LPB-3 boost & EQ from Electro Harmonix Guitar pedal gurus Electro Harmonix have announced the reintroduction and enhancement of an old classic, the LPB-3 Linear Power Booster & EQ. 

Is Groover actually a good marketing tool for musicians?Groover strives to raise up independent musicians and give them more exposure to industry professionals. But is it too good to be true? Randi Zimmerman of Symphonic digs in to find out.....
The post Is Groover actually a good marketing tool for musicians? appeared first on Hypebot.

A chat with LyricFind CEO Darryl BallantyneLyricFind CEO Darryl Ballantyne discusses his beginnings in the industry, his biggest milestones, and some wise words to pass on to other aspiring entrepreneurs.....
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Meet Porij, the Coldplay-supporting new-rave band who are all about “dance music live”Dance music live: that’s the ethos of Manchester-formed, London-based electronic quartet Porij. Having attended the Royal Northern College of Music together, they formed a band with this goal in mind. “The idea was to get the energy of a club night, but at a gig,” begins vocalist Egg Moore.
After some jam sessions in 2019, a friend offered them a gig following a last-minute drop-out. Despite the gig being booked with just one week’s notice and not having a live show plan, they said yes and wrote a set in a week.

READ MORE: How Jeekie and Raphaella produced and recorded Change

The ‘fake it ’til you make it’ approach worked, but they also needed a band name. Having never expected to make a career out of music, they landed on the moniker Porij. “I don’t think I considered that we would be doing this seriously,” Egg laughs, recalling Lauren Laverne saying ‘Porij – how you’d spell it if you’re a five-year-old’ when she gave the band their first play on national radio by spinning 2019 track I Like That on her BBC 6 Music show.
Despite a line-up change a few years ago, Egg suggests that the band — also comprising bassist James Middleton, guitarist Jacob Maguire and drummer Nathan Carroll — “haven’t really stopped since”.
Egg isn’t wrong. While they scored a breakout hit with 2021’s Nobody Scared (taken from their second EP, Baby Face), last year these Power Rangers of music opened for Coldplay for a week of “fever dream” gigs at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester.
“It was a totally wild experience,” Egg reflects, adding that watching Chris Martin and co-perform live was an inspiration. “I had never seen a show on that level, so to get to experience that and be a part of that was crazy”.

 
When it comes to Porij, Egg says they have “eclectic tastes and, when we combine them all, what comes out is pretty exciting”. This melting pot analogy extends to their EPs to date, which have been hailed by critics as genreless. Porij doesn’t necessarily think about crafting songs with that intention. “We just write the music we want to write.”
At the core of their sound is dance music and a desire to perform live. As a result, Porij’s songs end up having subgenres of dance music embedded within them. “It might not be a straight-ahead garage tune, but so much of the influence of the drums and bass parts will be from a little two-step moment,” Egg says as an example.
Their debut album, Teething, is a natural extension of their infatuation with club sounds and live performances, having started recording after a summer of festivals and a headline tour in 2022. However, because the band members were all living separately they’d send ideas to each other via SoundCloud and suggest edits.

