Antelope Audio expand Synergy Core Native collection Antelope's latest software release adds four new analogue emulation plug-ins to their Synergy Core Native subscription bundle.

“Once tech like stem separation is inside the CDJ, people will get a bit more creative”: Richie Hawtin on how real-time stem separation will impact live showsRichie Hawtin has shared his thoughts on the impact real-time stem separation might have on contemporary DJs, especially their approach to live sound manipulation.
Hawtin debuted his new concert series, DEX EFX XOX, at this year’s Movement Festival Detroit and Sónar Barcelona. The show sees him focus less on grandeur and visual spectacle, and far more on the most important element – the music.

READ MORE: Erica Synths and Richie Hawtin’s Bullfrog Drums will “teach you drum programming and sampling”

For DEX EFX XOX, Hawtin uses Traktor, Bitwig, his own MODEL 1 mixer, two A&H Xone K2 MIDI controllers, a Novation Launchpad, and a bunch of “custom scripts” that allow on-the-fly control over a suite of Roland software emulations, including the TR-808, TR-909, and the SH-101.
In the future, the use of stem separation – something he’s avoided up til now – may also make its way into his sets. In a new interview feature for MusicTech, he explains, “My shows are all pretty spontaneous. I’ve been reluctant to use any stem separation because it all has to be done beforehand. But real-time, high-quality stem separation is coming very shortly, and I’m excited because that will allow for even more fluid mixing.”
With his shows, Hawtin wants to revive that hypnotic state that immersive sound and lighting can induce alone. He wants his shows to feel more like a club experience, rather than concert which may focus more on feeding the eyes than the ears. Of the current DJ sphere, he says, “On one level, I see that the scene has exploded with the TikTok DJ generation who maybe think that DJing is just two CDJs and a mixer, but I’m starting to see some of the DJs who’ve been around longer really jumping into these hybrid setups.

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“Once tech like stem separation is inside the CDJ, people will get a bit more creative — but will we see a whole generation of DJs working on their own unique setup? I’m not sure that that’s going to happen.”
He adds, “I don’t want to sound like I’m slagging off the new-school DJs. Really, the production etiquette and technique of young, modern producers is fucking mind blowing. The music they’re making crosses and combines genres more than ever before — there used to be the house lane, the techno lane, the minimal lane. Now, it’s all going back into the melting pot and that’s where a lot of the energy and excitement is coming from.”
So, why does he feel rising DJs are not experimenting with their setup as much as they perhaps should? “Part of it is just the convenience of jumping on a plane with a USB stick and jamming out some great tunes,” he says. “I would have been excited if I could have done that 30 years ago, instead of dragging around three 50kg cases and a friend to help me.”
Find out more about Richie Hawtin, or view all of his scheduled live dates.
The post “Once tech like stem separation is inside the CDJ, people will get a bit more creative”: Richie Hawtin on how real-time stem separation will impact live shows appeared first on MusicTech.

Music isn’t getting worse, genre is

A couple of weeks ago Rick Beato put out a video titled “The real reason why music is getting worse”. The core arguments centre around too many people making music, and tech making it both easier to make music and  for people to be lazy creators. And while Beato followed his original argument with an ‘old man yells at cloud’ video (this time titled “I know you’re angry, so am I…”), he stood his ground. The problem is, what constitutes ‘good music’ is entirely subjective. If it was only about technique then the majority of popular music would consistently lose against classical or jazz. Music is good when it moves us. And it tends to move us most when we are young. Hence most generations thinking that the best music was made when they were young.

Of course there is a lot in Beato’s arguments, but the ‘problems’ he identifies are also the positive trends that underpin the tectonic shifts in today’s music business and culture. But (and I know you shouldn’t follow a ‘but’ with a ‘but’, but…) there is also a lot more going on. The tech and democratisation trends are merely responding to and catalysing wider cultural shifts in music –– with fragmentation and genre the prime movers.

There has been plenty written about genre coming to an end; that we are in a post-genre world. The truth is more complex. In some respects, genre was only ever intended as a way for audiences to navigate their way through music, signposts to what they will probably like. Genres still play this role, though mood and activity playlists are fast becoming an alternative architecture for categorising music. Nonetheless, genre  remains the primary way we understand music.

