Fan’s recordings of 10,000 shows – including Nirvana’s debut gig in Chicago in 1989 – are being uploaded online for freeIn 1984, Aadam Jacobs attended a local gig armed with a small dictaphone. After recording one gig, he recorded another. Then another. Then another. And that collection, which contains recordings of over 10,000 local gigs across four decades, is now being uploaded online for free.
Following Katlin Schneider’s 2003 documentary exploring Jacobs’ archival journey, Brian Emerick, a volunteer from the Internet Archive, reached out to Jacobs. Curious about his collection, Emerick was keen to archive Jacob’s staggering amount of vital music history, which included early recordings of Nirvana, The Cure, Depeche Mode, Björk, and more.

READ MORE: How we remixed Steve Aoki: Tips from Laidback Luke, Dani Thorne and Nostalgix

While Jacobs’ was initially dubious, he eventually gave in. That’s why a mass of volunteers are currently involved in the No Tape Left Behind: The Preservation of the Aadam Jacobs Collection project, regularly uploading every gig Jacobs has ever recorded to the Internet Archive.
It’s a tedious process, with volunteers working their way through boxes of tapes, transforming analogue recordings into digital files one by one, but it’s a vital project to preserve music history. “Before all the tapes started not working because of time, just disintegrating, I finally said yes,” he tells Block Club Chicago.
In his hometown of Chicago, Jacobs has earned himself the title of the ‘Chicago Tape Guy’. That’s because, as his collection slowly grew, his ongoing recording project became somewhat of an ‘open secret’ within the local scene. According to Block Club Chicago, Jacobs went from smuggling his compact Sony cassette recorder into gigs in a backpack, to openly recording each gig.
In fact, members of the sound team would allow Jacobs hook up his console cassette machine to the sound boards, while other venues began letting Jacobs in for free to record the show.
Across Jacob’s 10,000 strong collection, plenty of artists feature. From indie to rock to hip-hop, Jacob has caught acts both big and small on his amateur set up – with one stand-out being Nirvana’s debut Chicago in 1989. The recording captures a then-22-year-old Kurt Cobain performing to a small crowd in local club Dreamerz, two years before Nirvana skyrocketted to global fame with Nevermind.
So far, the No Tape Left Behind… effort has digitised over 5,500 tapes since beginning their work in 2024. It is estimated that it will take a good few years before they finish rooting through Jacob’s boxes of tapes.
While there are plenty of anti-bootlegging laws in place, many artists have enjoyed taking a peek back in time through Jacobs’ recordings. One or two acts have requested for recordings to be taken down, but that’s about it. Jacobs isn’t making a profit either, due to the Internet Archive collection being entirely free, the chances of a lawsuit are pretty low.
Hunt through the archives now at the No Tape Left Behind: The Preservation of the Aadam Jacobs Collection.
The post Fan’s recordings of 10,000 shows – including Nirvana’s debut gig in Chicago in 1989 – are being uploaded online for free appeared first on MusicTech.