Image: Zak WatsonThis isn’t worlds away from their creative process as a band. Rather than the four of them sitting in the studio, it has “always been very back and forth”. The band enjoy this way of writing because, as Egg suggests, “it’s really collaborative but, also, you have complete space to do what you want to do. There’s no pressure, time-wise, in the sense of, ‘Oh, there’s three other people in the room, let’s make music’.”
Drummer Nathan agrees: “You can fully flesh out all of the ideas and experiment with different sounds and take the time, which is nice to be able to do – to have the space to be able to make 50 terrible ideas before you make one good one and then take it to the band.”
Egg adds, “We’ve taken the essence of our sound and had the freedom and luxury of doing a longer body of work to… crank up the gas.” Compared to the constraints of a short EP, Egg adds that “it’s been really fun to be able to present a fully three-dimensional vision of our sound”.
Key to achieving this sonic evolution was getting in the studio with David Wrench, who co-produced the entire record. After they had crafted the bones of all the tracks that would go on to form Teething, the band took the demos to the Grammy-nominated Welsh musician. However, because they had done everything in-house for so long, they were initially cautious. But any concerns were soon put to rest.
Porij’s Jacob Maguire in the studio. Image: Zak Watson
“What was so brilliant about David was that he came in and just enhanced what was already there,” Egg says. “It was a case of fully realising the songs with him,” Egg says, adding that, on and off, the band spent the best part of 10 months with Wrench. “With his brain and his actual gear, that allowed us the tools to express what we wanted to express, which was really exciting.”
As well as “making the tracks shiny and letting us use his sexy gear in his sexy studio”, Egg enthuses that “we learnt so much from him”, with the remaining band members nodding in agreement. Wrench always seemed to have the answers when they were struggling with something, Egg adds: “it would be really small things that we’d be stuck on and he’d be like, ‘guys, have you considered EQing it this way?’”
Nathan adds that being in the room with Wrench for almost a year and “experiencing his knowledge and demeanour around producing was infectious; when you self-produce and self-mix, you spend a lot of time on YouTube searching various Mix with the Masters videos… I’ve watched his quite a few times”.
Porij’s Nathan Carroll in the studio. Image: Zak Watson
Egg reflects on the whole process as “a gift – to spend that amount of time working on something and really living the album, it meant that we could explore all the weird avenues we wanted to go down. And he was totally on board with everything. I think what made us all get along so well was that we were just like kids having fun in a room with a lot of toys for nine months. It was amazing.”
Among those toys was a bread knife and Egg’s necklace: “My favourite credit on the album is ‘kitchen percussion’. David had set up a microphone in the kitchen, and I literally threw everything at the kitchen sink and we recorded it, which made some delightful percussion on Gutter Punch.”
Another was the R2-D2 synth, the ARP 2600, which, bassist James Middleton gushes, has “filthy subs and monstrous low-end”, adding that it was used for much of the bass synth on the record. “That thing hits you straight in the chest,” Nathan adds; “you would feel yourself viscerally moving… and he’s got a very good subwoofer”.
Now that the album is out, Porij are equally excited to get back out on the road and spread their ‘dance music live’ message far and wide. “Because we all studied music to a certain level, you then want to be able to make the music that you produce translate live,” Nathan says, describing it as an “exhilarating chase”.
Image: Zak Watson
The fact that performing live enables an audience to connect to the emotions of the songs is also important for Egg. “Songwriting is free therapy, but there’s also the human element of dance music – connecting on an emotional level as well.”
When asked what people can expect from a Porij gig, Egg is surprised by the abstract answers that each bandmate gives, with the words scintillating and visceral cropping up. Instead, Egg settles on “beautiful chaos”, while Nathan gives a very literal answer: “You can watch four people trying to juggle instruments while figuring out how to play dance music live. I think that’s quite a lot of it.”

