Kalshi CEO admits enlisting influencers to dis Polymarket in a now-deleted podcast segmentKalshi’s CEO, Tarek Mansour, confirmed on a podcast interview that his employees did ask social media influencers to promote memes about the FBI’s raid on the home of his arch rival, the CEO of Polymarket.  Both of these companies offer competing events-betting markets, a new kind of betting industry where people wager about the outcomes […]
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Could Bitcoiners embrace BlueSky, an X alternative that hit 25M users?The social media platform has roughly doubled its number of users since November, suggesting it may have pulled some US-based X users after the presidential election.

Apple Newton Gets Rebuilt Battery PackWe all carry touch screen computers around in our pockets these days, but before the smartphone revolution, there was the personal digital assistant (PDA). While it wasn’t a commercial success, one of the first devices in this category was the Apple Newton. Today they’re sought after by collectors, although most of the ones surviving to this day need a bit of rework to the battery pack. Luckily, as [Robert’s Retro] shows, it’s possible to rebuild the pack with modern cells.
By modern standards, the most surprising thing about these battery packs is both that they’re removable and that they’re a standard size, matching that of AA batteries. The Newton battery pack uses four cells, so replacing them with modern rechargeable AA batteries should be pretty straightforward, provided they can be accessed. This isn’t as easy, though. In true Apple fashion the case is glued shut, and prying it apart can damage it badly enough so it won’t fit back in the tablet after repair is complete. The current solution is to cut a hatch into the top instead and then slowly work on replacing the cells while being careful to preserve the electronics inside.
[Robert’s Retro] also demonstrates how to spot weld these new AA batteries together to prepare them for their new home in the Newton case. With the two rows fastened together with nickel strips they can be quickly attached to the existing electrical leads in the battery pack, and from there it’s just a matter of snapping the batteries into the case and sliding it back into the tablet. If you’re looking for something a bit more modern, though, we’d recommend this Apple tablet-laptop combo, but it’s not particularly easy on the wallet.

