Droplets: Physics-based sequencer plug-in Droplets is an innovative sequencer application/plug-in equipped with a built-in synth engine that boasts a rather unusual interface. 

Is Antelope Audio’s ZEN Quadro the best audio interface under $600?Paid partnership with Antelope Audio
Whether you’re a producer or musician, a podcaster or streamer, or just someone who revels in high-quality sound, your choice of audio interface is vital to the success of your projects. However, in such a busy and crowded marketplace, it can be hard to know where to start and the questions can seem endless: Does an interface have enough inputs and outputs for my needs? Will the preamps complement and support my mics and instruments? What difference do the converters make? Should I get the red one or the black one?!
Faced with such myriad choices, options and variables, many of us simply set a budget and then buy whatever feels right in that budget. After all, you get what you pay for… right? Well, not always — sometimes you get a lot more.
Take, for example, ZEN Quadro Synergy Core, the latest interface from pro-audio experts Antelope Audio. Built into a smart, compact and rugged casing, the ZEN Quadro is laden with high-end features normally found only on expensive pro-studio grade hardware — in fact, some of its capabilities outstrip even these high-cost options! Yet despite this, the ZEN Quadro is just $599/€599.

Flagship converters
The most important factor that determines an audio interface’s sound quality is the analogue-to-digital and digital-to-analogue converters. Antelope Audio has some prestige in this field, with much of its reputation built on its impressive converter and clocking technology.
This expertise is present in ZEN Quadro, which comes loaded with the exact same converters as found in Antelope’s high-end Galaxy interfaces. These have been paired with the company’s proprietary 64-bit AFC (Acoustically Focused Clocking) digital clock technology, ensuring hyper-accurate wordclock timing and ultra-low jitter.
Sonically, this translates to tremendous audio detail and clarity, accurate and spacious aural imaging, and an astonishing 130dB of dynamic range when operating at 192kHz/24-bit. This easily outperforms all other interfaces in its class (not to mention many in higher classes!).
Console-grade preamps and generous I/O
To maximise the power of the superb converters, Antelope Audio looked to the preamp designs of high-end mixing consoles of the 80s and 90s. The resulting 6-transistor design recreates those classic consoles’ clarity, colour and character while delivering up to 75dB of near-noise-free gain.
Antelope Audio ZEN Quadro. Image: MusicTech
ZEN Quadro boasts four console-grade preamps, one for each analogue input channel. All can be switched to line mode for connecting to synths and other line-level sources, whilst the first two – conveniently located on the front of the unit – can also switch to a Hi-Z mode for use with electric guitars, basses and the like.
In addition to these four analogue inputs, ZEN Quadro can handle an additional eight channels of digital input via its optical ADAT port, plus a further pair of digital channels served via a coaxial S/PDIF input.
Output provision is similarly generous: Alongside the main left/right monitor output jacks there’s a stereo coaxial S/PDIF digital output and pair of secondary line outputs, useful for feeding signals to external effects or for providing different monitor mixes to different performers. There’s also a pair of headphone outputs, each of which carries its own mix and is powered by its own independent headphone amp.
All of this adds up to an impressive 14 input channels and 10 output channels, more than enough for everything but the largest, most complex sessions. Moreover, all analogue ins and outs can be switched to DC-Coupled mode, allowing them to send and receive CV signals from analogue and modular synths.
Synergy Core
Some high-end interfaces feature onboard DSP to add audio effects and processors directly within the hardware. This takes some of the effect processing strain away from the host computer and allows effects to be applied to input signals without introducing any significant latency. This is useful for input conditioning with EQs, compressors and the like, and to ensure performers can hear properly how their performance will sound, which is crucial for vocalists.
What’s particularly exciting about ZEN Quadro is Antelope Audio’s Synergy Core’s processing power. ZEN Quadro’s unique combination of FPGA and DSP chips allows effects chains to be added to any of the interface’s analogue and digital input channels, as well as to the main DAW playback busses – ideal for monitor-calibration EQ and mastering processors.
Antelope Audio ZEN Quadro. Image: Antelope Audio
The interface comes pre-loaded with 37 effect processors covering all important bases – preamp emulations, EQs, dynamics processors and such – with more than 50 additional processors available. Many Synergy Core effects are modelled on classic boutique hardware too, injecting tons of class and character into your recordings.
Guitarists are particularly well served by Synergy Core, with a large collection of classic guitar amps to choose from, along with a stack of cabinet emulations that are so detailed they even allow the type and position of the (virtual) mics to be adjusted.
Synergy Core is made even more compelling by the interface’s ability to run fully standalone. Impressively, you can recall up to five custom-made presets, with many of your routing, parameters, and mixer channel settings accessible directly via the unit’s high-res colour display. This is perfect for live performances, allowing ZEN Quadro to act as the mixer for an entire band, or for it to take the place of large, bulky and expensive guitar rigs.
Multiple Hosts
As a USB Class Compliant device, ZEN Quadro will work with any host computer, operating system or device that supports the standard. If you’re on Windows, you’ll need an additional ASIO driver, which can be installed separately.
Antelope Audio Zen Quadro
The interface has rather a special trick up its sleeve here too: it sports a second USB-C port that can be connected to a second, simultaneous host, which allows audio signals to be routed between those hosts.
This unique feature is a big deal for podcasters and streamers, massively simplifying tasks such as routing audio from phone-in guests into the main program stream, or playing in music and sound effects. It is also ideal for musicians who use synths or effects running from a tablet as part of a performance.
Overall, then, it is clear that ZEN Quadro is punching far above its weight. No interface of comparable price can match ZEN Quadro’s impressive feature set and stunning audio fidelity, and no interface with comparable features can match ZEN Quadro’s amazing asking price.
So, perhaps all of those confusing audio interface buying questions can be boiled down to just one: “Where can I get a ZEN Quadro?!”
Learn more at Antelope Audio.
The post Is Antelope Audio’s ZEN Quadro the best audio interface under $600? appeared first on MusicTech.

