“The most advanced creative synthesizer ever”: Roland launches new FANTOM EX synth seriesRoland has expanded its FANTOM synthesizer platform with the new FANTOM EX series.
Dubbed a “new flagship synthesizer series for professional musicians and producers” and comprising three models – FANTOM 6 EX, FANTOM 7 EX and FANTOM 8 EX – FANTOM EX builds upon the FANTOM platform, offering new range of sound design, sequencing and performance features.

READ MORE: Roland Fantom-08 review: Road-testing the all-rounder workstation

Boasting powerful custom processors, as well as Roland’s fresh Analog Circuit Behaviour (ACB) engine and the JX-3P ACB Expansion, FANTOM EX promises an enhanced performance with precise operation.
The new synths also boasts an expansive selection of premium sound engines. In fact, it offers, according to Roland, the most sound engines currently available in any hardware instrument.
The ACB, Zen-Core, V-Piano, SuperNATURAL and Virtual ToneWheel provide a huge range of sounds and tones to experiment with. Each synth also comes with 11 sound expansions included as standard.
Fortunately, users with older FANTOM models will be able to access the FANTOM EX’s premium sound content through Roland Cloud. Sound expansions available include Vintage Model Expansions’ JD-800, JUNO-106, JUPITER-8, JX-8P, and SH-101, the German Convert V-Piano Expansion 01, the SuperNATURAL Acoustic Piano 3 Expansion, and more.
The FANTOM EX also has plenty of effects to take advantage of. With reverb, analogue filters and an updated Master FX, there are ample ways to tune and experiment with your overall sound.

A nifty panel allows users to shape their sounds with hands-on precision, with its colourful buttons, knobs and sliders. Multiple workflow options are also available to suit your preferred creative style. There’s the classic Roland TR-REC step sequencer, as well as real-time recording with piano roll editing.
The FANTOM EX can comfortably work with your preferred DAW. Roland has designed dedicated modes for Ableton Live, Logic Pro, MainStage, Cubase and Studio One.
Users can also easily connect a wide range of gear via the rear panel; the FANTOM EX has XLR combo connectors and eight 1/4 inch outputs. MIDI I/O is also available, as well as dual CV/Gate outputs.
Credit: Roland
The FANTOM EX range currently offers three different variations: the FANTOM 8 EX, boasting 88 hammer action keys, and the 76 note FANTOM 7 EX, and the 61 note FANTOM 6 EX. Each model is available for $4,199.99, $3,699.99, and $3,199.99 respectively.
For those intrigued by the FANTOM EX, you can find out more information at Roland.
The post “The most advanced creative synthesizer ever”: Roland launches new FANTOM EX synth series appeared first on MusicTech.

Justice’s Hyperdrama Coachella show set the bar for electronic music performances — againFor the past few years, the idea of a rock show and an electronic music show have become increasingly synonymous. Dance music stars like Kaskade and Illenium are filling the same stadiums that Foo Fighters are touring this summer, applying production rigs that are just as fiery and laser-filled.
But one electronic group has bridged the gap exceptionally.
They’re called Justice. And they bridge this gap at Coachella.
Every time Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay have released a new album, from † in 2007 to Hyperdrama, due out this Friday, April 26, they’ve celebrated with a live set at Coachella.

For their previous two albums, they played Coachella in the year following the album’s release dates. Fans had months to engage with the new music before experiencing their live show.
This time, like with the first album, the people at the festival were among the first in the world to experience the full power of their new music. It was loud. It was glitzy. It was a spectacle. It was a marked set for tens of thousands of attendees.
Gaspard and Xavier don’t need to do stage dives or light guitars on fire. From the moment they first appeared at Coachella’s Sahara tent in 2007, everything about their show from the sound to the lighting to the stage setup employed the type of epic collaboration that only bands can accomplish. This year was no different.
They kicked things off, as always, with a rendition of their ultimate classic: Genesis. It’s the only thing their fans want to hear at the beginning of their set. It’s the long-awaited signal that a new era of Justice has arrived.
Throughout the show, they pieced together reworked hitters like Love S.O.S, The Party and D.A.N.C.E. Those familiar tracks generated a relieved roar from the crowd. But when they dropped tracks from the new album, the relief turned into euphoria. New music is here, and Justice delivered it with punchy, distorted drops that felt like the sound was ripping through the night sky.

This is one thing that differentiates Justice’s live dynamic as a band. Where electronic acts often create wild original imagery for their shows that fills up massive LED screens, bands generally use screens to highlight the members themselves and then create custom lighting rigs. This is why Justice now plays at the Coachella Stage or Outdoor Theater. Sahara Tent is big enough to handle the Justice crowd, but the production is too stable with the giant screens.
Justice’s light show strobed, shifted and flashed with sheer intensity. They switched from white to prismatic from second to second. Sometimes, the strobes flashed downwards and Gaspard and Xavier remained stoic, effortlessly exuding cool in their white suits as the desert wind blew dust around them. It was a rare set where you didn’t know whether you wanted to watch or dance.
But that’s Justice’s sweet spot. It’s dance music, but they hook your attention with Genesis and don’t let go until they take you on an extraordinary journey wherein you visit Kevin Parker (only the recording of his voice on One Night/All Night; he unfortunately didn’t show up to sing) and then ends with drum ‘n’ bass and hard style.
Dance music fans who walked by to hear the last few tracks in those uptempo genres would have come running. Rock fans who saw the light show moving in line with the distortion also would have come running. Because as rock and electronic music become closer and closer, Justice will always be there to demonstrate how they were never so different in the first place.
The post Justice’s Hyperdrama Coachella show set the bar for electronic music performances — again appeared first on MusicTech.

