TouchOSC is expanding to AndroidTouchOSC has just received a complete next-generation update, making it compatible with more devices, including Android.
The touch controller had previously only been compatible with iOS, having acted as the first serious solution for making control surfaces when Apple brought apps to its original iPhone.
Now, its new update enables it to function with more operating systems, including Windows touch devices, Linux and even Raspberry Pi and Wacom tablets.
On top of OSC over UDP & TCP, TouchOSC now supports every type of wired and wireless MIDI connection a device can offer, including MIDI over USB on iOS and Android.
It uses a GPU-powered integrated editor on all platforms, according to the website, to help users “create the most complex of control layouts with ease and precision.”
Meanwhile, other key updates include a new Time & Battery example layout, scripting improvements, including how to handle timeouts on long-running scripts and various other minor bug fixes and improvements.
In addition, several other issues have been fixed, including with new documents not respecting “assign new name on copy/paste” preference option, the local message log not respecting “control name as path” preference option, and the fixed script ‘init’ not always being called for example layouts.
The native implementations of Zeroconf – the often archaic underpinnings of how network connections work – have also reportedly been massively refactored.
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Sonible’s smart:gate is a content-aware gate plugin that uses AI to detect specific instrumentsPlugin developer Sonible has launched smart:gate, an intelligent content-aware gate effect powered by AI technology.

READ MORE: Roland launches AI-powered royalty-free sound library for Bridge Cast livestreamers

It gates audio triggered by specific target sources rather than purely by input level using intelligent target source detection. This means you can pick out a kick drum or a snare from a drum loop – identified by AI – for example, and process elements separately without having to spend time chopping up your sample.

The gate works effectively even if a target source varies in level, or if a competing instrument is louder than the signal you want to keep. So, if you’re wanting to pluck out the snare drums from a sample but some are quiet while others are loud, smart:gate still picks these out.
Unlike most level-dependent gates, smart:gate helps with parameterization in music production. Simply select the source from a drop-down menu, say “kick”, “vocals” or “hi-hat”, and the plugin actively singles out that sound source.
You can then adjust the parameters of the gate, with pretty standard controls available, as you’d expect, such as Threshold, Attack/Release, Hold and Tolerance. You can also control the Level Bias, which allows for accurate adjusting of the gating behaviour. Here, you can tell the gate to follow the detected signal closely or loosely, which helps refine transients or keep vocals natural or not.
Sonible smart:gate
There’s Impact Control, so you can adjust the gain reduction when the gate is closed, a Ducking mode, and you can fine-tune the gating even further with a three-band suppression control, so you can set the levels of the lows, mids and highs.
Sonible’s smart:gate also lets you sidechain audio in reaction to external sound sources with an external sidechain input function, which will detect audio in mono/mid or side signals.
On the plugin, Peter Sciri, Sonible’s co-founder and CTO, has said: “Conventional gates have been eyed sceptically in the past – I sure did so. We figured, that the solution to eliminating the uncertainty that comes with gates was to shift the processing’s focus onto the target signal instead of the overall signal. It’s a new approach that might need a little time to wrap one’s head around, but the results speak for themselves.”
smart:gate is available for an introductory price of €89. You can also download a free trial of the plugin, if you want to test it out. Find out more information at sonible.com.
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How to market your music like Taylor SwiftWith her worldwide success, Taylor’s team must be doing something right. Here are seven different T-Swift brand strategies to use to market your music. by Janelle Borg from Amplify You Taylor. Continue reading
The post How to market your music like Taylor Swift appeared first on Hypebot.

How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and ClipsShort-form video content is the key to social media success these days. So here’s how to use Youtube’s features to grow your music career. by Randi Zimmerman of Symphonic Blog. Continue reading
The post How to grow your YouTube channel with YouTube Shorts and Clips appeared first on Hypebot.

Making sense of global music forecastsMIDiA has been building global music forecasts for nearly a decade now, and I personally have been building them for nearly two decades. Throughout those years there have been many calls for the numbers to be bigger and bolder. Experience, though, has shown that realism most often trumps optimism. 

The simple truth is that there are no facts about the future. Instead, forecasts are, at least in MIDiA’s worldview, a structured, numerical representation of analyst thinking. We do not aspire to be cheerleaders for any market, however much we may believe in it. Instead, we strive to be trusted partners, aspiring to provide a view of where things are most likely heading. 

