Native Instruments release Scene: Saffron Designed with media composers in mind, the latest additon to Native Instruments’ Komplete range combines a collection of cinematic sounds with a simple and intuitive user interface.

Late Motörhead leader Lemmy brought back to life using AI – to appear in new installment of World of TanksWhat good is AI if not to bring back dead rock stars for a virtual tank battle?
Motörhead legend Lemmy Kilmister is set to make an appearance in the MMO warfare game World of Tanks Modern Armour. Joined by Rob Zombie and Motörhead mascot Warpig, the trio will feature as playable 3D commanders in the game’s new Metal Fest DLC series.

READ MORE: Entries now open for first-of-its-kind AI songwriting competition, where one lucky winner performs with Kaskade

Players will have the opportunity to command their tanks with Lemmy’s AI-generated voice and customise their war machines with band-themed cosmetics and skins. 2D commanders of the Motörhead band members are also at the ready, alongside a collection of “seriously cool” cosmetic items and goodies.
“Modern technology has enabled us to have Lemmy fully integrated into the game, which felt appropriate given that this is exactly the sort of game he played and avidly enjoyed,” said the band.
Brendan Blewett, World Of Tanks Modern Armour audio director, said that they created an AI emulation of Lemmy’s voice using “original voice samples from his private unpublished archives, including interviews and raw in-booth recordings.” The project was completed with the guidance of the Motörhead members.
“For Lemmy, it was obvious that using a sound-alike would lack an important level of authenticity”, he added.
The inclusion of these rock legends in World of Tanks Modern Armour follows a trend of incorporating music icons into the game. Megadeth’s Vic Rattlehead and Iron Maiden mascot Eddie famously featured in last year’s Metal Fest.
This year, the epic event kicks off on 30 July and runs through 20 August, promising three weeks of intense action for players to experience. Past offerings from Maiden, Megadeth and Sabaton will also again be available during the period.
Watch the trailer for World of Tanks Modern Armour below.

Learn more at World of Tanks.
The post Late Motörhead leader Lemmy brought back to life using AI – to appear in new installment of World of Tanks appeared first on MusicTech.

Why indie labels are mastering the art of reissuing musicArthur Verocai, Mary Clark, Gloria Ann Taylor, William Onyeabor, The Supreme Jubilees, — all artists that, before recent reissues, you’d likely never heard of. Thanks to the relentless devotion of independent labels and crate diggers, these artists and countless others have seen a second wave of renown and success. With their music being remastered and redistributed, these old-school gems have found their way to DJs, dancefloors and streaming algorithms, which are letting them shine decades past their original release.

READ MORE: How will young people learn music and production in a post-AI music industry?