Harrison Audio’s 32Classic Channel Strip plugin brings the iconic console sound to your DAWHarrison Audio has launched the 32Classic Channel Strip, a new plugin based on the legendary Harrison ‘32 Series’ console used by artists the likes of Michael Jackson, John Coltrane, Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and many more.

READ MORE: Sony Music CEO wants free streaming users to start paying – would it ever work, though?

Capturing Harrison’s classic console sound, the 32Classic Channel Strip features a new ‘Drive’ control for dialling in warm, harmonic saturation based on the transformer-coupled mic preamp in the 32Classic console.
The plugin boasts a 4-band parametric EQ section and full dynamics processing; Users can switch between Shelf and Bell mode on the high and low bands, while using the overlapping mid-bands to carve their sound. High-pass and low-pass filters are also included, which range from 25Hz to 3.15kHz, and 160Hz to 20kHz respectively, for a wide range of control from extreme to beautifully subtle.
In addition, the 32Classic’s fully featured compressor provides all the control you would expect in a premium standalone unit, offering three modes of compression and a sidechain filter with a sweepable frequency and a ‘listen’ function.
The three modes are as follows: ‘Comp’, which provides highly versatile, traditional VCA-style compression; ‘Level’, which offers a smooth gain reduction for subtly taming dynamics; and ‘Limit’, a fast-acting, aggressive style of compression for adding punch and energy to your tracks. There’s also an ‘Emphasis’ dial for those who want more vintage character.
Like on the original console, the 32Classic plugin’s Gate/Expander is designed to be highly intuitive. The gain-reduction metering offers instant visual feedback, allowing you to take full control of your sounds. The routing section, meanwhile, easily rearranges the processing order of the Gate/Expander, Compressor, and EQ for complete versatility.
The 32Classic is available in several formats including VST2, VST3, AAX, and AU as part of the SSL Complete and Complete Access subscriptions from $14.99/month, or perpetual purchase via the Harrison eStore.

Learn more at Harrison Audio.
The post Harrison Audio’s 32Classic Channel Strip plugin brings the iconic console sound to your DAW appeared first on MusicTech.

Warm Audio’s WA-19 microphone unveils a forgotten treasure that truly sparkles£209 / $199 / €219, warmaudio.com
It seems like every piece of classic studio gear is available in some form or another these days. The clue’s often in the numbers — an ‘87’ here, a ‘73’ there — not to mention the virtual emulations of historic recording facilities, vintage hardware and iconic acoustic spaces.