White Elephant Audio Releases Free MONSTR Stereo Width Plugin
From the developer White Elephant Audio comes MONSTR, a plugin that provides up to six bands of stereo width control. I don’t really use stereo-width plugins too often. More often than not, I can coax out the results I want with a little mid/side EQing and reverb. That said, there is always a place in [...]
View post: White Elephant Audio Releases Free MONSTR Stereo Width Plugin

My Forever Studio: Erol Alkan’s secret for making sounds that connectErol Alkan has remained a major player in the indie/electronic production scene since his career took off in the 2000s. With remixes under his belt for Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers and Justice, his peers and friends can’t help but namedrop him when talking about their studio workflows — Chromeo, DJ Falcon, Alan Braxe and more of our podcast guests have all mentioned him when talking shop. Elsewhere, his production work for Mystery Jets, Late Of The Pier, LCD Soundsystem and even Duran Duran have cemented him as a go-to for guitar bands looking to break onto dancefloors.
In the 67th episode of My Forever Studio, we talk about programming Nokias, accidentally digging through Soulwax’s record collection, and how he can make any sound unique. You can check it out below on YouTube and on your favourite podcasting platforms.

The My Forever Studio podcast sees artists, producers and engineers create their dream fantasy Forever Studio, wherever they want in the universe. However, there are strict rules in the Forever Studio. Our guests are permitted a limited number of items in their creative space, so they must choose carefully. There will be nostalgia. There will be anecdotes. There may be gags. But there will be no bundles!
Last episode, we spoke with Grammy-winning British producer, Tourist. In the show, he tells us about the one app he can’t live without, why he doesn’t agree with “sneery” synthesizers and collecting gear as relics, and the importance of not shying away from presets.

Subscribe to My Forever Studio on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and check out all episodes so far via musictech.com

The post My Forever Studio: Erol Alkan’s secret for making sounds that connect appeared first on MusicTech.

Roland reveal Fantom EX range The replacement for Roland's flagship Fantom series includes all of the features introduced in the recent EX Upgrade option. 

SlatFusor PL from GIK Acoustics GIK Acoustics have added a curved panel to their recently introduced SlatFusor line-up.

RELEASE DETAILS
Release title:
HARD IN THA EVIL PLACE *DONT LISTEN AT 3AM*
Main artist name:
KingPollo
Release date:
26th Apr, 2024
https://publme.lnk.to/HARDINTHAEVILPLACEDONTLISTENAT3AM
#newmusic #Release #Music #indepedent #artist #hiphop #trap

Bitcoin analysts agree that BTC has ‘a lot further to run’Key on-chain metrics suggest a higher baseline for Bitcoin price now that the halving is complete.

Washington D.C. Copyright Society to Host 'Labor Unions and Creators' Panel with AFM, SAG-AFTRA, WGA, moreJoin the Washington, D.C. Chapter of the COPYRIGHT SOCIETY for an evening hybrid program discussing how labor unions represent creators. 

When: May 6, 2024 at 6:00pm - 8:00pm EDT

Where: The George Washington Law School and Virtual

Panel One, 6 to 7 pm: will include three unions that represent creators — SAG-AFTRA, WGA East, AFM. The unions protect creators in many ways, from collective bargaining to lobbying and more, and this panel will discuss what the union does and the various ways that unions protect creators. The panel will include discussion about some of the lesser-known protections that these unions provide to creators that creator representatives should know. SAG-AFTRA and the AFM have established funds that distribute both collectively bargained and copyright revenue streams to creators.

Duncan Crabtree Ireland, SAG-AFTRA

Tino Gagliardi, AFM

Ann Burdick, WGA East

Dan Navarro, singer-songwriter, performer

Moderator: Ann Chaitovitz, Professor GWU

Panel Two, 7:10 to 8 pm: will include two of these funds — The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund and the AFM Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund. The panel will explain the Funds, what they do and the different income streams that they distribute. Both panels will include a creator to provide insight from a creator’s perspective.

Roxanne Castillo, FMSMF

Stefanie Taub, The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund

Dan Navarro, singer-songwriter, performer

Moderator: Ann Chaitovitz, Professor GWU

A small networking reception will be held after the second panel.

Please note, no MCLE credit will be offered for this program.

