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May 2025
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135 articles
- May 14
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- The Epiphone Dave Grohl DG-335 has just seen its biggest ever discount - this is a call to save a whopping £380 at Andertons
- "Crafted from Heritage. Tuned for Tomorrow”: Zultan Cymbals celebrate their 25th birthday with a new high-end 25 series
- "Can you believe this?": Watch Pulp drummer Nick Banks join tribute band Pulp’d at Fake Festival
- "It's drill music, but imagine it being about sex": Sexy drill, lagu timur and elector corridos are all having moments - the international genres blowing up on Spotify in 2025
- “I like the real thing that happens when you dig in a little bit and the amp starts to cry for mercy”: Is the compressor pedal a country guitar essential? Brad Paisley doesn’t think so – and here’s why
- “We used to work with Fleetwood Mac a lot on the uni circuit. You could sit down beside the stage and they’d start playing - der-der, der-der - for an hour and a half. We wanted to do that”: Francis Rossi on how Status Quo developed their 12 bar boogie
- Tempo shifts, key changes and the return of nonsense lyrics: Is Eurovision 2025 set to be the most musically weird contest in its history?
- “Paul’s basslines, while they’re iconic and memorable and musical, they’re not really technically challenging”: How McCartney’s sidekick Brian Ray juggles bass and guitar — and plays the Lennon role in The End
- “It’s not technically hard - a third-grader can play these bits. But on the spot? That’s kind of the difference”: The guitarist on Michael Jackson’s I Just Can’t Stop Loving You on how he found the right moments to play his “little earworms”
- "This is very much the last time around”: Make the most of the Oasis reunion says the band's co-manager
- “Use as a little gain as you can to get the idea across, which may still be all the gain in the world”: Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on exploring “absurd” tunings, his friends' genius, and why he is looking for someone to teach him guitar
- “We threw strings at the track and it exploded”: How a pop anthem turned into a wedding song favourite
- “I’m not even sure what size venues I can play. I don’t know what I can afford, and if it would just be me blowing £100,000 on something to give me pleasure": Gary Kemp admits that even big names can’t afford to tour
- Roland's V-Drums go wireless for new simple and seamless WT-10 sensor and DH-10 hub DrumLink system
- M-Audio upgrades its M-Track Duo budget audio interface with "pro-quality" converters and USB-C connectivity
- May 13
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- “Its robust construction, low self-noise, and ability to emulate a range of classic microphones make it a valuable asset”: Universal Audio SC-1 review
- “It’s a really wild, weird tuning, and something that low would just not work if you didn’t have a 30-inch scale”: Periphery’s Misha Mansoor on how the Fender Bass VI inspired his Jackson baritone offset – and the “absurd” super-low tuning he uses on it
- “You can hear how loose it is - you can hear how not gridded it is”: Producer Jack Antonoff on how he channelled the Beatles and Jeff Lynne for the drums and bass on Sabrina Carpenter’s Please Please Please
- “I was watching an episode of Friends and someone was wearing a Motörhead T-shirt. Literally an hour later, I got a call to work on their record!”: Romesh Dodangoda on how he became one of modern rock's most in-demand producers
- “I want to convey the incredible journey that life has taken me on as an artist": Madonna has teamed up with Netflix and the producer/director Shawn Levy for a series based on her life
- “Making music is like constructing a machine whose function is to dredge up emotions in performer and listener alike”: How becoming more in-tune with our feelings when listening to music made us better creators - with a little thanks to David Byrne
- Serum 2, Pigments 6, Phase Plant, Vital and Massive X: The ultimate soft synth showdown
- "I have a whole crowd in front of me, and all I want to do is hug him”: Someone just paid $12,495 to be Kiss icon Gene Simmons' roadie for a day
- Want a gig at the Montreux Jazz Festival? Thomann and Shure want to gift you your big break at the famous global gathering
- Chad Smith just destroyed the Wu-Tang Clan in his latest drum tuition video
- “I used the snare drums I played on those early records, including the snare I played on Two Princes”: Why the Spin Doctors are still rocking with the same old gear they used in the ’90s
- “She played it for us, and we were like, ‘Oh, my God’”: The last song Jill Sobule wrote before her death was entitled JD Vance Is A...
