Propellerhead announced today a new major version of its award-winning Reason music software. With over 90 third party Rack Extensions expanding Reason’s rack of instruments and effects already available, Propellerhead has focused its attention on new creative and inspirational improvements for the mixer, the rack and the sequencer.
Native Instruments today announced the latest generation of its two industry-standard KOMPLETE software bundles. KOMPLETE 9 includes 33 instruments and effects with six new additions, including the brand-new MONARK monosynth, plus the completely redesigned BATTERY 4 drum sampler. KOMPLETE 9 ULTIMATE includes all 65 current KOMPLETE Instruments and Effects at the time of release and over 370 GB of content. Each bundle now also features essential studio effects, delivering complete production solutions from initial idea to finished composition. Notably, KOMPLETE 9 and KOMPLETE 9 ULTIMATE are available for the same prices as their predecessors.
The latest online course in the Producertech Presents series is a brand new set of tutorials, shot live in the studio of Santé, one of Berlin’s hottest rising stars. In the course, Santé shows how he constructed the classic house track ‘Do You Wanna 808‘ with his preferred music software platform, Ableton Live.
Here is another video this weekend. Again something we like to watch and show you, … of course. It’s Chris Randall (Audio Damage) doing a jam on the Elektron Analog Four with the soundpack by Richard Devine.
Simon Mills from the band ‘Bent‘ opens his studio doors and gives a walkthrough of the track ‘Swollen’. Simon has remixed this classic track under his new guise ‘Napoleon’ Mills and has built up a musical portfolio that graced everywhere from Eastenders’ Queen Vic to the Acropolis in Athens and featured cameos from members of Faithless, Simian and The Beloved, not to mention a multitude of revived songstresses from crackly charity shop records.
With inspiration ranging all the way from grime to flamenco, listening to the French hiphop outfit Ghostown is a bit like turning the frequency knob on a radio receiving signals from all corners of the world. Rael Powell, the beatsmith and vocalist of the project, explains how he masters his loops.
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.
The Clocktave is a scratch tool to make music with. It is based on just one concept: the Clocktave. A Clocktave (Clock-Octave) is a note scale to scratch with, ranging from 1 to 4 octaves. The notes of the octaves are divided between exactly one rotation of the record. Every note of the scale appears at the same position over and over, regardless of which octave you are in.
Blue Cat Audio has released an update for their multi-purpose audio levels meter and envelope generation plug-in, Blue Cat’s DP Meter Pro. At this occasion, the introduction price period for the recently released plug-in has been extended.
Steinberg Media Technologies GmbH today released Nuendo 6, the latest, highly anticipated version of Steinberg’s state-of-the-art production environment tailored to post and audio production studios.
Since the introduction of the first Focusrite Saffire interface in 2005, FireWire (Apple’s trade name for IEEE 1394) has been a firm favourite among Focusrite interface users with its high speed and reliability. In particular, FireWire and USB represent a great partnership – by having your audio interface on one type of bus and your hard drives on the other, you get the highest possible performance from your computer audio system, and the fewest problems.
Korg are pleased to announce that the KORG Legacy Collection series is now available in 64-bit! KORG’s Legacy Collection series, made up of legendary KORG synthesizers including MS-20, Polysix, Mono/Poly, WAVESTATION and M1, as well as MDE-X effects processor and LegacyCell will now work on the latest 64-bit DAWs.
Sonnox is excited to have released the AAX version of the acclaimed Oxford Dynamics plug-in. Both AAX DSP and AAX Native versions can be used as a surround buss compressor / limiter (previously only available in the TDM version) and the plug-in has improved metering.
Designled technology startup ROLI introduces the Seaboard GRAND, a radically new kind of musical instrument and digital controller that reimagines the most iconic of musical instruments – the piano. An evolution of the piano keyboard, the Seaboard has a soft threedimensional surface that enables unprecedented realtime, intuitive control of the fundamental characteristics of sound: pitch, volume, and timbre. Piano and keyboard players can instantly transfer their skills to the Seaboard and begin exploring its new capacities. Pre-orders will start on april 14th, with only 88 Seaboards becoming available!
After the mysterious new synth they strated teasing last week, Native Instruments put out another teaser video for yet another product. “Supercharge your beats“, they say. Safe to say it has to with beats, drums. Will this be a new version of Battery (4). Or looking at the video, maybe Battery for iOS, seeing those funky buttons and ‘sample deckish kinda‘ pads?