Reissuers spend countless hours securing audible gold to democratise access to PVC slices of tropical cool; music from far off lands that would only exist with exorbitant price tags, if available at all. If done right, reissuing contextualises the music and the culture it originates from – distributing revenue fairly and ultimately bringing new attention to deserving artists.
This, however, is no easy job. So, here, we learn from some of the most interesting reissuing labels around, the artists who’ve benefited from the process, and an award-winning audio technician who’s remastered and pressed much of this work to glossy new vinyl.
The process
“There’s always a story, and never an easy licence”, says Kevin Griffiths, who founded the wonderfully eclectic Isle of Jura Records in 2016. First, you choose a piece of music that deserves to be more accessible. Next, through a lot of “mundane detective work” you find the best quality physical copy you can and contact the licence holders – preferably the artist and original record label but, failing that, the producer, writer, or artist’s next of kin. From here, you work out a licensing arrangement; commonly five years of streaming, plus the remastering, repressing, and distribution of newly-pressed physical media.
Some reissues come together easily, such as Parisian Afrobeat and Afrofunk label Hot Casa’s reissue of Benin singer Stanislas Tohon’s killer 1985 four EP Owhaaou…! — as the French label had mutual connections with Stanislas. Others… not so much. Julien Le Brun, the label’s founder took seven years and eight or so trips into Togo to make its Togo Soul 2 compilation, a 13-track treasure-trove of rare and unusual music from the West African state.
A successful reissue often relies on strong personal connections and networks to find the original physical media and the original artist or label. Hot Casa’s musical connections, as well as the shared culture and language between France and its former colonial subjects in sub-Saharan Africa, are vital assets to founder Hot Casa’s reissuing catalogue.
Napo de mi Amor, an artist whose music was reissued by Hot Casa for their ‘Togo Soul’ compilation series.
When mutual connections aren’t present, it gets tricky. The quest to find the original creator of great music has even led Isle of Jura, based in Australia, to hire a private detective to hunt down the original creator of a record that has never had a full release, from 1982 New York.
Griffiths says he was introduced to the PI through a friend at another label who’d also used his services. It’s “unusual” for the label to go down this route, and this was the only time Isle of Jura had done it, but all other avenues were exhausted and there was little info online. Although he was successful in finding out who the artist was, they’d unfortunately passed away. Griffiths managed to find a family member, but at the time of writing, no licensing agreement has been arranged.
Even when you find the original creators, it isn’t certain that it will result in a reissue. After many hours, Hot Casa tracked an artist who wouldn’t give the rights over on religious grounds, as they became a devout pastor. The label has over 20 pieces of music they want to reissue but can’t because they either can’t find the person or said person won’t give permission.
The ethics
The benefits that reissuing provides to the original artists, both artistically and monetarily, are undeniable. Although some relationships between label and artist are inevitably shaped by the historical legacy of colonialism, the original artist still benefits greatly and withholds all artistic licence and responsibility. The benefit may be mutual, but it is far from exploitative; it’s symbiotic.
However, we can’t ignore streaming platforms’ insufficient contribution to original artists or labels. Josh FB from Discoteque Tropicales, a London-based brand specialising in Zouk and other classic French African dance music, adds that, despite the significant reach streaming can provide, this isn’t “sufficient to support artists”. Purchasing digital copies of music, if and when possible (particularly off Bandcamp, where fans have paid artists and their labels $1.3 billion to date), is still, and probably always will be, better than listening on streaming services.
Ronnie Lion x Isle of Jura
When considering the circumstances, however, even limited income from streaming is better than nothing — which may be what these artists would receive if their music stayed locked in insular markets, and only available on physical media; and this is before we consider any future potential revenue this new-found audience could provide through vinyl sales and concerts further down the line.
Reissuing is a positive force economically. Culturally, however, there is a fine line to tread; like timeless art or historical objects in museums, care must be taken to properly contextualise the artist and the art to pay homage to their work and the culture that created it.
It wasn’t made in a vacuum — and a reissue is merely a reflection of the powerful work already done by someone else; the limelight is theirs. Focusing the story on this, rather than picking it up from where and when the label found it, is essential to not whitewashing art and erasing the culture that made it. This should be as much of an act of historicising and story-telling as remastering, marketing, and distribution.
Sound quality
Some audio purists debate about reissues, often claiming that they’re not reproduced from analogue source material and, therefore, are of lower audio quality.
There is some truth to this. It’s unlikely you’d find the original lacquer cutting of an old recording, especially rare productions from developing countries. However, the reason the quality may be poor isn’t due to digital technologies poisoning the analogue process – particularly in this context.
Digital doesn’t necessarily mean worse. In fact, we’ve never had access to better-sounding material thanks to all the digital tools that can complement the work done by analogue workhorses. This “wasn’t true in the 90s” due to limited technologies and “flawed” CD formats, says Frank Merritt, leading technician and owner of The Carvery – a multiple Grammy-nominated vinyl cutting and mastering studio in East London. But it certainly is now. “It’s all contextual, and a hybrid approach is best.”
Frank Merritt of The Carvery.
Access to the original master copy, if made by a purely analogue process and if stored in perfect condition, would likely create the best copy reissue. Since this is far from likely, however, the best quality reissues today are made via hybrid technologies. Merret says that digital tools can remove “80 to 90 per cent of clicks to clean up a damaged physical copy” – a real asset for potentially damaged physical media.
The main pieces of tech Merret uses for reissues are the following, although he stresses he doesn’t always need them all:

