AI music generation platform Suno has announced a "global alliance" with BMG, the world's fourth-largest music company, as it prepares to release new models trained on licensed music and developed in partnership with major players in the music industry.

In a statement shared today, the companies outlined plans to develop "entirely new music experiences that reimagine how artists and fans can connect" through a "strategic framework" covering BMG's recorded and music publishing repertoire.

According to BMG, the agreement ensures that its artists and songwriters will be compensated for the use of their music in training Suno's models, both retrospectively and moving forward. The statement made clear that only artists who choose to participate will have their music licensed to Suno.

BMG follows in the footsteps of Warner Music Group in its partnership with Suno, who reached a settlement in November last year that allowed the controversial AI music company to train its models using music from Warner's catalogue.

Warner was the first of the "Big Three" major record labels to settle with Suno. The other two – UMG and Sony Music – remain engaged in an ongoing lawsuit with the company that began in 2024, alleging "wilful copyright infringement on an almost unimaginable scale" and claiming that Suno copied "decades' worth of the world’s most popular sound recordings" to train its models.

On July 31, German performance rights organization GEMA landed a victory over Suno in the Munich Regional Court, marking the first time that a European court has ruled on the training of AI platforms in the United States. The court ruled that Suno should be obliged to pay license fees for the use of GEMA's repertoire, which covers works by more than 100,000 members.

The world's leading AI music generation platform, Suno has a user base of more than two million paid subscribers and recently raised more than $400 million in funding at a valuation of $5.4 billion.

Last week, Suno CEO Mikey Shulman announced that the company will adopt audio watermarking and fingerprinting technology to ensure that Suno-generated songs can be identified on other platforms. He also outlined new download limits designed to limit the ability to mass-distribute songs on streaming platforms and combat streaming fraud.

In the same post, Shulman shared a set of principles that he claims guide the company's mission to "build the future of music responsibly" and "contribute to a healthy and growing ecosystem".

Regarding the partnership with BMG, Shulman said: "We believe the future of music will be more participatory, creating entirely new ways for artists and fans to connect."

"Building that future responsibly means working directly with the people who make music and the companies that represent them. Together with BMG, we can develop new experiences that give artists and songwriters real choice, generate new revenue, and make music a bigger part of people’s lives."

Celine Joshua, BMG's EVP of Global Marketing & Streaming, added: "The future of AI in music will be defined by whether artists and songwriters remain at the center of the opportunity and share in the value it creates.

"Choice is the guiding principle. This agreement establishes strong protections, clear economics, and new creative possibilities for artists and their fans. As we enter the era of creation, we look forward to shaping that future together with our creators and Suno."

Reports have surfaced suggesting that inMusic has shut down Native Instruments’ UK office, putting a number of jobs under threat following extensive layoffs across the company rumoured to have taken place in July.

News of the office’s alleged closure arrived in a Reddit post shared on August 5, titled “The layoffs continue: InMusic just fired the whole Native Instruments UK office”.

While it’s unclear how many Native Instruments employees have been affected, a representative for inMusic told MusicRadar that the company is "simplifying its organizational and legal structure, including Native Instruments UK" as part of the “ongoing integration" of the company into the "inMusic family of brands".

Native Instruments CEO Nick Williams and Chief Product & Technology Officer Simon Cross have also been removed from their posts, according to reports from MusicTech, who reviewed company filings from July. inMusic Europe’s CEO Richard Seymour has since been appointed as a director of Native Instruments UK, suggesting that he has replaced Williams as CEO.

inMusic is the parent company that owns Moog Music, Akai Professional, Rane, Denon DJ, Numark, Alesis and M-Audio, among others. inMusic announced its acquisition of Native Instruments in May, several months after the company entered preliminary insolvency.

Since then, it’s been reported that layoffs across “nearly all departments” have taken place at Native Instruments, with “around 100 individuals” affected. inMusic has declined to comment on the extent of the layoffs.

Following its acquisition of Native Instruments, inMusic shared a video in which CEO Jack O'Donnell and Akai Professional Director Andy Mac discussed O'Donnell's plans for the company. During the conversation, the inMusic CEO said that the future for Native Instruments would be "very exciting, very bright and very secure", and that the acquisition was the highlight of his career.

MusicTech also reports that several new positions have recently appeared in inMusic’s directory of career opportunities, including Content Development Engineer, Engineering Manager and Data Product Developer. A number of these roles are based in Cambridge, where inMusic has its UK headquarters.

A representative for inMusic provided us with the following statement:

"As part of the ongoing integration of Native Instruments into the inMusic family of brands, we are simplifying our organizational and legal structure, including Native Instruments UK. This includes removing layers that were established to support a private equity ownership model, as well as streamlining other areas of the business to create a faster, more efficient organization focused on innovation, customers, and long-term growth.

“We recognize the impact these changes have on affected employees and are committed to supporting them throughout the transition.

“Native Instruments remains a strategically important part of inMusic, and our commitment to the brand is unchanged. Product development continues at a strong pace, with major new hardware and software initiatives already underway for 2027 and beyond."

Spotify has finally done what it should have done years ago, launching a new initiative that will give listeners more transparency regarding whether artists are AI-generated.

It’s called an AI Persona Badge and will go live from mid-September. The platform has also said they are reviewing profiles that appear to “represent photorealistic AI-generated identities.” They will apparently begin that process with artists that meet a certain audience threshold. Those that appear to be AI-generated will be notified and afforded the opportunity to self-disclose or appeal.

It should be noted that this merely covers AI-generated artists, rather than AI-generated tracks. That is a separate, though related issue. “Although there’s a broad spectrum in how artists use AI as a creative tool, the question of whether a profile represents an actual human is one where Spotify can help make a clear determination,” the company has said in a statement.

Clearly, Spotify is having to play catch-up in the race to get on top of the problem of AI-generated slop. Back in April, Deezer claimed it was the first platform to transparently tag AI-generated music and revealed it was dealing with over 75,000 AI tracks per day.

Meanwhile, Tidal has announced that they are blocking royalties for any tracks that they identify as 100% AI-generated, and Bandcamp has completely blocked any music which is “wholly or in substantial part” AI-generated. Indeed, in the last week they have even thrown Boy George and his AI-assisted tracks off of their library.

By comparison, Spotify has been notably slow at getting to grips with AI music. The AI-generated ‘Sienna Rose’ was able to upload ten albums between September and December last year, a superhuman work rate that no one at Spotify raised an eyelid at before questions began to be asked about the veracity of the music. ‘Rose’ was even able to get three songs on Spotify’s Viral 50 before Christmas 2025.

The new measure should – in theory – prevent a future Sienna Rose, or imposters pretending to be existing artists, such as ‘King Lizard Wizard’ who uploaded a whole tranche of tracks to Spotify last year after a certain Aussie psyche rock band defected from the platform.

The AI Persona Badge comes in the wake of previous measures Spotify has put in place, such as AI credits and Song DNA features that are supposed to flag up AI content.

Those, however, rely on artists voluntarily admitting to the use of AI, which is little use when dealing with nefarious actors that are simply uploading album after album of slop in an attempt to cream off royalties.

Inspiration can strike at any moment when you're a musician or a producer, and in the age of the smartphone, we're always only a few clicks away from recording a sample that could grow into our next track.

That's exactly what happened to British drum 'n' bass producer and DJ Bou on his flight from London to Las Vegas last week, but the sample in question is very far from what you might expect.

No, Bou didn't record the roar of the engines during takeoff or a spontaneous conversation with a stranger sat beside him – instead, he sampled the altercation between an enraged passenger and British Airways cabin crew as they attempted to calm the disorderly traveller down.

Bou had just boarded flight BA275 to Las Vegas from London Heathrow on 6 August when a disturbance broke out. Footage shared to the producer's Instagram and filmed by his tour manager shows a male passenger struggling with several flight attendants in the aisle before takeoff, refusing to sit down while swearing and shouting aggressively.

Leading the crew's response to the irate passenger was flight attendant Sophie Turner, who was recorded repeatedly requesting that the man sits down. "If I have to tell you again, I will be restraining you sir, if you do not stay seated," Turner states firmly in the clip.

Bou later shared an Instagram video narrating the incident: "I boarded the plane, got to my seat, ready for some sleep because I got a long-ass journey ahead – but all I could hear was a load of noise coming from the back, from some drunken idiot," he says.

"Fair play to the air hostess here because she absolutely held it down and she was doing the most out of everyone. Big love to her, British Airways you need to give her a raise.

The aircraft was forced to return to the gate before armed police boarded and removed him from the plane. It's since been confirmed that he was later arrested on suspicion of being drunk onboard an aircraft and disobeying the orders of the captain.

"We were finally able to move on to the runway," Bou said, "but best believe your boy had to sample that shit". The video then shows the producer chopping up the recording of the altercation in his DAW, sampling Turner's command to "stay seated" and placing it just before the drop in a new track.

Before the plane had even landed, Turner had spotted Bou's Instagram story and sent him a DM identifying herself. The pair posed for a photo before disembarking, and Bou invited Turner to his show in Las Vegas that night to join him on stage.

Later that evening at Las Vegas venue We All Scream, Bou played the track – fittingly titled STAY SEATED – for the first time with Turner dancing alongside him. "Big up Sophie, you're a real one," the DJ wrote on his Instagram post.

The response from Bou's fans has been predictably delighted, with commenters demanding that the DJ enlists Turner as tour security and proposing that British Airways rebrand as "British Air Raves".

What is it?

The original MicroKorg is a tough act to follow. Released in 2002, the MicroKorg dominated its corner of the synth market in a way that few other instruments have this side of the Millenium, shifting units in the hundreds of thousands over the course of two decades.

It’s tough to say exactly why the MicroKorg was so much more successful than other synths of the era. It was neither the most powerful nor the most groundbreaking virtual analogue of its time, being largely based on the engine of Korg’s existing MS-2000. Its matrix-style programming interface could be fiddly too, and made designing patches something of a slog.

But there was also a lot that the MicroKorg obviously got right. It was affordable and accessible, with a genre-based approach to presets that made exploring its sounds feel fast and fun. Crucially, many of those presets sounded great too – it was capable of convincing retro pads, basses and lively arp patterns, as well as acting as a vocoder via its detachable gooseneck mic.

Having tried, with mixed success, to evolve the MicroKorg concept with the XL and XL+ in the late ‘00s, Korg finally launched a true successor in 2024.

The MicroKorg 2 is another virtual analogue synth, although its oscillators are now also capable of generating sounds through additive synthesis and PCM samples. Once again, at the core of its workflow is a chunky dial that lets users browse through eight banks of presets that are grouped by genres.

The biggest change from the original MicroKorg is an increase in polyphony, from four voices to eight. The MicroKorg 2 is also bi-timbral, allowing it to simultaneously play two patches of up-to four voices each.

As with the original, the instrument ships with a gooseneck mic for use with its internal vocoder. That section is further upgraded with harmonizer and hard-tuning vocal processors, all of which can be used alongside the synth engine thanks to the bi-timbral design.

More recently, significant firmware updates have refined the MicroKorg 2 – so how does it stack up to the legacy of the original in 2026?

