Music Technology Posts from September, 2007



Reason 4 Released: Buy Reason 4 Now or Get a Reason 4 Upgrade

Saturday, September 29th, 2007

For some people, having a virtually infinite rack of software units with which to create an even more infinite (?) array of interconnections and arcane routing that emits sounds the likes of which the universe has never witnessed would be enough to keep them busy for decades. Not Propellerhead Software though… they’ve just released Reason 4, which throws a few new devices into the rack for good measure…
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MIDI Ironing Boards and Theremin Frog Rhythms

Friday, September 28th, 2007

The Handmade Music exhibition took place last night at Etsy Labs in New York, and featured Ranjit Bhatnagar’s innovative heat-sensitive MIDI ironing board controller, amongst many other odd things. He devised a way to allow MIDI signals to be triggered by temperature, and the gradual cooling of different areas of the board creates unusual trailing effects…
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Pitch Control On The Vinyl Side

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Most DJs are very familiar with the idea of pitch control, and DAW experts probably associate the phrase with timestretching, tempo modification and sample slicing. However, when you’re slinging vinyl, pitch control is an essential part of beat matching, due to the very real physical relationship between rotation speed/BPM and playback pitch…
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Free Windows XP Optimisation Guide Download

Wednesday, September 26th, 2007

Yes, it’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for – the awesome Podcomplex PC Tweaking Guide that has brought so much joy to musicians and non-musicians alike is finally available for you to download and take home today… and best of all, it’s completely free!
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Beck Reveals Sesame Street Rap Connection

Tuesday, September 25th, 2007

First off, I suppose I should admit that this title may be somewhat (deliberately) misleading to the casual reader. The Beck in question is probably not the one you’re thinking of – I’m actually referring to a comment made by Beck ‘Analog Partisan Raider’ over at Home Recording…
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More Ways To Make Money From Music

Monday, September 24th, 2007

If you’re just starting out as a musician, you’re probably eager to unleash your talent upon the world and receive the mighty flood of cash that it deserves. However, once that initial surge of enthusiasm dies down, you may begin to realise that promoting your band is an essential part of making a living from music – and it actually takes quite a lot of work…

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The Longest-Running Break Of All Time

Friday, September 21st, 2007

Excluding Lig Lury’s, the fourth editor of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, who has yet to return from his extended lunch break, the longest-running (in the sense of being the most often-sampled) break ever is probably the ‘Amen Break’. This is an extremely common and quite simple rhythmic syncopation that was (probably) first recorded in the track ‘Amen Brother’ by The Winstons in 1969…
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Seeq And Ye Shall Find

Thursday, September 20th, 2007

Seeqpod is one of the many new music search services emerging under the Web 2.0 umbrella, and boasts many of features you would expect from such a service – although the seemingly ubiquitous wetfloor logo has been omitted. Its ‘playable search’ uses biomimetic search and discovery technology from work done by UC’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL)…
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RPM Cross-Genre Box Set Compilation

Wednesday, September 19th, 2007

The RPM challenge took place throughout the month of February this year, inviting musicians around the globe to write, record and produce an album in 28 days. The project was a huge success, with thousands of artists and bands managing to create a new album within the constraints of the challenge. Mick M then spearheaded the daunting prospect of creating a series of six compilation CDs representing some of the musical genres covered by the RPM artists. The six CDs have now been completed…
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Behold The Singing Robot Vocaloid

Tuesday, September 18th, 2007

Yes indeed folks, the robots have already learned to play guitar and dance, and now they’re ready to sing as well. At this rate, the whole DRM-to-protect-the-artists kerfluffle will soon be a moot point, as we can just get a bunch of mechanoids up on stage to entertain us…
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