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
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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.
Read more music producer interviews. 
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. 

Chris Taylor resigns as CEO of MNRK Music Group; Sean Stevenson to lead companyStevenson to lead the company as of July 1, 2024
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Benn Jordan dives deep into the “bats**t” software Aphex Twin has used throughout his careerIn his latest video, musician and YouTuber Benn Jordan takes a deep dive into the gear used by electronic legend Aphex Twin on some of his most important works.
The video – titled The Batsh*t Software Aphex Twin used – begins with a look at Metasynth, a piece of software that allows users to “paint” to sound: “Metasynth more or less allows you to use sound as your medium and then colour represents panning and once you manage to make a sonic image that you like you can sequence it among others in software called Xx,” Jordan explains.

READ MORE: Spotify CEO Daniel Ek claims cost of making content is “close to zero”, internet outrage ensues

The software, which is still being updated and sold 25 years later, was instrumental in the making of Aphex Twin’s 1999 Windowlicker EP.
Next, Jordan delves into the tools used by Aphex Twin to create the complex, layered sounds characteristic of tracks like Bucephalus Bouncing Ball from his 1997 EP, Come to Daddy.

“The sound that’s making up most of the crazy sounds in the rest of the song [is] a ball being dropped on a hard surface. The audio of this sample is eventually torn apart in ways that nobody had ever heard before and it’s recycled into new, completely batshit insane sequences,” he explains. “The thing is in 1997, there really wasn’t a graphical destructive wave editor that could do this.”
According to Jordan, what we’re hearing on Bucephalus Bouncing Ball is Composers Desktop Project (CDP), a powerful, command-line-based sound design software that “did not have a GUI or front end at the time”.
While the user interface will feel extremely dated by today’s standards, it “still has functionality that I’ve not seen in any other software,” says the musician.
Some of the other softwares discussed in the video include PlayerPro, an early tracker used by Aphex Twin, and Super Collider, a high-level audio programming language created in 1996 by James McCartney.
Watch the full breakdown below.

The post Benn Jordan dives deep into the “bats**t” software Aphex Twin has used throughout his career appeared first on MusicTech.

Odyssey is Cercle’s new travelling 360-degree immersive concert installationParis-based production company Cercle has launched a travelling, 360-degree immersive concert installation called Cercle Odyssey.
The structure blends live music with a new type of visual storytelling. Cercle will collaborate with artists from various genres and backgrounds, but particularly with those who blend auditory and visual elements together.

READ MORE: Amsterdam venue The Other Side becomes world’s first nightclub to adopt L-ISA Spatial Audio

Odyssey utilises 2300 m² giant projection screens to envelop the audience. These are 10 to 12 metres (up to 40 feet) high, and up to 55 metres (up to 180 feet) long. Inspired by traditional movie screens, they showcase an array of high-quality images shot in 8K, “meticulously synchronised” live with music. Neels Castillon will oversee the direction of these videos.
Cercle Odyssey also has a commitment to sustainability, as all of the equipment (sound, light, and projectors) are sourced and rented locally. By opting for 29 projectors instead of traditional LED screens to illuminate the scenography, Cercle eliminates the need to transport a massive load of LED screens, therefore cutting down on emissions.
Interestingly, those who attend Odyssey shows will be subject to a strict ‘no phones’ policy. This is “to ensure that every audience member can fully immerse themselves in the experience”. Cercles hopes this will also foster “a shared sense of presence and connection”, and as a parting souvenir, each guest will still receive a folder of filmed content to keep.

“My current obsession is to create the shortest connection between the music played by the artist, the video narrative that we will present live on the screens, and the audience’s emotions,” says Cercle founder and creative director, Derek Barbolla.
“I want to connect these three things together at the deepest level and I believe this is still underdeveloped in the entertainment industry. If, by the end of a Cercle Odyssey show, I see people on the dance floor literally moved to tears, then I will consider it a success.”
The dates and locations for Cercle Odyssey 2025 will be announced soon, and you can pre-register now to be among the first to receive notification of these events.
Find out more about Cercle.
The post Odyssey is Cercle’s new travelling 360-degree immersive concert installation appeared first on MusicTech.

5 great promotion ideas for after the music is releasedUnlock the full potential of a music release with these five expert strategies designed to keep your audience engaged and attract new fans even after the music has been released.....
The post 5 great promotion ideas for after the music is released appeared first on Hypebot.