Crank-Powered Train Uses No Batteries or PlugsThe prolific [Peter Waldraff] is at back it with another gorgeous micro train layout. This time, there are no plugs and no batteries. And although it’s crank-powered, it can run on its own with the flip of a switch. How? With a supercapacitor, of course.
The crank handle is connected a 50 RPM motor that acts as a generator, producing the voltage necessary to both power the train and charge up the supercapacitor. As you’ll see in the video below, [Peter] only has to move the train back and forth about two or three times before he’s able to flip the switch and watch it run between the gem mine and the cliff by itself.
The supercapacitor also lights up the gem mine to show off the toiling dwarfs, and there’s a couple of reed switches at either end of the track and a relay that handles the auto-reverse capability. Be sure to stick around to the second half of the video where [Peter] shows how he built this entire thing — the box, the layout, and the circuit.
Want to see more of [Peter]’s trains and other work? Here you go.

Coachella’s Quasar stage illuminates the art of longer-form DJing – we’re here for itCoachella is introducing the Quasar stage to California. It’s a DJ-centric stage set to grace its 642-acre desert site for the first time this April.
The difference between Quasar and Coachella’s other dance stages, Yuma, Sahara and DoLab, is that on each day, only one DJ set will take place, with each running for a minimum of three hours.
The first week sees Honey Dijon b2b Green Velvet, a valiant – and no doubt, glowing return from Michael Bibi following his announcement in 2023 about being cancer-free, plus Jamie XX B2B Floating Points B2B Daphni. Phwoar. In the second week, there’s Rufus Du Sol, Eric Prydz B2B Anyma and Diplo B2B Mau P.
READ MORE: Diplo: “We downloaded so many different plugins to try and recreate the TB-303 and they were so hard to programme”
Plonking prolonged DJ sets on a pedestal is a major move from Coachella, and reflects the shift towards more long-form consumption of EDM in the US.
Watching an artist play their music live for an hour works, but a DJ set is a different style of performance. It’s unfair to make a DJ play for just an hour when they don’t have time to read the crowd, settle themselves, explore their record collection or experiment.

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Jamie xx, Daphni and Floating Points might gradually transition from more organic disco and funk to leftfield electronic wonkiness. The crowd might need to be more patient, but when this transformation takes place, it will pay off. They’ll respond more because they’ll be aware of where the set started – in a completely different place. That’s the entertaining factor of an extended set.
From a punter’s side, an extended set means you can embark on a holistic journey that morphs from one place unexpectedly to another or, if you’ve got people you want to see, dip in and out with the comfort of knowing they‘re staying put. For DJs like Diplo and Eric Prydz, it’s a chance to loosen up, away from 3D astronauts and flying cakes.
Eric Prydz at Coachella 2023. Image: Getty
Sunwaves in Romania has become a destination for marathon sets (tINI and Bill Patrick once played for 31 hours), as have the likes of Dimensions in Croatia, Dekmantel in Amsterdam, and Houghton in the UK. Even underground US festivals like Shambala, Desert Hearts, or the now-retired Symbiosis festival lighten the lineups so DJs can really express themselves over the space of multiple hours and craft a sonic journey.
No-frills, drawn-out sets aren’t new to Coachella either. James Murphy and Soulwax’s Despacio sound system landed at Coachella in 2016 and at This Ain’t No Picnic in LA in 2022, later making another appearance at Coachella in 2023. It’s a small room with minimal lighting and an enormous sound system, where the DJs go back-to-back for six hours or more, playing only vinyl records and turning the focus on the sound and dancefloor.