“Curious, foolish and ambitious”: How Polyend’s Synth is reimagining synthesizer designBenn Jordan isn’t a Polyend employee, but the company frequently consults him when developing new instruments. And he’s never been shy about discussing many of them to his 459,000 YouTube subscribers. Two years ago, the company’s founder Piotr Raczynski showed Benn an early prototype of the Polyend Synth. “To be honest, I didn’t completely get the vision,” the producer, content creator and researcher tells me.
But by that stage, Polyend had already settled on the physical design. “The grid has many advantages over the traditional keyboard — for example, [it can] fit way more notes within a small footprint,” Piotr explains. Still, the clever interface ideas that would elevate the Synth weren’t there yet. According to Benn, “it only had one synth engine” and despite the grid’s potential advantages, he just didn’t see the form factor “vibing” in the same way that Polyend’s Tracker and Play instruments do.
In that iteration, Polyend’s Synth was just another digital synthesizer, like many others out there, but in a black rectangle with pads instead of a keyboard. Piotr stuck with the idea, though. “We knew that we wanted to make a grid-based device… and knew there was still plenty of room for innovation. But, as it’s highly customisable, it can sometimes be disorientating. We knew we needed a solution.”
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
Polyend’s solution is so simple that it now doesn’t seem particularly revolutionary. For Benn, it wasn’t until he got his hands on a more complete unit a few months back that it finally clicked and he realised “how brilliant the thing is” he says. “Once I saw the multi-engines in use together with sequencing… oof. So nice.”
Polyend combined several different concepts to create an instrument greater than the sum of its parts. It starts with an incredibly broad pallet of sounds.
“We created separate synths, each with its own character,” Piotr says. There are eight engines in total covering everything from emulations of vintage analogue synths to harsh wavetables, physical modelling and modern FM.
But we live in a world where Arturia’s MicroFreak and MiniFreak are already covering this ground. These are also digital synths with powerful multi-engine cores capable of shapeshifting in surprising ways. This wasn’t the real challenge, as Piotr explains. “We knew that we were not building one system that shares some standard components and making a multitimbral architecture… Then, the interface challenge was allowing users to play three separate synths at once.”
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
This is where the Polyend Synth starts to separate itself from everything else on the market today. The Smart Grid goes beyond the standard pad-style controller that lets you switch between chromatic and scale modes, though it can do that too. You can split the grid up into three sections, each of which controls a different synth engine.
Think of it like setting up a split on a keyboard, but with a lot more flexibility. If you only need one octave of a pentatonic scale for your bass line, you can confine one synth to just five pads along the edge, leaving open a wide expanse for two other synths to play chords and leads on. Or you can split the grid evenly three ways. If you prefer a horizontal layout to a vertical one, there are options for that.
You can’t design your own custom grids, but the 12 built-in layouts give you more options than any other pad controller that I know of. Piotr hasn’t ruled out the possibility of a custom grid editor — in fact, the company beta-tested one during development, but everyone just ended up using the grid presets anyway. Pior adds that the company hasn’t received many requests for the feature at this point.
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
However, having three different playable synths available simultaneously presents some challenges. For one, playing three instruments at the same time is exceptionally difficult. Sure, Polyend could have just added a sequencer and called it a day, but that would make the Synth a groovebox, and Polyend already sells several of those. The focus here was on performance, adding “the smart grid and chord follower mode [kept] it highly playable and fun,” Piotr said.
Let’s focus on those words, “fun” and “play” for a moment. In a recent video, YouTuber and music producer Taetro talks about how so much gear is focused on making music, with an eye towards a finished product recorded for posterity. But “I do remember a time when I used to play music,” he says early in the clip before digging into how the Polyend Synth forces him to have fun with instruments again.
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
The final piece of the puzzle that makes the Polyend Synth something for playing music, versus making music is the chord follower. Each synth can have its own arpeggiator or sequencer settings, but as long as one synth is in a chord mode (either standard chord, chord scale or using a chord pack), the other two synths will follow the root notes to keep in tune.
So let’s imagine you’ve got a basic arp for your bass and a little lead flourish that you want to come in at the end of every four bars, but you also need to play a long, spicy eight-bar chord progression. With most instruments, playing this and keeping the bass and lead fill following your chords would require some serious finger dexterity. But the cleverness of Polyend’s Synth is that you can latch the bass and, as you change chords, the root note of your bass arpeggio will follow. And, even if you just hit the same pad over and over for the lead, it will also stay in tune with the backing chords. The pads also support polyphonic aftertouch which opens up levels of intuitive expression not normally available on this sort of mass-market device — not bad for $499.
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
The layout, the sounds, the sequences, the macros for tweaking the patches — all of these are saved together in Scenes. These are distinctly different from a project on a groove box, though. You can’t just open one of the producer-made preset Scenes by Venus Theory or Renoizer and hit play. In fact, there is no play button. Piotr’s thoughts were: “Since the Synth is more of an instrument to be played, we didn’t want users to simply load projects, hit play, and listen. Instead, we aimed for projects that could be performed live. This led us to the concept of Scenes, which are more akin to presets than traditional projects.”
What would normally require several pieces of gear, a mastery of a complicated sequencer or prodigy-level finger dexterity is accessible to a broad swath of the public with the Synth. Playing rich multi-part synth arrangements isn’t limited to those with deep pockets and a studio full of gear; it can be done in your living room.
The Synth is the next evolution of the synthesizer from gadget to modern parlour instrument, following in the footsteps of Teenage Engineering’s Pocket Operators and Korg’s Volcas. Where once the upright piano or a cheap acoustic guitar would be the most common instruments in a home, you’re increasingly likely to find a tiny affordable synthesizer. They’ve found their place among amateurs simply looking to entertain themselves or others, rather than record a hit single.
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
Creating an instrument that can deliver this level of harmonic complexity while also being a viable parlour music option wasn’t easy. It took roughly three years for the Polyend Synth to reach its final form. “The biggest challenge was the interface. We developed 12 different prototypes. It took us quite a lot of time to nail the thing down. The goal was to give users something familiar, intuitive, and easy to grasp in the first five minutes of operating it. But also deep enough to allow further exploration once you get the basics,” Piotr explains.
Judging from the early reviews (and my own hands-on time) it seems that Polyend has successfully struck this balance of immediacy and depth. Depending on where you look you’ll find artists like Federico Chiesa, better known as Oora, praising its more advanced capabilities saying the Synth is, “made for the sound designer, for the people who really like to dig into the sound.” But Emily Hopkins (AKA the Harp Lady) is quick to point out that you can learn most of what you need to know to use it in an afternoon.
The biggest criticism so far is that the firmware still feels incomplete and buggy. In particular, the pad sensitivity just isn’t dialled in yet and it defaults to full velocity. This state is how the company recommends using the Synth for now, which makes getting nuance out of the instrument a little difficult.
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
It helps that the Polyend Synth is built on the same microcontroller as its Play+ and Tracker+, the upgraded versions of its Play and Tracker grooveboxes that include early versions of some of the synth engines in the Synth. The company knows the hardware inside and out at this point. It’s tested the limits of its processing power, given many of the synth engines a trial run on those grooveboxes and even managed to keep the price reasonably low. Content creator Vulture Culture even called the Synth “the best value in music production today.”
For Piotr and the Polyend team, the goal with the Synth wasn’t necessarily to make something revolutionary. They didn’t want to build the most powerful synth, the smallest synth, or the synth with the longest sequencer. The focus was on making something fun that was more than just a musical toy.
“We engaged in a discussion about the ideal setup for our creative process and found that the best results come from using three different devices along with a few effects. Four devices always felt like too much, while two didn’t suffice,” Piotr said.
And with that core concept settled, the company carried forward, even if not everyone immediately got the vision. In a world where it often feels like companies are happy to make the same instrument over and over, cashing in on their legacy, Polyend is offering genuine innovation. Piotr summed up the company’s philosophy perfectly: “We like doing things differently, which is a more risky and challenging path, but this is who we are — curious, foolish, and ambitious.”
Polyend Synth. By Simon Vinall for MusicTech.
The post “Curious, foolish and ambitious”: How Polyend’s Synth is reimagining synthesizer design appeared first on MusicTech.