The canon of music genre was established years ago (pop, rock, metal, dance, hip hop, jazz, country, blues, classical, etc). Each of those meta-genres came to prominence with underpinning cultural movements and at specific periods in time, especially popular music: pop ‘60s, rock ‘70s, dance, hip hop and metal ‘80s, dance late ‘80s / ‘90s.

The last chapter of the genre cannon –– dance –– was the ‘90s (and yes, that is a statement that is asking to be disagreed with). All other genres since have formed within the now-canonised meta-genres.

The new genres of this millennium fall into four groups:

1.    Regional interpretations: amapiano, Brazilian funk, reggaeton

2.    Scene-driven sub-genres: hyper pop, drill, trap

3.    Genre reinvention: mumblecore, dovecore

4.    Genre revival: shoegaze, post-punk

Each one of these meta-genres push music in new directions but still claim membership to one of the genre canon.

The fact that meta-genres have become canonised is a reflection of the post-mainstream nature of music. Fandom has fragmented, and genre fragmentation is really the music manifestation of this foundational behavioural shift.

All of which means that the meta-genres are actually less important and useful than they were. They have always referred to the mainstream end of music fandom, with sub-genres being traditionally where the more tribal end of music fandom lives. While that tribalism still exists, the subtle-but-foundational shift is that the fragmentation of fandom means that many of today’s niche sub-genres are built around listening patterns more than tribal music scenes. Crucially, niche does not inherently mean small, it just means not mainstream (and just to complicate matters further, has itself become niche).

Perhaps the best way to think about music genre in the 2020s is less in genre terms and instead through the lenses of sound and culture. Music today is shaped in six key ways:

Technology: Music production technology is innovating at a rapid pace, not just in terms of what tech is being made but also how creators are using it. AI is accelerating and amplifying this. New, unexpected sounds are working their way into music and changing its shape and sound. Think hyper pop (auto tuned vocals, pitch shifted instrumentation), and neurostep (a dubstep sub genre that uses lots of hypergrowls and ‘neurotic’ sound design).

Cultural interplays: Regions fusing their local sounds with international sounds to create something new. Think Reggaeton’s fusion of dancehall, Latin music, and hip hop.

User modification: Music fans speeding tracks up or down, boosting the bass, or creating mashups all flow back into music’s creative melting pot. A TikTok user creating a trap / grindcore / ambient mashup could accidentally create an entirely new wave of sound. This will become increasingly widespread, especially when you put gen AI in the hands of music fans.

Scenes: Music used to create scenes. Now, music is often the soundtrack to scenes, especially online ones. As a consequence, music has the potential to evolve much more because it is not tightly bound by genre rules. Nightcore as the soundtrack to online games and manga communities was an early example, with its sound shifting over the years.

Context: Physical spaces used to shape music (think Paradise Garage, late ‘80s warehouse raves, etc). As we spend ever more time online, it is only natural that online spaces are becoming the places that shape music. Whether that be TikTok-core, Spotify-core or Roblox-core. TikTok-core is so meta that it is often referred to as ‘core core’. Even social media is reshaping music – look no further than techno’s shift  to Instagram-friendly, fast BPMs and big drops. If / when the metaverse finally becomes a thing, this effect could explode. Take a look at VR club Shelter to get a sneak peek of what the future may hold.

Genre fluidity: All of the above factors lead to genre fluidity, with artists increasingly happy to throw together elements of many different genres. In the old world, the genre-police would have angrily shouted down these efforts (and to be fair, some still do) but there is much more willingness to straddle genre’s old boundaries. The walls are coming down.

The music business, and music critics, are often too keen to identify new genres. But simply putting ‘core’ after a word does not invent a genre. Most often it explains a sound phenomenon, with music responding to one or more of the above six factors. Spotify-core is one such example. And because the digital world is forever changing, the nature of music is forever changing. If the 2010s was characterised by artists trying to make music that ‘works’ on Spotify –– with big intros, drops and hooks –– the 2020s is seeing music with a more aesthetic and mood based approach. This is music responding to its surroundings rather than the creation of music genre. 

