very clear and helpful explanation

I just listened to a bunch of these while rearranging my desk. It was fantastic.

• Azogial remix
• NotFat DNB remix
• Reinier Zonneveld’s Deep House Remix
• Reinier Zonneveld’s Filth on Acid Remix
• Andi Müller Mix
• Gigamesh DiscoTech Remix
• Eric Heirman Versions
• [Hybrid Remix](<Listen to Radiohead - Everything In It’s Right Place (Hybrid Remix) by Radiohead on #SoundCloud
  https://on.soundcloud.com/oweKOzonoObjYODJYH>)

TX-6 Control

https://tx6.psimyn.com

Wireless controller for TX-6 mixer using Bluetooth, or can use USB cable.

Can control volume and effects for each track, and master volume.

I love this thing. The device, mostly. The app I am also quite fond of.
As a synth, a drum machine, a sampler, a mixer. To sit on my desk, go in my bag, or my pocket. Has seen so much use that the FX buttons are faded. I got a YouTube comment about it being filthy because it was covered in pocket lint. Very flexible with aux out for loopback fx or sends or crazy cable configurations.

Lack of Windows support is annoying. It works, but you get buzzing even in 2ch mode. And latency is pretty high. But overall mostly works.

Also sometimes some clicking in recorded audio, even to USB stick.
And occasional crashes that need a reboot. So if using live you could be out for 10s.
But that has only ever happened after hours of use for me. Happens under heavy load though, which is a concern for risk of losing high interest moments. But, shit happens.

Pairing with TP-7
USB gives multitrack recording and overduubbing. Multitrack editing still takes a little reminder on TP-7 as I don’t do it often enough to remember.

Listo

https://listo.psimyn.com

Make playlists from your Spotify likes, or recently played. Saving to playlists while walking/out is a hassle, so instead I just hit the Like/Favorite button, then can go through a bunch of them later and add to a playlist. Or check ones I liked from a particular week/month if I want to group by time.

Requires access invite, Spotify make you request permission with API keys.

pscratch

https://pscratch.com

This was inspired by the SC500 portable scratch instrument being out of stock. Originally it used the OP-Z as a MIDI control input, so you could scratch with the tiny little spinny encoders.

Scratch and cut sounds on your phone. Includes drums and samples, you can add audio files or record from your microphone.

I really like the Help overlay. And the draggable window at the top. You can drag either edge, or the number inputs, or edit the numbers directly.
Sound quality still needs work, both the audio glitchiness when scratching, and the recording quality.

Some early small features, like the red tip of the rotating indicator used to touch the red indicator in the main waveform halfway through the rotation, but that was much less flexible for longer sections of audio.

Jamulus

this looks quite cool

always-on android phone left recording in public, identifying songs

To cover the cost of the music used in DJ live-streams, we will set aside a portion of earnings generated by DJ channels to be paid to musicians via music companies that represent them. These costs will vary based on how a channel monetizes. For most streamers, Twitch will be splitting these costs 50/50 with the streamer, although initially Twitch will absorb more of the cost. Twitch is covering the costs for DJs who aren’t yet monetizing. Non monetizing streamers will not be financially impacted.

Looks incredibly tedious!

via OP Forums

I have not even heard of some of these instruments

cool little overlay to print and sit above piano keys, shows different scales

currently on waitlist. Music app to consolidate different streaming apps

Listen to radio from around the world

good explanation and illustrations

this looks quite fun, sadly it seems to be iOS-only

“Judging from the comments, everybody got here by accident and everybody is glad that they did. I am glad too.”

I enjoyed the wii music

Really good!

Incredible concept. Math-based string simulator, with custom layouts.

free samples?! and little backstories behind the motivation and recording process?!! Great stuff

History and stories behind some of the many variations of the Lankum song

Rattling ghosts and The Human League

a department store manager from San Antonio.

the phrase “the internal rhythm of the phrase” has quite a nice rhythm to it.

saved for later maybe

lots of movement and colors to keep their attention.

This one with sheet music is also fun to follow along.

quite beautiful

great suggestions and explanations of couple of different POs

Values for figuring out not from a frequency spectrum

web emulator for po-33

from an abandoned 1950s musical which later became the basis for Monty Norman’s James Bond Theme

Heard a familiar sound while watching Tár

Great reconstruction video

Also this:

Question was, “What is the story behind Blood on the Motorway and is there a meaning to the song?” On The Private Press I wanted to force myself to dig deep into emotional territory…including contemplating death and dying, which is a somewhat consistent theme on a few of my albums. The loud thumping noises 2/3 of the way into the song represent death rattles and everything after is the afterlife. Sorry if this answer is too literal. Thanks for asking Ross

• DJ Shadow facebook post

exceptional internet

Clips from Mayer Hawthorne’s iPhone

I love this

Major triads. Typed out mostly as an exercise.

