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Capture fan contact info at live shows and stay connected with SETSET.Live (pronounced “set dot live”) is a mobile-based live event tool that artists can utilize across their tours to capture fan contact info. SET.Live can be part of unique in-show. Continue reading
The post Capture fan contact info at live shows and stay connected with SET appeared first on Hypebot.Traktor Pro 4: Generate stem separated tracks from your library in this new updateToday, Native Instruments is launching Traktor Pro 4. It’s been a long time (6 years, in 2018) since Traktor Pro 3 came out. But the killer feature in today’s Traktor Pro 4 release date goes back even further -to 2014 when the Kontrol S8 and Stem Decks first appeared in the DJ software. In this […]
The post Traktor Pro 4: Generate stem separated tracks from your library in this new update appeared first on DJ TechTools.RME partner with Sonarworks Thanks to a new partnership with Sonarworks, users of RME's DSP-equipped interfaces can now load SoundID Reference calibration files into TotalMix FX.
ROLI on the Seaboard BLOCK M: “MPE has become accepted in many producer’s workflows — MIDI 2.0 will be another big step forward”Music makers will always look for ways to express themselves more creatively but, in the field of electronic and software-based music, it’s all too easy to run up against the limitations of the 40-year-old MIDI specification. When ROLI created the Seaboard Grand in 2013, founder Roland Lamb envisioned an instrument that re-imagined how people could perform music using a touch surface; a whole new way to control software instruments. Winning a number of high-profile fans including Pharrell Williams, the company went on to release more hardware, including the Blocks controllers and the Seaboard Rise and Block, while beefing up its arsenal of software instruments.
READ MORE: Richie Hawtin is proving why DJs must embrace technology: “It’s about going beyond just putting two records together”
Several years on — and having experienced bankruptcy — the company came back with the Seaboard Rise 2 in 2023 and has now unveiled its latest innovation, the Seaboard Block M. An evolution of the original Seaboard Block, which was released in 2017, it’s aimed at performers and producers who want to take their creations to new levels with the 5D Touch technology that provides more intuitive and far-reaching control than regular MIDI devices can. And, do it from anywhere. It keeps everything users loved about the original Seaboard Block but adds a hardware MIDI out for better studio integration, as well as more advanced customisation of the instrument’s response to your input.
“My deepest interest is understanding what musical instruments have been, are, and can be,” says ROLI founder and CEO, Roland Lamb. “I see musical instruments as input/output devices where the input is human movement and gestures and the output is sound and music.”
ROLI Seaboard Block M. Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Italian production duo Parisi (brothers Marco and Jack Parisi) have been using ROLI products since their inception, and even had some valuable input into the design of the original Seaboard, Marco says, “I’d been shown a prototype of the original Seaboard and immediately knew this was the kind of instrument I’d been looking for my whole life. You could be expressive with it in ways that just hadn’t been possible before.
“I was invited to meet Roland, the founder, and around 2012 ROLI offered me a job doing demos for investors and artists. I became involved in the development of the instruments – the Seaboard Rise and then the Seaboard Block.”
Jack picks up the story: “I moved to London to join Marco around 2016 and being a drummer, I loved the Blocks units — I joined the company too and we travelled the world doing demos.”The Block M sports a similar design to its predecessor but has some crucial differences — the most obvious being a hardware MIDI and CV output for connecting the instrument to other hardware, such as modular synths. Enter product manager for ROLI, Adam Pollard. “The main change is the MIDI output. We had the Seaboard Block design that we knew worked really well — I think it was our best-selling keyboard. We stopped selling it for a while but it was the most-requested one people were asking us to bring back.
“We didn’t feel like it needed redesigning in terms of the fundamental way the key surface plays, but adding the MIDI output felt like a very natural thing to do. We also added that to the Rise 2 that came out roughly a year before.”
And what about changes to the playing surface? The keywaves are rubberized, multitouch-sensitive zones that are a little like piano keys but have no physical divide between them, enabling freeform performances. Pollard continues, “We’ve tweaked the playability, but, fundamentally, it’s still the same keywave surface as the original. That key surface is slightly different to the Seaboard Rise but it’s conceptually the same in terms of how you approach it musically.”