With those health warnings out of the way, I am proud to announce the ninth edition of MIDiA’s global recorded music forecasts (If you are a MIDiA client, you can find the report and the 38 sheet Excel data set here).

How we did

To start, I think it is worth a quick look back at how we have done over the years. In our first edition (2015), we forecasted global music revenues (in label trade terms) to reach $20.1 billion by 2020. The actual figure proved to $22.5 billion. So that translates into a 10% variance for a five-year forecast, which isn’t too shabby. Over the course of the previous five years, our forecasts for 2022 had an average variance of -2.5%. Again, a decent track record. 

That’s the good news. 2022, though, was an anomalous year, and 2023 is shaping up to be similarly volatile. Shaped as it is, by a cost-of-living crisis, soaring interest rates, economic slowdown, a softening ad market, global food and energy shortages, and a war in Europe. When we built the 2022 edition, we knew these factors might disrupt the music industry’s trajectory, so we built both a base case and bear case forecast. Our base case proved to be too optimistic ($30.7 billion) while our bear case ($28.3 billion) proved to be depressingly precise (just 0.8% above the actual figure of $28.1 billion).

Why currency matters

That $28.1 billion represented just 3.2% growth on 2021 – the slowest growth since the global market return to growth in 2015. On the surface, this might look like serious cause for concern, evidence of the long anticipated streaming slowdown. But, while a streaming slowdown is indeed happening, it is only a minor contributor to the bigger picture. Not only is 3.2% respectable growth in the midst of economic and geo-political chaos, currency volatility has, to put it bluntly, played havoc with the global picture.

MIDiA always builds its market models with US dollar values and, crucially, in current currency terms. Simply put, that means the values we present for any historical year represent what the market was actually worth in that year. In a year of global currency volatility, this means that some markets that reported strong growth in local currency terms saw much weaker, sometimes even negative, growth in US dollar terms. It is an analytical inconvenience but, in our view, a necessary one to present a meaningful and accurate view of global value.

Other entities try to mask the inconvenience by restating their entire historical dataset based on the currency conversion rates for the most recent year, i.e., constant currency conversion. Hence, the IFPI reported 9.0% growth in 2022, yet if you compare their 2022 figure to their previously reported 2021 figure, you end up with just 0.9% growth (i.e., a growth rate that is ten times slower). MIDiA’s base case forecast would have looked a lot more optimistic if we had used constant currency conversion rates!

All of these complexities make the job of forecasting particularly challenging. Which is why we focused on more stable metrics, such as local currency values and subscribers, to help us estimate future growth. Subscription revenue grew by just 4% in 2022, but subscribers grew by 16%, illustrating strong, underlying market demand and momentum. However, as is so often the case with market sizing, the picture is more nuanced and complex. Emerging markets grew subscribers far faster in 2022 than North American and European markets, but because they have lower ARPU, the contribution to revenue growth was far smaller. 

A decoupling of global growth

What we are seeing is a regional decoupling of global growth, to the extent that the global picture can be misleading. For example, by 2030, there will be 1.1 billion subscribers, up from 663 million in 2022, but Asia Pacific, Latin America and Rest of World will account for four fifths of that growth. Crucially, most Western rightsholders have relatively low repertoire share in much of these regions, so they will not benefit from this next wave of subscriber growth in the same way they did in the first, largely Western, wave. 

Yet Europe and North America will account for more than half of the global subscriptions revenue growth, due to higher ARPU and average subscriber months (a result of slower growth). Which means that Western rightsholders will accrue most revenue upside, despite losing out on audience growth.

Growth that is both impressive and eminently achievable 

Despite all of today’s market headwinds, MIDiA’s underlying assumptions about long-term growth remain largely unchanged. While we are forecasting slower growth over the next two years, we expect the global market to return to full momentum between mid-2024 and early 2025. This will result in global revenues growing by 51.0% to reach $32.4 billion in trade terms by 2030, and a slightly faster growth in retail terms (due to growing DSP share) to reach $87.1 billion.

As much as we would have liked to report that the market will double in value by 2030, we consider 51.0% growth to be both an impressive performance and eminently achievable. We would have liked to have forecasted a doubling of growth back in 2015 as well, but if we had, we would not have ended up being within 10% of the actual market, half a decade down the line. 

