This course is for anyone wanting to get into producing house music with Ableton’s Push. Presented by renowned producer and Producertech tutor Paul Maddox, the lessons show how Push can be used to create music in a totally hands-on way. This first part focuses on producing the beats and bass, which combine to create a classic, retro house groove.

Antares Audio Technologies today announced the introduction of Auto-Tune EFX 3, the third generation of their easy-to-use tool for real-time pitch correction and creating the iconic Auto-Tune Vocal Effect.

Elektron, the Swedish manufacturer of professional hardware machines, has just started shipping their latest creation, the Analog Rytm. This 8 voice analog drum machine with sample support can be purchased either directly from Elektron or from a wide net of retailers.

There is no offical announcement, but Moogfest shows at there website a new analog Moog synthesizer with the German name Werkstatt. (workshop) The name implicates a DIY synth. Let's wait for more information.

IK Multimedia announced today the newest release of the widely popular T-RackS Custom Shop mixing and mastering plug-in and standalone tools that features two new must-have British EQ models that provide the warmth and tone heard on countless recordings around the globe: the EQ73 and the EQ81.

The sonic arms race just got a little more heated as Joey Sturgis unleashes the latest weapon from his audio arsenal, the JST Clip.

With Beatport Pro software you can manage your music collection within a free application built by DJs for DJs. Create and manage playlists, add extended metadata, tag your music with attributes, use advance filtering tools, and shop with multiple carts.

Nord Keyboards this week announced a major addition to the Nord Sample Library, the sounds of the legendary Fairlight digital sampler. The Fairlight was the first commercially available polyphonic sampler when launched back in 1979 and it opened up the doors of sampling to many artists and producer during the 80's. The sounds in this collection were all sampled from a newly overhauled Fairlight CMI System IIx, with detailed mapping to capture that characteristic Fairlight sound!

Native Instruments today released RISE & HIT – the first instrument dedicated to creating thrilling tension and suspense with build-ups and climactic hits. RISE & HIT uses an extensive range of over 8 GB of exclusively recorded and studio-produced sounds. An easy-to-use interface offers detailed editing with integrated effects and mastering tools for endless sound design capabilities. RISE & HIT runs in KONTAKT 5 or the free KONTAKT 5 PLAYER.

The midi-restarter helps you to start or stop your MIDI-slave independent of your MIDI-master, but alway in perfect synchronisation. You push the buttom and the audiowerkstatt midi-restarter sends a MIDI-start/stop-message at the beginning of the next bar to ensure that all following MIDI-devices run in the correct timing.

Universal Audio Direct Developer partner Brainworx has released three plug-ins for the UAD Powered Plug-Ins platform and Apollo audio interfaces. Available for purchase via UA's Online Store for $199 each, the Chandler Limited GAV19T Amplifier, bx_refinement, and bx_saturator V2 plug-ins are part of new UAD Software v7.6.

Loopmasters’ sister site selling music software - has just released their first proprietary plugin, “Big Kick”. Created in collaboration with Credland Audio, Big Kick was developed to help producers make kick drum design easy and enjoyable and includes a set of features to help them get results quickly. 

inMusic announced the addition of three professional product brands from D&M Holdings to its existing family of brands. Denon Professional, Marantz Professional, and Denon DJ join a family that includes Akai Professional, Alesis, Alto Professional, ION Audio, Numark, M-Audio, AIR Music Technology, and Mixmeister.

From the Facebook page of Rob Papen:  Below is the 'concept idea' for RP-Control. Note that this product is not available!

Being a former lead guitarist for legendary bands such as Megadeth, King Diamond and Testament, Glen Drover knows how to get a massive tone, this time using mobile guitar apps. In his home studio in Ontario, Canada, the seasoned musician spends most of his time teaching, writing, and recording, so when he first grabbed mobile guitar apps JamUp and BIAS, the fact of having his whole guitar rig replicated in an iPad made total sense.

FabFilter is celebrating its tenth anniversary of creating powerful audio plug-ins with superb sound quality and innovative interfaces. The company is proud to toast this occasion by announcing a generous ten-day sale, with a discount of 40% off all bundles and plug-ins, from April 14 to April 24. In addition, FabFilter will make a charitable donation to Stichting MEMO, a local organization bringing children in their early years in contact with young professional musicians and their passion for making music.

123creative.com has released their new Multiband NoiseGate NX3 plugin. Noise gate is processor that „mute“ signal that is quieter than threshold level and vice versa pass signal that is louder than threshold level. This is mostly used during recording of live drums on more microphones, so if you are recording hi-hats microphone is also recording kick drum but at much lower level. You want to remove quite sound of bass drum from hi-hat channel – you use noise gate. Noise gate is useful also for removing low analog noise, low room reverb or some disturbing noises/speech in background of record.