Pricing

Launch price: £479 / $549 / €599

Performance

It would be doing the MicroKorg 2 a disservice to imply it’s merely a vessel for presets, but as with the original version the eight banks of genre-themed patches are the core of its design. Each of these is broken into four categories, the first three of which are labelled Classic, Modern and Future, while the fourth is saved for user sounds.

This method of selecting sounds feels like a throwback, particularly compared to something like the plugin-style library found on Arturia's AstroLab 37. I quite like the MicroKorg’s retro approach, although I’ll concede this may be down to nostalgia, seeing as the original was the first hardware synth I ever owned back in the mid-’00s. Other might understandably find it a little naff.

The sounds are generally good quality and many feel highly usable. Despite coming labelled with specific genres, a key part of the original MicroKorg’s appeal lay in how versatile many of its sounds were – even if a few verged into cheesy territory. Unlike some synths’ presets that come overloaded with modulation and effects, the MicroKorg was a great source of classic virtual analogue basses, pads and – a particular speciality – arp lines.

This successor does a good job of building on this legacy, although the increased complexity of the synth engine and the addition of effects does mean that some presets veer a little into ‘show off’ territory. For the most part the banks are full of sounds you could easily imagine using in the real world, either in a DAW project or for jamming with other musicians.

Take control

As with the original, parameter changes are handled by the five rotaries that sit to the top right of the interface. Here, however, the overall experience of editing sounds is a vast improvement on the original. This is largely thanks to the 2.8-inch colour LCD display, which is probably the MicroKorg 2’s smartest addition.

Although it’s not massive, it’s streets ahead of the basic numerical display of the original version and also a vast improvement compared to the simplistic displays found on other recent Korg synths like the Modwave or Opsix.

Thanks to the new display it’s easier to keep track of what the five parameter controls are doing and as a result they’re able to do more. Rather than controlling a set parameter across every patch, these function more like macro controls, changing what aspect of the synth sound each alters depending on the currently loaded patch.

The screen is most useful when editing deeper parameters or designing sounds from scratch. The original MicroKorg relied on the user navigating a convoluted matrix printed beneath the controls and then setting values numerically. The enhanced screen makes finding parameters much, much easier, and visualises things like envelopes and filters in a clearer and more engaging way. It’s a radical improvement.

The bi-timbral design works well too. As with the original, arpeggiated synth lines are a speciality of the virtual analogue engine and these work particularly well for dual layer patches, allowing users to pair a melodic arp with underlying chord progression, a wash of ambience or a deeper bass patch.

That arpeggiator has always been a core part of the MicroKorg’s personality, and little has changed in this regard for the MicroKorg 2. This is an easy-to-use and immediate arpeggiator, which makes use of a hold function and ten selectable patterns to quickly turn chords into melodic patterns.

Thankfully, the MicroKorg 2 keeps the step arpeggiator feature of the original, which lets users engage or disengage individual notes in an arpeggio using the preset selector buttons. It’s always been a nice feature for quickly creating and editing simple riffs and patterns.

Whereas the arp is a fairly like-for-like copy of the original, other aspects of the MicroKorg design have been more significantly overhauled.

The most notable of these is the vocoder. The MicroKorg 2 once again ships with a gooseneck mic that can slot into the rear panel of the synth and connect to its audio input. As on the original this can be used to input a modulator signal into the synth’s vocoder engine. Here, however, that engine has been upgraded and expanded into a full vocal processing module.

Alongside the existing vocoder the module now has hard tune – real time Auto-Tune-like pitch correction – and harmonizer modes. Both can create effective, if slightly dated-sounding effects, although neither offer the comprehensive functionality you'll find in dedicated software or hardware competitors on the market.

Synth section

The expansion of the synth engine itself is more successful. MicroKorg 2 layers a third oscillator into the virtual analogue engine, and all oscillators have been expanded with additive DWGS and OneShot PCM sample modes.

The oscillator section is also now capable of cross modulation, allowing for ring mod and phase modulation. As of the v2.0 firmware update, the third osc also has a ‘low’ mode, allowing it to function as a wide-range LFO that can act as an additional modulation source.

These new features make MicroKorg 2 a more versatile synth than its predecessor and, coupled with the improved editing workflow, make it a much more interesting environment to build sounds from scratch. That’s enhanced further by a simple but effective modulation matrix, which lets users route two mod sources for each destination, making use of the synth’s LFOs, envelopes, and a random voltage-style Analog source.

It’s arguably a shame that the filter section doesn’t offer the various emulations found on other recent digital synths from Korg, which can make use of virtual recreations of the distinctive circuits found on the MS-20, Polysix and more. The MicroKorg 2 offers a more straightforward resonant multimode filter with 2- and 4-pole low-pass and high-pass, and 2-pole band-pass modes.

The onboard looper and effects module are the MicroKorg 2’s strongest additions, and both were significantly enhanced with last year’s free 2.0 firmware update.

The Loop Recorder can capture and overdub audio from the synth itself as well as the mic and aux input. That in itself is a fun tool for basic recording and layering, but the functionality has been expanded further since launch, adding capabilities including step sequencing and loop slicing.

This latter feature is particularly fun, as it allows users to capture a loop of audio and then slice and retrigger segments across the keyboard. It all adds up to a module that is great for instantaneous fun, and feels refreshingly different to the sequencers found on other synths at this price point.

The effects section, meanwhile, is pretty run of the mill in its basic functionality, with modulation, delay and reverb effect slots, although each sounds great and there’s a good level of control over both sound parameters and routing options.

The effects modules became more noteworthy as of the v2.0 firmware though, which opened them up for use with Korg’s Logue SDK. This is an open source format, originally developed for the company’s Prologue and Minilogue XD synths, which allows third-party developers and users to code their own effects and oscillators that can be loaded into the synth via a librarian.

Although there are a variety of paid and free expansions that make use of the SDK, Sinevibes is the developer most closely associated with ‘Logue’ expansions. The company’s site offers a range of MicroKorg-compatible expansions that include granular reverb, multiple types of distortion, new modulation effects and much more.

Verdict

Overall, the MicroKorg 2 does an excellent job of updating the formula of the original in a way that modernises the design while still feeling familiar.

It’s a shame, however, that the keyboard itself does little to improve on the 25-year-old design of the original MicroKorg. Although the three-octave keyboard has a nicer action than the springy keys of the first generation MicroKorg, the mini keys themselves are the same fiddly size and, although the keyboard is velocity sensitive, there’s no aftertouch (as is found on the similarly priced Arturia MiniFreak, for example).

Given the expanded capabilities of the engine and improved modulation system, it feels like a real missed opportunity to not offer aftertouch within the synth itself. It's a shame too that the MicroKorg doesn't respond to poly-aftertouch or MPE, although it's more understandable that these options aren’t included for the keyboard itself.

Things like this might sound small, but could prove to be make-or-break for the MicroKorg 2 in the long run. Although this is still an excellent and approachable synth at this price point, it has entered a far busier and more competitive market than the original did in the early 2000s.

Microkorg 2 is a great workhorse virtual analogue, but it runs up against more characterful synths from the likes of Arturia and Korg themselves. It’s a worthy successor to one of the most recognisable synths of all time – but it feels unlikely to replicate its predecessor’s iconic status.

Hands-on demos

Korg MicroKorg 2

Alternatives

Specifications

IK Multimedia has given its Tonex Player a top-to-bottom refresh, offering a completely user experience “photorealistic” gear choices, improved workflow – and there are some fresh sounds too with this public beta release debuting 220 all-new Premium Tone Models.

Think of the Tonex 2.0 Player as the “creative hub” of IK Multimedia’s electric guitar and bass tone ecosystem; it’s the one place for managing your Tone Models, edits, presets, captures, and where you search for new sounds.

Once you’ve created your sounds you can make them available across your Tonex hardware devices.

When IK Multimedia says its Tonex ecosystem is growing, it really means it. I swear the diagram [see below] showing how the Tonex 2.0 Player sits at the heart of all the various hardware devices is getting more byzantine by the day.

The Tonex 2.0 Player is available as a guitar plugin or as a standalone app for your DAW. Boot it up and the first thing you will notice is that the homepage has changed, with your gear, signal chain and library all accessible.

“It’s faster to find the sound you want, easier to shape it, and more rewarding to explore everything Tonex has to offer,” says IK Multimedia.

The “photorealistic gear experience” is only a cosmetic update but these things matter, especially when browsing through the many, many different amp models. Speaking of browsing, the Tonex 2.0 Player offers improved integration with the ToneNET user community, with the new Smart Search feature making it easier to find user-created Tone Models and full signal-chain presets. There are dedicated (and resizeable) floating browsers to make navigating your various amps, effects and Tonex Collections a little bit easier.

That is crucial to the Tonex model. It is designed to be fully interoperable across all Tonex products, software and hardware alike, and IK Multimedia's Amplitube 5 platform. The big selling point for this refresh is that it creates “a single connected workflow from capture to studio, rehearsal, and stage”.

The Tonex 2.0 Player is available now as a public beta, and will soon be available as a free update for all Tonex users.

For more details, head over to IK Multimedia.

Suno has uploaded a blog post entitled ‘How We’re Building The Future of Music Responsibly’ to their website, in which they claim they’ll "soon" start to watermark songs produced on the platform, and limit "the ability to mass distribute songs on streaming platforms".

In it, the AI platform’s CEO Mikey Shulman says that Suno has a “clear set of principles” that are “always rooted in supporting artistry and creativity.”

It also attempts to distance the platform from any responsibility for the deluge of AI-generated slop that is increasingly clogging up streaming platforms. “Most of the music people make on Suno is deeply meaningful,” Shulman writes.

“A lullaby for a child, a song for a partner, or something made to preserve a memory. That music may never be released publicly, but it still has real value to the person who made it. That is fundamentally different from using generative technology to mass export content.”

Shulman’s intervention comes just days after Suno’s defeat in a German court, where it was found that in training its AI models without paying rights holders, the platform was in breach of both German and US copyright law.

In the post, Shulman indicates that Suno will put in place limits on downloads to prevent mass distribution on the platform – in theory, a move that may go some way to stopping the slop.

And there is no mention in the statement about finally revealing what music is used in its AI training and how artists and songwriters might be fairly recompensed for the use of their work in this way. They are unlikely to be placated by Shulman’s vague promise that “AI should help people create something new, not imitate someone else’s work.”

The company is still awaiting the amount it will have to pay in damages to the rights holders involved in the German case. They are also still fighting a legal battle with Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment over the “mass infringement” of copyright.

Back in May, 1010music unveiled a successor to its Blackbox sampler at Superbooth 2026, promising a creative and more portable successor to its 2019 original. This week, Blackbox 2 has landed and is now available for purchase.

Like its predecessor, the Blackbox 2 is a portable, touchscreen-equipped instrument that houses a self-contained sampling workstation within a compact, rugged device. However, for version 2 1010 has significantly reworked the interface, adding a larger touchscreen and new layout that promises an improved workflow.

According to its creators, “Blackbox 2 is heir to its own portable sampler throne with more creative features for the studio and stage. An even more elegant workflow, great sound, industry standard IO and portable size.”