Having experienced his fair share of longer DJ sets, Sean Johnston of A Love From Outer Space, a moniker shared with the late Andrew Weatherall, agrees that the Quasar stage has “got to be a good thing”.
“The late Andrew Weatherall founded A Love From Outer Space with the specific idea of playing longer sets and slower music as an antidote to the prevailing ADHD-DJ culture,” says Sean.
“I enjoy playing longer DJ sets because it lets you set the scene, develop different moods and control the dynamics on the dancefloor as opposed to a bunch of DJs playing their ten biggest records in an hour. Longer sets equal a massively improved experience for dancers.
Image: A Love From Outer Space; Andrew Weatherall and Sean Jonhston
“The longest set we played was at the iconic and now sadly defunct Festival Number 6, where we played for 8.5 hours on an outdoor stage overlooking a beautiful estuary and mountains. We started in the early afternoon with beatless music gradually working our way up to psychedelic techno at the end of the set.
Sean admits that he’s never been to Coachella, nor would he consider three hours to be an extended set, “but it’s got to be a good thing,” he says.
“EDM completely dumbed down dance music to its worst elements. Anything that gets away from white guys with masks, cakes and trumpets and puts the focus on the actual music and gives DJs a chance to expand a little on what has become the de facto formula can only be a good thing. Festivals need to remind themselves that the music came from queer black clubs and should do everything they can to diversify their line-ups.
“Sadly, from what I’ve seen, the EDM scenes in the US have taken the worst aspects of dance music here and somehow managed to make them even shitter. That said, hopefully, these three-hour slots may give the DJs a chance to expand their repertoire, and the crowd the opportunity to learn that there can be so much more.”
The Quasar stage, then, perhaps reflects a shift in EDM in America away from fast short sets, big lights, big shows, and big stage production. Fans understand now that that energy can, if you want it to, be spread out across more time.
When you consider that Coachella usually sets the tone for other festivals, Quasar is a positive sign for the integration of underground dance music culture into festivals. Dance music, EDM, noise, whatever you want to call it – it’s here. It’s alive. It’s kicking.
The post Coachella’s Quasar stage illuminates the art of longer-form DJing – we’re here for it appeared first on MusicTech.

The story behind AC/DC's Hell's Bell Mike Milsom was the Bellmaster tasked with casting, tuning and striking the iconic bell that featured on AC/DC's legendary album and live shows.

Many radio stations actually helped to form
a sense of taste as well as clubs. Record labels are cutting their radio 📻 promotion. What's next? #MusicBusiness

Spotify wants to use podcasts to help market musicSpotify intends to explore an untapped marketing strategy that would marry podcasts and music streaming for years to come. by Rutger Rosenborg of MIDiA Research Last summer, Variety published an article. Continue reading
The post Spotify wants to use podcasts to help market music appeared first on Hypebot.

From Taylor Swift’s return to TikTok to Spotify’s move on manipulated audio… it’s MBW’s Weekly Round-UpThe five biggest stories to hit our headlines over the past seven days…
Source

Spotify to help fans edit, speed up songs and promises to pay artistsAccording to a new WSJ report, Spotify will add tools that allow fans to speed up, mash-up, and edit songs without prior permission.....
The post Spotify to help fans edit, speed up songs and promises to pay artists appeared first on Hypebot.

Will you actively support WIN’s Global Values for Independent Music?Music trade group WIN (Worldwide Independent Network) has announced a new set of Global Independent Values as part of its ongoing campaign to unify and clarify the sector's positions.....
The post Will you actively support WIN’s Global Values for Independent Music? appeared first on Hypebot.

Last Minute Tax Advice for Musicians and SongwritersThe federal tax filing deadline in the US is this coming Monday, April 15th, so this week's Hypebot Flashback Friday post offers links to three articles that offer practical advice.....
The post Last Minute Tax Advice for Musicians and Songwriters appeared first on Hypebot.

AstroLab is one giant leap for Arturia — but will it really take off?Price: $1,600/£1,390/€1,599
Arturia isn’t pulling punches with the AstroLab. Its 60-page manual opens with a note from company founder and CEO Frédéric Brun declaring: ‘AstroLab encapsulates everything we’ve ever wanted to achieve; the seamless fusion of software and hardware […], the feeling of absolute creative freedom.’
Big words.
READ MORE: Arturia’s AstroLab: The story of an instrument 10 years in the making
What is Arturia’s AstroLab?
The AstroLab is ostensibly a hardware extension of Arturia’s Analog Lab plugin; a vast library of bespoke presets across dozens — though not all — of their category-leading V Collection software instruments (the latest edition of which MusicTech reviewed favourably). It’s a performance-focused, easy-access environment that has always necessitated a computer to run. Until now.
That’s right: the AstroLab allows presets from Analog Lab — included in the package, as it happens — to be loaded into a hardware instrument and taken onstage or into the studio with no computer in sight. Of course, it can also sync seamlessly, wirelessly if desired, with a computer running Analog Lab in real-time so, in the studio MIDI data can be retroactively assigned to any Analog Lab preset to have its sound edited and re-edited long after the player has left the building.