The Stern-Gerlach Experiment MisunderstoodTwo guys — Stern and Gerlach — did an experiment in 1922. They wanted to measure magnetism caused by electron orbits. At the time, they didn’t know about particles having angular momentum due to spin. So — as explained by [The Science Asylum] in the video below — they clearly showed quantum spin, they just didn’t know it and Physics didn’t catch on for many years.
The experiment was fairly simple. They heated a piece of silver foil to cause atoms to stream out through a tiny pinhole. The choice of silver was because it was a simple material that had a single electron in its outer shell. An external magnet then pulls silver atoms into a different position before it hits some film and that position depends on its magnetic field.
If electrons randomly flew around the nucleus like a cloud, you’d expect a cloudy line on the film. If the electrons had a fixed number of possible electron orbits, the film would show a series of points. In the end, the result was a big surprise — it was neither of the expected patterns. Instead, they got something shaped like the outline of some lips.
They realized that the horizontal deflection occurred even without the magnet, so what looked like two lines were really two points, and that implies that the electrons must be in one of two positions. However, the truth is more complicated.
In fact, Schrödinger’s equations appeared later and shed more light on how the electrons could orbit. It also seemed to imply that the earlier experiment should have been a single spot on the film. The answer turned out to be quantum spin.
According to the video, this was a lucky mistake. The experiment was perfect for measuring quantum spin, but it was unlikely that anyone would have thought to perform it for that purpose. By trying to prove one thing, they had actually proved another thing that no one understood yet. Science is strange and wonderful.
Spin is a big deal in many quantum computers. If you need a refresher on electron orbitals, it is a topic we cover periodically.