The central feature of this new look Blackbox is its four-inch hi-res colour touchscreen, which is used as the primary interface for sequencing and sample editing. A bank of four multi-use rotaries sit directly above the screen while a bank of transport and navigation buttons are placed below.

Blackbox 2 is a four-track workstation that can load up-to four one-shot, loop, slicer or multisample instruments, with the one-shot and loop instruments capable of supporting 16 samples per-patch. Blackbox 2 expands the song-creation features of the original, introducing new launch, scene, song, mixing and effect screens for editing various elements of the composition.

Unlike its predecessor, which required an external power source, Blackbox 2 contains its own rechargeable battery, allowing for 3hrs of fully portable use. It also adds USB-C host and device ports capable of transmitting multichannel USB audio and MIDI.

Other elements of the Blackbox workflow are unchanged from version one. As before, the instrument has a sequencer with step, grid and piano-roll modes, which is capable of probability sequencing. There are DJ-style effects with XY pad control for filter, echo,, gating, flanger, bitcrusher and repeater effects.

Sample editing tools include multiple filters, envelopes and LFOs, distortion and a flexible mod matrix. It also features a four-band EQ with cut, shelf and parametric modes for each band.

The hardware features a stereo main audio in and three stereo outputs, plus headphones output. It’s equipped with an automatic multisampling function allowing users to easily turn external gear into sampled instruments.

Blackbox 2 also has a microSD card slot, allowing users to expand the memory for projects and samples. Longer WAVs and detailed multisampled instruments can be streamed directly from the microSD.

Between this and the likes of Akai Sample, Teenage Engineering’s KO II and Casio’s forthcoming sampler, we’re living in something of a golden age of portable samplers. If, as 1010 states, “Blackbox 2 is heir to its own portable sampler throne”, then it’s facing Westeros-levels of rivalry.

Blackbox 2 is available now and priced at $649/£669.

Head to the 1010music site for more information.

We know what you're thinking: not another 808 sample pack. Hold up, though, as this one's a little bit different.

Focusing on the potential of the iconic 808 kick to be used as a bass sound in it's own right, this one collects 21 sound sources processed through five different effects chains for huge low-end potential. Happy 808 Day, everyone.

What you need to know

The 808 weight samples are divided into six folders: you get the sources and then five sets of processed samples.

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The 808 weight samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

808 weight samples: click to download

808 weight samples (60MB)

For over 95,000 more samples, head to our SampleRadar hub.

Today is August 8th – also known as 808 Day – and Roland is celebrating the 46th anniversary of its iconic drum machine, the TR-808.

Released in 1980, the Roland TR-808 was designed as an alternative to an acoustic drum kit for musicians to record with, but took on a new life in hip-hop, pop, R&B, techno, house and electro, as producers reveled in its defiantly synthetic tones.

With sounds based on analogue synthesis, the 808 is renowned for its booming kick drum, snappy claps and unique cowbell, all of which are instantly recognisable.

Of course, the TR-808 didn't earn its place in music history without being used on countless classic recordings. Below are just a handful of the key tracks that cemented the beatbox's legendary status.

Marvin Gaye - Sexual Healing (1982)

The intro to Marvin's pained plea for carnal redemption almost sounds like an advert for the 808, with its kick, clap, hi-hat and snare sounds all cutting through.

The 1982 hit proved that the 808 was a tool that, despite being a machine, had enough groove and character to make it sound almost human.

The S.O.S. Band - Just Be Good To Me (1983)

Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis were big 808 fans in the early days of their partnership, using it in countless productions.

Janet Jackson would later have TR-propelled hits, but this 1983 single demonstrates that The S.O.S. Band were early beneficiaries.

New Order - Confusion (1983)

Coming off the back of great drum machine classic Blue Monday - which was programmed on an Oberheim DMX - New Order decamped to New York to work with Arthur Baker, the producer behind Planet Rock.

Appropriately, the single that result from their collaboration, Confusion, is another slice of 808 gold, built around a rattling beat of snappy snares and crunching claps.

Phil Collins - One More Night (1984)

The 808 isn't just there for the pounding or rhythmically complex things in life - it can do straight-up balladeering, too.

One More Night demonstrates the inspiring power of Roland's beatbox; Collins came up with the chorus as he was fiddling with his, and the rest of the song quickly followed.

Loose Ends - Hangin' On A String (1985)

It's that cowbell - along with judicious use of the 808's toms - that keep this groove moving.

This is another track in which the Roland machine's sounds are given space to breathe, and they're fully deserving of their airtime.

Paul Hardcastle - 19 (1985)

It may have been most notable for its innovative uses of sampling - so much so that Reason's NN-19 sampler took its name from it - but Hardcastle's 1985 anti-war anthem is also an iconic 808 production.

Hardcastle is on record as saying that he was a fan of Afrika Bambaataa at the time, and you can certainly hear the influence.

• Read more: "The TR-808's bass drum is undoubtedly the most recognisable electronic kick sound of all time": How to get the perfect 808s

Kraftwerk - Musique Non Stop (1986)

Kraftwerk were early 808 adopters. In fact, when percussionist Karl Bartos spoke to Future Music in 2013, he told them that they actually had a pre-production model.

Musique Non Stop wasn't released until 1986, but has a quintessentially '808' sound.

Whitney Houston - I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me) (1987)

It might not sound anything like the real thing, but the 808's cowbell is one of the most recognisable percussive tones in electronic music.

We think there might be some other drum machines at work here too, but that cowbell is a distinctive feature of Whitney's Narada Michael Walden-produced 1987 smash.

The Belleville Three (Juan Atkins, Kevin Saunderson and Derrick May) - Rhythim Is Rhythim - Nude Photo (1987)

The TR-808 and TR-909 played a major role in the development of the early, rough-edged techno sound by Detroit icons the Belleville Three - Derrick May, Jaun Atkins and Kevin Saunderson.

When we spoke to him in 2013, Saunderson credited the 808 and 909 as being responsible for the swing of those early house and techno tunes. Meanwhile, in several classic interviews, Jaun Atkins has discussed how himself and his then-classmate May used to bring an 808 to parties in order to create rhythm tracks to transition between records.

2 Live Crew - Move Somethin' (1987)

Florida hip-hop group 2 Live Crew are probably best remembered for the string of profanity and copyright lawsuits imposed on them in the early ‘90s.

Sexually explicit lyrics and uncleared samples aside, however, the act - or more specifically, their main beatmaker Mr Mixx - were possibly the most visible proponents of the heavily 808-focussed Miami Bass style of hip-hop production that grew out of electro-funk towards the end of the ‘80s.

Aphex Twin - Analogue Bubblebath (1991)

Acid house producers were all over the 808, as this 1991 release from AFX (AKA Aphex Twin) indicates.

The kick is predictably boomy, but there's plenty of nice percussion work in here, too.

Richie Hawtin - Plastikman - Spastik (1993)

Roland’s TR groove boxes were instrumental in the development of techno icon Richie Hawtin’s early Plastikman releases. Of particular note is his ’93 single Spastik, one of defining tracks of his early-‘90s minimal techno output, which is effectively one long, rapid-fire 808 experiment.

Three 6 Mafia - Tear Da Club Up '97 (1997)

The booming, sub-heavy kick of the 808 has been the cornerstone of the past 20 years of southern hip-hop.

Much of the time, it’s hard to say whether an actual TR-808 has been used on any specific hip-hop track, as - particularly as time has gone on - the machine’s sound has often been sampled or emulated using other synths.

Still, whether it’s an authentic 808 or not, that kick, the tight snare and tinny hats of the TR-808 provided the sonic driving force behind much of the work of southern rap icons Three 6 Mafia - and the legions of artists that followed in their wake.

Developer Steve Mitchell has released MIDIpad, a genius app for macOS that turns a PlayStation controller into a musical instrument, working as both an MPE-compatible MIDI controller and a standalone synth and drum machine – and there’s a free version too.

MIDIpad is built around two distinct instruments: Chords is described as a “guitar-like chord machine” and Drums is a “gestural drum machine”. In the Chords mode, the controller’s left stick can be pointed towards one of six chords on a wheel in the centre of its interface, and that chord can be strummed using either the right stick or the touchpad, with the chosen chord laid out vertically across six “strings” in a guitar-style voicing.

The speed of the strum controls the velocity of the notes played and notes can be sustained by shaking the controller or palm-muted using the left trigger, while dragging horizontally across the touchpad’s X axis shapes the timbre and dynamics.

By default, the wheel is segmented into six chords – all the diatonic triads from your chosen key except the diminished chord. If you want some harmonic colour, holding the bumper controls opens up a new chord wheel: the right bumper gives you the dominant seventh of each chord from the main wheel, the left bumper flips the quality of the chords from major to minor (or vice versa) and you can access suspensions and extended chords by holding down the left stick.

MIDIpad’s Drums mode turns the controller into a drum machine with a twist. It’s possible to use the right-hand buttons on the face of the controller to trigger four drum hits like a traditional pad controller, but it’s the joysticks that open up a more complex and unusual method of crafting a groove.

Pushing the left stick in any direction triggers a rhythmic sequence, or "stream", of closed hi-hats, pushing the right stick does the same with a kick drum, and the direction of the push controls the sub-division of your rhythm, from quarter-notes through to thirty-second notes. Push the stick further out to the rim and a snare will sound on the 2 and 4, giving you a backbeat.

There’s a velocity contour applied to each rhythm to stop beats sounding metronomic, and drum patterns can be tweaked even further using the rest of the available controls: you can throw in off-beat hits and snare rolls, drop the whole pattern into half-time, or adjust the velocity shaping.

MIDIpad can be used standalone, and its internal synth engines are based on the open-source code for Mutable Instruments’ Plaits and Braids modules – it’s equipped with twelve preset “voices”, each of which gets three macro controls for timbral shaping, and a selection of drum sounds.

Of course, you can also route MIDIpad out to your DAW to control other instruments via MIDI, and the paid version offers MPE support: each string gets its own MIDI channel with per-note pressure and timbre, and shaking the controller feeds pressure back into notes that are still ringing to create volume swells. (In the free Demo Mode, Chords is routed over a single MIDI channel.)

Mitchell says he created MIDIpad in response to challenges he faced as a self-taught electronic musician. "I've picked up a bunch of music theory concepts over the years via osmosis; I started as a bassist, then picked up guitar, taught myself rudimentary keyboard skills, I can generally noodle around pretty competently but the muscle memory has never quite clicked for me," reads a post on Mitchell's blog.

"A lot of the time I'd find myself thinking 'I want this sound, but I don't know what it's called', so I'd just be blindly putting my fingers on the frets or on the keys until something I liked fell out of the instrument.

"I wanted to make music without having to lug something bigger than my laptop around with me. MPE also looks super cool! But I can't afford the very expensive hardware controllers that actually make use of it."

He continues: "Then one day I found my old PS4 controller collecting dust in a drawer and I had an idea: what if playing music could work more like playing a video game? The word 'play' is right there in both of them, after all."

Turning a gamepad into a MIDI controller isn't a novel concept, but most previous examples we've seen have essentially just mapped a controller's buttons and joysticks to notes and MIDI CC, which is fun but limited.