READ MORE: Warm Audio’s WA-44 expertly revives a vocal microphone design from the 1930s

When we heard about Warm Audio’s WA-19 dynamic microphone, we figured it would be a recreation of the legendary AKG D19c. While it’s surprising there hasn’t previously been a copy of this classic all-purpose dynamic mic from the 1960s, it’s no surprise that vintage specialist Warm Audio should be the brand to create it.
Long before the Shure SM57 earned its reputation as the go-to choice of cardioid dynamic mic for studio and live applications, the D19c could be found in the hands of everyone from maverick producer Joe Meek to the engineers at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, as well as in live and broadcast sessions. Most famously, the mic was used extensively on The Beatles’ recording sessions, notably on Ringo Starr’s drums, though as their engineer Ken Scott once recalled, “We used the D19 on everything… it was used on piano quite a bit.”
Available in nickel or black, the former (designated WA19N) more accurately evokes the look of the historic mic, while our review sample (a WA-19B in black) looks more modern. The mic is slim enough to be easily placed when close to individual drums for example, yet with its strong metal construction it feels reassuringly robust, weighing in at 200 grams.
The WA-19 on a stand
The fixed cardioid response is more focused than many other mics with the same pattern due to excellent off-axis rejection, particularly in the lower frequencies. This is useful when recording loud bands in small spaces, reducing boomy bleed from bass cabs. It also makes the WA-19 a brilliant choice for under-snare placement to minimise spill from the kick drum.
Low frequencies can be further tamed with the variable acoustic high-pass filter ring, which cuts up to 10 dB at 50 Hz without any discernible phase shift, while ventilated slots along the body behind the capsule lessen the bass tip-up of the proximity effect, facilitating the accurate capture of sources at close range.
Loud volumes are no problem either, with a quoted maximum level of 145 decibels, so heavy rock guitarists and screaming metal vocalists are well catered-for.
As you may rightly assume, the WA-19 is an incredibly versatile microphone, one which can be used for the same jobs as the ubiquitous SM57. However, at roughly twice the price of the ‘57 does it justify the price tag?
The WA-19 with its stand clip and padded pouch
The answer is a resounding “yes”. The WA19 has a sound characteristic unlike most other dynamic mics. With a superlative high frequency response, it expresses many of the characteristics of a small diaphragm condenser, such is the clarity and treble detail on offer.
For drums, the WA-19’s inherently snappy and sizzling response is superb, losing nothing of the zing from cymbals when used as an overhead (where you might otherwise select a condenser) and accentuating the crack of a close-mic snare drum without the need for much EQ sweetening. Toms are particularly well served as the mic is less prone to low-end ringing and boom than simpler mics without a high-pass-filter or the tuned-in proximity reduction.
While its sublime high-end is flattering to most sources, the WA-19 doesn’t quite reach the stratospheric heights of a condenser when ultra-bright extension is desired. Rather, its voicing favours applications where presence and brilliance is required to cut through busy mixes. This is made clear when used to record electric guitar. It can be used quite successfully positioned right up against the speaker grille sure enough, however judicious placing at a little distance away from the speaker yields superb results, capturing the full, direct tone of the guitar and amp without excessive room ambience. Experimenting with the variable high-pass filter pays dividends here, removing any low-mid muddiness to spotlight vivid musical communication and clarity.
Such is the level of articulation the WA-19 expresses, it effectively reproduces all the filigree detail and delicacy of acoustic instruments and voices. It even serves well enough as a vocal mic if options are limited.
The WA-19 on a snare
Many potential users will, of course, be attracted to the mic because of its documented use on Beatles recordings. After all, Waves’ Abbey Road plugins recreate pretty much all the outboard effects and acoustic spaces of EMI’s studios in the 1960s and beyond.
With all that to hand, it’s an obvious move to try to capture some of that magic by recreating the simple yet effective two-mic set up used to record Ringo’s drum kit. Using an AKG D12 (the direct descendent of the D20 used on those sessions) on bass drum with the WA-19 placed above the kit at head height, a pretty convincing splashy 60s drum sound is achieved when squashed through a Fairchild 660 compressor plugin.
Warm Audio’s WA-19 is a cracking, versatile dynamic microphone with a sophisticated sound that sets it apart from the competition. While its vintage vibe and cool retro looks will appeal to classic gear nerds and 60s freaks, this is a brilliantly capable, meticulous recreation that is ideally suited to modern pop and rock recording.
In the studio or on stage, the WA19 is a class act, delivering pristine audio in a multitude of situations. Try it on drums and electric guitar — you won’t be disappointed.