A C♯ E,
B♭ D F,
B D♯ F♯,
C E G,
C♯ F G♯,
D F♯ A,
E♭ G B♭,
E G♯ B,
F A C,
F♯ A♯ C♯,
G B D,
A♭ C E♭

incredible PDF of drum patterns

mostly recorded from hospital!

The “premature sheen” that happens when using computers, if stuff sounds ok enough too early, then you are reluctant to make big necessary changes later.

one of the greatest playlists of all time

Recommended by Fred Again on Tape Notes (TN:105)

Generating music from rich, descriptive captions. I look forward to Google actually making some of these available some day.

the low low low returns to artists from music streaming

Tips from OP Forums.

• Use live record mode and adjust parameters, values are saved just like playing notes
• Press and hold a step and adjust parameters to record values to that step
• Press and hold a step and stop to erase parameter locks for a step
• Press and hold Stop and Record buttons to erase parameter locks for a track

Used this to quickly map the controls for a USB MIDI mixer to volume/EQ gains in REAPER.

1. Click the Track Envelopes button to select FX parameters
   

2. Tick ‘Active’ checkbox (the one of the left). If deactivating, you might also need to uncheck ‘Visible’ to hide the row
   

3. There are little “learn” buttons in the Select Envelopes popup, otherwise click the MIDI Learn button on the track
   

4. Move MIDI controller, then click OK
   

For non-FX things like volume and panning, can use the View Actions menu, select the action (for example “Set volume for track 1”), and click Add to add a control.

Songs and lyrics by Tom Lehrer, freed into the public domain.

What a guy. Don’t chase streams, instead make things that you want to

Went from nearly a third of Billboard 100 songs having key changes in the 90s, to none by the mid 2000s.
Attributed to the ease of transposing on computers, the general lack of melody in hip-hop, and the shift from making music horizontally (for a particular part) to vertically (layering loops in a DAW).

Venus Theory on creator envy, and the importance of making ‘your own circle’. Make your own particular thing that you have in mind.

Cool music projects. Also had some fun with [lil beat maker]
(https://muted.io/lil-beat-maker/)!

pattern looping and tape machine madness. “The length of the delay was controlled by physical distance between the two tape machines”.

For making some music in a similiar style (loops of varying lengths), they suggest either using tape, or disable grid in DAW and just use time for loops.

forgot how good discogs was

the supertonic. Second note in the scale that sounds mostly ok with lot of chords in that scale.

One rare instance where it’s better to knock it down and rebuild than try to repair/remodel.

Another good reminder of the math of hours adding up

Key ones: develop a system, don’t say yes to everything, have fun.

more awesome web apps

I remember some stat of number of listens people would do of happy songs (200ish) vs sad songs (800ish)

The link

The list:

1. Hyde - The Gift
2. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Flow
3. Anthony Bourdain - Kitchen Confidential
4. Rene Girard - Violence and the Sacred
5. Susan Sontag - On Photography
6. Peter Kingsley - Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic
7. Jessie L. Weston - From Ritual to Romance
8. Henry Louis Gates - The Signifying Monkey
9. Robert Graves - The White Goddess
10. Camille Paglia - Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson
11. Mircea Eliade - Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy
12. F.M. Caswell - The Slave Girls of Baghdad

Opening paragraph was such a clear overview of them

Compressors and limiters are used to reduce dynamic range — the span between
the softest and loudest sounds. Using compression can make your tracks sound
more polished by controlling maximum levels and maintaining higher average
loudness.

I have often read that opening line - “what are compressors?” always leads to “what is dynamic range?” and “why do this? loudness?”

good read

As always, let your ears be the final judge. If it sounds good, it is good.

Great movie. The music, the androids, the city, the aesthetic.

I don’t tnink I agree with this reasoning

Plenty of layering and shit before

was the sound change because target devices changed?
targeting earbuds or laptop speakers
then things need to sound louder

bunch of recs for books about music

This was a fun discovery, from soundcloud suggesting the tag #bhangra. Also this

this made me kind of miss painstakingly tagging and organising my music collection

On length and style and cycles and narrative.
If you need to know anything about a piece before hearing he (he thinks not).
On the high/low division people make about pop music being silly.
Example of Vespertine by Björk, music that can exist in many different contexts and not seem out of place.

A love story in music lessons

Now that years have passed since I stopped, I don’t mind telling people that I trained to be an opera singer. I used to be ashamed of it, though I’m not sure what exactly felt shameful – the admission that I’d once wanted to be part of that world or the fact that I’d failed.

Cool comparison - make the same song on the two devices to compare workflow and sound

Interesting take on initial novelty (establishing a genre or crossover) followed by then staying in that same style

really quite excellent explanation of a bunch about sound

Removing limits on radio station ownership. Meant the same songs played across the whole of the US, and reduced the chance of local scenesters getting airplay.