Neumann W492 and W495B equalisers
Maselec MTC-1X Mastering Transfer Console
Thermionic Culture Phoenix tube compressor
Maselec MEA-2 equaliser
Klark-Teknik DN-50 reverb
Gyraf Audio Gyratec XXI Magneto-Dynamic Infundibulum multi-band analogue soft clipper
CEDAR restoration software
iZotope RX

All things considered, putting new material to wax is best done via analogue. There have been cases of big labels skimping on quality for profit – which led the excellent folk and country duo Gillian Welch and David Rawlings to press their own cuttings following the Dutch label Music On Vinyl using a CD source to make “poor–sounding” vinyl copies of Ms. Welch’s 2003 album Soul Journey.
“What people do nowadays is take a digital file and just run vinyl off that,” says Rawlings. “In my mind, if we were going to do it, I wanted to do it the way the records I love were made – from analogue tapes.” So, in 2000, the pair spent $100,000 on their own record-cutting lathe to make sure the labels pressed analogue-sourced material.
Reissues shouldn’t be held to the same standards as a new, original pressing. The remastering process for a reissue is just doing the best it can to improve flawed copies of old music which can’t be re-recorded, and which otherwise wouldn’t be heard at all.
As Zag Erlot, the man behind the hit YouTube channel and mix series My Analog Journal, says: “When you know the reissuing label won’t disappoint, I cannot see a reason why anyone would spend hundreds, if not thousands, on an original pressing that is probably not going to be in great condition. At the end of the day, a DJ shouldn’t play a tune with lots of crackles.”
The people behind the music
We should be grateful, then, to those who undertake the mammoth task of a successful reissue. It’s an act that can mean far more than may appear at first glance. Yes, previously unheard and unappreciated music can now grace more peoples’ ears and the turntables of enthusiasts, but what’s more beautiful is that new life that can be given to original artists following a successful reissue.
Sometimes, this simply reignites a passion; a wonderful thing when four decades or so after your work, someone tracks you down and wants to invest in your art and spread it to new listeners.
Other times, it starts a chain reaction worthy of a biopic. Reissues have shone a light on genius artists, who are now perhaps forgotten and stuck in everyday drudgery – inspiring a second wind in their musical career. Sometimes, this even results in new music and tours decades after their original creations.
This is best summed up by Discoteque Tropicales, whose killer reissue of Guadeloupean Manix’s 1988 EP Voyager, inspired the artist to say: “Now in my 70s, what a joy it is to discover my songs are being loved in new parts of the world that I could never have imagined them spreading to in the mad 80s. A reissue is like a renaissance, a second wind that reaffirms my belief that both music and love will never die.”
Discotheque Tropicales with Manix following his reissue
One particularly impressive story is Who is William Onyeabor?, a 2013 compilation album by William Onyeabor released by Luaka Bop. This was the first official reissue of the artist, who was widely heard in Nigeria in the late 70s and early 80s, but remained reclusive and had little influence outside of his home country.
Following the reissue, William found a new international interest in his music. In 2014, Noisey released Fantastic Man, which documented Onyeabor’s legacy as well as Noisey’s attempt to track him down for an interview. His song Fantastic Man was also featured in a television commercial for Apple’s iPhone 7 Plus in 2017, as well as a 2023 commercial for H&M. Onyeabor died at his home in Enugu from natural causes in 2017, aged 70.
The consequences
Pioneering artists, particularly from the broad musical umbrella of Afrobeat and Afrofunk, made (and still make) timeless music – but it’s often unavailable to those outside of their regional markets. Through significant effort, investment, and time taken, reissuing labels and their remastering engineers change this.
So, let’s salute the record hunters trawling through dusty boxes in far-off lands or those closer to home. They take the time to find lost gems, restore their natural shine, and democratise access, so everyday people like myself can feel the warm glow of cool success as we get a rare record out and place it gently onto the platter.
The post Why indie labels are mastering the art of reissuing music appeared first on MusicTech.