Key features

Dynamic, cardioid design
Variable 50 Hz acoustic high-pass filter
XLR connector
Frequency response: 30 Hz – 18 kHz
Max SPL: 145 dB
Impedance: 200 Ohms
Weight: 200 g
Colour: nickel or black
Comes with stand clip and padded pouch

The post Warm Audio’s WA-19 microphone unveils a forgotten treasure that truly sparkles appeared first on MusicTech.

Flow Mastering Suite from Softube Flow Mastering Suite comes equipped with signal chains created by professional engineers and offers an all-in-one solution for adding the finishing touches to a track. 

Classical Highlights for May 2024The releases that most impressed our reviewers this month cover the gamut of genres, highlighted by an all-star cast on a live recording from the debut run of the opera The Hours, based on the novel and film of the same name, composed by Kevin Puts (pictured). So much good music, so many good performances.

How to make Afrobeat music: Iss 814’s step-by-step walkthrough
Expert producer and veteran sample pack creator Iss 814 demonstrates how to make an Afrobeat track from scratch.

It's Here! Product Profile with Arturia AstrolabArturia just announced the release of AstroLab, their first-ever Stage Keyboard.  MC recently had the opportunity to talk with Pierre Pfister, project manager for Arturia, to get his insights about the AstroLab project.

Music Connection: Tell me about yourself. What do you do for Arturia? 

Pierre Pfister: I am a product manager. The role of the product manager at Arturia is to develop the idea of a product that we are going to start working on by interviewing users, making sure we identify features of a potential product that is solving people’s needs or people’s problems. Next, we figure out how we can address this problem and then we start to develop the concept for the product ultimately following through on the development from beginning to end, as well as come up with the marketing plan to promote it once the product has been launched. I have been working at Arturia for a while now, mostly on software products, but I have also worked on all the keylab products, our range of MIDI controllers. Right now, I am working mostly on Astrolab, which is a true milestone product for Arturia.

MC: I know this is Arturia’s 25th anniversary. Do you have any thoughts about that? 

PP: I am quite amazed by the progress and how far Arturia as a company has come because when I arrived 10 years ago at Arturia, we were a team of maybe 20 or 25 people. Back then, nobody knew about Arturia like they do now. Every time I was talking with some musicians, most of them did not know who the company was. Now, every time I meet people, and I tell them I am from Arturia, everybody knows about Arturia, which feels great.

These days, when we go into the field trying to meet users, we feel like everyone is using our products. Our AnalogLab and the V Collection are definitely some of the most frequently used pieces of software in the industry. In general, everybody that is making music nowadays uses at least some of our products. 

MC: What exactly is AstroLab? 

PP: AstroLab is Arturia’s stage keyboard. It’s an innovative and quite groundbreaking stage keyboard because it doesn’t rely on samples, unlike most of the stage keyboards on the market, AstroLab uses all the emulations that we’ve worked on for the past 20 years, making it possible to have more than 30 instruments, this includes everything from pianos, to expertly sampled analog synthesizers all in a single keyboard. With AstroLab you have an amazing amount of power and a huge range of high quality of sounds to work with. 

MC: How is AstroLab different from your other keyboard controllers that Arturia has released in the past? 

PP: AstroLab is not a controller. The thing to keep in mind is that it is producing its own sounds, which is what makes it so powerful. You have all the sounds built into AstroLab, so you can go on stage without the need for a computer, which is something that is new for Arturia. That said, AstroLab also works great as a MIDI controller because it is designed to be fully integrated with AnalogLab whenever you are working on your computer. AstroLab is designed to be used in the studio as much as using it on stage.

MC: Can you tell me about the core set of sounds that is included with AstroLab? 

PP: AstroLab has more than 1,300 premium grade sounds built into the keyboard. The sounds range from bread and butter sounds to classic emulations of vintage synthesizers. AstroLab delivers all the classic keyboard sounds that you will need when you are playing live on stage. Pianos, e-pianos, organs and more are all there as well as more classic synth patches and a full range of iconic Pads. We also have a lot of tribute sounds built into AstroLab from famous artists and keyboard players. This is great for all those musicians out there that are going to play in tribute bands or even people that have listened to all the classic keyboard sounds and they want to access them for their own music. 