Some of the change is truly innovative, some of it entirely reductive. And the reductive change is not simply driven by the long tail of enthusiast creators learning their way. The biggest artists and songwriters are just as culpable: of the 960 songs from the US Billboard Top 40 in the entirety of the 21st century just 32 diverged from 4/4 time. In the era of fragmentation, creators big and small will do whatever it takes to cut through. In this paradigm, genre can be a barrier rather than a signpost, confining a song to just one lane of music culture’s highway. 

Genre is not going away, but while it was once the only place music could go, it is now just one part of a much more nuanced and complex picture. And that’s a good thing.

EVE Audio upgrade SC3010 & SC3012 EVE's SC3010 and SC3012 now boast improved low-frequency performance specs that bolster their ability to serve as main monitors without the need for a separate subwoofer. 

Moog’s Spectravox: A slice of classic Moog for its semi-modular line£599/$599, moogmusic.com
It’s been a difficult year or so for Moog Music.
June 2023 saw the company acquired by Alesis and Akai Professional owners InMusic, with sources suggesting that the majority of production would be moving away from the US. That September, reports from the factory floor claimed that over half of jobs were being cut. “Moog [is] about to change forever,” wrote one former employee. Indeed, the following March saw Moog vacate its famous Asheville, NC home on Broadway Street. More recently, it was announced that its physical Asheville store was to close too.

READ MORE: Moog Mariana isn’t your typical Moog synth plugin — but we love its modern sound