- May 12
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- "There's too much new gear!": The 12 best instruments, effects and innovations you need to know about from Superbooth 2025
- “This book will serve as a reliable companion on your journey through drumming”: Millenium launches new book for drummers
- “Prince was really excited and kept pumping us up, saying ‘We’re making history tonight’”: How Prince summoned one of the greatest guitar solos of all time from thin air
- “I met him at his house and he played the drums for me”: As he prepares to play him in the Beatles biopics, Barry Keoghan has been studying Ringo Starr’s technique up close
- “It was a joke and suddenly it became a genre. I don't even understand it. I never understood it”: Daryl Hall can’t get onboard with the concept of yacht rock - “It's just R&B, with maybe some jazz in there"
- "I remember in the studio thinking: ‘Oh my God, how am I going to deliver this to the label tomorrow?’ I’d totally lost sight of its potential": A music professor breaks down the theory behind All Saints' Pure Shores
- “While we were all eager to return to the stage, Sean's health is our top priority at this moment”: Alice In Chains pull tour after drummer experiences "non-life-threatening medical emergency"
- “It felt like every song was 20 minutes long. It was not comfortable”: Suzanne Vega explains why she had to play her groundbreaking 1989 Glastonbury set wearing a bulletproof vest
- New to synthesis? This free synth plugin can help you learn how it works
- “It’s really weird: 400 students asking questions, and I’m the only person there - and I’m the instructor - who can’t read music”: Acoustic guitar hero Tommy Emmanuel plays The Beatles and Oasis as he discusses the glaring gap in his musical knowledge
- “I remember saying, ‘Come on, you’re gonna edit it down to, what, four bars?’ Harold goes, ‘No, we’re gonna keep everything.’ And they did!”: How a guitar hero's epic 64-bar solo lit up a classic movie theme
- May 10
- May 9
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- “The only difference for me between me calling it an album and a mixtape is what I went into it thinking it was”: PinkPantheress on why her new project, Fancy That, is a mixtape rather than an album
- "A versatile jack-of-all-trades, with some excellent displays of mastery at times": Fender Player II Modified Precision Bass review
- “John said, ‘I don’t know where to go from here.’ So Paul said, ‘Well, I’ve got this other song I’ve been working on.’ They joined the two bits together to make one song”: The story of the greatest thing The Beatles ever recorded
- "While being dubbed the ‘Metallica Quake’ online, it actually posed no danger": Metallica’s Enter Sandman triggers mini earthquake on its American Football ‘homecoming’
- “I had a bit of a shock because I’d just come from working with Yes, who had done 1,000s of live shows and were all brilliant players. Frankie Goes To Hollywood had done 5 shows and they could barely play”: Trevor Horn on the making of Relax
- “I was hypnotised when I was a little boy - by my dentist who was experimenting with hypnotism”: Pete Townshend reveals why he always does his best on stage, as The Who announce final US tour
- MusicRadar deals of the week: Score an impressive £400 off a Rickenbacker 330, £200 off PRS, and up to 80% off a host of synth gear
- “We may jump up on stage and jam. It's very loose”: Gene Simmons tells Kiss fans to expect the unexpected at the band’s upcoming Las Vegas event
- “You sir, are an absolute madman. I can't imagine how long this took”: You have to see this astonishing Lose Yourself movie mash-up
- May 8
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- Can you fix your guitar's frets yourself? We try three innovative approaches from MusicNomad to investigate how they might conquer a major cause of fret buzz
- Novation’s Bass Station II has officially entered its Swifty era, thanks to a new collaboration with a highly respected British designer
- “It is an absolute phenom for us to be able to present to you now our teenage aspirations in this song”: Joe Satriani and Steve Vai are living out their teenage dreams in the video for their new single featuring the ‘Voice of Rock’ Glenn Hughes
- “We’ve carefully considered what matters most to musicians and sound designers”: Groove Synthesis announces a more compact and affordable version of its superb 3rd Wave synth
- Why are parts of the Melvins’ old touring van being sold for up to $40,000?