The thing about forecasts is they are always updated, so it can be easy to forget anything other than how the latest edition racks up compared to the previous one. Which makes it depressingly easy to build overly-bullish forecasts that have the benefit of aiding ulterior business objectives. MIDiA, of course, has many of the exact same companies as paying clients as the other entities do, but our clients pay to subscribe because they rely on us to provide an objective and useful view of the market. To tell them what they need to hear, even if that is not always what they want to hear.

TikTok expands music streaming service beta test to Australia, Mexico and SingaporeTikTok has expanded the beta testing of its new streaming service, TikTok Music, to Australia, Mexico and Singapore.

READ MORE: Warner Music Group sign licensing deal with TikTok to boost social media revenue

The expansion comes just weeks after the initial launch of the streaming service in Brazil and Indonesia.
The streaming service allows users to listen to full versions of viral TikTok songs, and create collaborative playlists. There is also a Shazam-like feature where you can find songs just by playing a short snippet of audio.
In addition, the app offers social features such as TikTok notes, offering the ability to write comments on songs.
According to TikTok, the app is hoped to compete with fellow streaming services, such as Apple Music and Spotify, and also offer exclusive features.
“TikTok Music is a new kind of music service that combines the power of music discovery on TikTok with a music streaming service offering millions of tracks from thousands of artists,” explains a spokesperson for TikTok in an email to TechCrunch.
“We are now beta testing TikTok Music in Australia, Mexico and Singapore, and will have more news to share on the launch of TikTok Music in the coming months.”
There is no news about whether TikTok will expand to the US and UK, but it might depend on the success of this beta launch.
In more TikTok news, the company has just signed a licensing deal with Warner Music Group.
The new deal licenses a collection of Warner Recorded Music and Warner Chappell Music to TikTok, as well as TikTok Music, video editor CapCut, and TikTok’s Commercial Music Library.
Under the new agreement, Warner Music’s artists and songwriters will also have access to TikTok’s brand partners such as Canva, Samsung, ASOS and hundreds more.
There will also be access to monetisation features like merchandise, ticketing, and digital goods.
The post TikTok expands music streaming service beta test to Australia, Mexico and Singapore appeared first on MusicTech.