How do you use AstroLab?
The AstroLab is a weighty beast at a formidable ten kilograms, but it’s smart and ergonomic, too.
Its panel is centred around what Arturia calls the Screen Encoder; a circular, full-colour screen that’s also an encoder and button for selecting presets, adjusting effects, changing settings and a whole lot more.
Looking like Iron Man’s chest-worn arc reactor, the Screen Encoder greets you upon power up, bids you goodbye upon power down, and is generally the engine behind the AstroLab’s overall workflow.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
It’s no mystery why so much thought has gone into the Screen Encoder: things can get menu-heavy quickly here, so quick and intuitive navigation is key. We find on several instances that pushing the button also leads the encoder to scroll down an extra item, making for a wrong selection; but overall Arturia has got this right. The Home menu offers several ways to filter the AstroLab’s presets: by instrument, by instrument type, by favourites and even by artists — here, the AstroLab offers fairly faithful recreations of iconic synth and keys sounds from a selection of artists, from The Beatles to Bruno Mars and more.
There doesn’t seem to be a way to customise this list, at least from the panel (at the time of writing the literature for synchronising the Astrolab with Analog Lab is not yet available, nor the AstroLab Connect software for syncing over wi-fi). So, whether or not you consider yourself an A-Ha fan, you might find yourself stuck with the preset for Take On Me regardless. Perhaps this will become an option in future firmware versions.
As with Analog Lab, one supremely useful function comes in the form of Playlists. They’re very much editable from the panel and a place where presets can be arranged in specific orders for quick access during any song or set.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Beyond the Screen Encoder are simple controls for sound sculpting, effects (offering delay, reverb and two assignable effects), arpeggio and chord modes (with a variety of scales on offer). Record and Play buttons create MIDI loops, while buttons for splitting the keyboard into regions allow presets to be mixed and matched, whether split across the keyboard or layered on top of each other.
The AstroLab’s build quality is outstanding— which is important with so much emphasis on the hardware component. Wooden side panels, a spacious layout, immaculately responsive LED value displays and, of course, the AstroLab’s talismanic central Screen Encoder.
Who is AstroLab made for? 
As we’ll come to shortly, it’s as if Arturia could have populated the panel of this incredibly powerful instrument a little more, but the intention is clear from the get-go: whether in the studio or onstage, this instrument is designed for performance. Varying instrument-to-instrument, parameters are combined and boiled down to just four primary controls — except conventional expression controls; such as velocity, aftertouch and the mod wheel. On the panel, these are labelled Brightness, Timbre, Time and Movement, with the shift-accessed parameters beneath these offering voice volume and a three-band EQ.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
On the included Mini V preset, ‘A Bass You’ll Use’, for instance, Brightness controls the filter, Timbre is filter resonance, Time is the envelope release (with an extreme setting resulting in a latched drone) and Movement controls both the frequency and amplitude of an LFO routed to the filter.
Another, very different example is the ‘Walk Of Life’ organ preset: this time, Brightness increases harmonic content by incrementally, virtually pulling out organ stops. Timbre controls drive, the higher the Time setting the slower the attack (emulating the swell of a volume pedal), and Movement intensifies the rate of a virtual Leslie speaker for some satisfyingly warbling Hammond-style vibrato.
Now, in one sense, this teeters dangerously close to making the AstroLab a blunt instrument, belying the customizability of Arturia’s fabulously deep software emulations and in turn the joy of translating that into a hardware environment. But remember: this is also something of the remit— and strength— of its parent Analog Lab, which has identical controls in its onscreen environment. And, while offering deeper editing of presets, as such provides a considerably streamlined array of instruments for those primarily in the business of reaching their desired sounds quickly. There’s also a balancing act to consider: too many assignable controls with no direct labels would make it easy to forget what any given knob does— particularly in a low-light, live setting.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The point is, Arturia clearly expects the lion’s share of preset editing to be taken care of long before taking it out onto the stage. Spend hours at home or in the studio finding the exact Juno or Augmented Strings sound you need, then take it out on the road with just the four parameters to worry about for confident, low-risk, hands-on variation and performability; with the aforementioned FX A and B and delay and reverb on hand as well.
Arturia had the classy idea to make the AstroLab’s knobs capacitive, so simply touching one with your finger brings up the parameter value onscreen without needing to move it— an onstage bugbear of many a synthesis.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Should you buy Arturia’s AstroLab?
All things considered, it’s hard to imagine a better companion to the already-proven Analog Lab than the AstroLab and, by extension, a better-suited instrument for taking carefully curated sounds out of the studio and out on the road for stress-free gigging.
Arturia has long proven itself as a leading developer in both the worlds of software and hardware, and with AstroLab has managed to build a wholly new type of bridge between the two. The price is steep and will definitely be a barrier for many — indeed, people online have already pointed out that buying an Arturia Keylab Essential mk3, an affordable Windows tablet and V collection would be more affordable and potentially more powerful — if not a completely different concept and workflow approach.
Still, AstroLab is a strong move from Arturia and we wouldn’t be surprised if it inspires a plethora of other developers to attempt the same.
The post AstroLab is one giant leap for Arturia — but will it really take off? appeared first on MusicTech.