Jamstik Core is the best MIDI guitar at $500, but I’m still left wanting moreWhen building or upgrading your music production setup, a MIDI or MPE controller is often an essential investment for controlling virtual instruments. With a budget of, say, $600-700, you could get a full-size keyboard with weighted keys and ample controls, or something more futuristic and expressive, like the Embodme Erae Touch MPE controller. Or you could opt for the Jamstik Core MIDI guitar, and shred through your own sound library and the accompanying Jamstik Creator suite of virtual instruments.
The Jamstik Core is the smaller, more affordable version of the Jamstik Standard (previously called the Studio), which we called “an incredible instrument” and “the best iteration of a MIDI guitar.” Like the Standard, the 22-fret Jamstik Core is a MIDI guitar that actually is a guitar. That might sound bizarre to say, but with other MIDI guitars, such as the AeroBand, you’re getting something that looks and plays something like a guitar — not an actual guitar.
Jamstik employs a 6-channel Hexaphonic MIDI pickup in the bridge position, which doubles as a traditional guitar pickup. That means that you can easily flick between sending MIDI to your synths and compatible gear, and to playing through an amp or DI box as a normal guitar. The MIDI data is captured with the Hexaphonic pickup and Jamstik’s per-string processing.
Jamstik Core. Image: Jamstik
I’m surprised by the Jamstik Core. It’s quite a capable MIDI guitar for hobbyists, curious music-makers, and lifelong guitarists. However, I quickly find myself wishing for slightly better accuracy and a few features that the Jamstik Standard has.
Playing the Jamstik Core
As a guitar, the Jamstik Core feels entry-level. It’s not exactly a premium build and comes in a variety of basic colourways, but it feels nice in the hands, durable, and has comfortable action. I’m reminded of the £200 Yamaha Pacifica I once had as a teenager, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Still, some budding MIDI guitarists should look to the Jamstik Standard for a more esteemed design. The Core is also smaller than the Standard, with 22 frets as opposed to 24, which may bother players looking to dabble in the higher registers.
Although touted as a MIDI controller, the Jamstik Core is actually equipped with MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression). So, when I play parts with slides, bends, and hammer-ons, the virtual instruments on my laptop respond accordingly — a normal MIDI controller isn’t capable of these additional dimensions of expression. And, crucially, such behaviour makes this truly feel like a guitar, even when you’re playing sounds that aren’t typically capable of slides and hammer-ons.
Jamstik Core. Image: Jamstik
The plug-and-play nature of the Jamstik Core means you can start playing these sounds within seconds of picking it up. A single USB-C port transmits all the MIDI data from the guitar straight into your laptop or audio interface. I tested the Core during a trip away from home with only my laptop and no peripheral gear, so this was ultra-convenient.
On the first setup, I had to update the Core’s firmware, install some drivers, and get the Jamstik Creator app running on my laptop. You don’t need the Jamstik Creator app — you can just select the Core as a MIDI instrument in your DAW, and it’ll control your sounds — but the Creator app is a rich bank of sounds and instruments that work exceptionally well with the Core guitar. All in all, this was a surprisingly seamless setup process.
If you happen to pick up the Core for a quick guitar jam, you can plug directly into an amp or DI box via the quarter-inch input just next to the USB-C port. This is positioned naturally at the base of the guitar’s body.
Jamstik Core. Image: Jamstik
How accurate is the Jamstik Core?
As mentioned, the Core employs a six-channel hexaphonic MIDI pickup, which is currently the standard for MIDI guitars. This translates a string’s pitch into MIDI data, which allows you to control virtual instruments and MIDI gear. It’s also capable of transmitting the pitch of all six strings simultaneously — hence ‘hexaphonic’.
The first few moments feel like magic when I start playing my soft synths with the Jamstik Core. With near-zero latency, I’m playing a swelling synth pad by strumming bar chords and plucking a piano melody. It’s plenty of fun to scroll through the hundreds of sounds in Jamstik Creator — which include real guitar presets, too. The Core even registers harmonic notes, which isn’t something I expected.
A bonus here is that you can use Creator with any MIDI controller, and as a standalone app or as a plugin in your DAW.
Jamstik Core. Image: Jamstik
However, it must be said: the Jamstik Core is not 100 per cent accurate and can be inconsistent. This is most apparent when playing Ableton Live’s stock instruments compared to sounds in Jamstik Creator. I find that the pickups sometimes struggle to detect the lowest notes on the E string, and the softest strums aren’t always picked up, which is frustrating when trying to play monophonic bass synths. The Core either doesn’t pick up the fret I’m playing on, or plays an adjacent note, which takes me straight out of the experience.
That said, content creator RoyZivMusic shreds furiously on the Jamstik Core and seems not to face a similar issue. He also demonstrates a powerful way to use the Core: blending the natural sound of the guitar with a virtual instrument for gritty and experimental tones. In addition, as RoyZiv demonstrates, playing drum parts on this thing is a serious challenge — it’s nothing like triggering drums with a MIDI keyboard or anything similar!