He relates this to the band’s recent shows for Independent Venues Week, which included an intimate first performance of Teething, from start to finish, at Cambridge pub The Portland Arms. “All of our brains were working at a million miles an hour, trying to figure out how to do it,” Nathan says, detailing that their live set up includes Egg on vocals and synths including a Prophet-12 keyboard and a Roland JV-1080 for piano sounds.
While it was initially a challenge, Egg chimes in to say that their live show is more crafted now several months down the line. “What you can expect is high-octane moments and… pure unadulterated joy. You’ll be crying, dancing and sweating.”
While it’s arguably more fun to see a band perform live rather than just a DJ set, Egg recognises that – with the rise of Boiler Room – the performative aspect of DJ’ing is growing. “People want to see the music happen, visually.”
Image: Zak Watson
Seeing Bonobo at Glastonbury in 2022 was a particularly formative experience for the band. “That was one of the most incredible dance music live sets I’ve ever seen”, Nathan recalls, also citing Little Dragon as inspirational: “those sort of names set the pace”, he adds.
More recently, Egg has noticed that more dance acts are “definitely stepping up”, citing producers-turned-live acts such as Barry Can’t Swim. “It’s great to see.” Generally, Egg suggests this rise of big dance acts playing live is because “there’s part of you that craves that human element of dance music. I think that’s what you really get when you play live. It’s those moments of being on edge and not everything is perfect. That’s what really makes me attach to the music and draws me into the gig; those human imperfections in dance music make it so exhilarating.”
In terms of the wider dance scene, Egg thinks it’s in an exciting place. “Obviously, it’s been having a huge resurgence amongst the mainstream media over the past few years, but I think it’s going to new levels and you have loads of artists blurring those sub-genres and getting a bit crazy with it. I’m just having the time of my life because I think going clubbing right now is so exciting.”
While Egg points out the decline of small clubs – “it’s a big shame because we really need grassroots venues – in terms of the music that’s coming out, I think we’re in a really exciting spot”.
Nathan echoes this sentiment: “when you see acts like Overmono and Joy Orbison doing a track with a grime artist – all of these genre-crossover collaborations – I think that is super exciting, because everyone’s inspired by those sub-genres that came up when dance music first started happening”. Consequently, he says “all the blurring of the lines is making for some really exciting music”.
“People are always going to want to move,” Egg enthuses. “It’s something we need!”
‘Teething’ is out now on Play It Again Sam
The post Meet Porij, the Coldplay-supporting new-rave band who are all about “dance music live” appeared first on MusicTech.

Confirmed: Better Noise Music sold 50% of its catalog for ‘around $100 million’ in 2022, is now reinvesting into expansionDan Waite and Steve Kline confirm deal was reached two years ago, as hard rock label eyes bigger ambitions
Source

Apple says sorry for not crushing it with their controversial iPad Pro adApple‘s latest iPad Pro advertisement most certainly did not crush it. Not in the way the Cupertino giant would’ve preferred, anyway.
The company issued an apology Thursday (9 May) after its commercial for the new iPad Pro model – its “thinnest ever” by the way – sparked criticism for depicting a hydraulic press crushing and destroying thousands of pounds worth of music and studio equipment (and our hopes and dreams).

READ MORE: “I don’t value creativity for the sake of creativity” Creators debate the value of AI-produced music

“Creativity is in our DNA at Apple, and it’s incredibly important to us to design products that empower creatives all over the world,” Apple’s Vice President of Marketing Communications Tor Myhren tells Ad Age.
“Our goal is to always celebrate the myriad of ways users express themselves and bring their ideas to life through iPad. We missed the mark with this video, and we’re sorry.”
Commenters were quick to condemn the ad after Apple CEO Tim Cook posted the video on X earlier this week, with many outraged by the seemingly dystopian and cruel depiction of gear destruction by a brand that has long prided itself on being creative, friendly, and user-centric.
“Crushing symbols of human creativity and cultural achievements to appeal to pro creators, nice,” wrote Sterling Crispin, a software developer and former Neurotechnology Prototyping Researcher at Apple.
“Maybe for the next Apple Watch Pro you should crush sports equipment, show a robot running faster than a man, then turn to the camera and say, ‘God is dead and we have killed him.’”
Posting on X, Actor Hugh Grant said that the ad showed “the destruction of the human experience courtesy of Silicon Valley.”

The destruction of the human experience. Courtesy of Silicon Valley. https://t.co/273XB3CfnF
— Hugh Grant (@HackedOffHugh) May 8, 2024

That said, while the ad didn’t win many hearts, Apple’s newly released iPad Pro just might. Users get “the world’s most advanced display” (yes, it’s OLED) and an all new M4 chip, all within a thinner and lighter outer shell. Now available for orders, the device arrives in stores 15 May.
Learn more at Apple.
The post Apple says sorry for not crushing it with their controversial iPad Pro ad appeared first on MusicTech.

“I don’t value creativity for the sake of creativity” Creators debate the value of AI-produced musicA discussion about the value of AI-produced music at the recent Music Matters conference in Singapore left creators divided.