- L-Acoustics’ new DJ-aimed stem separation software can pull apart any stereo source and fire its elements across a 360 soundstage in the blink of an eye
- Roland releases free update to the SH-4d bringing new oscillator models and the ability to pattern chain
- Calling all synth heads, Thomann just dropped the sale of the year with up to 80% off models from Moog, Behringer, Arturia and more
- Novation's Launch Control XL 3 boasts updated hardware and sleek new design, along with MIDI connectivity for DAWless music-makers
- Phase8, Korg’s ‘acoustic synth’, is finally confirmed for release, and it looks and sounds awesome
- Superbooth 2025: all the latest synth news from Berlin, as it happened
- "True to the Moog legacy and innovative spirit of Dr. Robert Moog": Moog unveils new $899 analogue monosynth, Messenger
- May 7
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- “Musical equipment does not appreciate being stored away... please keep creating, pushing boundaries”: 12 pieces of Andy Weatherall’s studio gear are now up for auction
- “The neck is carved and rolled to Eddie Van Halen’s exacting specifications”: An EVH electric guitar with fixed bridge and fine tuners? The Wolfgang Special TOM is one classy no-fuss speed machine
- "He’s still in my dreams two or three times a week, getting on my case about something": Motörhead’s Phil Campbell prepares to unveil an 8ft bronze of his bandmate, Lemmy Kilmister
- “Designed to replace your laptop and become the brain of your setup”: Bento is an all-in-one DAW in a box that does 'everything 1010music users have been asking for'
- “This beast of a guitar is built for speed, equipped for domination”: Jackson refreshes three classics as stripped down single-pickup shred machines – meet the limited edition Pro Plus Pure Metal range
- “Why is there no amp that can do a really nice clean, and a really nice gain-y tone, with a reverb on it?”: Victory satisfies Pete Honore’s tone cravings and rehouses his Deputy tube amp in a portable lunchbox format
- “Not another multi-effect for your dentist,” but Polyend’s Mess looks like an FX sequencing powerhouse that you can really get your teeth into
- “It replaced three plugins on my vocal bus - I love it!ˮ: Meet Velvet, iZotope’s new smart vocal smoothing tool
- Arturia embraces NKS - and offers hardware owners free access to Native Instruments' Komplete 15 Select
- The ultra-rare PPG 1002 has been rebuilt for the 21st century - and it comes with a jaw-dropping price tag
- “We were able to up the gain and the volume on tap way past the levels we would normally get”: ThorpyFX’s Hanami fuzz pedal is packing NOS germanium, dynamic, and blooming lovely
- One of our favourite instruments of 2024 gets even better as Polyend adds an experimental sample engine to Synth
- “I'm so glad that the Erica Synths crew was able to carry out the vision and finish the dream!": Hexinverter Électronique’s planned analogue drum machine never made it to market, but the HexDrums is set to put that right
- “Okay, I’m saying it. I didn’t post the video because Giacomo couldn’t play well enough to be on my channel”: Rick Beato comments on the Giacomo Turra plagiarism scandal and says stealing other people’s music is “completely not cool”
- Ableton drops 1.5 update for Move, adding sample slicing, improved MIDI I/O and a new Auto-Filter device
- “I turned to my assistant and said 'Man, this sounds like it's going to be big’”: Shakira and Wyclef Jean reunite for a 20th anniversary performance of Hips Don’t Lie, a song that began life in the Dirty Dancing movie that you’ve never seen
- Instruō's new semi-modular Seashell offers time-saving total recall of parameters via software
- May 6
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- Moog teases new Messenger synth with freaky Severance-inspired video
- “The PB-62 continues our tradition of delivering outstanding price-to-performance value, and a fresh take on a classic theme”: Vintage mojo from a $180 beginner bass guitar? Meet the Harley Benton PB-62
- "Create unique and professional tracks in seconds": Sugar Bytes' Dialekt is an 8-track groovebox that can create instant songs in a variety of genres
- “This isn’t just an Artist Signature model – it’s a glimpse into what could have been, had this concept made it to production”: Fender and Brad Paisley introduce the 1967 ‘Lost Paisley’ Telecaster
- “At last, we get our first album to sound as we imagined it should sound… Phew!”: 52 years later, Queen have finally got their debut album right, says Roger Taylor
- Definitely not a complete unknown: Hollywood star rumoured to be playing a ‘secret’ set at Glastonbury
- Frap Tools’ debut polysynth Magnolia might be the most exciting new instrument of 2025