Andrea Bocelli at the Kia ForumThe great tenor Andrea Bocelli performed at the KIA Forum in Inglewood, CA. Sunday night (12/8) along with his wife Veronica Berti, daughter Virginia, wife and a few very special guest performers. This was a show of not only Bocelli’s incredible music, but also a few Christmas classics, legendary opera compositions, and covers. In the entire 20th and 21st century, few singers have been globally known like Bocelli. Bocelli, now 66, still has a perfect voice. Earlier this year, Bocelli celebrated his 30 years in music with an all star celebration including Ed Sheeran, David Foster, Christian Nodal, Brian May, Lang Lang, Jon Batiste, and many more.  Bocelli is known as one of the greatest singers globally of any genre, however he’s quite a comedian as well, always making the audience laugh. 

Bocelli has been awarded a Guinness World Record for his album Sacred Arias for simultaneously holding the top three spots on the U.S. Classical Albums chart, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is a seven time World Music Award winner. Outside of music Bocelli has earned a law degree. Bocelli can sing in English, Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Latin. Bocelli also had the best selling Classical album by a solo artist of all time with Sacred Arias. In 2020 Bocelli released his latest album Believe including covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” and “Amazing Grace,” with Allison Krauss.

This 2+ hour show featured Bocelli with a full orchestra and choir totalling around 80 members. The show began with the classic “La donna e mobile” (Giuseppe Verdi) a song everyone knows and was famously performed by Luciano Pavoratti in he 1987 film adaption of Rigoletto and parodied by Adam Sandler as Opera Man in Saturday Night Live. The Christmas classics came during the second of the show starting with “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” and later “Silver Bells” and “Silent Night.” Bocelli regulars Pia Toscano and Zucchero both performed as well as Il Volo, Edward Parks, Cadie J. Bryan, legendary producer David Foster whose recent 75th birthday celebration at the Hollywood Bowl included Bocelli, Toscano, and Jennifer Hudson who was a guest as well for this Bocelli show.  If there was one song that left the audience in tears it was the incredible “Time To Say Goodbye (Con Te Partiro).” This was the second to last song and Bocelli’s most famous one. This was followed by none other than the grand finale, “Nessun Dorna” from Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot which Luciano Pavarotti sang at the 1990 FIFA World Cup bringing it to a global audience, and has been covered numerous times including versions by Jeff Beck, Chris Botti, Jennifer Hudson and is part of Billy Joel’s shows before “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant.”If there is any artist to see today that’ll blow anyone away, it’s Andrea Bocelli. The show left the crowd in awe and stunned.The post Andrea Bocelli at the Kia Forum first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Frostwave Audio releases FREE Tubeshifter saturation plugin
Tubeshifter is a free analogue-style tube saturation plugin for macOS and Windows from the developer Frostwave Audio. Frostwave Audio is a Nordic developer founded by Reidar Schæfer Olsen, who later partnered with sound designer Niklas Eurén. Reidar Schæfer Olsen is perhaps better known as Danheim, an acclaimed Nordic folk artist whose penchant for epic Viking [...]
View post: Frostwave Audio releases FREE Tubeshifter saturation plugin

From the United States vs. TikTok to Sony pulling its catalog from Boomplay… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe biggest stories from the past week – all in one place…
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Live Music Society shares impact of $1M in funding for small venuesThe Live Music Society awarded $1 million in Music In Actions Grants to 58 small US music venues in 2024. As they prepare to open a new round of Music in Action grant applications, the non-profit shared some of the most transformative and impactful projects that this year's grants made possible.
The post Live Music Society shares impact of $1M in funding for small venues appeared first on Hypebot.

Most popular SiriusXM channels and how to submit musicThis week SiriusXM decided to buck industry trends, pull back on streaming and concentrate on in-car satellite broadcasting. So this Hypebot Flashback Friday resurfaces a perennially popular post sharing the most popular SiriusXM channels and how to submit music.
The post Most popular SiriusXM channels and how to submit music appeared first on Hypebot.