READ MORE: Read Steve Albini’s 1992 letter to Nirvana: “Paying a royalty to a producer is ethically indefensible…there’s no fucking way I would take that money.”

Day 2 of Music Matters had Jako de Leon (Creators and Influencers Council of the Philippines President), Johnathan Chua (GRVTY Media CEO), and Mohamad Fattal (Alfan Founder & CEO) sharing their insights on how creators can work alongside AI to build a sustainable career.
Asked if content and music produced using AI should be valued more or less than something “organically produced”, Chua had this to say: “I don’t value creativity for the sake of creativity.”
“I would value the song that I like better. Even if one was generated and one was written with blood. I would prefer the one that I like. I don’t care how it was made.”
Describing his approach as a “free market kind of ideology”, he explained that “at the end of the day in modern pop music we figured out that many of the songs can be played in a similar harmony.”
“If AI is what’s going to get us to expand that and end this phase a little faster… and create the next wave of creatives who would rise to the top and that’s going to evolve music further then I think it’s fine.”
Beside him, Jako offered an alternative view. Presented with the choice between an AI program that could make anyone sound like Justin Bieber and a physical person who sounds just like the pop star, Jako said: “I will support someone who’s doing it creatively rather than someone who’s just doing it out of a machine.”
His rationale? To minimise support for possible bad actors who try to pass off AI-generated work as human.
Meanwhile, Fattal mentioned how consumers don’t always care about the creative process behind the content so long as they can get the best product for the cheapest price. “But when you talk to creators and artists, it’s always like ‘I put so much passion and energy, why are people not using it.’ Where is the middle ground?” He questioned.
Elsewhere throughout the conference, panels of artists and industry executives discussed the rise of virtual creators, how to create new unique experiences for fans, and how to navigate a career in music in the wake of AI.
Read more music technology news.
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AI and the future of creativity: Takeaways from Music Matters 2024Artificial intelligence took centre stage as creators, music professionals and industry leaders descended on the sunny city-state of Singapore this week for the 19th edition of Music Matters. This year, the music conference returns as part of the inaugural CreatorWeek, a new festival spotlighting and celebrating Asia Pacific’s music and creator economy.
Speakers at the 2-day event (8-9 May) included Akhila Shankar, head of TuneCore South Asia; Mike McCabe, managing director of Epic Games; Meng Ru Kuok, CEO & co-founder of Caldecott Music Group; Reggie Ba-Pe, CEO and founder of Alias; Accenture managing director Caspar Schlickum; and Johnathan Chua, Co-Founder and CEO of GRVTY Media.
AI’s transformative potential
Thursday’s programme began with a discussion on the exponential growth of Generative AI across creative industries and the massive ecosystem that’s been built on the technology.
“Once in a while in history, you see technology that will potentially change lives. I think we are at that stage right now,” said Kevin Chan, chief partner officer of Microsoft Singapore. He explained that the magic of Generative AI lies in the way it allows creators — both big and small — to “do much more with less”. For musicians, this means freeing up precious time to focus on what matters to them: making music.
“Most people don’t like to do the kinds of tasks that Gen AI’s really good at doing in the process. The miserable, repeatable, repetitive tasks,” said Accenture managing director Caspar Schlickum. Addressing sceptics, he argued that AI has been in development and in use (albeit more implicitly) for decades, and that “what happened with ChatGPT is [just] that AI got a UI”. With the democratisation of AI, he argues, a broader range of creators can now produce higher-quality content due to the lowered costs of projects.
Building a sustainable career in the age of AI
With AI looming large, how can you ensure longevity in your career as an artist and content creator?
In this session, Jako de Leon (Creators and Influencers Council of the Philippines), Johnathan Chua (GRVTY Media), and Mohamad Fattal (Alfan) stressed the importance of leveraging AI while cautioning against an over-reliance on the technology.
Chua, a seasoned podcaster (The Daily Ketchup), spoke of the “difference between creating content and creating a brand”; AI can do the former, but the latter is what’s needed to build a long-lasting career, he says. Artists should thus focus on developing their own unique identity and brand while creating content because, eventually, “the algorithm will adjust to bring in more humans”.
The speakers also touched on AI abuse in music — such as inputting a singer’s voice into an AI model to generate songs without their approval — and the need for more open conversations about its dangers as well as greater community-based efforts to protect artists from bad actors.
Crafting ‘experiences’ in the creator economy
Relationships take work, and artist-fan relations are no exception. Dylan Harari, global head of creators at content subscription platform Fanfix (aka the family-friendly version of OnlyFans) offered insights into subscription-based models for creators, emphasising the importance of direct one-on-one engagement or ‘experiences’.
While the concept is hardly new (think artist Meet-and-Greets, backstage passes, paid video recordings), the form it takes on has certainly evolved. For example, Fanfix has a pay-to-message feature that allows fans to pay between $3 to $500 to chat privately with their favourite artists. Describing creator subscriptions as modern-day e-commerce, he shared how curating the right “experiences” can create new revenue streams for artists while strengthening the bond they have with their fans.
Asked about the impact of AI on the creator economy, Harari surprised the audience, saying that the technology is not going to change things drastically: “I don’t think it’s going to be as disruptive as people think it’s going to be,” he said. The executive also expressed scepticism towards fully AI-generated avatars because “you still need the sprinkle of human touch”.
Rise of the ‘virtual’
Later in the day, Alias founder Reggie Ba-Pe, Kobe CEO Evangeline Leong, and VP of business development at TheSoul Publishing Patrik Wilkens explored how virtual pop stars like Polar are poised to upend the creator economy.
Last year, VTuber Ironmouse won the coveted Content Creator of the Year award at the Game Awards, which, according to Wilkens, signalled that markets are ready to embrace virtual influencers.
With AI, “everybody will be able to create avatars. The obstacle is to be relevant, to be authentic,” he said. Leong also emphasised that while AI is capable of streamlining processes and generating content, it cannot replicate the unique chemistry between creators and their followers.
On the whole, discussions about avatars, VTubers, and virtual experiences highlighted a paradigm shift in creative expression facilitated by AI. There is a general consensus that AI is here to augment rather than replace human creativity.
Learn more at Creator Week.
The post AI and the future of creativity: Takeaways from Music Matters 2024 appeared first on MusicTech.