There’s also ROLI’s stable of software — Equator for sound design, Cypher and Strobe, plus sound packs — that’s designed to integrate tightly with the MPE MIDI that the Seaboard Block M can output. And solid and growing support for the MPE format among all major DAWs and an ever-increasing number of third-party software instruments. Pollard explains, “When the Seaboard Block first came out, MPE was a bit of a headache. I remember when I first used the original with Ableton Live. I had to set up a template to get it working. But these days, almost every popular software synthesiser supports MPE so it’s just plug and play with your favourite environments. The one main exception for now is Kontakt instruments.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Roland Lamb adds that “the support for MPE has been nothing short of astonishing. We see hundreds of applications that support MPE and it’s become a very much accepted part of many producer workflows. Some DAWs handle MPE editing better than others and there’s still work to be done to make MPE a really natural part of every workflow. But, we’re definitely getting there and I think MIDI 2.0 will be another big step in that direction.”
The ROLI founder believes that MIDI 2.0 is “a huge step forward” and that the MIDI Association (who are spearheading MIDI 2.0), has “done a wonderful job.”
“I hope we can move forward with the same kind of adoption that we have with MPE, which will ultimately make expressive and creative music-making easier for everyone in the ecosystem.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Alongside expressive playing, the Seaboard Block M is designed to be super-portable, with an onboard battery and its ability to connect to your laptop wirelessly or over USB. But it’s also a very different experience to playing a regular keyboard, so how do users acclimatise to it? Do they use the ‘Piano’ mode, toggled in the Dashboard app, to simplify its responses and make your finger movements a little less far-reaching in their effects?
“Piano mode is the easiest way to start,” says Pollard. “And then it’s almost like a spectrum. So you could for example just turn down the sensitivity of the five parameters in the Dashboard app. In those first hours and days and weeks, you’re getting used to this new method of control. But then, over time, it becomes more familiar and you can turn the sensitivity back up.”
And for experienced players, Marco offers a window into how he approachers performance with the Seaboard Block M. “There are two main ways I use the keyboard. One is to replicate acoustic instruments, and there’s nothing else in the world that can do that like this instrument does. It’s the first time electronic music has become as expressive as acoustic instruments. And I think the keyboard absolutely set that bar incredibly high and is still unbeaten today for me.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
He continues, “I don’t play keyboards any more. For me, a piano is a square and you have four points — but ROLI’s instrument is a circle, so you have infinite points. Still, people haven’t realised how deep this instrument is.”
“And then”, Jack adds, “from an electronic sound design point of view it’s absolutely outstanding. The amount of in-depth control you have and also the micro values that you can achieve — there’s nothing like it.” Marco chimes back in: “When I think about the keyboard, I don’t think about it like an electronic instrument. I think about it like an acoustic instrument — I compare the keyboard to a guitar or a cello.”
The duo have also used the Seaboards on some big records, as Marco continues. “Sometimes when we record strings we use the audio modelling software, it’s all physical modelling. There are a few records from Ed Sheeran that we played brass and strings on and it’s all expressive playing from the keyboards, but nobody can tell. We actually had to check when we heard the finished record that they hadn’t replaced our parts with real acoustic instruments.”
We ask Roland and Pollard about ROLI’s plans for the future and his views on developing for the iOS platform, where currently the company’s offerings have remained static for some years. While we don’t elicit any scoops about future products (it’s rare that you do), we learn that the company has one eye on the iPad, though nothing is imminent.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“Earlier on with Blocks, we put a lot of attention into iOS. And then more recently, as we’ve been focusing on the Seaboard Rise, our attention has been more on desktop. Now that we’re launching the Seaboard Block M, we’re beginning to focus back on our iOS offering and will be developing new products for release on those platforms in the near future.”
“At some point, I do feel the music creation industry will embrace tablets and phones and watches more,” Pollard says. “There are lots of successful examples of apps that are doing fascinating things on the platforms; it’s just 10 to 20 years behind the desktop. It’s literally our job to explore all these things and keep an eye on everything so pretty much anything you can imagine — whether it’s new devices or new computing platforms — we have looked into at some point because we always want to be on the cutting edge.”
And what would Parisi like to see regarding the future of the Seaboard Block? “From a physical point of view,” says Marco, “the keyboard is pretty incredible. If I had to think of something, one thing I struggle with is rhythmic guitars, so maybe some kind of method where you could pick? Or maybe in the future, some way where the keyboard knows when you’re about to strike it. But really, the development could be more on the software side of things, more innovative instruments being developed in future.”