Moog Music’s official statement following the 2023 layoffs concluded, “We ask that you […] keep an open mind as we put the finishing touches on some of our most innovative instruments yet.” Well, an open mind we shall keep. Besides — to zoom out for a moment — these sorts of shake-ups are nothing personal, and hardly new in the music technology industry (remember when Tom Oberheim finally got the rights to his own name back from Gibson?). What we producers are concerned about is the fruit.
Moog’s shift into developing plugins will no doubt have frustrated many analogue and hardware devotees, with the Apple Vision Pro-oriented Animoog Galaxy being one such invention that will likely have borne the brunt of that. The recent Mariana, on the other hand, showed real promise, and there are auspicious rumblings concerning a new hardware polyphonic powerhouse.
Moog Spectravox
Now comes Spectravox, an addition to what is arguably the biggest success story of Moog’s recent output: its semi-modular line.
Like the preceding Mother-32, DFAM and Subharmonicon, it comes as a Eurorack-friendly unit in its own elegant, wood-sided case. Like those other instruments, it is a compact, rather beautiful piece of Moog. Broadly described as an ‘analog spectral processor’, with the addition of a microphone via its Program input it becomes a capable analogue vocoder. Of all the ups and downs of the last 14-or-so months, could this be the thing to restore our faith in Moog?
‘How so?’, you ask. The answer to that question lies in the circuit at the core of Spectravox: its filter bank. The resonant filter bank, rarely if ever seen today in a 3U format, harks back to the earliest Moog designs, leapfrogging the mass of plunderable Moog history in between. Actually, the filter bank reaches even further back in time, to 1928 and Homer Dudley’s work on the Voice Operating Demonstrator, or ‘Voder’, which preceded the vocoder as a musical instrument with its telecommunications and military use.
An array of narrow band-pass filters that could emulate the characteristics of real world sounds — such as speech — with reasonable accuracy and no shortage of sonic excitement, the Moog 907 10-band Fixed Filter Bank was key to the Moog modulars of yore. In a world still getting its head around the advent of synthesisers, its ability to impart quasi-acoustic resonances to sounds not only helped assimilate electronic sounds into acoustical and musical realms, but also allowed synthesists to model existing instruments more closely. The Moog 907 most famously found favour with Wendy Carlos in her soundtrack for Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
Moog Spectravox
Spectravox really is a little slice of that history. Like the 907 it has 10 bands, and — not that it matters to any but the most ardent purist — these are set in accordance with Dudley’s 1939 Voder specifications. Nice. Each of these is endowed with its own band-pass filter, with the exception of the lowest band, which is a low-pass filter, and the highest band (a high-pass filter).
One major difference, though, is that Spectravox’s filter bank is not fixed, but moveable. Variable resonance and frequency positioning are controlled via a Spectral Shift knob. Spectral Shift makes it possible to sweep the whole lot up and down sequentially through the frequency spectrum, creating something that’s a cross between comb-filtering, flanging and phasing. In layman’s terms, let’s just say it very much sounds three-dimensional.
Being a filter bank, Spectravox expects a sound source, or a carrier, to be fed through it. This is provided on the panel as a single, healthy Moog-grade oscillator, offering pulse or saw wave shapes. You can of course bypass this (or send it elsewhere) and feed Spectravox whatever line-level sound you like via the Carrier input, opening up vast processing possibilities for more or less anything you can think of.
Flick the switch from Filter Bank mode to Vocoder mode and things get even more interesting. The Program input is where the tonal properties of incoming sounds — such as a voice — are analysed through the filter bank and then used to process the carrier signal. Traditionally, this would be the oscillator but with Spectravox it can be anything you like.
Moog Spectravox
Even without either of the above, though, simply turning up the resonance of the filters to ‘ping’ them by themselves creates an incredibly resonant, woody-sounding percussion instrument — and that’s before we get to turning any of these bands’ VCAs up or down to emphasise or de-emphasise them, which results in some incredible tonal variety.
If there’s one thing we find lacking in the filter bank, it’s the choice to use miniature knobs for its VCAs instead of the more substantial and tactile classic Moog knobs, considering how much use they get. Sonically, it’s fair to say the resonance of the filter bank never reaches into particularly aggressive territory, á la that of many other Moog synths, which would have given Spectravox significant extra scope. Instead, its response is excellently tuned, if a little tame.
In Vocoder mode, Spectravox’s range of tonal shaping is immense. Growling snarls, mournful drones, wailing noises — the list goes on. Don’t expect impeccably clean speech, mind. This is old-school analogue vocoding, after all. On account of this, it does require time to find the sweet spots. For instance getting the right noise-to-carrier mix in order to best grab the consonants of speech while retaining tonal richness, or the correct decay time for natural sounding movement.
Moog Spectravox
But this is the name of the game with old-school synthesis. No presets, no digital tuning, just a set of well laid-out controls and a quality array of sound-generating circuits. The patch bay covers just about every base (though not filter resonance, interestingly) and there are VCA inputs and envelope-following outputs for every filter band.
Spectravox’s panel is comparatively sparse next to those of its semi-modular siblings. One internal LFO is provided, normalled to modulate the Spectral Shift, immediately leading us to reach for patch in another LFO from elsewhere. It’s certainly worth noting that Spectravox begs for external gear, and so it may prove to be a gateway into Eurorack for newcomers to the system.
Could Spectravox be the thing to restore our faith in Moog? Quite possibly. It’s the kind of unit whose weighty heritage and fundamental quality makes the Animoog look like it was designed by an over-enthusiastic intern.
If this is the shape of things to come from Moog, then the future is bright, even if it does mirror the past.
Moog Spectravox
Key features

10-band analogue filter bank, offering low-pass, band-pass and high-pass filters
Analogue vocoder to analyse incoming audio and map it across the filter bank
Saw or pulse wave oscillator with two noise types
Single LFO, normalled to Spectral Shift
XLR/jack combination input

The post Moog’s Spectravox: A slice of classic Moog for its semi-modular line appeared first on MusicTech.

Novation update FL Key firmware The latest FLkey firmware delivers improved plug-in and virtual instrument control in FL Studio as well as introducing some general functionality improvements.

Mining company TeraWulf pays off outstanding debt earlyThe payment will allow the company to focus on scaling operations rather than keeping up with debt obligations in the post-halving environment.