MC: I understand that AstroLab has full integration with AnalogLab and that AstroLab comes with 22 gigabytes of user onboard storage, to load your own sounds. 

PP: Correct, you have 22 gigabytes of user storage available in AstroLab. Most of the sounds we have are presets which in terms of memory are very small, just a couple of megabytes for each of the presets. This means you can have thousands of presets on the unit with room to spare.  Where you are going to have to be careful is when you start to use sample-based sounds which will take up a lot more memory. But for now, most of the synthesizers and pianos that we have are physical or circuit modeling. Also, we will be adding increasingly sample-based products soon after Astrolab is released. We have the augmented strings and augmented pianos, augmented woodwinds libraries planned to be integrated into Astrolab in future firmware updates. 

It is super easy to customize your own sounds on AstroLab and create layers and splits and things like that. On Astrolab, it is easy to quick edits and adjust typical when you are rehearsing or jamming with your friends.

MC: Can you tell me a little bit about AstroLabs’ DAW integration? For example, I use Pro Tools. Are you able to set it up as a MIDI controller? 

PP: Yes AstroLab is going to work for most applications as a MIDI keyboard. You can send MIDI control changes with the eight knobs on the front of the keyboard and you can assign those CCs to some of the typical DAW parameters if you want. AstroLab is designed to be integrated seamlessly with AnalogLab our flagship sample based software instrument. 

MC: Let us go back and talk about the user interface of AstroLab. I see that all the controls are streamlined for live performances, you can load like songs and set lists and things like that. Can you elaborate on that? 

PP: Setting performance playlists in AstroLab is super easy. Your playlists are going to be a list of songs and for each song, you can have up to ten presets that are directly accessible on the front of the keyboard. The preset buttons just above the keyboard that you can click to load any of the ten presets of each song. You can have as many songs as you want and for each song, you have 10 presets. So, it is quick to go from one song to another and in each song to use up to 10 presets very quickly, to switch between the 10 presets very quickly. 

MC: At launch, you are going to have a 61 version, key version of Astrolab. Are there 49 and 88 versions of Astrolab planned also? 

PP: We are working on the other versions. I do not have info I can really share about when they would come out.

You can find out more about AstroLab, AnalogLab and other Arturia productsat arturia.com.The post It's Here! Product Profile with Arturia Astrolab first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

Hipgnosis Songs Fund’s catalog turned out to be worth more than a lot of people thought.In light of Blackstone's latest bid, MBW crunches the numbers on what HSF spent on assets... and what they're worth now
Source

An appeals court rules that VC Fearless Fund cannot issue grants to Black women, but the fight continuesThe court ruling said that Fearless Fund’s Strivers Grant likely violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bans the use of race in contracts.
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Chainlink co-founder notes importance of oracle networks following NYSE glitchSergey Nazarov explained how Chainlink could remedy centralized points of failure inherent in centralized information processing systems.

Aiken’s Secret Computing MachinesThis neat video from the [Computer History Archives Project] documents the development of the Aiken Mark I through Mark IV computers. Partly shrouded in the secrecy of World War II and the Manhattan Project effort, the Mark I, “Harvard’s Robot Super Brain”, was built and donated by IBM, and marked their entry into what we would now call the computer industry.
Numerous computing luminaries used the Mark I, aside from its designer Howard Aiken. Grace Hopper, Richard Bloch, and even John von Neumann all used the machine. It was an electromechanical computer, using gears, punch tape, relays, and a five horsepower motor to keep it all running in sync. If you want to dig into how it actually worked, the deliciously named patent “Calculator” goes into some detail.
The video goes on to tell the story of Aiken’s various computers, the rift between Harvard and IBM, and the transition of computation from mechanical to electronic. If this is computer history that you don’t know, it’s well worth a watch. (And let us know if you also think that they’re using computer-generated speech to narrate it.)
If “modern” computer history is more your speed, check out this documentary about ENIAC.

Thanks [Stephen Walters] for the tip!