Agenda

5/06

5:30 pm - 6:00 pm EDT

In Person Check-In

5/06

6:00 pm - 7:00 pm EDT

Panel One

Panel One will include three unions that represent creators — SAG-AFTRA, WGA East, AFM. The unions protect creators in many ways, from collective bargaining to lobbying and more, and this panel will discuss what the union does and the various ways that unions protect creators. The panel will include discussion about some of the lesser-known protections that these unions provide to creators that creator representatives should know. SAG-AFTRA and the AFM have established funds that distribute both collectively bargained and copyright revenue streams to creators.

SPEAKERS:

Duncan Crabtree Ireland, SAG-AFTRA National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator

Tino Gagliardi, AFM Executive Officer,

Ann Burdick, WGA East General Counsel

MODERATOR:

Dan Navarro, singer-songwriter, performer

5/06

7:10 pm - 8:10 pm EDT

Panel Two

This second panel will include two of these funds — The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Intellectual Property Rights Distribution Fund and the AFM Film Musicians Secondary Markets Fund. The panel will explain the Funds, what they do and the different income streams that they distribute. Both panels will include a creator to provide insight from a creator’s perspective.

SPEAKERS:

Roxanne Castillo, Film Musicians Secondary Market Fund General Counsel

Stefanie Taub, CEO of the The AFM & SAG-AFTRA Fund

MODERATOR:

Dan Navarro, singer-songwriter, performer

5/06

8:10 pm - 9:00 pm EDT

In Person Reception and Networking

Please join after the presentations for some light refreshments and networking.

More info at copyrightsociety.org

IBM moves deeper into hybrid cloud management with $6.4B HashiCorp acquisitionWith HashiCorp, Big Blue gets a set of cloud lifecycle management and security tools, and a company that is growing considerably faster than any of IBM’s other businesses.
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Milk & Honey now represents Travis Kelce and 80 other sports stars – but its world still ‘revolves around the songwriter’Lucas Keller talks Travis Kelce, Spotify, A&R, and where his company is headed
Source

More Mirrors (and a Little Audio) Mean More Laser PowerLasers are pretty much magic — it’s all done with mirrors. Not every laser, of course, but in the 1980s, the most common lasers in commercial applications were probably the helium-neon laser, which used a couple of mirrors on the end of a chamber filled with gas and a high-voltage discharge to produce a wonderful red-orange beam.
The trouble is, most of the optical power gets left in the tube, with only about 1% breaking free. Luckily, there are ways around this, as [Les Wright] demonstrates with this external passive cavity laser. The guts of the demo below come from [Les]’ earlier teardown of an 80s-era laser particle counter, a well-made instrument powered by a He-Ne laser that was still in fine fettle if a bit anemic in terms of optical power.
[Les] dives into the physics of the problem as well as the original patents from the particle counter manufacturer, which describe a “stabilized external passive cavity.” That’s a pretty fancy name for something remarkably simple: a third mirror mounted to a loudspeaker and placed in the output path of the He-Ne laser. When the speaker is driven by an audio frequency signal, the mirror moves in and out along the axis of the beam, creating a Doppler shift in the beam reflected back into the He-Ne laser and preventing it from interfering with the lasing in the active cavity. This forms a passive cavity that greatly increases the energy density of the beam compared to the bare He-Ne’s output.
The effect of the passive cavity is plain to see in the video. With the oscillator on, the beam in the passive cavity visibly brightens, and can be easily undone with just the slightest change to the optical path. We’d never have guessed something so simple could make such a difference, but there it is.

A new ‘music-only’ subscription tier is coming to Spotify, confirms Daniel Ek… and 4 other things we learned on the company’s latest earnings callSpotify is making good on its aim to become more than a music streaming service
Source

DIY Electronics Plus Woodworking Equal Custom Lamp
There is something about wooden crafts that when combined with electronics, have a mesmerizing effect on the visual senses. The Gesture Controlled DNA Wooden Desk Lamp by [Timber Rough] is a bit of both with a nice desk piece that’s well documented for anyone who wants to build their own.
Construction starts with a laser cutter being employed to add kerfs, such that the final strips can be bent along a frame tube to form the outer backbone of the DNA helix structure. Add to the mix some tung oil, carnauba wax, and some glue — along with skill and patience — and you get the distinct shape of sugar-phosphate backbone.
The electronics include an ESP8266 with the PAJ7620 gesture sensor that controls two WS2812B RGB LED Strips. The sensor in question is very capable, and comes with the ability to recognize nine human hand gestures along with proximity which makes it apt for this application. The sensor is mounted atop the structure with the LEDs twisting down the frame to the base where the ESP8266 is tucked away. Tiny glass bottles are painted with acrylic spray varnish and then glued to the LEDs to form the base pairs of the double helix. We thought that the varnish spray was a clever idea to make light diffusers that are quick and cheap for most DIYers.
We previously covered how this particular gesture sensor can be used to control much more than a lamp if you seek more ideas in that realm.

Sampling the sound of climate action with Madame Gandhi
Madame Gandhi discusses the process of creating samples using field recordings from Antartica, as well as the intersection between music and environmentalism.