NovoNutrients tweaks its bugs to turn CO2 into protein for people and petsNovoNutrients has raised a $18 million Series A round from investors to build a pilot-scale facility to prove that its fermentation process works at scale.
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Building A Cassette Deck Controller To Save a Locked Out Car StereoCars have had DRM-like measures for longer than you might think. Go back to the 1990s, and coded cassette decks were a common way to stop thieves being able to use stolen stereos. Sadly, they became useless if you ever lost the code. [Simon] had found a deck in great condition that was locked out, so he set about building his own controller for it. 
The build relies on the cassette transport of a car stereo and a VFD display, but everything else was laced together by Simon. It’s a play-only setup, with no record, seeing as its based on an automotive unit. [Simon]’s write up explains how he reverse engineered the transport, figuring out how the motors and position sensors worked to control the playback of a cassette.
[Simon] used an Atmega microcontroller as the brains of the operation, which reads the buttons of the original deck via an ADC pin to save I/O for other tasks. The chip also drives the VFD display for user feedback, and handles auto reverse too. The latter is thanks to the transport’s inbuilt light barriers, which detect the tape’s current status. On the audio side, [Simon] whipped up his own head amplifier to process the signal from the tape head itself.
Fundamentally, it’s a basic build, but it does work. We’ve seen other DIY tape decks before, too. There’s something about this format that simply refuses to die. The fans just won’t let Compact Cassette go down without a fight. Video after the break.

ASCAP Empowers Music Creators to Vote in Major Election YearThe American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) today announces the launch of the 2024 ASCAP Citizen campaign. Powered by nonpartisan, nonprofit voter registration organization HeadCount, ASCAP Citizen encourages ASCAP’s more than one million songwriter, composer and music publisher members and their communities to make their voices heard in this year’s elections.

As the congressional debate around artificial intelligence regulation intensifies, the 2024 ASCAP Citizen campaign focuses on why voting is important for ASCAP members, emphasizing the direct impact policy can have on a music creators’ ability to make a living. This year’s campaign kicks off earlier than ever, on July 9, and will run through Election Day on November 5.

The campaign launches with a video featuring ASCAP members Leon Thomas (“Snooze,” SZA), Madison Love ("Bad Things,” Machine Gun Kelly & Camila Cabello), Jimmy Jam (“What Have You Done for Me Lately,” Janet Jackson), Marcus Miller (“Jump to It,” Aretha Franklin), Siddhartha Khosla (Only Murders in the Building), Joe Ragosta ("Need a Favor,” Jelly Roll), Akil “worldwidefresh” King (“BLACK PARADE,” Beyoncé), Amanda “Kiddo A.I.” Ibanez (“Calm Down,” Rema & Selena Gomez), René G. Boscio (The Watchful Eye), Amanda Jones (Moving On), Jaren Johnston (“Take Me to the Bottom,” The Cadillac Three)and Georgia Middleman (“I’m In,” Keith Urban)sharing why it’s critical for music creators to participate in the democratic process, and sending the message to elected officials that music creators vote. 

Throughout the campaign, @ASCAP social media channels will feature educational content and personal messages about the importance of voting from ASCAP members across every genre. The initial list includes LENA ("Tu Corazón”), Blu June (“CUFF IT,” Beyoncé), Pinar Toprak (Captain Marvel), 310babii (“Soak City (Do It)”) and more. ASCAP will also amplify “get out the vote” messages from other top ASCAP creators partnered with HeadCount including Olivia Rodrigo, Alicia Keys and Kehlani.

“Whether it is protecting creators’ rights through copyright law or new artificial intelligence regulations, policy directly impacts our members’ livelihoods. It’s vital for music creators to stay engaged with democracy and that starts with voting,” explained ASCAP CEO Elizabeth Matthews. “It’s time to show elected officials that they should listen to more than just our members’ songs, because music creators vote.”

"We're thrilled to continue our partnership with ASCAP to empower music creators and their communities to vote in the upcoming elections. ASCAP Citizen embraces music’s power to bring people together – and music creators’ power as advocates for making our voices heard," said Lucille Wenegieme, Executive Director of HeadCount.

For the third election year in a row, ASCAP is an official partner of National Voter Registration Day on September 17. ASCAP Citizen will engage in online and on-the-ground grassroots voter registration mobilization throughout the summer and fall, and will shift to get-out-the-vote efforts in the days leading up to Election Day, including early voting efforts for Vote Early Day on October 29.

Starting today, anyone can visit www.headcount.org/ascap to register to vote, verify or update their voter registration status and view their local ballot.