Found via lightnote

Markdown archive of the OP Forums tips and tricks megathread

In those days, my head was full of reggae. Even when I was trying to come up with a rock beat, I think it just naturally came out as something that would work in reggae as well.”

From the rare HN discussion filled with music recommendations!

A long writeup of a long show. Has convinced me to give it a look

Outdoor comparison of UE Hyperboom and 2.2 Minirig setup

Had kinda sensed this trend, though some wild stats in there. There was also the turn to comfort music early in the pandemic.

old songs now represent 70% of the US music market.

The new music market is actually shrinking. All the growth in the market is coming from old songs.

the 200 most popular tracks now account for less than 5% of total streams. It was twice that rate just three years ago

Never before in history have new tracks attained hit status while generating so little cultural impact.

Have often wondered what the endpoint of this is. Or how much in impacted/unfluenced by sampling.

this is awesome. Dissecting and assembling different types of beats

Amazing, occasionally scathing. I wish this links page were as comprehensive

Relevant bit to current book:

Guthrie Govan, a slide guitarist whom Zimmer discovered on YouTube, described the process: “He’ll outline the desired end result rather than prescribing a specific means of getting there. For one cue, he just said, ‘This needs to sound like sand.’”

And not relevant to the book, but what a time to be alive:

These vocals were recorded in a closet in Brooklyn, the makeshift studio of the music therapist and singer Loire Cotler. In that space, sitting on the floor, with clothes dangling above her head and her laptop perched on a cardboard box

A history of African Jazz

Rise of holograms, deepfakes, so more ongoing fame for existing artists. Decline of labels, consolidation of the remaining power/profit in that business to fewer and fewer people.

The “official industry figures” will show that the music business is growing, but these numbers will be highly misleading. A huge portion of “music profits” will actually go to tech companies (Apple, Google, etc.), who have no interest in reinvesting this cash into the music ecosystem. For example, Spotify will take the cash flow generated by music and use it to acquire rights to podcasts, etc.—and, in general, the music culture will be starved of funds because it now must pay the bills for other businesses

Very interesting discussion. Computers’ ability to solve tasks goes from ‘impossible’ to boring as soon as they solve it! Though I am still regularly impressed by GPS…

I’m midway in the philosophizing here, but my point so far is obvious enough: The ability of a machine to do or outdo something humans do is interesting once at most. Deep Blue isn’t playing chess anymore and Watson isn’t on “Jeopardy!” because nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. We humans need to see the human doing it: Willie Mays making the catch that doesn’t look possible. When it comes to art, we need to see a woman or a man struggling with the universal mediocrity that is the natural lot of all of us and somehow out of some mélange of talent, skill, and luck doing the impossible, making something happen that is splendid and moving—or funny, or frightening, or whatever the artist set out to do.

Rostam goes through the creation and production of a few songs. Some wonderfully specific parts, like when he included effects in the recording of a sample, or the attempt to find something completely different to an existing sound to add to a song.

Can’t exactly remember where I found this, but some interesting looking publications on sound and music

Thoroughly enjoyable listen.

Was great hearing the earlier/wip versions of things (also related to him being a data hoarder! Though he’s done much better at it than me), and going through the various iterations, both good and terrible, seeing what works together and just that process of experimenting.

Really just hearing someone talk about their passion. Him realising that he really enjoyed messing around in garageband, making joke songs and jingles. Sometimes just saying random words to get the sound of something.

some good playlists in the comments

Tool for the lost art of tagging your audio files

Two key parts: start small and play slow!

Treating practice different to performance. Until you can actually play a piece just do drills, then gradually build up to larger sections. But do the drills slowly and correctly, rather than trying to play at actual speed with bad form.

This is a joke, but some parts are too real

you forgot to mention the time it takes hunting for your ‘obscure teenage years’ CDs on eBay, setting up search alerts for each CD to appear for ~$1 with cheap shipping, waiting three weeks for them to arrive from Lithuania, alcohol-rubbing the dozen sale stickers off the jewel case, cleaning the CDs with lint-free holy water, ripping the audio losslessly at superfast 52x, physically scanning with a scanner and optimizing the album artwork, categorizing, metadata’ing, updating and maintaining your Frankenstein music database, updating the online database for prospective fake internet points, and relisting each CD at $2

The relaxing sound of events and errors rolling in to your server.

Some good resources for free sheet music and other resources for learning music. On the actual site I saw the ‘have Amazon print it for $9.53 paperback bound book’, which is an interesting concept.

I like the point that film music can’t be overly specific - if it’s too emotive in a particular way then it can overpower the film. The music should add something to a scene, but it shouldn’t determine how people are going to react to it.

Interactive examples to learn through reading and play. I looked at a music one and it was one of the best visualisations of notes/harmony I’ve seen

A look at the music industry. You can’t make money from album sales, or from touring. Either have to do it as a hobby or get into the merchandice game.

Still trying to figure out the UI and layout of Bitwig, finding these kind of focused tutorials worth it for navigation alone