Best free sample packs for hyperpop and electropopAd Feature with BandLab. 
The rulebook has been well and truly torn up when it comes to making pop music, with countless artists pushing the boundaries. Movements like hyperpop emerged in the 2010s, pioneered by AG Cook and his PC Music label to name a few, combining accessible songwriting with far-reaching influences from trance, EDM, dubstep, punk – and everything in between.
These sample packs focus primarily on the electronic side of things, drawing inspiration from names like Charli XCX, Flume, Sophie, and KUČKA – who explained more about the process of recording her album, Can You Hear Me Dreaming?, and its ‘no-rules’ approach in our digital cover feature.
Want to get a little experimental with your own pop productions? These free sample packs are filled with loops, one-shots, textures, and effects to help you score a chart-topper.
[Editor’s note: BandLab and MusicTech are both part of Caldecott Music Group]
Experimental Pop
Bandlab Sounds Experimental Pop
Distorted basses, crunchy drum hits, and sparkling arpeggiators are just a taste of what you’ll find in this highly versatile pack. Sounds range from simple to complex, and many are treated with quirky and intriguing effects for plenty of character.
Download Experimental Pop
Pop Essentials
Bandlab Sounds Pop Essentials
This pack focuses more on cleaner, melodic content like chord progressions and riffs perfect for contemporary pop productions – or for mashing and mangling with your own processing if you’re looking for a bit more edge. You’ll find everything from modern synth patches to more organic loops featuring guitars, keys, and acoustic drums.
Download Pop Essentials
Alternative Pop
Bandlab Sounds Alternative Pop
This collection slows the tempo down a bit, serving up brooding bass sounds, sparse drum loops, and ethereal pads that blend seamlessly into darker, more atmospheric production styles.
Download Alternative Pop
Rookes: POPNOTPOP Pack Vol 1
Bandlab Sounds PopNotPop
UK producer Rookes is the name behind this lighter, playful selection of loops and one-shots comprising glistening keys, snappy drum parts, and experimental reversed textures that work as well in radio-ready chart toppers as they do in left-leaning alternative productions.
Download Rookes: POPNOTPOP Pack Vol 1
91Vocals: Pop Vox
Bandlab Sounds Pop Vox
Vocals – it’s hard to do pop without them. This pack contains a vast selection of hooks, harmonies, ad-libs, and effects from professional vocalists. Leaning into the hyperpop sound? Try dirtying them up, running them through autotune, or pitching them well beyond their original key.
Download 91Vocals: Pop Vox
Experimental Electro Pop
Bandlab Sounds Experimental Electro Pop
Want to channel the weirder sonics of producers like Sophie and AG Cook? This pack takes sound design in a more creative direction, with wobbly leads, siren-esque synths, and growling basses, plus a handful of foley-inspired drum loops.
Download Experimental Electro Pop
Bedroom Pop Vocals
Bandlab Sounds Bedroom Pop Vocals
Pop vocals don’t always call for a powerful performance. If you’re looking for something on the softer side, this pack offers gentler delivery recorded with an upfront, close-mic sound that’s intimate and emotive. Alongside dry vocals, there are plenty of effected versions with carefully dialled reverbs, delays, and filters.
Download Bedroom Pop Vocals
Tim Wicked: Dream Pop
Bandlab Sounds Dream Pop
New Yorker Tim Wicked takes a more dance-inflected approach to pop with this pack. There’s a distinctly analogue flavour to the synth sounds, which is perfect if you’re leaning on the nostalgia factor that’s nearly always in vogue.
Download Tim Wicked: Dream Pop
Hyperpop Vocals
Bandlab Sounds Hyperpop Vocals
While the other vocal packs in this list offer plenty of options for warping into something new, this selection of hyperpop vocals lets you shortcut straight to the sounds of 100 Gecs and Midwxst out of the box. From formant-shifted hooks and melodies to glitchy autotune effects, these samples could inspire your next track from the ground up, or be the final piece in a more developed production.
Download Hyperpop Vocals
Effected Percussion
Bandlab Sounds Effected Percussions
Whether you’re after heavy-hitting half-time beats or crafting intricate patterns with an IDM flavour, getting your drums right is vital in any electropop arrangement. This pack errs on the minimal side, but its tight, snappy hits are great for adding detail to your loops – especially with the healthy dose of modulation that’s been applied.
Download Effected Percussion
 