MIDIpad is something else, an instrument with its own harmonic and rhythmic logic, and its chord wheel and stick-controlled drum streams are unlike anything we've come across before. (Plus, if an MPE controller like the Osmose CE or Push 3 is out of your budget but you have an old PlayStation controller lying around, then it’s a problem solved.)

MIDIpad is a free download and most of its functionality is available in the Demo Mode, but a paid license gives you complete control over routing for audio and MIDI, all twelve voices (the demo has three) and access to more advanced settings. The paid version is currently priced at $19/£16 and also gets you free lifetime updates.

MIDIpad is available now for macOS and is designed to work with Sony DualShock 4 and DualSense PlayStation controllers over USB or Bluetooth. It can be used with controllers for other consoles, but this limits what you can do with it – check out the manual for more details.

Find out more on MIDIpad’s website.

Arturia has released Pigments Play, a free version of Pigments, its flagship multi-engine software synth.

Pigments Play follows the same approach the company took with Analog Lab Play, which arrived in 2023 as a free, stripped-down edition of Analog Lab, built around a simplified Play View and a curated set of 100 presets.

The instrument is based on the updated Play View that Arturia introduced with Pigments 7 last December, which features an audio-reactive visualiser and an interface designed for browsing presets and making quick adjustments rather than getting into the weeds with complex sound design.

Pigments Play's 100 presets cover a variety of genres, including modern pop, R&B, garage, house, drum and bass, trap and ambient. (That might not seem like much compared to the 1700 presets that come with the full version of Pigments, but it’s not bad for a free plugin, and they sound fantastic – just check out the overview video below.)

Though Pigments Play lacks some of Pigments’ more advanced features, there’s a lot more under the hood than you might expect: it features the same six synthesis engines as the full version, spanning virtual analogue, wavetable, sample-based, granular, harmonic and modal, and is equipped with the same 68 filter modes and 20 effect algorithms.

Each Pigments Play preset has four macros for immediate sound-shaping that are unique to each preset, and you can find simplified oscillator, filter and envelope controls at the bottom of the interface for both of its dual sound engines, which can both be swapped out to customize each preset. Alongside these, there’s a Utility engine that can be used to add a noise generator or sub-oscillator.

Pigments Play’s effects section has two slots, giving you access to all of the same effects you’ll get in the paid-for version, covering various flavours of delay, reverb, distortion, dynamics and modulation effects.

Sounds can be filtered by type and instrument in the browser, and the plugin is linked up to Arturia's Sound Store, where you can find 200 additional sound banks organised by artist and genre, both free and paid-for. And if you own an Arturia controller or keyboard, it’ll be mapped to Pigments Play’s main controls automatically.

Pigments 7 was released last December, bringing three new filter modes (Rage, Ripple and Reverb), a new Corroder distortion effect, refined envelopes and a bundle of new content. It also redesigned Pigments’ Play View (the same one you’ll find in Pigments Play) introducing a visualiser that represents the sonic character of each preset, reacting graphically to both sound and parameter changes.

Arturia’s Pigments has taken the number one spot in our guide to the best synth plugins and received glowing reviews from our team; it’s an impressively powerful and versatile instrument that manages to remain accessible and fun despite its advanced capabilities and extensive feature set.

Pigments Play would make a great introduction to the full version for anyone considering adding the instrument to their collection, but even if you're not particularly curious about Pigments, this is an excellent free synth plugin that's definitely worth a look.

Arturia Pigments Play is available now as a free download for macOS and Windows in VST/AU/AAX formats or as a standalone app.

Find out more on Arturia's website.

Music is just organised noise - the degree of organisation is where the arguments start. One person’s migraine-inducing cacophony is another person’s emotional, spirit-touching experience. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the genre of noise music, which eschews traditional musical structures and sounds for extreme distortion, howling feedback and violent volume.

As practiced by artists like Merzbow, Pharmakon and Winterkälte, with a history that includes luminaries like Throbbing Gristle, SPK and Iannis Xenakis, noise music is an often brutal - some may say brutally beautiful - genre.

You don’t have to fully embrace noise as a listening experience to appreciate its sonic power and its applications for experimental sound design - bringing drama and fury to otherwise traditional music productions. Here are a few different ways to wrangle that power into your own music, no matter the genre…

Let’s start with feedback. Ever since artists in the 1960s started using the sound of a guitar howling through an amp in a musical way (hello, Jimi Hendrix!), feedback has been an indispensable part of experimental music-making. While creating feedback with a guitar or microphone can be a powerful thing, it can be hard to control the feedback itself. For a more contained feedback experience, some have harnessed a mixer as a feedback-sculpting instrument.

Known as no-input mixing, plugging a mixer’s output into its own input can generate waves of feedback that you can then massage and direct with the mixer’s gain, volume and EQ controls. Japanese noise musician Toshimaru Nakamura is a master at this, coaxing all manner of experimental and even beautiful sounds from his ‘instrument’

The beauty of no-input mixing is that you can use the mixer that you already have. It also doesn’t have to be anything fancy. In some cases, something cheap may even be preferable. It’s not about sound quality, after all, but sound power. For greater variety, you can also include instruments and effects in the signal chain if you want - just as long as you’re still working within a closed loop.

If you prefer to work with feedback in the box, you can route audio in a similar within your DAW. Just be careful of sound levels! For an instrument-based approach to working with feedback, the recently-released iOS app WAIL from Anthony Moran uses two feedbacking delay lines to create all manner of banshee screams that sound similar to no-input mixing.

Speaking of feedback, Body Synths is a Berlin-based boutique company that creates instruments for those working in harsher genres than you’ll hear on daytime radio. Debuting at this year’s Superbooth, the company’s Laboratory is a feedback synthesizer and dual-channel effects processor, with four feedback paths, dual delays and no-input self-oscillation capabilities.

“Using feedback, any effect can become an unusual sound source, something that trades precision and control for character and unpredictable results,”Body Synths’ Xavi Badosa tells us, when asked what inspired him to make Laboratory.

“I spent some time experimenting with audio feedback synthesis … with guitar effects placed on the feedback paths. I realised I could distill those ideas to their absolute simplest by creating an instrument that could be used as a stereo feedback synthesizer with the added benefit that the included effects would be exposed so they could be used on their own.”

Unlike most feedback-oriented devices, Laboratory is true stereo, with voltage-controlled delays and filters in its feedback paths. “It lets you create delays, filters, distortions, oscillators and all kinds of weird textures and soundscapes,” says Xavi.

“Things get extra interesting at the intersections between those functions. From there, letting feedback signals take over just spices things up even more.”

Laboratory is currently in the final stages of development with plans to release it later during 2026.

While Laboratory might be experimental on the inside, from the outside it looks like a standard effects unit. That’s not always the case with hardware aimed at noise musicians.

One of the exciting things about working in harsher genres is how much performance and interaction with the device can contribute to results. Many instruments and effects are made to be worked with in real time, sometimes even with no MIDI or CV. It’s all about being hands on and in the moment.

Take Demon Box from Eternal Research, for example. Blurring the line between performance instrument and industrial test equipment, it turns electromagnetic signals from electronic devices into sound, MIDI data and control voltage. You ‘play’ it by placing electric objects on it, then adjusting panning, phasing and effects as it sonifies electromagnetic waves.

Another unusual box is Enigma from SOMA Laboratory, the same team of mad scientists behind Lyra-8 and other unusual instruments. Enigma looks like a Ouija Board combined with a piece of audiophile hi-fi equipment. By placing metal objects on its occult-like surface as if playing a board game, you generate sounds and sequences, with MIDI and CV clock sync plus MIDI note control as well.

“The shape, size and type of object are entirely up to you,” says SOMA. “Coins, screws, fragments, gears, tools and any other metallic artefacts will work.”

With both of these devices, the goal is not to compose a piece of repeatable music, but to work hand in hand with the instrument to generate new sounds and sequences, ones that you might not be able to do on your own.

Perhaps the king of unusual boxes are those crafted by Error Instruments. With a catalog packed with bewilderingly beautiful devices in both standalone and Eurorack format, many limited edition, and fans like Martin Gore and Trent Reznor snapping up their products, Error Instruments is like a cottage industry unto itself.

“My place has always come from an art background, from paintings,” says Paul Tas, the driving force behind Error Instruments and a sometime visual artist. “It was never the idea to sell on Sweetwater or other big companies. It was never for money. I just do what I like.”

What Paul likes is to make unusual instruments and effects processors, ones with names like Sugar Rush FX BX, Radio Sputnik UVB-76, and the popular Indian Resonator, a device with two self-oscillating resonators that can sound both like a synthesizer and an Indian flute.

“Most people know synthesizers,” answers Paul when asked to describe his products to someone who might not be familiar with experimental music-making gear. “They think about a surfboard with black and white keys. They don't think about Eurorack. They don't think about experimental boxes that make sounds. I describe it sometimes as noise toys. It’s also somehow a kind of fetish.”

Given Paul’s history with art, it’s no surprise he places a premium for his noise toys on what he refers to as aesthetics. “You can get a lot of out of your iPad these days or from a computer, but they don't have aesthetics,” he says. “People like aesthetics, like to feel that aesthetics give feedback for ideas.”

Another key element in noise music production is distortion. Cranking up the gain, blowing out the signal with a distortion pedal, leaning into the storm: this is how you turn a plain sound into an extreme one.

“I always loved the distortion of tubes or overdriven analog mixing decks or effects,” says Udo Wiessmann, who records as Winterkälte and runs the label, HANDS. “Today there are so many ways for sound processing that you have to focus on your gear not to get lost.”

Udo’s love for unusual sounds began at an early age. “I learned keyboard instruments as a child,” he says. “Already then, I liked triggering two different sounds on the home organ at the same time. When I discovered and started to make electronic music in the late ‘80s, I always fell in love when it broke out of standard harmony or came to a kind of melody or structure created by filter sweeps or noise manipulations. Noise always made me feel at home.”

To create his unrelenting fusion of noise and rhythm, which smoulders like a burning car crashed at the intersection of industrial and noise, Udo prefers to work with whatever is available. “For my projects Winterkälte and Atrum, there’s no limitation on how to create sounds,” he explains. “I use sounds from manipulated and resampled field recordings, but also effects, filters, drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers. It doesn’t matter if it is modular, analog or digital.”

If the idea of creating rhythmic noise appeals to you, Udo recommends starting by listening to the artist Esplendor Geométrico. “My vision of rhythm ‘n’ noise you can find on the releases of Winterkälte,” he says. “And of course, on my label HANDS there are many noise-inspired artists like Mono No Aware, Orphx, Nullvektor, Monolith, Sonar, Geistform, Greyhound, Maschinenkrieger KR52 and many more.”

Getting started with noise, or incorporating noise music ideas into your own tracks, doesn’t have to be complicated. While you can indeed work with unique instruments like the Laboratory or Demon Box, what you already have in your studio will also get the job done.

“It’s more a question of how you use it,” stresses Udo Wiessmann when asked if you can make noise with traditional music gear. “Of course, it’s easier to create noise with a Korg MS-20 compared to a Korg M1. Also, it might be easier to use an effects processor like the Boss SE-50 for distortion compared to using the tubes of an old multi-track tape machine, but the differences in the process is always exciting, and the results are always worth the travel.”