Machinedrum: “That’s what’s exciting about making music: learning, evolving and experimenting”A cursory web search of ‘demoscene’ will lead you down one of cyberspace’s most esoteric rabbit holes. You’ll find website designs straight out of 1998, archives of trippy electronic music from 1999, and bizarre CGI music videos from competitions held in 2000. This all transpired from a late-90s/early-00s online movement, the demoscene, which saw creatives exploring the early internet. They’d pirate software, share music files, build video games, and socialise in IRC chatrooms, forming a unique subculture.
Running in parallel to the demoscene was an even more niche movement: the tracker scene. Here, music producers used software-based trackers — Aphex Twin, Calvin Harris and Venetian Snares are notable users of these early DAWs — to create electronic music on their home computers, complete with CRT screens. Producers would then head to the web to share their music, samples and video game scores with other tracker producers and demoscene fans.
In this online community, in an IRC channel dedicated to tracker music (#trax), a young Travis Stewart in North Carolina found his calling as an electronic music producer. After producing 11 albums as Machinedrum in the past 20 years, he’s revisiting his tracker and demoscene roots to find out “what it would be like to collaborate with my younger self,” Travis says. “Me in the 90s to early 2000s, when I was really excited and bewildered by this world of electronic music…this amazing community of tracker musicians.”
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
You’re not exactly being thrown back 30 years when listening to Machinedrum’s new album, 3FOR82, released on Ninja Tune. The LP features on-point vocal performances from luminary artists including Mick Jenkins, Duckwrth, Kučka, Jesse Boykins III and Tinashe, and — true to Machinedrum fashion — mashes together hip-hop, d‘n’b and IDM. It feels more innovative than retrospective. But the nostalgia lies in Travis’ production techniques, and not just in the gear and software he used.
“After my past two albums and collaborating with vocalists, I wanted to be more intentional this time about the narrative of 3FOR82,” Travis tells us over a video call from L.A.
To build a concept, he conducted interviews with each vocalist just before they’d head into the studio, also recording these conversations with the same model VHS recorder his family owned in the 90s, no less. Travis asked each collaborator one crucial question: “If you were in the room with your younger self, what would you say to them?”
3FOR82 by Machinedrum
“Some people seemed to be very inspired by the question and their answer would turn into, like, a 10-minute response,” Travis says. “But I wouldn’t then say, ‘Okay, let’s write a song about that.’ I would just hope that it would affect their subconscious in a way that would influence what they wrote; whether it was more literal, like a love letter to their younger self, or if there was just some certain aspect of the inspiration behind the song, or if they tapped into vocal style from when they were younger. Basically, having that be somewhere in their inspiration was important to me.”
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
Travis was careful about how he enlisted the vocalists. Usually, he’d hit up friends and singers he’d already worked with, either as Machinedrum or as a producer on their projects, so that rapport was already established. This includes longtime friend Jesse Boykins III, who is credited as the album’s co-executive producer and lent his vocals on the tracks WEARY and GODOWN. For this album, though, Travis wanted to connect with new artists — and Jesse was invaluable in making that feel natural.
“[Jesse] kept giving me different vocalist ideas for songs, often people he was directly connected with, and they were so spot on,” Travis says.
“He’s a great songwriter and is really good at putting vocalists outside of their comfort zone. He’ll challenge certain things or, if he knows that the vocalist is on a roll, he’ll just stay completely uninvolved if he needs to.”
The diverse vocal performances beautifully complement Travis’ experimental production. From Aja Monet’s introspective dialogue in ORACLE and Jesse’s emotive performance in GODOWN to Mick Jenkins’ defiant bars in WEARY and Topaz Jones’ aggressive verses on RESPEK, the album gives each vocalist space to shine. As many producers know, getting vocalists to perform their best in a session is really a skill in itself.
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
“A lot of times,” Travis explains, “you get into the studio with the new vocalist and the first hour or two, you’re trying to find some sort of rapport or playing them a bunch of beats and hoping something grabs their attention. Having Jesse there made the environment more friendly and open, which definitely helped in how the songs came together so quickly.”
Travis’ idea for the 12-track album came during a trip to Joshua Tree, California, on his 41st birthday. He then started building up a library of sounds – “thousands and thousands of sounds; I only scratched the surface with this album” — and gave himself a time limit to pull new ideas together quickly.
“I’d have an hourglass on my studio desk and turn it over when I started working on an idea. When the hourglass ran out, I’d walk out of the studio for five or 10 minutes, come back and take a listen to the track, and if I felt like it was really worth continuing to flesh out whatever the idea was, then I would.
“And if I just really didn’t like it, that was another reason for me to move on and also not try to rescue the idea. The point was to just keep moving forward.”
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
With his thousands-strong sample library, Travis had a DOS emulator running Impulse Tracker, which was released as freeware in 1995. He’d load his old tracker projects and samples into the software until he heard something that caught his ear — a loop, kick sound, a synth, anything with an “old retro kind of 90s tracker aesthetic” — and recorded those moments into Ableton Live, which ran in the background. Sometimes, he’d turn those sounds into virtual instruments within Ableton to play chromatically.
After a month, Travis had around 45 tracks; not bad for a few weeks of hourglass rotations. The final 12 tracks on the album, which he whittled down based on his mood (“those 12 tracks were 12 different tracks each month”) traverse hip-hop with samples from Tracklib, liquid drum ‘n’ bass with mellow synth parts, and experimental backdrops for the likes of Jesse Boykins III and Tanerélle’s vocals.
For Travis, producing across a variety of genres comes fairly naturally. He explains that it comes from his earliest days in music production “when I was very focused on experimenting with anything I wanted to. When I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I was just constantly emulating what I was hearing and trying to recreate other people’s music, which was really exciting to me. I’d find my own sound within that inspiration. I think that’s inside of my DNA — I’m always exploring different sounds based on whatever my tastes are at the time because that’s what I find exciting about making music: learning, evolving and trying new things.”