Can’t cross the moat? Walk around itThe music business is bifurcating. On one side, a new AI, fandom, and creation centred business is coalescing. On the other, the traditional business is pulling the draw bridge over its moat by pushing up streaming royalty thresholds to ensure the soon-to-explode long tail knows it is not welcome. AI has arrived at just the right time, acting as the change catalyst that will propel the consumerisation of creation to the fore. The news of music AI start up Udio’s $10 million raise is just another piece in the puzzle.

The traditional music business has a long tradition of building moats. The genesis of the recorded music business was the first moat. Until the phonograph, everyone and anyone could be a performer and take part in music. Then suddenly, a business was built around those deemed ‘good enough’ to be able to record. The music business’ moat was thus dug, with the audience on one side and the artists firmly on the other. In later years, the moat was widened with a succession of developments, such as record label marketing budgets, TV appearances, exclusive licensing deals, expensive recording technology, and so forth.

The rise of the creator economy, AI, and consumer creation will probably not drain that moat. High quality music and artists are not going to be replaced – that is simply not the point of AI. Virtual artists are an entirely different proposition (!) but AI and consumer creation open up another, entirely new path. Instead of having to swim across the traditional industry’s century-old moat, this new, parallel movement / industry can, and will, simply walk around it and carve out its own space. This will be a good thing for both sides of the future industry and mirrors what already happens in video.

No one confuses a TikTok short for a Netflix original because they operate in entirely different lanes. Right now, both sides of music occupy the same places (streaming and social). For as long as it was only the long tail of single millions of independent artists, that awkward cohabitation just about worked. But not for much longer. Now, we have tens of millions of creators uploading music to social (but not streaming) and we face the prospect of hundreds of millions of consumer creations, perhaps even a billion, according to Bandlab’s Meng Ru Kuok.

And as much as this consumerisation trend will largely happen outside of the moat, some of it will happen inside it too. Look no further than the reports that Spotify is planning to allow users to modify songs. So, perhaps the demarcation will be modification within the moat and fully fledged creation outside of it.

What is fast approaching in the music industry’s rear view mirror is what MIDiA termed ‘Music’s Instagram Moment’, where making music becomes just as accessible to the average consumer as photos and video are now. Thom Yorke might have uttered the words ‘anyone can play guitar’ but in practice, most people don’t – either because they do not have a guitar or the will to learn. But anyone can write a text prompt. The traditional music industry’s moat kept the accomplished safely clear of the enthusiast. AI changes all of that.

Of course, the counter argument is that all this consumer creation will likely be garbage. But that misses the point. This is not about music as consumption, nor even fandom. It is music as expression and identity. Professional photographers did not look at Kodak and call them merchants of garbage because they enabled millions of consumers to take overly exposed holiday snaps with fingers obscuring the lens. 

The current fear around AI is it creating million stream songs, but that is not the point either. Don’t worry about the one AI track with a million streams, worry about the million AI tracks with one stream.

After all, who is going to listen to all this consumer creation? The friends and family of those who make it.  If each consumer creator has, say, ten people who will listen to what they create, and they make a track a month, that results in 120 streams minimum per year (assuming each person only listens once). Turn that one consumer creator into 100 million people (15% of Spotify’s current user base) and you end up with 12 billion streams. Now imagine that 25% of those 100 million consumer creators make two tracks a month, have more than 30 friends that listen, and that their music is good enough for those friends to each listen twice, then the total annual streams becomes 45 billion. Now imagine if those consumer creators make music every single day….

It is when you consider this sort of scale that it becomes clear why it is good for both sides of the business that they occupy different spaces, because they serve different purposes. 