Tek'it Audio has announced the release of the OIO One bundle, which features 18 products - 8 instruments, 7 effects and 3 expansions - a comprehensive collection for creative music production, composition and sound design with more than 1,100 sounds and 200 effects.

Altiverb 7 is the industry standard convolution reverb plug-in for Mac OS X and Windows. It uses top quality samples of real spaces to create reverb, ranging from Sydney Opera House to the cockpit of a Jumbo Jet. Altiverb 7 is efficient on the cpu, offers many parameters to tweak reverb, is total recall automatable, and has 64 bit support.

March 25, 2014 marks the two-year anniversary of the re-opening of Wisseloord Studios in the Netherlands. Coinciding with the anniversary, Wisseloord unveils its new Studio4, known as the ‘Vintage Room’: a one-room concept studio, with the look and feel of a living room, but with technical amenities catering to smaller productions, tracking sessions, collaborative songwriting, and the like.

Below are some of the new releases we have encountered this week on the Loops and Samples front. Just like the quality of the audio software we use these days the quality of the content we use (loops and samples) equally matches the high standards of this software. Below is this weeks selection.

Mixvibes has been developing pro DJ software and DJ apps for more than 15 years. To celebrate Cross DJ 3.1 release - that offers a direct share of recorded mixes to Mixcloud - Mixvibes teams up with Mixcloud, Allen & Heath, Creative & Nüba to organize an international DJ competition with awesome prizes, listed above.

Radial Engineering is pleased to announce the SB-15 Tailbone - a high performance signal buffer designed to sit at the beginning of the signal chain and drive multiple pedals without the added noise that often plagues high impedance circuits.

A few weeks ago, they gathered an all-star lineup of musicians from The Loop Loft to set up and play at Guitar Center in NYC. No rehearsal. No agenda. Just the world's best musicians, getting on stage and making music in the moment. The result? Watch below...

Pusher is a sound sculptor's dream, an artist's tool that bends the rules of physics to generate genuinely new musical distortions and transient colorations. It models the unique sound-bending properties of 4 magnetized metal cores and, through the use of controls the world has never seen or heard before, lets you creatively shape their harmonic complexity and transient character.

​WaveDNA is proud to announce that Liquid Rhythm v1.3.4 allows users to control ​the software with Ableton Push, offering producers and DJs a highly fluid workflow to keep creative juices flowing during the music-making process.

iZotope Inc. and Beatport Play, the leading remix contest platform, have partnered with BT to launch the BT Producer Challenge. Through May 5th, create an original piece of music using BreakTweaker, the future beat machine designed by BT and developed by iZotope, for a chance to release your track with Armada Music.

With its bass heavy, dance oriented grooves and the extensive use of synthesis and digital sampling, electronic music has a large and loyal following. Such is the nature of TYR, whose music has been featured on Billboard’s ‘Next Big Sound’ chart as the #9 fastest accelerating artist across the web. TYR’s music has been well received by genre icon Moby and his following keeps growing. Quality production is central to TYR’s music and the studio reference monitors used during production need to be accurate and robust. That’s precisely why TYR relies on his D5 monitors from San Diego, CA-based Equator Audio.

Fairlight has raised the bar again with the release of its next generation audio engine. CC-2 is based on Fairlight’s Crystal Core Technology, powering their entire range of high-speed digital audio mixing, recording and editing systems, delivering guaranteed performance and increased efficiencies in the largest and most complex productions.

Korg have announced that their 'Taktile' controllers are available now. The KORG taktile/TRITON taktile are USB/MIDI controllers equipped with the same great-feeling, semi-weighted keyboard found on Korg's KingKorg and Krome. Taktiles are loaded with functions that make them fun to use.

English engineer Geoff Foster has recently completed the first ever specific Dolby Atmos music mix for the new Paramount Pictures blockbuster feature film on the Unity Audio Rock MK II active monitors. The cast includes Russell Crowe, Ray Winstone and Anthony Hopkins and directed by Darren Aronofsky with music composed by Clint Mansell.

Arturia’s BeatStep offers a new degree of functionality and performance for a portable pad controller. BeatStep is highly versatile, capable of triggering clips in such applications as Ableton Live, it also allows you to play drums in conjunction with such applications as BFD or EZDrummer.

Propellerhead today released an update to their award-winning Reason software and Synchronous; a modulation Rack Extension plug-in for Reason. Reason 7.1 offers an enhanced workflow, performance improvements and new SDK2 technology for Propellerhead’s Rack Extension plug-in platform.

Firebeatz are part of the strong, and growing group of very succesful dutch EDM producers. With succesful releases of their own but also collaborations with Martin Garrix and Sander van Doorn, and remixes for Rihanna, Pink and Justin Timberlake these boys are one of the hot names in the (EDM) business right now.