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
So what remains appealing about Impulse Tracker? Why not try new gear or a newer, more traditional DAW? Is it all just for the nostalgia?
“In the 90s, there were a lot of producers, especially bedroom producers, using trackers because they wielded a lot of power despite being essentially free software,” Travis says. “When I was younger, I would read different music technology publications that would feature my favourite producer’s studios, and they were just filled with massive amounts of gear and it seemed so unattainable for me…[Making electronic music] is so much more possible now and there’s this amazing support within the tracker community.”
Another bonus for Travis was that the small size of tracker files meant they were easy to share online with fellow tracker producers and demoscene fans. Small file sizes can seem trivial now — we’ve got virtual instruments that take up hundreds of gigabytes — but it was a game-changing factor during a time of dial-up and cable modem internet. Impulse Tracker’s file compression also resulted in a distinct sonic characteristic that Travis likens to vintage samplers, like an Akai MPC 60 or E-Mu SP-1200 .
“The way that Impulse Tracker, and a lot of trackers, processes the samples gives it this very…it’s hard to describe the sound, but it’s somewhere between lo-fi and hi-fi.
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
“Your capabilities of decimating a sound and making something really grimy and saturated were just that. There were so many possibilities for downgrading samples to the point where they would become unrecognisable. And then eventually you’d get DAWs like Ableton and FL Studio, with the goal of making things sound as professional and clear and hi-fi as possible. So going back to those old versions of Impulse Tracker and turning off any hi-fi settings gave it this really endearing, unique sonic quality. And, yeah, there’s a nostalgia there, but there’s also an interesting rawness to the sound that I really like.”
Travis was making his tunes on Impulse Tracker until around 2005, at which point he gradually switched to Ableton Live. He says that if you listen back to his earlier releases, you can actually hear a change in the sonics and in the song structures, the latter being a consequence of the change from a vertical sequencer to a linear DAW.
He’s pretty much been hooked on software his whole life, rather than getting too caught up in which hardware synth or drum machine to buy next. He keeps his studio in LA pretty minimal, sometimes capturing specific synth sounds when he goes to a friend’s studio. Or, he’ll buy a piece of gear, collect some sounds from it and then let it go.
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
With a musical career so focused on software and computers, it’s no surprise that Travis tried tinkering with AI to create music. He’s previously said that new AI developments are “super interesting and equally terrifying” – rightly so — but his experience with ChatGPT was less than fruitful. And not just in his attempts to make it produce an Aphex Twin track…
“I was getting ChatGPT to give me Csound code to create experimental sound design. And it was cool to get back into Csound and see what was possible there, but chat GPT wasn’t really yielding the best results, as it’s known to do.”
So he ditched the idea of AI being able to make the music he wanted. Instead, he used ChatGPT to stylise his social media captions with underscores, cryptic symbols and abbreviations that are reminiscent of demoscene. These messages also appear in //3FOR82//’s accompanying zine and vinyl package, which is a printed homage to demoscene, tracker culture and the retrofuturism of the early 2000s. There’s also a nod to Californian cyberpunk magazine Mondo 2000, which was published in the 80s and 90s.
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
Travis and I opine that much of what we now see as futuristic has already been imagined and referenced by the likes of Mondo 2000 and other forward-thinking figures and brands. One example is Discord, a community platform that’s reportedly seeing 29 million daily users communicate and collaborate with like-minded people (producers, gamers, even workplaces) in dedicated servers and channels. It sounds novel but it’s essentially a modernised version of IRC — and Travis has been using it as such.
“A lot of those same people that I would talk to on IRC are all on their respective Discord servers now,” Travis says.
“I grew up in the middle of nowhere in North Carolina, and I didn’t have that real, in-person, collaborative aspect to what I was doing. And so my only opportunity to learn from other producers was to literally download their tracker files and look at how they made a song, and, you know, use the same samples that they used, because a lot of those samples are being passed around within the community.”
Travis can look back at the “huge growth periods” in his career and attribute them to times when he was collaborating. Whether in IRC channels or in person, he’d discover new concepts, processes and techniques to implement into the Machinedrum project. In the tracker community, he’d find inspiration from the breaks, loops and sounds that were circulated around the scene. He’s now reviving that same movement within his own fanbase, with hopes that the producers in his community can grow, too.
His Discord-based COMPO battles see fans and fellow producers take a Machinedrum-supplied sample pack and create something new.
Travis Stewart AKA Machinedrum.Image: Ben Bentley for MusicTech
“I’ve always tried to find some way of incorporating a community aspect to what I do,” Travis says. “Because I recognise the importance of how that can help other artists grow, but even myself grow, you know…Just doing all these beat battles and learning about how other people take the rules that I apply to each competition and really run with it.”
Travis and his community maintain the same ethos of those early demoscene and tracker scene channels; the idea of creating for creation’s sake, not to release or sell music. “There’s a certain aspect of it that you want to impress everyone, but at the same time, you know the stakes aren’t so high.”
“We all listen to the music together and celebrate these moments in time through the beat battles.”
As Machinedrum, Travis has embraced key concepts from demoscene culture — collaboration, curiosity and creativity — and kept them alive as we collectively grapple with early versions of new technology. He’s finding ways to engage an online community and explore new technologies, all while keeping letting the past inform the present.
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The post Machinedrum: “That’s what’s exciting about making music: learning, evolving and experimenting” appeared first on MusicTech.