Yes, consumer creation will compete for time. It will turn a considerable amount of time that is currently spent listening into time spent creating. Surely that is only a positive thing. Music as a form of expression and creation. It can – and should – be for everyone. 

If this kind of thing interests you, then keep an eye out for a major new report coming from MIDiA: Bifurcation theory: How today’s music business will become two. More on that soon!

Arturia’s AstroLab: The story of an instrument ten years in the makingIt’s fitting that we find ourselves speaking with Arturia’s product manager, Pierre Pfister, on the eve of Arturia’s 25th birthday. Since its genesis, the French company has moved gracefully between musical software and hardware; from the Modular V released in 2003 and designed in collaboration with Robert Moog, to 2012’s MiniBrute, which marked the start of an enduring and fruitful relationship with the world of analogue.
Multitudes lie between those poles: 2014’s Step range of compact controllers provided an elegant interface between USB, DIN MIDI and CV connectivity, quickly finding a home in electronic setups the world over. 2018’s Pigments heralded the company’s first original software synth, and 2020 saw the launch of the titanic Polybrute, a polyphonic six-voice analogue powerhouse. Now, the company boasts Eurorack modules, plugin effects, audio interfaces and more, confidently rubbing shoulders with some of the biggest names in those industries.
But the litany wouldn’t be complete without the V Collection, Arturia’s category-leading, ever-expanding suite of iconic software emulations. Version 10 boasts a whopping 39 instruments and the companion software, Analog Lab, packs thousands of presets designed by Arturia and dozens of artists. With parameters combined and streamlined for more intuitive performability and effects, Analog Lab combines a dauntingly vast array of instruments and presets that could easily overwhelm even the most confident users.
Now comes the AstroLab, touted by Arturia as a defining achievement in the company’s history.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“It’s everything we’ve ever wanted to achieve,” describes co-founder Frédéric Brun of the AstroLab. And it’s easy to see why.
The AstroLab’s raison d’être is to take the environment of Analog Lab and all its intricacies— its instruments, presets, effects and playlists— and load them into a fully-fledged, bespoke hardware instrument fit for the rigours of any stage or studio. It’s heavy, rugged and oozes elegance; from its colour screen to its wooden side panels.
“So yeah, launching the AstroLab is a good way to mark our 25-year anniversary,” Pfister laughs, before reflecting, “It’s quite a long time now since we started. I joined the company ten years ago. I’ve seen quite an amazing change in the company in that ten years. We were around 25 people, I think. Now we have 150 people in the office in Grenoble, [France]. So it’s exploded, massively.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“When I arrived, most people didn’t know about Arturia. We were just seen as a very small software company making niche products. It felt like it was only for some people, in their home studio, making bleeps and bloops! Now, it feels like Arturia is used by everyone. Whether professionals or amateurs, everyone has a link to Arturia in some way. It’s crazy.
“That’s the biggest thing that comes to my mind when I think about the evolution of Arturia: now we are one of the major actors in the music industry. When I meet artists, it’s very exciting to see everyone using our products. It makes our job super important..”
Be it creating a Eurorack case that can clip onto a hardware synth or the ultra-portable hybrid MicroFreak, Arturia’s modus operandi has long been to bridge workflow gaps for music creators.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
So why hold the AstroLab aloft as a singularly significant achievement? Well, for starters, it’s worth remembering that most famous developers’ stories start in hardware before moving into software. For Arturia, however, born at the technologically auspicious turn of the 21st century, things were different.
When the company’s classically-trained founders Frédéric Brun and Gilles Pommereuil met at the Grenoble Institute of Technology in the 1990s, their initial ambition was to create a software company. This they achieved: after launching in 1999, Arturia’s first product was Storm: an “end-to-end” production suite for the home computer that quickly found a faithful user base.
This flexing of the software muscle would meet one need, but in the process open up another. Users began to look for ways to bring their work in software back into the physical realm. “Musicians were still hesitant to take computers on stage at that time,” Pommereuil would later remember. “Many were coming to us, requesting hardware instruments that would embed our algorithms.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
Enter Origin, Arturia’s first hardware instrument, unveiled in 2009. Replete with physical controls, the Origin sought to meet that need with a modular-style workflow, onboard effects and a now-retro-looking colour screen.
Exactly what happened next is something of a mystery. “Arturia is now in a strategic position between hardware and software,” the company declares in 2024, “offering new ways to learn, create, and play, empowering musicians and allowing them to seamlessly move from one to the other. This balance was, and remains, a cornerstone of our strategy.” But has it always been?
Origin’s design was far from perfect, and it was expensive, but it was no flop by any means. Developments in the Origin’s vein were paused in favour of other projects— not dissimilar to how the iPad’s development was purportedly shelved to make way for the original iPhone amid a blooming smartphone market.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
As it was, Arturia’s Analog Factory Experience launched in 2008 along with the company’s first MIDI keyboard, presaging the arrival of Analog Lab not long after and signalling a renewed focus on the DAW as a primary production tool for the modern producer.
It’s also no mystery that the beginning of the following decade heralded a massive resurgence in analogue synthesizers, a large portion of which ostensibly presented their own variations on the theme of ‘small’.