The Jamstik Standard also has a six-channel hexaphonic pickup, but it also boasts onboard digital signal processing (DSP) for extra detail. This is where the step up to the Standard makes sense for those who need reliable, accurate tracking when it matters, like onstage or group recording sessions.
Should you buy the Jamstik Core?
To the point of live performances, the Jamstik Core comes with an obvious limitation: Unless you buy Jamstik’s MFC1MIDI floor controller, you’ll always need a laptop with you when playing the Core. For most home studio music-makers, this isn’t going to be an issue.
If I were seriously invested in using a MIDI guitar as a professional and daily staple, I’d save up for the Standard version. The latter would be more reliable, a more serious size, and come in more premium finishes. But, if you’re tantalised by playing pad swells, lead synths, and blooping arpeggios with a six-string, the Jamstik Core is a powerful entry point, especially for an MPE instrument. I was immediately, and still am, grinning to myself when picking up the Core to play my virtual instruments in a completely new way.
Read more music gear reviews.
The post Jamstik Core is the best MIDI guitar at $500, but I’m still left wanting more appeared first on MusicTech.

Orra Audio releases Tone Zone, a FREE tonal curve corrector plugin
Orra Audio has released Tone Zone, a free (pay-what-you-can) tonal curve corrector plugin for macOS and Windows. If you’ve used iZotope’s Tonal Balance Control, this freebie from Orra Audio will look familiar. And it’s one of the best freebies for use on the master bus that I’ve seen so far this year. Tone Zone shows [...]
View post: Orra Audio releases Tone Zone, a FREE tonal curve corrector plugin

UAD Sound City Studios plugin is 84% OFF at Plugin Boutique ($39)
Universal Audio’s Sound City Studios reverb plugin is currently 84% off at Plugin Boutique, bringing the price down from $249 to $39 until April 30th. If you’re looking for a natural-sounding reverb plugin, especially for rock and pop, this is a great pick. UAD Sound City Studios is more than a reverb, though. It’s basically [...]
View post: UAD Sound City Studios plugin is 84% OFF at Plugin Boutique ($39)

BTC recovery fragile, Iran war fallout to 'dominate' markets in 2026: AnalystThe fallout from the Iran war will likely weigh on markets for much of 2026, dashing hopes of rate cuts until Q3 by the earliest, Nic Puckrin said.

Trump officials may be encouraging banks to test Anthropic’s Mythos modelThe report is particularly surprising since the Department of Defense recently declared Anthropic a supply-chain risk.

34Audiovisuals Glitch ShredderGlitchShredder is an audio effects processor that breaks down the input signal into fragments— called segments — and reassembles them in different order, backwards, at the wrong speedor randomly. The result is glitch, stutter, reverse and looping effects ranging from subtle rhythmic artifacts to complete deconstruction of the original sound. Stereo zero-crossing chopper engine for click-free signal fragmentation. Circular buffer with 16 independent segments per channel (L/R). Probabilistic glitch engine with Chaos, Glitch, and Reverse controls. Stutter Sync with 9 rhythmic subdivisions synchronized to host BPM. Real-time visualization with dual-layer waveform oscilloscope. 15-day fully functional demo — no feature restrictions. Activate on up to 2 machines with a single license. Read More

Who had “New OS for the Z80” On Their 2026 Bingo Card?Some might say the venerable Z80 doesn’t need another operating system, but [Scott Baker] obviously disagrees. He has come up with a brand new, from scratch OS called NostOS for the Z80-based RC2014 homebrew retrocomputer. [Scott] describes it as CP/M-like, but it’s not CP/M– in fact, it’s totally incompatible with CP/M–and has a few tricks of its own up its sleeve.
As you might expect of an operating system for this vintage of hardware, it is “rommable” — that is, designed to run from read-only-memory, and fit inside 64kB. It of course supports banking memory to go higher than that 16 bit limit, and natively supports common serial devices, along with the good old WD37C65 floppy controller to get some spinning rust into the game. Of course if you don’t have floppies you can plug in a compact flash card– try that with CP/M– or, interestingly Intel Bubble Memory. [Scott] has a soft-spot for bubble memory, which at one point seemed poised to replace both hard drives and RAM at the same time. We also appreciate that he included drivers for vacuum fluorescent displays, another forgotten but very cool technology. Back in the day, this operating system would have enabled a very cool little computer, especially when you take his implementation of text-to-speech with the SP0256A-AL2 chip. Fancy a game of talking Zork? Yes, he ported Zork, and yes, it talks.
The whole thing is, of course, open-source, and available on [Scott]’s GitHub. Unlike too many open-source projects, the documentation is top-notch, to the point that we could picture getting it in a three-ring binder with a 5 1/4 floppy on the inside cover. If you like video, we’ve embedded [Scott]’s walkthrough but his blog and the docs on GitHub have everything there and more if you’re not into rapidly-flickering-pixels as an information exchange medium.
[Scott] isn’t wedded to Zilog, for the record; this OS should run on an Intel 8080, perhaps like the one in the Prompt 80 he restored last year. 
Thanks to [Scott Baker] for the tip!