- The LIVE Trust charity just made its first £500,000 from voluntary ticket price contributions
- “It’s a $20 plugin…I love it because sometimes the problem with digital sounds is they just lack a little bit of character”: Steven Wilson reveals his favourite plugin is a lo-fi cassette emulator and it is on all the guitars on his latest prog epic
- “I sat down, gathered all my historical track sheets about everything we did each day during the production of the album": Ken Caillat, the producer of Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, on writing the book that he believes inspired a hit Broadway musical
- If you’re struggling creatively, don’t make owning that $2,000 synth your primary objective: Why tech isn’t to blame for your lack of inspiration
- Years after Thom Yorke told her that she was “the only one doing anything interesting these days,” Billie Eilish has covered Radiohead’s Creep
- “A half-million dollars of tone at your feet”: Nail the sound of a holy grail tube amp with a pedal you made yourself – JHS Pedals unveils the NOTADÜMBLË solderless DIY kit
- “All Strats aren't equal… Then it’s how you smack it, or zing it or strum it… A lot of it is that too”: Session guitar legend Michael Thompson reveals how he created the famous clean tone that’s on countless '80s and '90s hits
- “It’s jokingly the worst rap album in history because there are no lyrics on it at all”: It turns out there’s a reason why André 3000 turned up at the Met Gala with a grand piano on his back
- ‘Artist centric’ music streamer Deezer just made €134 million in the first quarter of 2025
- Ever wondered if you need a subwoofer and which one to buy? Kali Audio has the perfect options for producers
- The Faces have completed 11 tracks for an album, says Kenney Jones and “most of them are good”
- May 5
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- "This is a guitar that proves affordability can still bring looks that stun": Gretsch G5230T Electromatic Sparkle Jet FT review
- “I was frightened, but I was like, ‘ok, big boy pants time. Step up to the plate, here comes the pitch and you can either knock it out or you can strike’”: Bob Dylan's live engineer Jason Frankhouser on mixing front-of-house for The Never Ending Tour
- “There are very few artists whose best work was the very last thing they ever did in their lives”: Ronnie James Dio is the exception that proves the rule, says ex-Skid Row star Sebastian Bach
- “You have everyone from senior citizens to little kids who like heavy metal music. It's a very friendly community”: Scary? Moi? Ghost’s Tobias Forge reckons you've got metal all wrong
- "I have a very emotional relationship with my machines”: Djrum on how a catastrophic technological failure led to one of 2025’s best electronic albums
- May 4
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- “The groove was so thick, and what am I playing? A simple, Boom-Bop-Tish-Bop-Boom-Bop? It was unbelievable”: The making of Robert Palmer's Addicted To Love
- One man spent an entire year recording a pine tree. Hear the results as FOUR album epic is released
- “It was just fun, and if you ask me how I did it I don't know, because I think I was in a flow process”: Rihards Zalupe on composing the music for the Oscar-winning animated movie, Flow
- May 3
- May 2
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- “Listen closely to your mistakes, are they really mistakes? Many of the best ideas on our album came from these happy accidents”: 50 production secrets from the pros
- “We’d do a soundcheck and everything would be great, but when we came to do the show, it wouldn’t turn on”: 10 more things producers can learn from our In The Studio With... series
- “When I started I didn't really know what a producer was. I just thought artists would produce themselves, because that's what I would have done”: Adele, Stormzy and Kae Tempest collaborator Fraser T Smith on the shifting definition of a ‘producer’
- “There's no wrong way to record. Like, people say, ‘oh, this is a good mic and this is a bad mic.’ There is no such thing”: Rafa Sardina on a career producing, mixing and engineering for the stars
- “The amount of streams on a song isn't indicative of the quality or effort put into it”: And Doja Cat says that those who disagree with this “could be having an episode and should seek love from the outside”
- “He was a great hero to all of us, and because he wore glasses this even allowed John Lennon to wear his in public and not have to whip them off if there was a girl passing by!”: Paul McCartney salutes a rock ’n’ roll legend