Arturia saw the opportunity from a distance; announcing the fully analogue, monophonic MiniBrute in January 2012. Korg’s MS-20 Mini and Moog’s Sub Phatty— comparative shoo-ins from already vaunted synth companies— would both follow in 2013, but Arturia’s designs kept apace. The MicroBrute arrived in 2014 and two years later, the DrumBrute. 2018’s MiniBrute 2 would double down on the commitment to analogue with a patch bay and the accompanying invitation to integrate it into a modular synth environment.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
However, the success of these products was belied by Arturia’s continued preoccupation with the conundrum of how to reconcile the power of software with the joyous tactility and hands-on performability, which was all but fuelling the analogue renaissance.
“AstroLab is the conclusion of a long-standing dream that we’ve had forever at Arturia: to make the software and hardware integration seamless, and to be able to use all the sounds that we have in the V collection live,” explains Pfister. “The idea was already there when I arrived at Arturia. So we’ve been talking about doing it for more than 10 years!”
If it wasn’t clear already, the story of the AstroLab is, in many ways, the story of Arturia. But it’s also Pfister’s own story at the company. Joining as a software developer, many of his early years at the company were spent working on the V Collection before moving into the contiguous world of product design and eventually product management.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“All the work that we’ve done at Arturia on MIDI keyboards and the integration with Analog Lab is what has fuelled the idea of AstroLab,” he says. “So, it’s definitely one of the most important projects that we’ve worked on for years. It was already something that we’d tried to achieve with previous products.
“Origin was our first hardware instrument, embedding some of our software emulations. And AstroLab is the next step. It’s a dream we’ve had from the beginning. When Frédéric started to work on software emulations of vintage instruments, we quickly started to imagine how we could make that usable on hardware instruments as well.”
The phrase ‘the best of both worlds’ comes up more than once in our conversation. As a practitioner on the very boundary between those worlds, what exactly is the best of each, according to the Arturia manifesto? “Hardware is going to have the tactile feel, obviously,” considers Pfister, “but it’s also about having a limited and very purpose-oriented design. So you’ve got a set of features, and you don’t have to think about it. You’re limited to what the hardware is telling you that you can do.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“On software, you can do pretty much anything. And, if you want to add some more functionality, you just add a screen. So it’s great to have some limitations on hardware; to immediately be able to understand what you can do with it. But on software, you have the opposite. You have unlimited potential for creativity because you can do whatever you want.”
It follows that the AstroLab pulls few punches when it comes to those hardware limitations, leaning into the workflow introduced by Analog Lab with an astonishingly sparse control panel that could capably handle twice its bill of controls.
“With the AstroLab, it’s really about refining things to the smallest common denominator. Since you have so many different instruments [to choose from], with so many controls on each, it takes a lot of time to learn every instrument and to learn the differences between all of them. So those Macros, that we’ve worked on for years now with Analog Lab, prove to be very simple to understand and very powerful, even though it feels limiting at first.
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
“But once you’ve focused on finding a sound and tweaking the macros, it makes your music production workflow very fast. You don’t have to think about it, and you know exactly what you can do with a sound. It’s the end of a process where we saw how people are using Analog Lab with our MIDI controllers. We saw what’s actually used by people, and we saw how many people are making music today with those four macros and those four effects. And we felt like we didn’t want to add more controls just for the sake of it. We wanted to keep a synth that was super simple to use, even by people who don’t know anything about synthesis.”
It’s almost as if Arturia’s mission is as much to do with education and accessibility as it has to do with providing tools for seasoned professionals, we offer. “It’s democratising,” agrees Pfister. “Like, there’s so much complexity that you can have in hardware and with synthesisers in general, but we wanted to hide it as much as possible on this instrument and focus on performance, on finding inspiration.
“The first step needs to be as easy as possible— we need people to understand the benefits very quickly. And when they get interested in the instruments, then we can provide them with all the history, all the specifics about each of the instruments, and they can dive into the collection and understand everything about how the instruments work. But the first step needs to be very easy to understand: how they sound, and how they can interact with them. So that’s why we wanted to make a product that’s very simple at first sight, that everybody can understand. And then, if you want to go more in-depth, you can open the collection on a computer and change anything that you want.”
Image: Simon Vinall for MusicTech
The AstroLab, then, is every bit a fitting token for Arturia’s two-and-a-half-decade milestone. As Pfister talks, it’s clear that into this instrument the company has poured its history, its philosophy— and, needless to say, its technology. The AstroLab has been a decade in the making, but it promises a new chapter for Arturia that may well provide a blueprint for the decade to come, too.
“It’s the end of a very long path,” reflects Pfister. “Although, for us, it’s not the end; it’s also just the beginning! Because now we have the technology. And we can make pretty much anything based on that. It’s about putting all the pieces together, small blocks in very different areas, and combining everything in a single ecosystem that provides everything that we’ve worked on so far. It’s going to take some time, but I’m really hoping to see more and more people using our instruments on stage in the next couple of years. There’s no clear limitation on what we can do. It’s gonna be very exciting.”
The post Arturia’s AstroLab: The story of an instrument ten years in the making appeared first on MusicTech.