More information about ASCAP Citizen can be found at www.ascap.com/citizen.The post ASCAP Empowers Music Creators to Vote in Major Election Year first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Hackable Ham Radio Gives Up Its Mechanical SecretsReverse-engineered schematics are de rigeur around these parts, largely because they’re often the key to very cool hardware hacks. We don’t get to see many mechanical reverse-engineering efforts, though, which is a pity because electronic hacks often literally don’t stand on their own. That’s why these reverse-engineered mechanical diagrams of the Quansheng UV-K5 portable amateur radio transceiver really caught our eye.
Part of the reason for the dearth of mechanical diagrams for devices, even one as electrically and computationally hackable as the UV-K5, is that mechanical diagrams are a lot less abstract than a schematic or even firmware. Luckily, this fact didn’t daunt [mdlougheed] from putting a stripped-down UV-K5 under a camera for a series of images to gather the raw data needed by photogrammetry package RealityCapture. The point cloud was thoughtfully scaled to match the dimensions of the radio’s reverse-engineered PC board, so the two models can work together.
The results are pretty impressive, especially for a first effort, and should make electromechanical modifications to the radio all the easier to accomplish. Hats off to [mdlougheed] for the good work, and let the mechanical hacks begin.

Techivation's free T-De-Esser 2 plug-in Techivation's latest free plug-in provides users with a simple and intuitive de-esser that promises to maintain a natural, musical sound. 

Streaming fraud costs the global music industry $2bn a year, according to Beatdapp. Now it’s partnering with Beatport to combat the trend“Suspicious activity has been on the rise in recent months," Beatport's Chief Revenue Officer says
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FL Studio 2024 welcomes new plugins, AI tools and expands FL Cloud libraryFL Studio 2024 is here. Image-Line’s latest FL upgrade is rammed with new features, both for FL Cloud subscribers and non-members alike. With new AI tools, synth plugins, and an increased library of instruments and effects, FL Studio 2024 is pretty mega.

READ MORE: Best plugins for music producers in all genres, styles and workflows

Firstly, FL Studio has embraced the current trend of AI-powered tool. The latest update introduces an AI-based Chord Progression Tool, allowing both musical novices and masters to produce versatile chord progressions. The tool can create unique progressions from genre or mood prompts, or users can provide a melody to work from.
AI will also be assisting the Edison Declipper tool, allowing it to remove noise and vocals from a track with more accuracy. FL Cloud Mastering has also had an AI makeover, allowing more user customisation thanks to AI-powered tools. Users will benefit from enhanced bass and EQ control, to optional compression switches, to low and high frequency exciters, and more.
Alongside the AI tools, FL Studio 2024 will also introduce a shiny new synth. Kepler Exo is heavily inspired by the sound of the 80s, inspired by the Roland Juno-6 and Jupiter-8. However, with its dual-oscillators and 16-slot modulation matrix, the synth adds a futuristic twist to bring it into the here and now. It also comes with five built in effects, including a vintage chorus effect.
In terms of effects, FL Studio 2024 welcomes two new effects plugins. The Low Lifter plugin creates harmonics from sub and low frequencies, while the Spreader plugin will allow stereo widening.
The update will also introduce support the CLAP plugin format (Clever Audio Plug-in).
Elsewhere, paying FL Clouds members will have access to a whole new selection of virtual instruments and plugins. Subscribers on FL Studio’s top tier Plus plan will be able to access a total of 69 plugins from the likes of Native Instruments, Minimal Audio, UVI and more.
“It’s incredibly exciting to see more people than ever before experimenting with audio and getting into music making,” says Constantin Koehncke, CEO of Image-Line. “With the release of FL Studio 2024, we continue to build on our mission to provide all music makers at all stages of experience with everything they need to be creative.”
FL Studio 2024 is available now as a free update for existing FL Studio customers. FL Cloud is available for free, but can be upgraded to Pro and Plus levels. New customers can take advantage of an introductory offer of $99.99 for 12 months of FL Cloud Pro.
The post FL Studio 2024 welcomes new plugins, AI tools and expands FL Cloud library appeared first on MusicTech.

ONErpm has 550 employees and 40 offices globally… and it’s still 100% owned by its founderThe founder of ONErpm is aiming to build the world's fifth largest music company – without the help of outside investors
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