TC Electronic is proud to announce three new loudness meter plug-ins for audio and video editing systems. The company is a pioneer in loudness-based technology and offers a multitude of solutions for loudness metering, normalization, processing and logging. Furthermore, each element helps the creation of a transparent loop spanning from production to multi-platform transmission.

XILS-lab is proud to announce availability of XILS 3 V2.0 — an updated version of its authentic-sounding software emulation of the groundbreaking late-Sixties-vintage EMS VCS3 portable analogue synthesizer, scaled up to also emulate EMS’ early-Seventies-vintage Synthi Sequencer 256.

Having worked with UK rockers Def Leppard in the studio and as concert front-of-house engineer for well over a decade, Ronan McHugh has had ample opportunity to try out lots of different gear with the band. McHugh has been using the new PreSonus ADL 700 tube channel strip to record the band's first studio album since their 2008 Songs from the Sparkle Lounge, and he gives the channel strip high marks all around.

Digital audio workstations, controllers, interfaces: professional post-production capabilities can only be realized when all components work together in perfect harmony. Nuage Integrated Audio Production System brings it all together in a collaboration that defines new standards of quality and workflow efficiency for virtually every aspect of the production process. Yamaha control and interface hardware seamlessly integrates with Steinberg Nuendo DAW software in a purpose-built system that offers unprecedented productivity and flexibility as well as premium audio quality.

Hornberg Research is a small and young company in the south of Germany founded by Martin Raschke and Mick Baumeister. Mick is a professional film composer. He is working for more than 30 years for the German Film- and TV-Providers. When the BC3 disappeared from the market he begged Martin to develop a new breath controller because he needs a replacement to continue his work. The goal was to develop a stable, durable and high flexible tool that gives your work more expression and makes your daily work more easy and intuitive. This is why the hb1 MIDI Breath Station has been developed.

Audient can reveal that Windows drivers are now available for iD22, extending the benefits of its high performance AD/DA interface and monitoring system to all PC-based recordists.

Around the end of last year Elektron announced the Analog Keys which they describe as their flagship analog synthesizer. For many it is the same as the Analog Four but with keys. Before we begin with this review I wanted to tell you that I already own an Elektron Analog Four and know it like the back of my hand. So in that regard I may skip over parts that I'm overly familiar with and will make a comparison between the two models.

Over the weekend we found this cool and interesting concept over at Kickstarter. Imitone is a project there which lets you use your own voice to become a sort of midi controller. Imitone is an app for PC and Mac which transforms your voice into musical notes, live.  As you sing -- or whistle, or hum -- imitone instantly converts the sound into "MIDI signals" which can control almost any music software.

Like most of their products, the VT-24 came about because it was something Douglas Fearn needed for his own recording projects. He wanted to record every microphone with VT-1/VT-2 mic preamps, but was running out of rack space in his small control room. A four-channel version of the VT-2 would double the preamp capacity in the same space.

Positive Grid, creator of best selling mobile guitar apps JamUp, BIAS, and the recently launched Final Touch Mastering System for iPad, announces full Audiobus 2.0 support as part of the latest update for its family of apps.

Allen & Heath has released a new firmware update for its Qu Series of compact digital mixers. Downloadable from the website, v1.4 introduces several new features, including multiple access user permissions, Windows drivers for multitrack streaming, per scene recall filters and FX user libraries.

Below are some of the new releases we have encountered this week on the Loops and Samples front. Just like the quality of the audio software we use these days the quality of the content we use (loops and samples) equally matches the high standards of this software. Below is this weeks selection.

Audiowerkstatt are pleased to announce their first product: the audiowerkstatt midi-clock-divider - a clock divider for the MIDI clock.

When Grammy-nominated composer BT was just a kid,  his music teacher told him that nothing new would ever happen in the industry again – that becoming a master involved artfully rehashing the past.

Future Music Magazine went to The Hague (The Netherlands) and made a studio tour in the studios of Legowelt, famous for his use and love of vintage synthesizers and gear. Legowelt (real name Danny Wolfers) is a Dutch electronic musician who describes his musical style as "a hybrid form of slam jack combined with deep Chicago house, romantic ghetto technofunk and EuroHorror Soundtrack."

Reveal Sound is a relatively new company and their first product is a synth called SPIRE. It's a 4 oscillator synth with the options: classic, noise, fm and amsync. According to the developers it is a polyphonic synthesizer that combines powerful sound engine modulation and flexible architecture, a graphical interface provides unparalleled usability. Spire is the embodiment of the best opportunities, both software and hardware synthesizers. Let's dive in and see what this synth is all about.

Arturia is proud to announce availability of an Audiobus 2-supporting update (V1.0.2) to iSEM, its authentic recreation of the 1974-vintage Oberheim Synthesizer Expander Module® (SEM) for Apple’s iPad.