Highlights of Coachella, Day 2Jack White photo courtesy of Coachella/Julian Bajsel 

Music Connection plays mailman

We handed out magazines and shirts to excited campers, making new friends and filling our unofficial role as festival mailman in the process. The gloriously-decorated tents and vehicles made the jaunt worthwhile.

Die Spitz

The Austin rockers shook the cobwebs away early on the Sonora stage with a set that was as sludgy as it was brutal.

Jack White

The late addition to the bill was predictably brilliant. The sound of the Coachella crowd singing the guitar refrain from "Seven Nation Army," full-voiced, won't leave us for a while.

Addison Rae

A visually dazzling set, jam-packed with great pop tunes. Another huge break-out from the fest.

Sombr

Sombr brought an anthemic, emotive rock vibe to the Outdoor Theatre. Queen-epic, but with a contemporary edge. The crowd lapped it up.

Coi Leray and Bia

Further proof that females are killing it in the hip-hop world. MC has long been a supporter of these two queens, and they ruled at Coachella.

Nine Inch Noize

Having moved from the Friday, the Nine Inch Nails/Boys Noize collar turned into a dark, crunching and ultimately epic performance on the Sahara stage. Stark and bleak in all of the right ways, it felt like a new day for industrial music.

PinkPantheress

Our February cover star put in a near-perfect performance last Mojave. "Stateside" kicked off what might be a career-defining night for the Brit.

David Byrne

We caught Byrne at Coachella 2018, and he was great again. 73 years old. and still able to rouse the rabble. Just look at set list (below).

Justin Bieber

This might be the year that, in the public's eyes, Bieber went from "former teen heart throb" to "genuine pop icon."

The post Highlights of Coachella, Day 2 first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Areal unveil the SR1 The SR1 is the latest product from immersive specialists Areal, and delivers an all-in-one headphone monitoring system that employs an interesting new multi-driver design. 

US President Trump faces renewed backlash as Trump-linked tokens crashDemocratic lawmakers and crypto investors characterized crypto projects launched by or tied to Trump as scams and political corruption.

10 Things We Noticed at CoachellaPictured above: Holly Humberstone

Slayyyter

As we mentioned on Friday, Slayyyter's set was magnificent. By the end of the day, our early prediction was vindicated. Nobody--not headliner Sabrina Carpenter not anybody else--put in a better performance than Slayyyter. The buzz was palpable, and she will surely only go from strength to strength from here.

Bini

A day for the Girl Groups

Los Angeles-based Katseye is considered a "global girl group" with members from the Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States. Getting anywhere near the Sahara stage proved an almighty task, such was the frenzy to catch their set. It was far easier to see Bini on the Mojave stage and, from what we saw, Filipino girl group Bini have the better songs. The buzz is Katseye's, but we can see Bini catching up soon.

Devo

Moby and Devo have still got it

With the Yuma stage full-to-bursting when Groove Armada played, halting our plans to see them, it was left to Moby to fill the "veteran electronic artist" spot in our day. Songs like the classic "Porcelain" and "When It's Cold I'd Like to Die" (the latter featuring vocalist Jacob Lusk) highlighted the man's longevity. Before that, Moby was spotted dancing to new wave icons Debo's set, and why wouldn't he. Devo were superb. "Whip It" and "Gates of Steel" would enhance any festival.

CMAT

Holly Humberstone and CMAT skillfully rep Britain and Ireland

Both were wonderful. CMAT gleefully toyed with the crowd, pulling all manner of poses while blasting out tunes like "The Jamie Oliver Petrol Station." Meanwhile, Humberstone's vibe is more subtle, slightly gothic, but equally effective. Expect bigger things from both.

The food is part of it

Gone are the days of nothing but greasy food at music festivals. At Coachella, the food is very much a part of the experience. That said, we star6ted with grease, getting a Breakfast Wrap from Smoothies & Wraps on the campsite. It was great, bursting with egg, tots and bacon. Later, we had a salmon poke bowl that looked delicious but was quite terrible. Oh well, you can't win 'em all.