Tracklib launches desktop app so you can browse, preview, drag and drop samples straight into your DAWMusic licensing platform Tracklib has launched a brand new desktop app, making it easier to find and drop sample tracks right into your DAW.
The app is still in its Beta phase (so it’s still in active development), but it already gives users instant access to its library of over 100,000 tracks and samples. Tracklib says that “every bit” of metadata, beat markers, tempo alignment, and administrative detail is handled automatically.

READ MORE: “It let us play the music of an imaginary future”: Why Hans Zimmer worked with the Expressive E Osmose on Dune 2

Tracklib’s library hosts a vast range of original songs and royalty-free sounds. Via the app, you can explore and sync sounds, curate favourites, and also create custom loops and adjust pitch, as well as simply dragging and dropping samples into your DAW projects. To access the app,  login to your Tracklib account to get started. For those who aren’t a Tracklib subscriber, you’ll need to first register an account and start a trial to get access.
“Removing boring barriers in music creation is our life mission,” comments Andreas Ahlenius, CEO of Tracklib. “The new desktop app is a game-changer. It enhances how producers interact with our great library and significantly improves their workflow.”
Chairman Andreas Liffgarden adds: “The desktop app marks a major milestone in how producers interact with Tracklib’s platform. We’re just getting started – many more exciting developments are planned for the coming year.”

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Earlier this year, Tracklib unveiled Sounds, a new feature allowing producers to access a range of authentically recorded, royalty-free loops and one-shots. Sounds complements Tracklib’s existing library of song samples, further offering everything from the slaps of a 808 drum machine to the vocals of an obscure 70s track, all within one subscription.
Head over to Tracklib to find out more and download the app now.
The post Tracklib launches desktop app so you can browse, preview, drag and drop samples straight into your DAW appeared first on MusicTech.

US government asks court to reject TikTok’s motion to delay law that could see its app banned in the marketTikTok and parent company ByteDance filed an emergency motion asking for a temporary injunction to delay the law
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LANDR & Warner Chappell Production Music launch HOT MIC library LANDR have announced the launch of HOT MIC, a new and exclusive sample label created in partnership with Warner Chappell Production Music (WCPM).

“I can make better music than people pushing buttons” Beyoncé producer Raphael Saadiq says only “people who can’t play an instrument” depend on loopsBeyoncé producer and multi-instrumentalist Raphael Saadiq says he’ll never use a bassline from “any digital domain”, arguing that only “people who can’t play an instrument” depend on loops from DAWs.
Saadiq makes the comment in the latest issue of Music Business Worldwide’s ‘World’s Greatest Producers’ series, where he discusses his creative philosophy and the reason he prefers making music “the authentic way”.

READ MORE: “The production is a little distracting. It’s a bit slick” Early Nirvana producer on his “least favourite” record from the band

“People like pushing buttons because it’s faster and easier for them,” says Saadiq. “But I can make better music than people pushing buttons, fast.”
“People who can’t play an instrument, or can’t come up with a certain line or a melody, depend on loops and take basslines from Ableton [Live] or Logic [Pro]. I will never take a bassline from any digital domain in my life! That will never happen.”
While the producer is open to drum loops, “even 99% of those, I’ll play it faster than I can find it, and I can find the best drummer who can play better than me,” he says. “I’d just rather do what the authentic sound is; it breathes more, it has that sensibility. And, if everybody’s doing something, I want to be the one person that doesn’t do it.”
With how musicality is “getting lost in the business”, he says, those who have it will stand out instead.
“It’s like driving a Tesla versus driving a Porsche that takes gas,” Saadiq muses. “I’d rather drive a Porsche, but there are a lot of Teslas out there.”
Elsewhere in the chat, Saadiq — who worked on three tracks from Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter album — also shares his thoughts on the rise of AI and its potential effects on producers and songwriters.
“I’m not nervous about it,” he says. “There are people doing some amazing things with AI. I’m not against it, but I don’t want to use it. I’d rather just figure it out the way I’ve been figuring it out.”
“I love the technology, it’s amazing. But I don’t think it’s going to write Let It Be. It’s not going to write Try A Little Tenderness. So, knowing that it’s not going to do that, I know I can’t get the best out of me if I’m using AI.”
In August, producer Afrojack also shared his “disappointment” in artists using samples from services such as Splice. Speaking directly about the track ten by British superstar Fred Again.., he said: “It’s based off three Splice samples. To me, that was disappointing when I found out. ‘Oh my god, that’s four Splice sample loops on top of each other!’ I love Fred again.., and he’s super talented, but when I found out that was a sample…”
MusicTech writer Sam Roche defended the use of sample packs in an opinion piece titled Sample libraries are here to stay – so why do some producers still find their use illegitimate? In the piece, Splice’s Kenny Ochoa asked, “There will always be producers with more technical skill than others, but why would anyone gate-keep creativity?”
Read more music technology news. 
The post “I can make better music than people pushing buttons” Beyoncé producer Raphael Saadiq says only “people who can’t play an instrument” depend on loops appeared first on MusicTech.

