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.

Excite Audio unveil Bloom Vocal Edit The latest addition to Excite Audio’s range promises to transform the way users incorporate vocals into their productions, and make quick work of crafting professional sounding chops.

Entries now open for first-of-its-kind AI songwriting competition, where one lucky winner performs with KaskadeSoundful and SoundCloud have partnered with Kaskade for a first-of-its-kind AI songwriting competition, which will see one winner get to perform alongside the esteemed DJ, and even release their own track via his label, Arkade.
Soundful is described as “the recognised leader in AI-powered, ethically-trained music generation”. The platform’s artificial intelligence-powered algorithms are human-trained and guided by music theory, not copywritten material.

READ MORE: deadmau5 and Kaskade on Kx5, the perils of signing for a major label and why we should “unleash the beast” of AI-written pop songs

Entries are open now, and hopeful participants can head to the Soundful website to create a track from Kaskade’s Collab style. Soundful Collabs capture an artists’ core musical aesthetic, or “Sonic DNA,” enabling users to create one-of-a-kind tracks that sound like their favourite artists. However, participants are encouraged to modify the track to reflect their own unique style.
All submissions must be made via SoundCloud by 12 August. The first-place winner will have their track completed and released by Kaskade as a featured artist, and perform live with him at one of his upcoming shows.
But that’s not all, as they will also receive a two-year Soundful Pro plan, one year of SoundCloud Next Pro, a $1,000 cash prize from Soundful, and even up to $1,000 towards travel expenses for the meet and greet.
And if you don’t quite make it to the winner’s spot, the closest runner up will also win a prize that isn’t too shabby – Second place gets you a one-year Soundful Pro plan, a release on Arkade, and a $500 cash prize.
In other SoundCloud news, the platform has newly entered a strategic partnership with Resident Advisor (RA) aimed at revolutionising how artists and fans connect both online and in person. The alliance seeks to improve the way users of both platforms discover and experience music and events.
To view the full submission guidelines and rules for the AI songwriting competition, head to SoundCloud.
The post Entries now open for first-of-its-kind AI songwriting competition, where one lucky winner performs with Kaskade appeared first on MusicTech.

Frequency Factor: Rethinking Your Engagement StrategyUnfortunately, even daily fan engagement might not be enough to connect with your audience effectively. Here's how to better understand how often to reach out to improve audience relationships.
The post Frequency Factor: Rethinking Your Engagement Strategy appeared first on Hypebot.