarageBand for her Central Cee collaboration, Nice To Meet You. In a TikTok video, she flicked between her old reliable GarageBand and Logic Pro, as she was just in the transition phase to the more up-market software.
But that doesn’t mean she’s ever forgotten her GarageBand roots – when she received her first nod of production recognition as Billboard’s Producer of the Year, she shared a tweet simply reading “love you GarageBand”.

The post BRITs Producer of the Year PinkPantheress on how she produces using just her MacBook keyboard appeared first on MusicTech.

From Chance the Rapper’s courtroom revelations to Live Nation’s DOJ settlement… it’s MBW’s weekly round-upThe biggest headlines from the past few days...
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