The post Best free sample packs for hyperpop and electropop appeared first on MusicTech.

Why is ETH demand lacking post-Ethereum ETF?ETH price failed to crack the $3,400 resistance level, as spot Ethereum ETFs are seeing more outflows largely due to Grayscale.

Live Review of Kacy Hill in Los AngelesContact: niquita@biz3.net

Web: kacyhill.com

Players: Kacy Hill, vocals; Valerie Franco, drums; Daniel Lape, guitar

Material: Kacy Hill sang plenty about disappointment at The Lodge Room. Ironic, given that the show didn’t seem to disappoint anyone in attendance. The concert featured opening acts from Hamond and Love Spells. Kacy Hill was performing in support of her new album, BUG. Lyrically, the new material struck a chord with the fans. The lyrics were undoubtedly one of the stars of the night. Hill mentioned that after her last tour, she considered leaving music behind to pursue a career in software engineering, as many struggling musicians do… She spoke of doubt and disatisfaction—feelings that come through loud and clear during the set. Look no further than the tune “Damn.”

Musicianship: Hill wasn’t just playing music; she was telling a story. Even the imagery of bugs, sometimes flying, sometimes eating or running in circles, played into one of the many themes of the night—insignificance. Small creatures in a big world. There’s also plenty of fun to the melancholy, too.

There’s a joyfulness to the playing, sometimes serving as just the right contrast to any down-and-out, smooth lyricism. The playing is as strong as the songwriting. When Hill picks up a saxophone, the concert takes extra flight. Her bandmates, drummer Valerie Franco and guitarist Daniel Lape, also made the stories come to life just right. 

Performance: Franco brought the house down. Talk about a drummer and a voice connecting. Franco knew how to bolster the lyrics and singing, letting her drums provide sounds of thunder even for the most peaceful of melodies. It’s hard not to watch and listen to Franco at work and not be all smiles. There’s a vulnerability to Hill on stage that’s reflected in her body of work, which now spans four albums. She’s honest with her crowd, and that honesty is clearly appreciated among her fans, who seemed to hang on every lyric.

Summary: Given the audience’s reception, hopefully, Hill has forever left behind the thought of a career in software engineering. She writes about lows, but she performs them at such highs. What a warm show about cold feelings. Keep the contrasts coming, Kacy Hill.The post Live Review of Kacy Hill in Los Angeles first appeared on Music Connection Magazine.

How to find samples for your music
We explore some resources and strategies that can help you discover and create unique samples for your next project.