EPROM on using Max4Live to control onstage robotics and creating melodies with granular synthesisEPROM thrives off the uncertainty of new technology. In his decade as an electronic music producer and touring artist, he’s taken each new innovation as an opportunity for experimentation.
READ MORE: Amon Tobin: “sampling captures the energy of a recording like a photograph”
“I’m always looking for new techniques because there’s a moment where you’re uncovering how [the technology] works. Figuring out how everything works is the moment when you’re being the most experimental; I love producing music in that state because you’re not necessarily thinking about the finished product. You’re thinking about the process more, and that’s what’s interesting for me,” says EPROM, real name Sander Dennis, speaking to MusicTech from his home studio.
Much of this experimentation happens in the realm of music (his artist name, EPROM, is the name for a chip Oberheim used in its early synthesizers, after all), crafting intricate and formidable productions on respected labels such as Dirtybird, Deadbeats, and 1985 Music as well as collaborations with fellow bass titans like G Jones and Alix Perez, with the latter of which he has a joint project: Shades.
Eprom. Image: Daniel Zetterstrom
But his compulsion to experiment extends to technological pursuits both within and outside of music.
Graphics, 3D software, HTML, and more are all in his purview, and now he’s demonstrated prowess in robotics, which he applies in his new live show concept, Syntheism Robotics.
The name of the show is an allusion to his latest album, Syntheism.
Syntheism by EPROM
“[Syntheism] is a movement that [asks], ‘What if we deify that which we create rather than something external? What if the products of everything that we do is the higher power?’” Dennis says. “It’s a reverence for the products of human civilisation. It ties into my personal beliefs on creativity.”
The Syntheism Robotics live concept is a manifestation of his beliefs, with the first show taking place this past April in Portland, Oregon.
This kind of show has never been done before, and Dennis is already reconfiguring the process for the second performance at Denver’s Mission Ballroom on July 29.
Eprom. Image: Daniel Zetterstrom
Dennis worked with Motorized Precision, a robotics and cinematography company, to integrate two of the brand’s robotic camera arms (known as Kuka Robots) into his live set. Instead of cameras though, each arm is holding an LED screen, and the robots move in time with Dennis’s music while he’s performing.
The robots add another dimension of movement to the live show, while the images on the screens sync with the stage lighting and the imagery on the larger screen at the back of the stage.
“When [the robots] start moving, it’s a major moment. The motion is the most amazing part of it,” Dennis says. “It’s a spectacle. It’s fun to create this show where a lot more of the focus is on the visuals.”
Image: Tyler Hill
Visuals have always been crucial to the EPROM project, and also an essential part of Dennis’ upbringing and his relationship with technology.
Alongside his musical pursuits, which began at age 13 when he started producing with Propellerhead’s Rebirth and Sony Acid Music, Dennis was also learning visuals. He went on to study film and digital media at UC Santa Cruz, and worked in design for a number of years after graduating.
And now, as EPROM, Dennis is directly involved in designing all of the visuals with his art director Jackson Greene – whether it’s the cover art found on his releases or images on LED screens during the live show.
“I’m a very visual-oriented person,” Dennis says. “Anything I can do where I’m using my computer is fun for me.”
The robots from Motorized Precision were just another fun thing for Dennis to do on his computer. They allowed him to further explore his relationship with visual technology.
After discovering Motorized Precision – which, like Dennis, is based in Portland, Oregon – his manager made the connection between them. And Dennis had one idea in mind in their first conversation:
“‘I want to put visuals on robots and have them move.’ That’s kind of what [Dennis] said,” says Sean Brown, CEO of Motorized Precision, speaking to MusicTech.
Image: Tyler Hill
Collaboratively, Dennis, Brown, and the MP team designed the screens that the robot arms were holding and added circular LED panels to the base of the robots. When it came time to ideate the robots’ movements, Dennis tapped into his decades of experience in creating with computers and dove into the experimentation of it all.
Each move the robots perform during the show is preprogrammed, and Dennis designed all of them using Motorized Precision’s custom software, MP Studio.
“Right away, with very little instruction at all, [Dennis] was able to create all these moves like a pro. That’s a huge testament to his knowledge as an artist and our software as a simple intuitive interface that anybody can use,” says Brown.
Dennis created 90 minutes worth of moves in a month and a half. And, with MP Studio, he was able to perfectly align each move with his music, thanks to the timeline-based software.
Image: Tyler Hill
“The software is amazing. I’m pretty familiar with 3D software already so that helped, but it’s great. You can load up your song and drop keyframes on the kicks and snares.” Dennis says. “Each song has its own move and a move is essentially a timeline of keyframes of positions for the robot arm to be in, in terms of its XYZ coordinates as well as the rotation of the last joint in the arm.”
According to Brown, in making these moves happen on a technical level, the robots have sub-millimetre accuracy, so the robots always move in the exact same way. Everyone seeing a Syntheism Robotics show will see the same moves (if Dennis decides to keep the same keyframes that is).
The robots can also move over six meters per second, so there is massive capacity when it comes to speed. Plus, they have unlimited axis-4 and unlimited axis-6, which means they can move in any direction and create any sort of path possible.
With these impressive capabilities at its disposal, Motorized Precision has used its robots in TV and film productions attached to some of the biggest names in the industry. It’s worked with Marvel, Disney, Apple, and CNN, using Kuka Robots on red carpet events and in major motion pictures like Free Guy with Ryan Reynolds.
But using the robots for music was different from all of those prior applications.
“The approach for a film would be, ‘Here’s the shot we’re trying to achieve,’ whether you do it ahead of time and show up ready to go or do it on set live. This one was a lot more on [Dennis] to design,” says Brown. “There have been screens on robots before, but it is definitely the first time it’s been done in this market, and I haven’t seen it quite like this before.”
Image: Tyler Hill
Normally, MP wouldn’t license out its software to a client. And while Dennis didn’t have complete access to the actual robots, he had autonomy over designing the moves in MP Studio’s virtual space, which Brown and the team would then tweak and advise for safety and other technical concerns.
With everything dialled in, it’s on Dennis to launch each of the robot’s movements on stage in real time as he’s handling all the music as well. To integrate these two processes, he uses MIDI to control the robots via a custom Max4Live patch.
One MIDI note from the patch queues the next move, and another note launches the move.
“The Max4Live patch is just listening for MIDI notes on a specific channel, and when it receives a note it formats a message with the MIDI note encoded as an integer at the end, which corresponds to a move ID,” Dennis says. “This happens at the beginning of each song that requires robot moves, ensuring that everything runs on time.”
As a result of his experimentation with this technology, Dennis is already conceiving new musical techniques. One example is recording the actual noises the robots make when they move, then processing them into his productions.
Image: Tyler Hill
Whether it’s recording new samples from Kuka Robots, calling upon tools such as Arturia’s V Collection synths, or using new production tools like an M8 tracker that’s based on a GameBoy tracker software called LSDJ, they all contribute to Dennis’s reverence for the products of human civilisation.
One particular tool that Dennis leaned on in Syntheism and throughout his catalogue is Ableton’s Granulator.
During production sessions, Dennis will often spend the morning making a version of a track, take a break for lunch, then bounce the original version and run the entire thing through Granulator – chopping it up into bits and pieces that he says he could have never imagined on his own.
“You end up with these internal fragments of melody that when you loop them…you would never think to write a melody that way,” Dennis says. “Any process that can have a little bit of human agency and a little bit of generative chaos is gold for me.”
Dennis has produced a unique live show rife with innovation and experimentation. As a devout technophile, the producer may well be inspiring a new precedent for electronic music performance. Just like Amon Tobin with his ISAM show, deadmau5 with his Cube stage, and Daft Punk with their pyramid, EPROM is showing fellow artists what can be achieved when embracing new technology and adding a sprinkling of chaos.
Learn more at eprombeats.com. 
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SP-1200 sampler RZA used on Enter The Wu-Tang is up for sale, starting at $35,000The E-Mu SP-1200 used by RZA to produce Wu-Tang Clan’s seminal 1993 debut album Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) is going under the hammer.
READ MORE: The E-mu SP-1200: How one sampler ushered in a revolution
The sampler, which bears RZA’s signature, has been listed by Sotherby’s with bids starting at $35,000 (£27,139) with the value estimated somewhere between $50,000- $80,000 (£38,760-£62,016). It’s available to bid on till 25th July.