The Very Loud Indeed Co. Spring Sale The Very Loud Indeed Co. are currently offering generous discounts across their entire range of sample libraries and software synthesizer sound packs. 

Synth designer Love Hultén is crowdfunding a new book that lets you see inside his artful mindRenowned Swedish designer, woodworker extraordinaire and synth-crafter Love Hultén has announced the crowdfunding of his first monograph titled Apparatrum.
Apparatrum offers an in-depth insight into the idiosyncratic influences and inspirations behind the creativity of the self-described ‘alientech’ and ‘craftporn’ maker, whose reputation for quirky synths and offbeat electronic contraptions often precedes him.

READ MORE: The Minimoog Book by Bjooks is a visual deep-dive into the most famous synth in music history

This extensive overview of Hultén’s work celebrates a decade of his creations — which range from synth-shaped guitars to cacti and black goo synthesizers, while also revealing the technical detail and inspiration behind his craft.
Each piece is accompanied by a personal commentary by Hultén that explains his design process and eclectic influences, from retrofuturism and science fiction to Dieter Rams and mid-century design. Interspersed throughout are step-by-step case studies where the artist breaks down the creative process behind some of his best-known works, from the initial sketches to the finished product.
The book also features a personal biography, studio tour and exclusive behind-the-scenes sketches and photographs illustrating Hultén’s secretive working process. Readers will also enjoy a deep-dive into Hultén’s evolution as an artist and woodworker, as well as a rare tour of his Gothenburg workshop.
Comprising multiple paper stocks and bound in a dual-cover case with tipped-on images, Apparatrum is a must-have for fans of Hultén’s alientech oeuvre. Backers can choose between a signed or unsigned version of the book; the former costs $87 and the latter $113.
For serious collectors, a special slip-cased edition of the book is also available, featuring a graphic cover designed by Love Hultén himself. Priced at $165, this edition is signed by Hultén and is limited to 250 copies only.
Image: Courtesy of Volume, Love Hultén
Apparatrum is currently in its crowdfunding stage, with nearly half of its $104,010 goal met. According to the Volume, the campaign will end on 12 April 8pm, and the project will only commence if the funding goal is met.

Excited to announce the upcoming release of my new book APPARATRUM. The monograph offers an in-depth insight behind my work including detailed case studies, studio tours, drawings, personal observations and all that secret stuff I never share
Pre-order a copy at @voldotco pic.twitter.com/YlyX51rVp1
— Love Hulten (@HultenLove) February 6, 2024

Learn more about the campaign at Volume.
The post Synth designer Love Hultén is crowdfunding a new book that lets you see inside his artful mind appeared first on MusicTech.

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VZTec just debuted the beta release of the free Malibu plugin, a digital replication of the Singletone Malibu reverb and tremolo pedal.  The plugin is for Windows, MacOS, and Linux. VZTec states that it “allows you not only to incorporate the characteristic audio of the Malibu into your productions but also to remotely test the [...]
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