As for how to bring experimental techniques into non-noise productions, Paul Tas of Error Instruments suggests using experimental gear to process and add texture to elements of your track like drums;

“There are a lot of drum machines and a lot of drum companies, but they're actually not so (unique) because they're all cloning each other,” he says. “What we do sometimes is make a drum sound more crunchy or more over the top. If you put it on traditional drums, your rhythm becomes much richer.”

Lastly, Xavi Badosa of Body Synths advises pushing your gear to the limit to see what it can do. “Don’t be scared about misusing audio technology in a way that’s different than the one intended by its designers,” he says. “The chances of breaking something are low while the chances of finding new and interesting sounds are high.”

As for specific techniques, taking his Laboratory as a cue, Xavi recommends exploring effects in new and non-traditional ways. “My main recommendation is to stop thinking about effects as simple end-of-chain devices,” he says. “Use the output of a reverb as a modulation source. Feed the crackle of a cable connection to an infinite delay. Modulate the distortion amount at audio rates. Use EQ to change your sound source into something unrecognisable. Add scary levels of gain. There is no right or wrong technique.”

Steinberg is celebrating 30 years of its VST standard by telling us that "the '90s are back" and releasing the Classics Collection. This is a new free bundle that features five fondly-remembered plugins from the ‘90s and early ‘00s, one of which was the first VST instrument ever released.

This was (and is) a simple two-oscillator synth known as Neon. We’re old enough to remember when this arrived (in 1999 as part of the Cubase VST 3.7 DAW update) and it did a fine job of proving that the ‘software instrument’ concept – which many still doubted – was credible.

Indeed, it set the tone for what was to come, both sonically and with its vintage-style ‘wooden’ end panels, which became ubiquitous as emulations of hardware synths flooded the market

The VB-1, meanwhile, was one of the original virtual bass instruments, and made it clear that the VST market wasn’t only going to be about synthetic sounds.

Fast forward to the early 2000s and Steinberg released the CS-40 polysynth, and that’s resurrected here, too. The sample-based LM7 drum machine also gets another airing, and the bundle is capped off by Karlette, a classic ‘90s tape delay plugin.

As you’d expect, these plugins aren’t as powerful or refined as many of their contemporary counterparts, but trying them again, they hold up surprisingly well, and it could be a fun creative exercise to go back and try and make a track with the same kind of software sounds that producers had access to 25 years ago.

It’s also worth saying that, while some of the plugins have been re-released before, these versions are compatible with the latest Mac and Windows operating and are VST 3 compatible, though there are no AU versions.

You can download the Steinberg Classics Collection now from the Steinberg website.

Fender has announced the launch of Fender Motion, two pad controllers designed to integrate with Fender Studio Pro, the DAW formerly known as PreSonus Studio One Pro.

Unveiled at NAMM back in January, Motion comes in two configurations: the 16-pad Motion 16 and the 32-pad Motion 32. Both models also come with a perpetual license for Fender Studio Pro, which will set you back $199.99/£169.99 if you buy it on its own.

Both Motion 16 and Motion 32 feature RGB FATAR pads, illuminated encoders and touch strips, alongside timeline navigation and session controls. Motion's pads were developed in partnership with FATAR, an Italian company that's been supplying keybeds to synth and digital piano manufacturers since 1956, and Fender says they're the first pad design FATAR has produced.

The pads on both models are velocity-sensitive with polyphonic aftertouch, but each controller has a different layout. The Motion 16 features a conventional 4x4 grid of 16 pads, but the Motion 32 spreads its pads over two lanes to give you two options: Keys, a piano-style arrangement outlined using the RGB backlights, and Blocks, a layout that splits the pads into two adjacent banks of 16 for samples or drum kits.

Both models have eight touch-sensitive encoders and a colour display with its own navigation encoder, but the 32 gets a larger display and two dedicated touch strips for pitch bend and mod wheel, compared to a single strip on the 16.

Motion 32 and Motion 16 also feature two Chord Modes: Famous Chords maps a choice of over 30 progressions from well-known songs onto the controllers’ pads, while Simple Chords generates diatonic chords and intervals from the chosen scale and key. There's a Scale mode too, with a choice of two layouts: Locked restricts the pads to notes in the selected key, and Guide just highlights them to guide your playing.

Fender says Motion offers “deep native integration” with its Studio Pro DAW. Motion’s dedicated Add button lets you quickly load up virtual instruments, audio tracks or effects during a session, and the eight encoders and touch strips are automatically mapped to plugin controls and mixer functions.

Announced earlier this year, Fender Studio Pro is the DAW formerly known as PreSonus Studio One Pro. Fender acquired PreSonus back in 2021 but rebranded Studio One Pro as Fender Studio Pro 8 in January as part of the launch of a “connected music ecosystem” that also saw PreSonus' Quantum HD and AudioBox Go interfaces relaunched under the Fender Studio name.

Both models have two 3.5mm MIDI ports and a USB-C connection, which can also be used for bus power to run the controllers from a phone or tablet on the go.

“Since we debuted Motion at NAMM, the anticipation has been off the charts. It confirmed what we already knew: players don’t want a controller that handles one corner of their workflow, they want one built for all of it,” said Fender Electronics’ Chief Product Officer Max Gutnik.

“Motion gets the same obsessive attention to detail we put into everything we build. Pair it with Fender Studio Pro and your sessions, your sounds, your tones and your rig all move together, from the first take at home to the last song of the night.”

Fender Motion 16 is priced at $269.99/£239 and Fender Motion 32 at $329.99/£299.

Find out more on Fender's website.

The German music rights society GEMA has won a major victory over Suno, with a regional court in Munich finding that the tech company had illegally trained its AI models on music GEMA represents, without obtaining a licence or paying the rights holders.

Some of the tracks that were effectively stolen by Suno include Forever Young by Alphaville and Boney M’s Daddy Cool. The court found that Suno’s use of the songs was in breach of both the German and US copyright law.

The victory is a significant one in that, going forward, other AI companies must now licence any music from GEMA’s repertoire. It also sets a precedent for other collective societies not only within the EU, but also in the US market.

Suno will now have to pay damages, though how much has not been determined yet. The AI firm has vowed to fight the ruling and in a statement, said: “We disagree with today’s ruling – which rests on a fundamental mischaracterisation of how Suno’s technology works, how it is used and how U.S. law applies - and are evaluating all available options, including an appeal.”

It’s not the first time the German equivalent of PRS has come out on top against a tech giant. You may recall that last November GEMA won a case against OpenAI which accused the tech firm of breaking German law by using copyrighted lyrics to ‘train’ ChatGPT.

This latest ruling is far more significant in that it covers GEMA’s core business – the licensing of playable music. It remains to be seen how the ruling will impact the other battles Suno is fighting - against both Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment in an action the companies took out in 2024 against the “mass infringement” of copyright by Suno and its market rival Udio, as well as a separate claim by the Danish collecting society Koda.

In a statement to Reuters, GEMA’s CEO Dr Tobias Holzmüller said: “Today, the Chamber made one thing crystal clear: AI models built on stolen intellectual property have no protection under the law.”

“AI service providers must pay for licenses rather than helping themselves to our members’ works free of charge. Today, the court’s verdict has significantly strengthened Europe’s position as a cultural centre.”

Meanwhile, GEMA board member Dr Ralf Weigand added: “Through this decision, GEMA has set an important precedent not only for its more than 100,000 members, but for creators worldwide. The fact that we can now enforce our rights in countries including the United States gives creators hope and confidence at a time of profound technological transformation.”

The UK’s Performing Rights Society welcomed the court’s decision and has sent a supportive tweet to GEMA - see above.

You now no longer need a Helix Stadium amp modeller to apply use of Line 6’s flagship Augora modelling technology to your electric guitar tone, because the digital guitar amp and effects specialist has just unveiled a guitar plugin to bring all this tone-shaping power to your DAW.

Technically, there are two plugins, and one of them is free. Choose the Helix Stadium Intro plugin and you get five Agoura-modelled amps, with 11 channels in total, plus five matching speaker cabinet models and 16 “studio-quality” effects models.

You also get support for cab IR loading and Line 6’s Proxy clones – meaning you can upload digital “clones” of hardware gear that have been created on a Stadium Helix processor.

This “Intro” version could be your entry point into the Line 6 Stadium Helix tone universe. As Line 6 says, the Helix Stadium Native Intro license provides a curated set of amps and effects at no cost and with no expiration”.

Or you could have a 15-day trial of the full version, whereupon your tone options expand considerably, with 27 amps modelled by Augora (a total of 55 channels), plus 111 HX amps, 46 speaker cabs, and 274 effects.

Again, you get Proxy clone support, with up to four clones per preset, and you can upload IRs. With the full version, presets are compatible with Helix Stadium hardware, and there are a range of discounts for those who already own Line 6 hardware.

Prices start from $99 for those with Helix Stadium processors or the Helix Native plugin, and there is a fairly hefty $399 price tag for those without a qualifying discount, i.e. owners of Line 6 hardware.

Perhaps what Line 6 is counting on is that a free trial of the Stadium Helix Native will make more converts to its hardware.

Or that when you consider everything that is in the plugin – which is a lot – that it adds up to a lot of tones and in-the-box solutions for recording guitars. Quite possibly everything most players would need and then some.

This is very much the Helix Stadium model, only it is not inside a piece of hardware, it is inside your DAW. And again, with Proxy capture support, it is expandable, too. MusicRadar was certainly blown away by the Helix Stadium XL, not only was the Augora amp modelling first class, but that user interface was super intuitive.

"Even in the comfort of the testing room, the Helix Stadium XL is still the most usable modeller I’ve gotten my hands on to date," wrote Matt Owen. 'It’s a ‘best of all worlds’-style approach that has been refined into Line 6’s own style."

The Line 6 Helix Stadium Native plugin is out now. Check it out over at Line 6.

Universal Audio has announced that two of its EMT reverb emulations are now available as native plugins, meaning that UAD EMT 140 Classic Plate Reverberator and UAD EMT 250 Classic Electronic Reverb can be used in any DAW on macOS or Windows without any Apollo or UAD hardware.

Introduced in 1957 by German manufacturer Elektromesstechnik, the EMT 140 was the first plate reverb, an invention that gave studios an alternative to a spring reverb or dedicated echo chamber for the first time. Plate reverbs work using a thin sheet of steel suspended on springs inside a frame: a transducer vibrates the plate and pickups capture the result, producing a lush and silky reverb with a smooth and dense decay.

Abbey Road installed four customized EMT 140s in 1957 that have featured on recordings by The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Radiohead and more. Alan Parsons, who engineered The Dark Side of the Moon, has claimed that the 140 was the only reverb used on the album.

Released almost two decades later, the EMT 250 was the first commercially available digital reverb, and also offered several modulation and time-based effects. An ultra-rare piece of music tech history, it was originally priced at $20,000 and only around 250 units were built. The EMT 250 can be heard on Prince's Purple Rain, alongside records from Red Hot Chili Peppers and Michael Jackson.