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E-Mu’s SP-1200 was seen as a key tool in the progression of sampling as an art. First released in 1987, it has been used by artists the likes of Daft Punk, The Prodigy, Cypress Hill and DJ Premier and was considered a revolutionary piece of equipment by the standards of the day.
However, in 2023, its feature set is considered limited compared to modern music technologies. Still, such limitations are part of its appeal, leading to an official re-release by the original designer, Dave Rossum, and multiple reimaginations, such as the S2400 by Isla Instruments.
It’s not the only relic of hip-hop history that Sotherby’s is currently auctioning off. A collection of 119 hip-hop items are available to bid for currently to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the genre.
There are other pieces of Wu-Tang memorabilia up for grabs, including RZA’s handwritten liner notes for Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) and another E-Mu SP-1200 owned and signed by Ice-T and producer Afrika Islam, which comes with four original floppy disks.
Guest curator Kelvin “Posdnuos” Mercer says: “For me, listening to music, and thinking about what that music does to you at that moment, and then being able to touch the equipment that was actually used to create it? That’s special
“It’s one thing to say, ‘Oh yeah, I recognize that drum sound, I know that comes from the SP-12.’ But knowing that you can physically see the exact one that was being used? There’s a level of energy that’s been leaked all over that machine. I feel the same way about it that someone might feel knowing that they can get their hands on Jimi Hendrix’s guitar – to see it and feel it and learn about it.”
Also up for grabs are a crown ring owned by the late Tupac Shakur, an original De La Soul leather pendant from 1989 and David ‘Trugoy The Dove’ Jolicoeur’s prototype De La Soul tour jacket.
Find the entire auction at sothebys.com.
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Sub Focus on the Amen break: “Everyone has manipulated these tiny bits of audio hundreds of thousands of times – theres loads of ways of interpreting this small batch of source material”Sub Focus – AKA Nick Douwma – has revealed his love of the Amen break, a drum solo performed in 1969 by Gregory Sylvester Coleman, that has been sampled on thousands of DnB tracks.