Bill Ackman massively scales back expectations for the IPO of his Pershing Square USA, from $25bn to $2bnAckman confirms that IPO will be priced at less than a tenth of original $25 billion target
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The Last Instrument to get Auto-TunedVarious decades have their musical signature, like the excessive use of synthesizers and hairspray in the 1980s pop music scene. Likewise, the early 2010s was marked by a fairly extreme use of autotune, a technology that allows sounds, especially vocals, to be shifted to precise pitches regardless of the pitch of the original source. In this dark era, a wide swath of instruments and voices on the charts were auto-tuned at some point, although we don’t remember this iconic instrument ever being featured among the annals of pitch-shifted pop music.
The auto-tuned kazoo created by [Guy Dupont] does its pitch corrections on-the-fly thanks to a built-in ESP-32-S3 microcontroller which, through a microphone inside the kazoo, listens for note of the musician’s hum and corrects it to the closest correctly pitched note. Once it identifies the note it outputs a kazoo-like pitch-corrected note from a small speaker, also hidden inside the instrument. It does this fast enough for live performances using the YIN fundamental frequency estimation algorithm. Not only can the kazoo be played directly, but thanks to the implementation of MIDI it can be used to control other synthesizers or be played through other means as a stand-alone synthesizer.
Much like the 80s, where the use of synthesizers relaxed from excessive use on nearly every instrument on every track throughout the decade to a more restrained use as the decade faded, so has autotune been toned down in most music to be more subtly applied. But like our enjoyment of heavily synthesized tunes outside the 80s like those by Daft Punk or The Weeknd, we can also appreciate something heavily auto-tuned outside of the 2010s like a stylized kazoo or a T-Pain-style guitar effects pedal.

The SEC has charged an a16z and Sequoia-backed crypto startup founder with fraud The founder of once-hyped crypto startup BitClout is facing trouble. On Tuesday, the SEC charged him with fraud and other offenses.
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This Home Made Mac Has a Real CRTCathode-ray tube (CRT) televisions may no longer be in production, but its last bastion came in the form of extremely cheap little Chinese portable sets with a black-and-white tube. They’re now useless for broadcast TV, so can often be had for next-to-nothing. [Action Retro] has a video showing a Mac Classic clone using one, and with a built-in Raspberry Pi and a copy of RiscOS it almost makes a usable computer.
The video below the break is a little heavy on the 3D printer sponsor and the Mac case comes from a Thingiverse project, but it’s well executed and we’re grateful for being introduced to that original project. We’d have gone for a period-correct beige filament rather than the glow-in-the-dark green one used here.
We’re guessing that more than one reader will have a few of those TVs around the place, such is their ubiquity. Is it worth making this as a novelty item? It depends upon your viewpoint, but we can’t help liking the result even if perhaps it’s not for us. If RiscOS isn’t quite the thing,  there’s an option a little closer to the real thing.

As Spotify readies $18 per month ‘deluxe’ tier, do consumers care about high quality audio?Luminate study sheds light on what consumers really want from streaming
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Vox Samples Drops FREE Drift Pitch Vibrato Effect Plugin
Vox Samples released the free Drift Pitch vibrato effect plugin for Mac and Windows.  Drift Pitch is a 64-bit exclusive release for VST3 on Windows or VST3 and AU for macOS.  Vox Samples describes the plugin as “easily customizable and super powerful,” stating that it can “add a vibrato effect to any sound without degrading [...]
View post: Vox Samples Drops FREE Drift Pitch Vibrato Effect Plugin

Music Votes: Major Industry Partners Join CoalitionMusic Votes, the groundbreaking coalition of music voting and activism nonprofits, has announced a wave of major industry partners ranging from ASM Global to Wasserman and Bandsintown to the National Independent Talent Organization (NITO) pledging to support its three steps to solve obstacles to voting: voter registration, ensuring the correct voter ID, and voter turnout.
The post Music Votes: Major Industry Partners Join Coalition appeared first on Hypebot.

Streaming Data for Musicians: Unlocking Success in the Digital AgeExplore the most important streaming data for musicians and what they need to understand for success in the digital age. This guide highlights key metrics and provides insights on leveraging. Continue reading
The post Streaming Data for Musicians: Unlocking Success in the Digital Age appeared first on Hypebot.