UA's EMT 140 plugin emulates three different EMT units modelled at The Plant Studios in California that can be switched on the front panel, and complements the original controls with additional settings for balance, width and modulation. Each of its three plates can be set to an independent reverb time from 0.5 to 5.5 seconds, and you also get a choice of original EMT or Martech input filter models, a two-band shelving EQ and reverb time modulation.

The EMT 250 plugin is built on an algorithm sourced from a "golden unit" at Ocean Way Recording, and the plugin features six program modes covering Reverb, Delay, Phase, Chorus, Echo and Space. Three of the panel's four levers are remapped for each mode, controlling decay time and separate LF and HF decay multipliers in Reverb, or coarse and fine delay times and repeat damping in Echo. A front/rear switch gives you access to the four discrete outputs of the original hardware and a Noise control models its noise floor.

"Some sounds never go out of style," said Bill Putnam Jr., CEO of Universal Audio. "The EMT 140 and EMT 250 have inspired generations of great recordings, and we're excited to bring them to even more creators."

The UAD EMT 140 Classic Plate Reverberator and UAD EMT 250 Classic Electronic Reverb are priced at $149 and currently available at an introductory discount of $79, and both are included in the UAD Spark subscription. Owners of the non-native versions are eligible for upgrade pricing.

Find out more on Universal Audio's website.

AI is cutting-edge technology but one of its leading platforms has announced a new service that uses distinctly old skool tech.

Suno is launching a vinyl pressing and shipping service that will give users the ability to order a one-off 12-inch record with a custom-designed sleeve.

The process, it seems, will be a three-step one. First, you select the tracks you want on the record from your own personal Suno library. The maximum running time for these is apparently 46 minutes.

Then you upload your chosen artwork for both the front and back of the sleeve, as well as the labels. Once the finished record is pressed and passes through quality control, you’ll receive your own disc on polyethylene terephthalate glycol vinyl, which Suno are claiming is “eco friendly”.

The price, according to the platform, is just $45 excluding shipping, which seems pretty competitive for a one-off, considering that mass-produced vinyl by established artists is around that mark in 2026.

It’s not clear from the Suno website whether you’ll be able to press tracks that are in your Suno library that aren’t generated via the AI platform. However, you could fill your record with stems, beats and drum breaks, resample them and chop them up without the need to clear samples. If you so wished.

Of course, should any bedroom producers use this service and then go on to find success on a wider scale, their one-off pieces of Suno vinyl will go on to become very valuable indeed.

For more information head over to the Suno website here.

What is it?

Novation’s Launch Control series first appeared in 2013, and 2026 brings us the third generation, mirroring the revisions made to the recently-updated Launch Control XL. Ironically, given the name, neither of these units have dedicated ‘launch’ features any more – the pads from earlier versions have disappeared, which is a shame because they were useful. Along with the cosmetic update, the LC3, as we’ll call it from now on, promises improved DAW integration on one hand, and customisation on the other.

The controller arrives in a simple recycled cardboard box (and in keeping with that, the LC3 chassis is made from 85% recycled materials), and the contents are equally straightforward – the LC3, and a 1.5m USB-C to USB-A cable. Your purchase includes a software bundle that includes Ableton Live Lite, Cubase LE, and plugins from Baby Audio, Kievgrand and Output.

Products like this are rather mysterious when powered down; monolithic black shapes with dark-toned controls, and plain white text – the device needs to be powered up before things make more sense. The upper panel includes a 128 x 64 monochrome OLED display at the top left, two rows of eight endless knobs each, with indicator lights under each one, and 15 buttons in all.

Connections are located at the back, with, from left to right, a USB-C port, MIDI Out/Thru, MIDI Out, and MIDI In, all on full-size DIN plugs, and a Kensington lock slot. It’s very rewarding to see full-size MIDI connections making a comeback here, and improving our chances of adapter-free communication with other equipment.

Performance

We connected to a MacBook Pro via USB and used Novation’s Components application to check for firmware updates. Our tests began with Ableton Live 12, and configuration was as easy as could be, with the words ‘Live 12’ popping up on the OLED. The Mode/Function buttons flip between DAW Mixer mode, where knobs take over pan and volume, and DAW Control mode. The lower buttons can be used for tasks such as mute, solo, and arm, while the Page buttons cycle through banks of controls in familiar Live control style, and the Track buttons, naturally, navigate through tracks.

We then installed Novation’s Logic Pro script and enjoyed the same degree of control as with Live (other DAWs are supported, including Bitwig, FL Studio, Cubase, and anything that supports HUI). Furthermore, the LC3 has seven custom mode slots, which can be uploaded from the Components software.

We used the provided modes for Novation’s Circuit Tracks hardware, powering the LC3 via USB, with a MIDI cable connecting the devices. It was an excellent way to expand physical control for the Circuit’s onboard synths – we achieved similar benefits with Akai Pro’s MPC One+. Other templates are provided for products from Novation, Elektron, Arturia, GForce, and Xfer’s Serum, and it’s important to remember the level of customisation available, so if your gear isn’t represented, simply upload your own template, containing your chosen MIDI messages, and even keyboard shortcuts (very useful for DAW control). You could use the LC3 with iPadOS/iOS in the same way.

We would have preferred touch-sensitive knobs, MPC-style, so we could instantly see the assigned parameter; this would be a real workflow boost. Also, we would have loved a side-mounted USB port so we could more easily butt the LC3 up against other hardware, including Novation’s own Launchpad Pro, and the computer itself, a placement currently blocked by the protruding cable at the top.

And – our final question, something we’ve seen mentioned online – it looks like there’s room for another row of knobs or buttons, maybe even pads. Could be there’s a good explanation for how it is, but it feels like valuable space is being wasted.

Verdict

Those quibbles aside, taken for what it is, we enjoyed our time with the LC3. The DAW and other modes work well, and we appreciated the compact size. Other compact controllers are available, at various price points, but the Launch Control continues to strike a balance between features, size and price.

Hands-on demos

Novation

Alternatives

Specifications

In the ongoing debate about the use of AI in music, Empire Of The Sun’s Luke Steele has come out in favour of the new technology, though with an element of reluctance.

The Australian musician was speaking on iHeartRadio Canada and said that “of course” he uses AI. “I love the battle now. It’s quite exciting – the humans versus AI. But you know it’s just another tool. It’s like a really smart guitar pedal.”

He continued: “I think you’ve got to be careful because it’s so powerful, because the AI is going to empower artists that know how to use it and they’re going to become unstoppable.

"The artists that are against it, you’ve got to be careful because it’s going to come and swallow you like the boogie monster at night,” he said before shrugging off the immense environmental impact of its use.

However, one artist who uses it openly is looking very far from ‘unstoppable’. Boy George has found himself in all sorts of trouble in the last few days, over his openly pro-Israel AI-assisted track We Will Dance Again.

The backlash was swift to the song, which appears to deny the genocide (a term both the UN and Amnesty have used) in Gaza and, with lines like ‘You condemn the Jews, with selective memory/ Musicians holding flags, mouthing like sheep/ Propaganda fuelled by the Internet feels so weak’, seems to criticise pro-Palestinian musicians.

Last Thursday George quit a two-week West End role playing King Herod in Jesus Christ Superstar at the London Palladium. Then he parted company with his label manager, Tony Pontius, who has allegedly told him he wanted “nothing to do with” We Will Dance Again.

Now the Culture Club singer has run into problems with Bandcamp. He uploaded the track to the platform over the weekend. However, Bandcamp has removed it and deactivated his account.

The platform has yet to issue a statement about the song. However, it’s more likely that their beef with it is the fact it has been created using AI – earlier this year Bandcamp put in place a ban on tracks used that ‘wholly’ or ‘in substantial part’ generated by AI – rather than the song’s political content.

Not surprisingly, George isn’t very impressed. He’s uploaded a clip on Instagram titled: “Bandcamp. What a bunch of c***s!”

“The drama continues,” he explained. “Sadly Bandcamp have removed my profile, so anyone trying to get a copy of We Will Dance Again will have to wait until I record it and find a way to put it out.”

In recent years we’ve really been spoilt for choice when it comes to hardware drum machines, from top-end beatmakers like Roland’s TR-1000 or Polyend Drums to wallet-friendly gadgets like Sonicware’s Deconstruct Minimal or Akai’s MPC Sample. Now German hardware brand Vermona is rejoining the fray with its latest drum machine, drumDING.

Vermona is a brand with a long and storied history that reaches back to Soviet-era East Germany. While the company is known for its effects and synthesizers, including the excellent PERfourMER and desktop Lancet range, perhaps its best known instrument is the DRM1 – a digitally-controller analogue drum machine first launched in the mid-1980s, and currently sold in a revived MKIV iteration.

The company’s latest release, drumDING, is said to be an evolution of that concept. However, where the DRM1 is built around multiple analogue voices, drumDING combines elements of analogue and digital generation and a workflow that emphasises internal sampling.

At the heart of the machine is a single analogue voice designed to generate a broad range of percussion sounds, from kicks, toms and snares through to hats and tuned percussion. It does so through a combination of a wide-range VCO, noise generator and ‘click’ impulse generator, all of which can be combined in the internal mixer and fed through a multi-mode filter. The synth voice also includes a variety of modulation tools including an LFO and snappy decay envelopes.

drumDING then lets users quickly capture sounds created with this voice and turn them into samples that can be sequenced and processed with digital effects.

“Press a button, and your analogue sound becomes a sample – ready to be shaped further and layered with effects on the digital side,” Vermona says. “From there, drumDING's sequencer makes it easy to turn those sounds into driving, distinctive beats. Then the cycle begins again: a new sound, a new sample, a new idea.”

As well as sampling its own internal voice, drumDING is also designed to sample via its external input, which allows users to patch in a synth or modular system.

Once captured, samples can be turned into patterns using the versatile step sequencer. This features six tracks with up-to 64 steps per track. The sequencer tracks can be set to individual lengths in order to create polymetric patterns and also includes features such as ratchets, micro-timing, parameter locks and probability. There is also a per-track LFO and pitch, envelope and reverse playback capabilities for sample manipulation.

On the effect front, drumDING has two delay sends and one reverb send. It can also make use of per-track insert effects offering drive, bit reduction and amplitude modulation.

The hardware includes individual outputs for each of its six tracks along with a main output and separate output for the synth voice. It has MIDI, USB and CV connectivity for interfacing with other gear.

To see more of it in action, check out the preview below from musician and YouTuber OoraMusic.

All told, drumDING looks like a powerful and excitingly original drum machine. While the exact release date is still TBA, the instrument is now up for pre-order priced at £1299/€1499.

Head to the Vermona site for more.

Electronic musician and software developer Kieran Foster, also known as Illformed and Dblue, has passed away. Foster was the developer behind Glitch, an influential multi-effects plugin initially released for free in 2005, and its commercial sequel Glitch2.

In memory of Foster, who passed away last month at the age of 47, his sister Joni has made the Illformed Glitch2 plugin available as freeware, with the help of Foster's friends and collaborators Taktik and Beatslaughter.