READ MORE: The Chemical Brothers announce first album in four years, ‘For That Beautiful Feeling’

The break has been described as “the most sampled loop in music history”, and in a recent episode of Tape Notes, Sub Focus has broken down how he likes to process it in Ableton Live.
“The way I’ve used is slightly old school,” he explains. “I’ve chopped it up in a sampler and I change the transpose of it as the pattern goes on to give it variation. It slightly shifts up and down as the variation goes on.
“It’s a technique for keeping it more interesting as it continues. Doing it in a sampler really helps because when you’re using an Amen in Ableton, because of the way you’re manipulating it, it will fill all the gaps, whereas in this way you’re working you end up with little silences depending on how pitched up it is, which gives it a bit more definition.
“It seems to feel different when manipulating that way,” he continues. “You tend to gravitate towards different types of edits when you’re dealing with it in a sampler, but it is an old-fashioned way of dealing with it.
“It’s mad the intimate knowledge you get of these breaks. Everyone has manipulated these tiny bits of audio hundreds of thousands of times and theres loads of ways of interpreting this small batch of source material. If you’re a drum ‘n’ bass producer, you just become familiar with the varieties of Amen”.
You can watch the full interview below:

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SoundCloud announces flagship First On SoundCloud 2023 programmeSoundCloud has launched an “all-encompassing” six-month accelerator programme to support selected emerging artists.
The First On SoundCloud (FOSC) 2023 programme offers artists “unique opportunities for career acceleration, education and creative support”, working directly with them to co-produce “a tangible, career-defining roadmap” that will enable them to develop and deepen connections with their fans.
The platform’s selected ‘Next Pro’ artists include wolfacejoeyy, DJ Dave, Nitepunk, Sojabrat, and sim0ne, who were chosen because they represent “an eclectic tapestry of sounds, identities, and backgrounds but unite as a collective voice propelling the future of music”, and because they are creating music in a unique way “that can only be done on SoundCloud”.
The programme has been launched in partnership with Sony’s Audio Team, who will provide the artists with support and resources. Sony is set to invest in each artist through their upcoming Audio Brand Campaign and will support them with provision of their professional audio products and consumer-focused audio products, as well as creative audio technologies.
The company will also provide the ‘Next Pro’ artists with unique opportunities such as as early access to beta tools and pilot programmes, the option to attend and participate in Sony’s annual creator camp, and access to exclusive Sony hosted events, in addition to collaborating on developing assets and content to give FOSC a visual identity.
The artists will also receive one-on-one mentoring from SoundCloud’s creator development team to discuss their goals and strategy.
“First on SoundCloud has always been about empowering emerging artists and fostering music discovery for our listeners,” said Emmy Lovell, Global Head of Music at SoundCloud in a press release. “Partnering with Sony’s Audio Team is a great step in this mission. We’re thrilled to unveil the new class of breakout talent and embark on a collaborative roadmap to hit creative milestones, expand global fanbases, and make a significant impact in each artist’s unique journey.”

“Sony’s Audio Team is always looking towards the future and collaborating with SoundCloud on this artist accelerator program aligns with our mission to support music creation and artists on the rise with our latest products and tools,” added Jordy Freed, Head of Brand & Business Development and Partner Marketing & Strategy and Personal Entertainment Business in Sony Corporation of America. “We hope to further bolster this incredible lineup of talent with our upcoming brand platform and campaign that puts creator vision first.”
SoundCloud’s annual music discovery programme was launched in 2018 and has previously supported the likes of Little Simz, Kehlani and Peggy Gou.

The post SoundCloud announces flagship First On SoundCloud 2023 programme appeared first on MusicTech.

MIDI Innovation Awards: Last chance to vote The voting for this year's MIDI Innovation Awards will close on 21 July 2023 ahead of the jury deliberation.

“To understand the second half of the 20th century, you have to understand The Beatles”: Paul McCartney podcast editor on the legacy of the Fab FourPaul McCartney’s new podcast A Life in Lyrics is on the way, and executive producer Justin Richmond has revealed what went into condensing the hundreds of hours of recordings between McCartney and biographer Paul Muldoon into 12 hours of audio content.

READ MORE: Ringo Starr on Beatles AI song: “For all the madness going on around it, it’s a beautiful track”

For context, the podcast is a product of the hundreds of hours of audio captured in the writing of the book The Lyrics: 1956 to the Present that was published in 2021, unpacking the songs that defined McCartney’s career, from The Beatles, to Wings and beyond.
Understandably, turning all that audio into a 12-hour podcast was not an easy feat.
In an interview with The Verge, executive producer of the podcast Justin Richmond explains how they approached the massive amounts of audio.
“One of the hardest parts about editing, almost carving tape, is that you’re very aware when you’re listening to tapes from, say, a president or a head of state,” he says.
“This is Paul McCartney – and to understand, culturally, the second half of the 20th century, and I would argue the first 23–24 years of the 21st century, you have to understand The Beatles.
“The hard part of editing him was that you almost wanted to treat it like an archive. As a storyteller, because it’s a historical person, you want to save everything. But obviously, we have a mission to tell the most interesting story possible.
“So having gone through hours and hours of tapes, we realized we couldn’t follow every tangent, and we couldn’t, like the book did, really drill down what the lyrics meant for a particular song.”
McCartney: A Life in Lyrics is scheduled to launch 20 September on all streaming platforms.
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Boss launch GM-800 Guitar Synthesizer Boss' latest guitar synth comes packed with a huge selection of sounds which can be layered, triggered by different strings, or even split across different fret ranges. 