The last word goes to Roland Lamb: “Going forward, the capability set that we’ve developed to innovate across hardware, software, sound and other forms of content puts us in a unique position to release powerfully integrated products — which is exactly what we plan to do.”It’s no surprise that the portable Seaboard was the instrument that ROLI’s users and fans wanted resurrected the most. More compact than the Rise 2 and significantly more affordable at just $349/£299, it’s far more advanced than the LUMI Keys hardware that the company still makes for beginners but more accessible than the flagship Rise 2. It’s a seriously expressive instrument but also one you can have fun with.
As the industry moves gradually towards widening support for MPE, ROLI’s 5D touch system, pioneered years ago, looks set to be at the forefront of it. And at this new, much more accessible price point, the Seaboard Block M is sure to find its way into many more studios.
Find out more about the ROLI Seaboard Block M at roli.com
The post ROLI on the Seaboard BLOCK M: “MPE has become accepted in many producer’s workflows — MIDI 2.0 will be another big step forward” appeared first on MusicTech.Splice issues copyright strike to YouTuber for displaying terms of service in video, internet reactsSplice has issued a YouTube copyright strike to a lawyer and content creator for displaying a section of its terms of service in one of her videos, and the internet is up in arms about it.
The company – which, among other services, offers a comprehensive sample library for music producers – took issue when Miss Krystle posted a video on her Top Music Attorney channel breaking down its terms of service.
The video came as part of a regular series from Top Music Attorney in which she breaks down the terms of service of big music companies to give her viewers a better understanding of what they’re signing up for if they do so.READ MORE: Layoffs expected after Universal Music UK announces plans to merge Island Records and EMI
“I have a series where I go through the terms of service for these music businesses, and I tell you guys what these contracts say that you’re being forced to sign in order to use these platforms,” she explains.
Krystle claims she was handed a cease and desist order from Splice’s legal department, to which she suggested jumping on a phone call to clarify some of the stipulations of the company’s ToS, saying she wanted to create a followup video for her audience’s clarity.
She says the call was productive and that Splice had agreed to update its ToS to iron out flagged inconsistencies, and that she left feeling a positive resolution was had by all.
It was only the next day that she discovered her Top Music Attorney YouTube channel had been issued a copyright infringement takedown notice at the request of Splice, resulting in a harmful copyright strike. If a YouTube user receives three copyright strikes in 90 days, their account and channel is permanently terminated.Several notable content creators have since come out in support of Miss Krystle – including Benn Jordan, who calls Splice’s actions “one of the most creator-hostile things I’ve ever seen a company do”. Jordan has also strongly implied that he’s deleted his Splice account.
This has to be one of the most creator-hostile things I've ever seen a company do, @splice.
I'm out, and I'll remember this every time someone asks for a library recommendation (one of my most common questions). Zero tolerance for this type of garbage. https://t.co/ZZBDnUb0uG
— Benn Jordan (@bennjordan) July 13, 2024Jordan goes on: “There’s literally no justification for abusing DMCA because someone criticised you, Splice… You issued a DMCA to nuke a video on false claims before the creator could even respond. It’s literal perjury. I’m out.”
Responding to Jordan, another X user, musician and entrepreneur Jonathan Rowden, claims “Splice has been getting copyright strikes for artists since [its] inception. I spoke with a bunch of labels during Covid and they all told me they have official documentation discouraging artists in roster to use Splice because of said risk.”Splice has been getting copyright strikes for artists since inception. I spoke with a bunch of labels during covid and they all told me they have official documentation discouraging artists in roster to use splice because of said risk
— jonathan rowden (@jonathan_rowden) July 15, 2024Following Top Music Attorney’s video on the matter, MusicTech reached out to Splice for comment – and the company says it is currently working with YouTube to have the copyright strike removed from the Top Music Attorney channel. It’s not clear yet whether the strike has been removed at the time of writing, and Miss Krystle/Top Music Attorney has yet to create a followup video.
See more of her content at the Top Music Attorney YouTube channel.
The post Splice issues copyright strike to YouTuber for displaying terms of service in video, internet reacts appeared first on MusicTech.How Fly By Midnight Went From YouTubers to Sold Out ToursThis week, Ari is joined by Justin Bryte and Slavo of the hit group, Fly By Midnight, to discuss their journey as independent artists.
WATCH: "Farewell to Ghosts" by About You feat. Elliott SkinnerAbout You - Farewell to Ghosts feat. Elliott Skinner
Listen to "Farewell to Ghosts" (out now) on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/7fCXCC...
Instagram: / abandaboutyou
About You makes music about the listener. After years of collecting stories from friends, fans, and total strangers, About You has adapted these stories into songs. "Farewell to Ghosts" is one of those songs inspired by a story sent in from an unhoused friend who found strength in their fellow unhoused community. With 1M+ streams across platforms, About You is forging a musical path all their own to bring these stories to you.