Glitch2 is a sequenced multi-effects plugin designed to "slice, dice, chop, screw, twist, turn and mangle your sounds into radical new forms".

The plugin is equipped with eleven unique modules covering reversing, time-stretching, pitch-bending, delay, distortion, ring modulation, beat repeat, trance gate and more. Glitch2's step sequencer allows the user to switch the effects on and off rhythmically by entering sequences into each module's lane, with per-module controls for volume, mix, filter and pan.

There are also a ton of options for randomization and mutation onboard. Glitch2's Randomizer module applies a random effect each time it's triggered, with adjustable probabilities for each module, and both sequences and parameters across all modules can be individually randomized or mutated.

Both sequencer patterns and snapshots of parameter values can be stored as Scenes, and up to 128 scenes can be created in each Glitch2 Program. Scenes can be triggered in real-time via MIDI notes from your DAW or controller, making Glitch2 a powerful tool for incorporating sequenced effects in live performance.

"Glitch can be as gentle or as brutal as you like," reads the description on the Illformed website.

"Add the occasional splash of retrigger or stretcher to single hits within your drum loop, or fill the entire sequencer with random effect blocks for a totally chaotic trip down the digital rabbit hole... the choice is yours!"

Both Glitch and Glitch2 were ahead of their time upon release, and influenced the development of countless glitchy "FSU" (Fuck Shit Up) plugins that take a similar approach to sequenced sound-mangling, such as Sugar Bytes' Effectrix and Devious Machines' Infiltrator.

Foster's friends and family have shared a memorial on the Illformed website that describes him as "one of the brightest stars in the musical sky... leaving the world a legacy of his music, sound, art, legendary software and overwhelming goodness of character."

"It’s with tears in our eyes and our hearts full of sadness but also joy that we remember him and will never forget," the memorial concludes.

Glitch2 is available for macOS, Windows and Linux in VST/VST3/AU formats.

Head over to the Illformed website to download Glitch2.

What is it?

The words “field recording” and “four-track” elicit a fair few associated words, but it’s highly likely that the first one to come to mind is “Tascam”. The Japanese audio brand has been there on the ground floor of every new technological moment, ready with a suite of user-friendly recording devices to launch a thousand bands.

Tascam’s reel-to-reels were amongst the first recording devices to bridge the gap between studio and musician. Its four-track Portastudio cassette recorders were definitive home-recording fare, and are still sought-after today for their inspiringly limited features and sonic capabilities. Tascam’s digital field recorders are similarly definitive, for capturing a nascent market as a flagship standard. Which brings us to now, and to the Tascam DR-40XP.

The Tascam DR-40XP is the brand’s new flagship for handheld field recording, part of a range that takes some very familiar field-recorder designs and imbues them with the foolproof majesty that is 32-bit float recording. It’s a direct sequel to the DR-40X, keeping much of the same form and features, but with some vital future-friendly upgrades.

First, the basics. The DR-40XP is a four-track field recorder in sheep’s clothing, possessing a pair of on-board cardioid condenser mic capsules and two TRS/XLR combo mic/line inputs. The on-board mic capsules can be toggled between XY or AB configuration, for focused capture or a broad stereo field; the combo inputs are phantom-powered for favourable communication with any mic from your own cabinet.

The DR-40XP iterates on the DR-40X by adding the aforementioned 32-bit float recording capability up to 96kHz, but it goes further too. It adds Tascam’s proprietary HDDA (High Definition Discrete Architecture) mic preamps, with an EIN (Equivalent Input Noise) of less than -126dBu; it adds a more RF-resilient on-board mic design; and it adds USB-C connectivity – a welcome graduation from the micro-USB standard that held on for a few years too long.

That USB-C port isn’t just for delivering power or data, either. Like the DR-40X before it, the DR-40XP also works as a 2-in/2-out audio interface, with either the on-board microphones or the external inputs as your source. If you’re not running the DR-40XP on USB-C bus power, you’re running it using three AA batteries – which, in the right atmospheric conditions, will offer up to 30 hours of on-time.

And in that on-time, the DR-40XP will handily show up for practically any recording undertaking you have in mind. The on-board mics can handle a high SPL, which, combined with its 32-bit float capabilities, makes the DR-40XP suitable for practically any sound capture. Not only that, but an on-board tuner and six-preset reverb modifier mean you’re set for live performances or location-based multitracking. Throw in the overdub and file bounce features, and you’ve got a mini mobile studio on your hands.

Performance

For starters, the DR-40XP feels reliable in-hand. It’s a moderately dense bit of handheld kit, and reassuringly solid despite its all-plastic chassis and connection ports. The metal bars protecting the mic capsules are another reassuring touch; it could certainly handle an accidental drop or three. The tactile experience is a good one, too, with responsive clicky buttons in front of every user input.

My first attempt at using the DR-40XP in the wild was thwarted by a wrongly formatted microSD card from another of my devices. These are minuscule grumbles, made larger by already being outside and by the sad omission of a complementary microSD card in the first place.

Now, not testing before departure was my fault entirely, besides which Tascam doesn’t necessarily owe anyone free storage, and data storage has of course gotten more expensive lately. Still, it’s a modern convenience we’ve come accustomed to from other brands and products; a modicum of on-board storage for emergencies would be a nice feature indeed; and, curmudgeon that I am, I want my 90 minutes of pointless traipsing back. Devoting over a hundred words to a problem of my own making might seem a bit ridiculous, but I assure you there’s a good reason: namely, that it’s almost all I have to complain about.

Once up and running, the Tascam DR-40XP is a dream to use, and capable of capturing some magnificent audio. Even without acknowledging the freedom to use whatever mics or inputs you want, the on-board microphone array is a real wonder – a world apart from the noisier capsules of older field recorders, and easily a new standard for mobile audio captures. The HDDA preamps are impossibly quiet, too. All told, it’s an uneasy feeling, getting professional-grade field recordings just from wandering outside with the DR-40XP and a camera tripod.

Navigating the on-board menus seems like it should be more difficult than it is, a precedent set by early digital recorders with dense and impregnable user interfaces. The DR-40XP, with its ergonomic button layout and well-signposted utilities, is a simple thing with multitudes beneath. Also, a small change that’s huge enough for me: the DR-40XP has added one-press recording at long last, its lack being the only tactile bugbear I’ve had with Tascam field recorders past.

At home, I tried out the DR-40XP in its ancillary function as an audio interface. In this mode, it’s limited to 24-bit/48kHz at maximum – a small shame for those hoping to twin that bottomless dynamic range with a hard-wired DAW setup, but functionally no problem at all. Just with it sat on my desk, pointed vaguely towards the 12^th fret of my acoustic guitar with the mics in XY configuration, I got a stunningly natural, bell-clear sound. It’s effortless stuff. Remarkable, even.

I did, briefly, have some issues with getting computer audio back out through the device’s headphone output, a problem I narrowed down to a driver issue. A reinstall, and a reboot of both computer and field recorder, and full functionality was there. Seamless. A breeze. And for what it’s worth, that monitor output is clear, full and transparent in exactly the way you’d hope.

Verdict

The DR-40XP is, in my opinion, the new standard for all portable field recorders. The feature-set is outsized for the form, meaning more freedom to do more with it – with less than ever. It’s built well, it’s supremely user-friendly, and its results are, in a word, pristine. It might reach a little above some budgets accordingly, but as a versatile box for recording setups big and small, it can’t be beat.

MusicRadar verdict: The Tascam DR-40XP is a phenomenal four-track field recorder, with high-fidelity recording thanks to some excellent on-board microphones and some even more excellent built-in HDDA preamps. It’s everything anyone could need in a handheld recording device, and it’s good at it all too.

Audio examples

Also consider

Hands-on demos

Tascam Official

Specs

• Microphones: stereo cardioid condenser capsules, XY/AB configurable
• Inputs: x2 TRS/XLR mic/line
• Outputs: 3.5mm TRS headphone, USB-C
• Phantom power: 24/48V
• Recording formats: WAV/BWF, MP3
• Recording fidelity: 16-bit/24-bit/32-bit float, 44.1/48/96kHz
• Recording media: microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC (up to 512GB)
• No. of channels: x2 stereo input tracks, x4 recording tracks
• EIN (equivalent input noise, mic preamp): ≤–126dBu
• Dynamic range: ≥112dB
• Display: Backlit LCD
• Power requirements: x3 AA batteries; USB-C bus power; AC adapter (sold separately)
• Battery life: 30 hours
• Dimensions (WHD): 70 mm × 155 mm × 35 mm
• Weight: 282g (with batteries)
• Contact: Tascam

Getting your sub bass right is one of the hardest aspects of music production to master, but the most rewarding when you do; there's nothing like a well-mixed sub to lend weight and power to any track.

That's why we've put together a bumper pack of free sub bass samples for the latest edition of SampleRadar. Here we have everything from sub-heavy kicks (almost 100 of them!) to filtered drum loops and bass-heavy synth riffs, along with multi-sampled subs from classic synths and samplers, including the Roland SH-101, Korg MS-20 and Novation Bass Station.

Just scroll down and hit the link below to our latest free sample pack.

• Read more: The ultimate guide to sub bass: tips and tricks for a high-class low-end

What you need to know

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

Sub bass samples: click to download

Sub bass samples (409MB)

These samples originally appeared in Future Music Magazine. Check out the latest issue for many more.

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 95,000 more free samples.

ReFX, the developer behind the Nexus virtual instrument, has announced the release of a new hybrid software synth that brings together physical modelling and subtractive synthesis with a broad array of additional features and capabilities.

Physical modelling synthesis is a technique that can emulate the acoustic properties of physical objects and instruments, or be pushed to create experimental sounds that reimagine real-world timbres in new and creative ways.

Like many physical modelling synths, the architecture of Rippler’s sound engine is based on exciters and resonators: the exciter is the initial input that triggers a sound – analogous to the pluck of a string or the strike of a drum – and the resonator emulates the body that the exciter vibrates, which determines the pitch and character of the sound.

In its Exciter section, Rippler gives you the choice of 32 onboard samples, user-imported samples, sidechain input or a custom impulse editor to shape its initial signal, and there’s also the option to use a noise generator to feed the resonators, alongside the exciter or on its own.

These run into dual resonator modules, which feature a choice of 12 models that simulate different acoustic instruments and objects: String, Beam, Squared, Bell, Membrane, Plate, Drumhead, Djembe, Vibraphone, Marimba, Closed Tube, Open Tube. These can operate in parallel or in series, the latter mode using bi-directional coupling to let the two resonators exchange energy as they would in an acoustic instrument.

There’s also a Manual resonator mode that replaces the physical model with a custom partial series that can be drawn in by hand, and lets you store resonator configurations as snapshots and morph between them in real time.

Rippler is also equipped with two conventional oscillators with Phase, Fold and Asymmetry controls that can be layered with its physically modelled output to “blend, enhance or solidify your sound”. Both these and the physical modelling engine pass through dual filters, which offer a choice of 27 filter types spanning low-, high-, band-pass and notch filters with multiple slopes, along with vintage-style models, ladder types and a formant-shifting Vowel filter.