The Chemical Brothers announce first album in four years, ‘For That Beautiful Feeling’Thirty years into the game, UK dance music duo The Chemical Brothers have announced a new album, For That Beautiful Feeling, set to be released in September.

READ MORE: Orbital M25 rave barman recounts 90s acid house scene in new book, Rave New World

The album will be The Chemical Brothers – real names Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons – first studio album since 2019’s No Geography. While the band have released anniversary versions of classic albums, Surrender and Dig Your Own Hole, among EPs and remixes, this new music body of work will surely galvanize (hey) boys and (hey) girls who are fans of the superstar DJs and producers.
The album announcement follows the release of singles No Reason, All Of A Sudden and Live Again [ft. Halo Maud], which came out earlier this year and had been a key addition to the boys’ live set in recent years.
Upon the announcement of this, their 10th studio album, The Chemical Brothers have treated us to a music video for the Live Again. It’s directed by long-time visual collaborators, Dom & Nic. Watch below:

On the music video, the directors have said, “Working with the Chemical Brothers is a dream for any video director. We’re really lucky to be still making films together after quite a few years,” Dom & Nic said in a press statement. “The Chems just keep smashing it with great tracks that demand videos that live up to the music and hopefully add something extra to the whole experience. ‘Live Again’ is our 10th collaboration… the woozy, wonky analogue sounds and the dreamlike lyric suggested a hallucinogenic visual journey following a character caught in a loop of death and rebirth.”
The tracklist for the album is as follows:

Intro
Live Again [ft. Halo Maud]
No Reason
Goodbye
Fountains
Magic Wand
The Weight
Skipping Like a Stone [ft. Beck]
The Darkness That You Fear (Harvest Mix)
Feels Like I Am Dreaming
For That Beautiful Feeling [ft. Halo Maud]

For That Beautiful Feeling will release on 8 September 2023. Check out The Chemical Brothers’ back catalogue via their Bandcamp.
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Behringer’s modded 303 clone gets black and red makeover in TD-3-MO-BKBehringer has launched a new black version of its “modded out” Roland TB-303 acid bassline synthesizer clone, the TD-3-MO-BK, inviting you to “embrace your dark side”.

READ MORE: How to create a Chicago-style 303 acid house bassline

This new colourway for the brand’s modded 303 replica is black with red detailing. It has sleek, nightrider-esque red lines on the knobs, red accent and OSC/SUB switches and red lights along its base.
The TD-3, released in 2019, is a “faithful homage” to the classic 1981 Roland TB-303 bassline synthesizer that paved the way for acid house music. A classic piece of gear, the TB-303’s squelching distinctive bass sound can be identified on any track it features in, having even become the defining sound for many popular electronic artists.
Behringer’s TD-3 clone has a fully analogue signal path, a 16-step sequencer, transistor wave-shaping circuitry. Like with the original, it has a built-in arpeggiator and there’s a 4-pole resonant lowpass filter that delivers rich and expressive tones.
The TD-3-MO – previously only available in silver and yellow – is a modded version of the TD-3 and was launched in July 2021. It’s a nod to popular 303 mods like the Devil Fish, which introduced audio in, allowing letting you apply the Filter, Overdrive, and Filter FM to any sound. It also increased the range of the original, with lower Decay and higher Resonance, making for a fatter sound.
The modded TD-3, therefore, follows a similar route of modulation. It features an extra sub-oscillator alongside the primary square/sawtooth oscillator, introducing new circuitry and an extended filter range with FM and overdrive controls. It comes with extra patching points for connecting other equipment.
Furthermore, it offers new parameters like variable slide time and three accent sweep speed modes with three accent sweep modes. MIDI CC support enables seamless control of the TD-3-MO’s filter frequency, allowing easy integration with DAWs and MIDI controllers.
Find out more about the Behringer TD-3-MO-BK at behringer.com.
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