Intentionally Overly-Complex Clock is Off to a Good Start[Kelton] from Build Some Stuff decided to create a clock that not only had kinetic elements, but a healthy dose of Rube Goldberg inspiration. The result is a work in progress, but one that looks awfully promising.
The main elements of the design are rotating pieces that indicate the hours and minutes, but each hour is advanced solely by the satisfying physical culmination of multiple interacting systems. Those systems also completely reset themselves every hour.
Each hour, a marble run kicks off a short chain reaction that culminates in advancing the hour.
At the top of the hour, a marble starts down a track and eventually tips over a series of hinged “dominoes”, which culminate in triggering a spring-loaded ratchet that advances the hour. The marble then gets carried back to the top of the device, ready for next time. Meanwhile, the domino slats and spring-loaded ratchets all get reset by a pulley system.
There’s still some work to do in mounting the motor, pulley system, and marble run. Also, a few bugs have surfaced, like a slight overshoot in the hour display. All par for the course for a device with such a large number of moving parts, we suppose.
[Kelton] has a pretty good sense how it will all work in the end, and it looks promising. We can’t wait to see it in its final form, but the tour of clock so far is pretty neat. Check it out in the video, embedded just under the page break.
As for the clock’s inspiration, Rube Goldberg’s cultural impact is hard to overstate and our own Kristina Panos has an excellent article about the man that might just teach you something you didn’t know.

Triton Audio launch D2O Plugin Triton Audio's first software release recreates their discontinued D2O Microphone Preamp unit.