Orchestral Tools present Grimm with Bleeding Fingers Described as a medieval orchestra crafted for the modern composer, Grimm captures a range of traditional instruments and aims to provide the ideal toolkit for horror, drama and fantasy scores. 

Coinbase sees infinite interoperability potential with Ethereum and USDCCoinbase head of tokenization Anthony Bassili described plans for its Base network at TokenizeThis 2024 in Miami.

Infighting among fintech players has caused TabaPay to ‘pull out’ from buying bankrupt SynapseA dust-up between Evolve Bank & Trust, Mercury and Synapse has led TabaPay to abandon its acquisition plans of troubled banking-as-a-service startup Synapse.
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Todd Rundgren's Spirit of Harmony Auction Now Open for BiddingBidding for the Spirit of Harmony's online fundraising auction is now open, and you are invited to check out wide variety of treasures, large and small. Choose from an array of t-shirts, jewelry, posters, music, accessories, collectibles, and much more. Even if you aren't looking to bid, we hope you have fun visiting our auction site to check out our music-related items. Here is the auction link: 32auctions.com/SOHF2024

Auction ends Sunday, May 26 at 5 pm Central time.Packages will be sent out USPS Priority, within ten days after payment is received at the end of the auction. Of course, international postage and shipping costs are higher, and we will contact international winners with an invoice for the actual postage/shipping amount.This auction supports the Spirit of Harmony's Music Education Advocacy.