Diamond Dave

We were planning on watching The Two Lips, but Teddy Swims changed our plans by bringing out David Lee Roth to fire through the Van Halen classic "Jump." That felt like a historic Coachella moment.

Other guests

Joe Jonas of the Jonas Brothers also joined Swims, while Lizzo joined Sexyy Red, HUNTR/X (from Kpop Demon Hunters) joined Katseye, and Sabrina Carpenter pulled up Will Ferrell. There were more, but these made us happy.

The Radiohead thing

Like Groove Armada, the Radiohead exhibit in the Bunker proved too difficult to get into. We'll have to catch it later with the rest of you. The art elsewhere, though, was breathtaking.

Lykke Li

Swedish artist Lykke Li stark yet warm alt-pop was the first act we caught on either of the two big outdoor stages, and she was glorious. Songs like the opening "Hard Rain" and "No Rest for the Wicked" highlighted the fact that she's an enormous talent. Like Slayyyter, Humberstone and CMAT, we think the next year will be huge for Li.

Sabrina Carpenter

There's no doubt that Carpenter was a valid and worthy Coachella. She's a great performer with a strong voice, and a few killer tunes. "Please Please Please" and "Go Go Juice" were particularly impressive at Coachella. This didn't feel like it'd be classified as one of the great Coachella headline sets (there was a weird bit where Carpenter griped at the crowd a bit), but it was strong.

The post 10 Things We Noticed at Coachella first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Kalshi wins temporary pause in Arizona criminal caseThe Commodity Futures Trading Commission announced Friday that it has won a temporary restraining order preventing Arizona from pursuing its criminal case against Kalshi.

Implementing PCIe over Fiber Using SFP ModulesAlthough we can already buy commercial transceiver solutions that allow us to use PCIe devices like GPUs outside of a PC, these use an encapsulating protocol like Thunderbolt rather than straight PCIe. The appeal of  [Sylvain Munaut]’s project is thus that it dodges all that and tries to use plain PCIe with off-the-shelf QSFP transceivers.
As explained in the intro, this doesn’t come without a host of compatibility issues, least of all PCIe device detection, side-channel clocking and for PCIe Gen 3 its equalization training feature that falls flat if you try to send it over an SFP link. Fortunately [Eli Billauer] had done much of the leg work already back in 2016, making Gen 2 PCIe work over SFP+.
The test setup involves a Raspberry Pi 5 on a PCIe breakout board and a PCIe card connected to the whole QSFP intermediate link with custom SFP module PCBs for muxing between PCIe edge connector or USB 3.0 connectors to use those cheap crypto miner adapter boards. The fiber is just simple single-mode fiber. Using this a Gen 2 x1 link can be created without too much fuss, demonstrating the basic principle.
Moving this up to Gen 3 will be challenging and will be featured in future videos, involving more custom PCBs. With Gen 5 now becoming standard on mainboards, it would be great to see this project work for Gen 3 – 5 at link sizes of x4 and even x16 so that it might be able to run external GPUs at full bandwidth unlike Thunderbolt.
Thanks to [zoobab] for the tip.

U&I Software ArtMatic DesignerThe ArtMatic Creative ToolboX (CTX) is a graphics and sound engine plus a unique set of two integrated applications for procedurally creating still images, motion graphics, video special effects, animation, sound design, and music. Designer can generate audio+video using hundreds of graphics and mathematical modules that link together in countless ways. Use them to generate audio samples, hear what you see (same math), and control images with live audio or recordings. Create images for MetaSynth presets, animations for Music Videos, and complex sounds for motion pictures. It can be seen as a Modular synthesizer capable of almost anything that is algorithmically and mathematically possible. Use it to create all kinds of graphics: decorative images, background textures, video effects, fractals, fine-art, motion graphics, sound effects, audio loops, and more. You can even use it to process photos and videos, or use audio as a math system, that controls 2D, or 3D (with Voyager). Use it with MetaSynth sounds to command pulsing 3D objects, create images in ArtMatic for use in its Image Synth or Image Filter tools, or create unique ArtMatic music to collage in the Montage room. Read More