Director/Editor: Cyrus J. Stowe
Director of Photography: Nathan Bailey
Production Design/Animation: Marie Marchant
Prop Master: Alyssa Franks
Sorcerer: Theo Michel
Gaffer: Jeremy Teran Color: Elliott Powell
Analog FX Artist: Gary Bardizbanian
Creative by Marie Marchant and Cyrus J. Stowe
The post WATCH: "Farewell to Ghosts" by About You feat. Elliott Skinner first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.Elon Musk says X and SpaceX headquarters will move to TexasThe billionaire industrialist has an estimated net worth of $221 billion and owns Tesla, SpaceX, xAI, and the X social media platform.
Elon Musk vows to move X, SpaceX headquarters from California to Texas Elon Musk is doubling down on his commitment to Texas by vowing to move SpaceX’s massive headquarters from its long-time Hawthorne, California home to the Lone Star State. Musk later said that he would move the headquarters of his social media platform X from San Francisco, California, to Austin, Texas — where his other company, […]
© 2024 TechCrunch. All rights reserved. For personal use only.Playing Rock, Paper Scissors With A Time of Flight SensorYou can do all kinds of wonderful things with cameras and image recognition. However, sometimes spatial data is useful, too. As [madmcu] demonstrates, you can use depth data from a time-of-flight sensor for gesture recognition, as seen in this rock-paper-scissors demo.
If you’re unfamiliar with time-of-flight sensors, they’re easy enough to understand. They measure distance by determining the time it takes photons to travel from one place to another. For example, by shooting out light from the sensor and measuring how long it takes to bounce back, the sensor can determine how far away an object is. Take an array of time-of-flight measurements, and you can get simple spatial data for further analysis.
The build uses an Arduino Uno R4 Minima, paired with a demo board for the VL53L5CX time-of-flight sensor. The software is developed using NanoEdge AI Studio. In a basic sense, the system uses a machine learning model to classify data captured by the time-of-flight sensor into gestures matching rock, paper, or scissors—or nothing, if no hand is present. If you don’t find [madmcu]’s tutorial enough, you can take a look at the original version from STMicroelectronics, too.
It takes some training, and it only works in the right lighting conditions, but this is a functional system that can determine real hand sign and play the game. We’ve seen similar techniques help more advanced robots cheat at this game before, too! What a time to be alive.‘Middle class’ of artists growing larger, Luminate report finds, as 29,253 clocked between 1m and 10m on-demand audio streams in H1The number of "mid-tier" artists grew by more than 5% in the past year, Luminate's Midyear Music Report says
SourceThis AI tech lets users sing in 10 languages and 15 Chinese dialects. Westlife have used it to release a song in Mandarin via Tencent Music“Everyone can become a professional singer with AI.”
SourceSelf-host, #decetralize and back up imho nowadays.
Link Rot: Why your Digital Links won’t last foreverUnfortunately, link deterioration, often called link rot, is inevitable. Here are some effective strategies for managing its impact on online content. by Bobby Owsinski of Music 3.0 Just about everyone. Continue reading The post... ...CUDA, But Make It AMDCompute Unified Device Architecture, or CUDA, is a software platform for doing big parallel calculation tasks on NVIDIA GPUs. It’s been a big part of the push to use GPUs for general purpose computing, and in some ways, competitor AMD has thusly been left out in the cold. However, with more demand for GPU computation than ever, there’s been a breakthrough. SCALE from [Spectral Compute] will let you compile CUDA applications for AMD GPUs.
SCALE allows CUDA programs to run as-is on AMD GPUs, without modification. The SCALE compiler is also intended as a drop-in swap for nvcc, right down to the command line options. For maximum ease of use, it acts like you’ve installed the NVIDIA Cuda Toolkit, so you can build with cmake just like you would for a normal NVIDIA setup. Currently, Navi 21 and Navi 31 (RDNA 2.0 and RDNA 3.0) targets are supported, while a number of other GPUs are undergoing testing and development.
The basic aim is to allow developers to use AMD hardware without having to maintain an entirely separate codebase. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s a promising tool that could help break NVIDIA’s stranglehold on parts of the GPGPU market.
Universal Audio introduce Apollo x16D The latest addition to Universal Audio’s line-up combines the power of their renowned DSP plug-ins with the flexibility of networked audio, integrating seamlessly with Dante-equipped digital consoles and recording systems.