Auction Link: www.32auctions.com/SOHF24

POV Digital Clock Is the Literal Sands of TimeSand has been used to keep track of the passage of time since antiquity. But using sand to make a persistence of vision digital clock (English translation) is something altogether new. And it’s pretty cool, too.
The idea behind the timepiece that [Álvaro Gómez Giménez] built is pretty simple drop a tiny slug of fine sand from a hopper and light it up at just the right point in its fall. Do that rapidly enough and you can build up an image of the digits you want to display. Simple in concept, but the devil is in the details. Sand isn’t the easiest material to control, so most of the work went into designing hoppers with solenoid-controlled gates to dispense well-formed slugs of sand at just the right moment. Each digit of the clock has four of these gates in parallel, and controlling when the 16 gates open and close and when the LEDs are turned on is the work of a PIC18F4550 microcontroller.
The build has a lot of intricate parts, some 3D printed and some machined, but all very carefully crafted. We particularly like the big block of clear plastic that was milled into a mount for the main PCB; the translucent finish on the milled surfaces makes a fantastic diffuser for the 96 white LEDs. The clock actually works a lot better than we expected, with the digits easy to make out against a dark background. Check it out in the video below.
Between the noise of 16 solenoids and the sand getting everywhere, we’d imagine it wouldn’t be a lot of fun to have on a desk or nightstand, but the execution is top-notch, and an interesting and unusual concept we haven’t seen before. Sure, we’ve seen sandwriting, but that’s totally different.

Thanks to [ThoriumBR] for the tip.

Soundware’s Octane Rompler Plugin Is Now FREE
Soundware has made its Octane rompler plugin available for free for Mac and Windows. Soundware describes Octane as “the pro-grade rompler that changed the game by making professional tools accessible to anyone.” The developer explains that the plugin was designed by producers for producers and is “the top choice for sound creation. With lots of [...]
View post: Soundware’s Octane Rompler Plugin Is Now FREE

Fully 3D Printed Case Is Stacked High With Mini PCsOver the years we’ve seen no shortage of 3D printed cases designed to hold several Raspberry Pi computers, often with the intent to use them as convenient desktop-sized platforms for experimenting with concepts such as server load balancing and redundancy.
The reason the Pi was always the star of the show is simple enough to explain: they were small and cheap. But while the Pi has only gotten more expensive over the years, x86 machines have gotten smaller and cheaper. Which is how a project like the N100 Obelisk was born.

As the name implies, [Jay Doscher] has packed this printed tower of power with a number of mini computers utilizing the Intel N100 CPU, namely the QC12 from Beelink. At $250 a pop they’re definitely a more expensive option than the Pi 5. But with each one packing 16 GB of RAM, a 512 GB NVME drive, plus the option to plug in a SATA drive, you’re getting plenty of bang for your computing buck.
Each QC12 lives on its own printed “shelf” inside the case, which will fit up to five of the machines at once. Though [Jay] notes that heat could become an issue at that point, so four seems like a safer number. The front panel of each computer can be accessed through a cut-out in one side of the case, while the rear (and all the cables) are covered with easily removable panels should you need to get in there and reconfigure anything.
With everything all buttoned up, it looks like it could survive a bomb blast. Considering it took two rolls of filament and the better part of 100 M4 screws to put the thing together, we’d wager it doesn’t just look tough, either. The write-up says the goal was for the final product to have a certain brutalist style, and it certainly seems like the mission was accomplished on that front.
Of course, the really standout feature of the Obelisk is the integrated Waveshare AMOLED display. This 13.3 inch panel boasts a resolution of 2560×1440, and even offers touch support. Here it’s been rotated into portrait orientation to provide plenty of vertical space, making it ideal for working on the command line, writing code, or scrolling through long documents. Don’t need a screen? No problem — the case has been designed in such a way that you can forgo the display and fill in the opening with more of the printed panels.

As we’ve seen with his previous projects, [Jay] has a knack for turning extruded plastic into devices that are both functional and visually striking. We’re always excited when one of his creations come our way, and can’t wait to see what he’s got in store for the future.