Top 10 MIDI Keyboards 2021 – Unlock Your Flow
Top 10 MIDI Keyboards 2021 A MIDI Keyboard is a useful device that allows music producers to intuitively input chords, melodies, and even drums into their DAW. They usually come with velocity-sensitive keys, pads, and knobs to help provide that human feel to your electronic tracks. This article rounds up the top 10 MIDI keyboards of 2021 and will help inform you about what to consider before purchasing one. Why Do I Need A MIDI Keyboard? Have you ever seen an instrumentalist ‘lose’ themselves in the music they are creating? Eyes closed, head pointed to the sky, and absolutely surrendered to the piano, guitar, or drums that they’re playing? (Source: Tash Sultana, Image by Jim Bennet/FilmMagic May 2020) This is the feeling that we musicians like to call “the flow state” – and it’s one that music producers can find hard to reach behind the clickity-clack of a mouse …
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Blog Recap: sidebrain Live at SamplenHold
SamplenHold is a new LA-based event for boundary-pushing performance artists hosted at Downtown LA hot spot, Resident. We are honored, grateful, but also not surprised our school's founder, Yeuda Ben-Atar AKA sidebrain, was asked to perform at the first SamplenHold event last Tuesday, July 11, alongside the likes of incredible talent like Amp Live, Josh Spoon, Portrait XO, and other special guests.
On SamplenHold's event page they described sidebrain as a "mastermind of multi-genre live performance and controllerism". He absolutely lived up to the hype. Using Ableton, a MIDI keyboard, and his famous Dreamcast controller - Yeuda threw down a set full of original loops, beats, and songs all while jamming out live with his controllers in masterfully creative ways. People we're feeling the heat and we can not wait for sidebrain to release some of the new material he was previewing.
GrooveBox by Ampify: A Mobile Studio in the Palm of Your Hand
GrooveBox by Ampify: A Mobile Studio in the Palm of Your Hand Ampify may be a name you’ve never heard before, but you know the products well. The development team Blocs grew out of Focusrite and Novation and gave us the Launchpad and Blocs Wave music-making apps. Now they have changed their name to Ampify for the release of GrooveBox; an all-in-one mobile studio for the iPad and iPhone. While still maintaining the user-friendly simplicity of Launchpad and Blocs Wave, GrooveBox offers more advanced synth parameters. Ampify’s intention is to create a program that is easy enough for beginners to start, and for the more experienced to master. From everything we’ve seen so far it looks as though GrooveBox does just that – blurs the line between ease of use and detailed control all with the user’s workflow in mind. The free app is based around two dual-oscillator synthesizers and …
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Novation’s Next Level Analog Synth and Sequencer: Circuit Mono Station
Novation’s Next Level Synth and Sequencer: Circuit Mono Station For weeks now, we’ve been hearing rumblings of Novation’s latest, the Circuit Mono Station, so with its unveiling at last week’s Superbooth trade fair in Berlin, we thought we’d check it out. Our first impression is this synth/sequencer has a lot of really cool, applicable features, and it looks like a lot of fun. This could be a great tool to add some new flavor to your productions or give a new avenue for songwriting. For anyone familiar with Novation products, the Circuit Mono Station is a cross between the Circuit, Peak, and Bass Station II – taking the layout of knobs from the Peak, combining with the workflow of the Circuit, and mixing those features with the sound engine of the Bass Station II (we have a Bass Station II here and love its ability to produce fat, dirty or …
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Blocs Wave – Novations New iOS App
Blocs Wave – Novations New iOS App Novation just released a brand new IOS App under their sub-company called Blocs Wave. An app designed to create quick musical ideas by combining a collection of sound, in an improvised, on-the-go, in-the-moment-manner. Includes a sleek and intuitive layout that displays waveforms and allows you to adjust, tweak, and time stretch the sound in real time. Blocs Wave includes a wide range of sounds form a number of different genres including chip tune, club classics, trap elements, stellar songwriting, starlight soundtrack, slow jams, rock radio, retro trap, retro techno, retro EDM, house of EDM, house heads, hip hop hustle, and garage grunge. On top of the presets you can import your own sounds to warp and recreate, or you can record directly into your IOS device. (A look at the time stretching view) Blocs Waves foundation is within the time stretching ability and its visual …
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Novation’s Finish Something – Get Your Tracks Done
Novation’s Finish Something – Get Your Tracks Done Novation, the company that brought you the LaunchPad, recently released a video featuring several new, and experienced artists, providing advice and insights on how to finish tracks. In the world of production, finishing a track is the most important part of the entire process and can be the biggest challenge to any artist. Check out the video below to hear some serious wisdom, from setting strict deadlines, to sitting on a track for ten years until you feel you’re ready to release it, anything to get you to finish a track and get it out to the public. su_youtube_advanced url=”https://youtu.be/ISXSVaT0iWM” showinfo=”no” rel=”no” modestbranding=”yes”
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