- “I’d urge anyone wanting to make music to avoid waiting around for others to give you permission”: Eli Keszler on staying true to yourself as an artist, working with Skrillex and Oneohtrix Point Never, and his self-titled new project
- “If you’ve never encountered modes before, this one tip could change your musical outlook forever”: 10 music theory tricks every producer and songwriter should know
- “The whole essence of why the sound was so interesting is because it is going from all to nothing in milliseconds”: The classic hit that defined the sound of the ’80s — and features the most famous drum break in rock
- “I thought: Oh, f_____g hell, she’s got an idea. Here we go. Then everyone and their f_____g mate started jumping on board”: Ozzy Osbourne confirms his attendance at this summer’s Back To The Beginning mega gig
- “Miles runs into the studio with his horn and shouts ‘hit the record button,’ and we were recording. We wrapped that album up by midday”: Billy Cobham on Miles Davis’s agile approach to recording
- “PC Music was just two guys in a room making stuff and uploading it to the internet - that’s where it starts”: Danny L Harle on self-discovery, success and helping unsigned artists find their sound
- May 1
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- “You could take everything away from me but leave the laptop and I'm confident I could make interesting music quite happily for the rest of my life”: Lone on the gear behind his technicolour, rave-adjacent electronica
- “One of the concepts we are exploring is whether an artist could continue to create work after they have passed away”: The groundbreaking tech that will shape the future of music production
- “If you messed something up on a production, admit it, fix it, and move on”: 8 cost-free tips to improve as a producer in 2025
- "I switched to a Stratocaster - I got a really good deal in the middle of the night for $120 - and then in 1972, Lowell George showed me his MXR compressor pedal”: Bonnie Raitt on how she developed her famous slide guitar style
- “The melodies work so well in this CGDGAD tuning. I’ve absolutely fallen in love with this arrangement”: Magic Mike Dawes is at it again – he’s turned a Sleep Token track into a work of solo acoustic guitar genius
- “He’d start, ‘You’ll never guess what I dreamed last night…’ and the groaning would begin”: How Rush marshalled Alex Lifeson’s dreams to write a bona-fide prog-rock classic
- “I pulled this Moog bass forward… we were like, ‘OK, that feels kind of trashy’”: Lorde says that she needed to find “just the right amount of dirt” to finish her new single, What Was That
- PreSonus’s Quantum HD interfaces can be the heart of a powerful, convenient recording setup
- “Whether you’re looking to liven up a dull snare or beef up a lacklustre bass sound, these plugins are extremely handy”: Our resident platinum award-winning mixer and producer shares 10 of his go-to plugins
- Soundtoys just dropped the best free reverb plugin we've tried in years - grab it now before it costs $99
- “I knew since I first listened to the music that it was gonna be big - because the music was incredible”: Charli XCX's Brat mastering engineer Idania Valencia on finalising a modern classic
- “He stopped writing, I think, because he just ran out. He had used that guitar neck up. He did everything and anything that neck could do”: Sammy Hagar explains Eddie Van Halen's lost years
- “After every take, Mutt would say, ‘Check the tuning, man!’ This went on and on for almost a year. One day, I just gave him the guitar and said, ‘You tune it. I can’t take this anymore!’”: How legendary producer Mutt Lange drove the Cars half-mad
- “Last time I saw my mother alive was at her own father’s funeral. It sounds almost too Irish": Bono shares trailer for his Apple TV+ documentary
- “If it’s not all samples, what did those people do to get that credit on the song?”: Diane Warren on the trend for hit songs having multiple writers, and why she prefers to work alone
- “We could see John begin smiling. At the end of the first verse, he gave an exuberant thumbs-up and McCartney and Harrison began slapping each other on the back”: How one Beatles track spawned a recording technique revolution
- ‘Ain’t Going Down Without a Fight’: Michael Bolton confirms he has incurable brain cancer
- “Some of the greatest musicianship right now is young and female... If you want to take a course in great songwriting, go study at the college of Taylor Swift”: Sheryl Crow heaps praise on Olivia Rodrigo, Chappell Roan and Phoebe Bridgers
- “All the albums I did with Metallica were recorded on 24-track analogue tape. There’s not a computer in sight”: How Flemming Rasmussen produced Metallica’s classic Master Of Puppets