Drill producer EMRLD BEATS under fire for hating on boom-bap: “If you sampling a soul record, get that bullshit outta here”Drill producer EMRLD BEATS has ended up in the line of online fire for his thoughts on producers in the boom bap scene.
In a video posted at the end of November, the producer — who produced a track for Digga D on the extended version of his chart-topping 2022 mixtape, Noughty by Nature — is asked in an interview for On The Radar which genre he believes is overrated.
“If you sampling a soul record, get that bullshit outta here,” he says. “No one trying to hear that. I hate soul, anything, boom bap. Yeah, get that unc [uncle] shit out of there bro. I don’t like any of that music.”
The clip’s since gone viral and EMRLD’s hot take has got people talking. Even popular music critic Anthony Fantano has weighed in, on a video titled ‘Huge Idiot’, suggesting the controversy and the origin of his viewpoints point towards wider issues in the hip-hop world.

 
“There’s nothing wrong in terms of gravitating towards a specific direction into the kind of music you want to hear and the music you want to make,” begins Fantano in his response. “There’s plenty of different classic amazing styles of hip-hop that are not soul sampling records, that are not boom bap.”
Fantano believes the video relates to myriad issues in hip-hop, from the genre’s commodification to its racial politics.

blatant disrespect of our shit. ya hate the soul shit cuz you ain't got none Mark
"get that unc shit outta here" ok bro pic.twitter.com/4FYdddhidD
— genius (@juneayth) December 8, 2024

“This guy is young, he is white, he’s obviously quite oblivious when it comes to the broader world of hip-hop music and he’s obviously making a living in a genre he is openly disrespecting,” he says.
“What sort of irks me or worries me is… I don’t think this guy becomes a professional producer and boom bap hater in a vacuum. This doesn’t happen without hip-hop being commodified and stripped down to its most salacious and marketable characteristics. Meanwhile, the message and aesthetics of its past are just totally being thrown out.”

Fantano theorises that EMRLD would have picked up on this sentiment voiced by other producers of his age. “Of course [he] holds this opinion because this opinion is essentially the water he’s swimming in.”
He adds: “It’s become increasingly clear that there are certain genres of rap music today where white people seemingly are totally freely allowed to move about and operate without being confronted with their whiteness, even the concept of black struggle at all. While it is true there’s a lot to know about drill music and the culture that surrounds it much of the content is removed from any systematic and historical context that might explain it and the way it’s presented on the internet doesn’t exactly push listeners to do their own digging.”
MusicTech has reached out to EMRLD Beats via UNKWN Music Group for comment.
Later in the On The Radar video, EMRLD breaks down the beat he made for NLE Choppa & 41’s Or What, showing how he uses plugins such as Nexus 4, Roland’s SRX Keyboards, FabFilter Pro-Q 3 and how he chops up samples.
Read more music producer news.  
The post Drill producer EMRLD BEATS under fire for hating on boom-bap: “If you sampling a soul record, get that bullshit outta here” appeared first on MusicTech.