This entire signal path can be duplicated, giving you two layers each made up of dual resonators, oscillators and filters, all running into the effects and master output. Speaking of effects, Rippler features a broad selection of 13 effects covering delay, reverb, chorus, compressor, distortion and more, which can be applied per-layer or globally. There’s also a sophisticated arpeggiator and sequencer onboard with modifier lanes that introduce variation to pitch and velocity.

Modulation comes courtesy of four LFOs and four envelopes with 64 LFO shapes and multiple envelope types, alongside four macros, random generators, velocity, key-tracking and aftertouch. All of this can be routed via a mod matrix with custom mapping curves, and Rippler will also play nice with MPE-compatible controllers, which can be used as a mod source for expressive performances.

Rippler is descended from RipplerX, a free and open-source physical modelling synth from developer Tiagolr, who has partnered with ReFX to develop and release a commercial successor.

Rippler is available now in VST3, AU and AAX formats for macOS 10.13 or later and Windows 10 and 11. It’s currently priced at an introductory price of $99 and ships with 441 factory presets. A 30-day free trial is available.

Find out more on the ReFX website.

Grammy-nominated producer and composer Steven Ellison, AKA Flying Lotus, will be the latest artist to share his songwriting secrets through School of Song, an educational platform that offers online workshops with acclaimed musicians.

Previous School of Song courses have seen artists such as Brian Eno, Oneohtrix Point Never, AG Cook and Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker deliver workshops that explore their creative process and help students develop their own.

Ellison's course will dive into his unique approach to production and composition while showing students how to build a daily musical practice that "lets inspiration flow". Across a four-week period, Ellison will deliver a weekly lecture on a different subject specific to his creative process, and each class will then be tasked with writing a song using the techniques covered in the lecture.

These subjects include Ellison's "sketchbook approach to music-making", in a lecture that covers "techniques for gathering sounds, loops, and samples in Ableton, focusing especially on the practical methods he uses to fashion those fragments into finalized songs".

Other lectures will explore improvisation in the studio and on stage, and the role of individuality in developing a creative practice. "In a cultural moment that pushes artists toward sameness, we will consider how sound, presentation, and instinct can come together to help you make work that feels personal," says the press release.

In addition to the lectures, there will be regular song-sharing sessions that give peers a chance to discuss each others' work, and an extra hour of live Q&A with Ellison each week.

The workshop is aimed at musicians and producers of all skill levels, and there are no prerequisites to sign up, though School of Song notes that "having familiarity with a musical instrument and/or recording environment will be helpful for completing the homework assignments".

The course will be taught online via live Zoom lectures across four consecutive Sundays (September 13th, September 20th, September 27th, and October 4th) with two lecture sessions on each class day to accommodate different time zones. Recorded lectures will be available afterwards for those who are unable to attend.

If you're interested, the deadline to sign up is September 12th, and the course is priced at $200.

Ellison recently released BIG MAMA, a chaotic seven-track EP that he discussed in detail in an interview with MusicRadar back in April.

Find out more on School of Song's website.

AlphaTheta DJM-V5 review: What is it?

Launched in 2020, Pioneer DJ’s DJM-V10 is an all-singing, all-dancing six-channel DJ mixer that has proved remarkably popular with professional house and techno DJs.

A big part of the V10’s appeal lies in its sound and build quality, both of which are a noticeable step up from much of the DJM range. Beyond that though, the mixer also offers a fresh approach towards performance effects, ditching the Sound Color FX found on other Pioneer/AlphaTheta products in favour of a focus on effect sends more akin to the design of Allen & Heath’s top-end Xone mixers.

For all that the DJM-V10 gets right, it’s an undeniably high-end device, and a significant commitment in terms of both its hefty size and near-$4k price. It’s also overkill for the needs of many DJs and smaller clubs.

The DJM-V5 is a response to this. Released earlier this year – now under Pioneer DJ’s parent brand AlphaTheta – the V5 has three mixer channels based on the V10’s design ethos, resulting in a smaller footprint and a more affordable price, relatively speaking.

The V5 isn’t simply a cut-down version of the V10 though. In the process of streamlining the design AlphaTheta has also introduced some new features and refined others, resulting in a mixer that feels like a more focused and, in some areas improved version of its bigger sibling.

Pricing

Launch price: €1,999 inc VAT, £1,739 incl VAT, $2,199 excluding sales tax (US only), $1,999 excluding tax (Canada and Latin America)

AlphaTheta DJM-V5 review: Performance

The three mixer channels found on the V5 are actually based on those found on the later DJM-V10-LF. These offer 60mm long-throw faders with no crossfader.

This is one of several significant ways in which the V5 feels specifically aimed at a certain type of house or techno DJ likely to emphasise slow, methodical track blends over quick cuts or scratching – a style perfectly suited to those long-throw faders.

Realistically, the bottom third of a channel fader often feels redundant on most mixers, since it’s only at around 40% volume that a track begins to make itself known under the master output. The extra length of the long-throw faders means there’s considerably more ‘active’ space between that lower level where a track is first audible and the maximum, which makes it possible to introduce a track more subtly and to be more precise when changing the emphasis from one track to the next.

Above each fader is a 4-band EQ that splits the mid-range frequencies into low and high mids. As with similar design found on Allen & Heath’s top-end Xone mixers, I have mixed feelings about having this extra EQ compared to a more common 3-band setup. It’s useful for slower transitions, which is certainly fitting for the V5’s design, although it can make things a little more fiddly if you want to quickly swap the low end between two tracks.

The V5’s channel faders can be switched between three different curve modes, including a new ‘soft’ mixer curve. In this mode, reducing the fader level cuts the volume of the track while simultaneously rolling off the high frequencies, the aim being to ‘soften’ the output as it's mixed out in a musically flattering manner.

I really like this as a concept, although I wish the effect was a little more pronounced. While subtlety is the name of the game for the V5, which is generally a good call, the difference between soft and non-soft mixer modes can be hard to discern, at least to my rave-aged ears.

More successful is the new XPF, or cross-pass filter mode. This combines both high- and low-pass filters so that, as the cutoff knob is turned to the right, the filter sweeps up through the high frequencies but keeps the very lowest frequencies in the mix, like a widening band-pass. This is a really fun tool for creating builds and raising tension without messing with the sub elements of a track.

On the subject of the filters, it’s worth noting that the filters on each channel are controlled by a single-direction cutoff knob. This means that, unlike most DJ mixers where the cutoff is turned to the left for a low-pass effect and right for high-pass, here the filter type is selected using the buttons to the left of the interface and then the cutoff knob is turned from left to right to increase the prevalence of the filter effect. This setup can feel a little counter-intuitive and is likely to divide user opinion, but it does mean that there’s more travel and – again – more space for subtlety when engaging each filter mode.

The highlight of the V5’s design, however, is the way it handles effects. The V5 ditches the tempo-synced Beat FX and swept Sound Color FX found on most of AlphaTheta’s other gear. Instead it makes use of both internal and external effect sends, with the internal processors putting most of the emphasis on delay and reverb.

The internal effects are housed in the Send FX module, which offers six reverb and delay effects divided into tempo-synced and non-synced types. In a neat design trick the time knob – which is a shared control dictating the length of each effect – adapts to provide haptic feedback marking the beat division when used with synced effects, but offers smooth free-flowing movement when used with non-synced modes.

With just six options, there are significantly fewer effect types than found on the V10 – or on many cheaper DJM mixers for that matter – but rather than feel like a downgrade, the design of the V5 feels more considered and focused on what its target users are likely to actually use.

Another significant change compared to the V10 lies in the fact that the return level is now controlled by a fader, as opposed to a knob. This might sound like a minor change on paper, but in practice it makes for a far more expressive way of manipulating the effects channel. It’s a really smart update.

Along with its internal routing, the V5 also has both a ‘multi-I/O’ channel that can be used for either analogue send/return connectivity on its rear panel, or a top-panel USB-C port that, among other things, allows for single-cable connectivity with AlphaTheta’s recent RMX-Ignite effects unit.

AlphaTheta DJM-V5 review: Verdict

Verdict

While the V5 is cheaper and smaller than the V10, this is still a pro level piece of kit offering the same top-end sound and build quality.

The choice of three mixer channels rather than a more conventional four-channel setup might seem odd to some, but in-use it feels like a good level of compromise. The V5’s neat size and streamlined feature set make it a more approachable and immediate DJ mixer than the V10.

The combination of that third channel and the multi-I/O connectivity provides just enough flexibility for DJs looking to push their sets beyond a basic two-deck setup, whether that involves adding an additional player or turntable, an external effects loop or some ‘live’ element like a drum machine or sampler.

The inclusion of one-knob compression on each channel is a nice touch on this front, providing an easy way to balance disparate inputs or compensate for the difference in mastering between a modern track played from a CDJ and classic played on aged vinyl.

Again, this combination of features really lends itself to a specific type of DJ. The V10 was already a mixer aimed more at club DJs than multi-format or scratch DJs, but by refining things further AlphaTheta has doubled down on this identity.

With its long faders, playable spatial effects and interesting filter design, the V5 is a mixer specifically suited to DJs that like to blend long, looping forms of dance music, where mixes for one track to the next might take several minutes and involve carefully cutting and emphasising individual frequencies.

Does this focus on a specific type of DJ risk alienating some of the potential market? Definitely. Even among house and techno DJs, the V5’s specific set of tools won’t suit everyone. But that commitment to the bit is worth celebrating.

In recent years the DJ market has seen a lot of releases that aim to be all-things to all-DJs, particularly when it comes to controllers and all-in-one systems. The DJM-V5 is a mixer that knows who it’s for and which encourages a certain style of mixing. The result is a more interesting, creative and musical piece of DJ kit.

AlphaTheta XDJ-AZ review: Hands-on demos

AlphaTheta / PioneerDJ Global

AlphaTheta XDJ-AZ review: Specifications

• MIDI Control: Full assignable MIDI controls
• DVS Control: djay Pro, rekordbox , Serato DJ Pro
• Dimensions (W × D × H): 302.0 × 437.5 × 107.9 mm / 11.89″ × 17.22″ × 4.25″
• Main unit weight: 8.0 kg / 17.6 lbs.
• Input / Output terminals
• Input: PHONO × 3 (RCA), LINE × 3 (RCA), MIC × 1 (XLR / 1/4-inch TRS jack)
• Output: MASTER × 1 (XLR), BOOTH × 1 (1/4-inch TRS jack), REC OUT × 1 (RCA), PHONES × 2 (1/4-inch / 3.5 mm)
• SEND/RETURN: SEND × 1 (1/4-inch TS jack), RETURN × 1 (1/4-inch TS jack)
• LAN × 1
• USB Type-C × 2 (MULTI I/O × 1, PC/Mac × 1)
• Sampling Rate: 96 kHz
• A/D Converter: 32 bit
• D/A Converter :32 bit
• S/N Ratio: LINE 105 dB / PHONO 88 dB / MIC 79 dB
• EQ4 Band
• Contact: AlphaTheta

Here’s something we didn’t have on our bingo card for 2026: there’s a new release on the way from Jean-Michel Jarre. But it isn’t a new album or even one of his multimedia extravaganzas in an unlikely location. Oh no. It’s something almost quaintly old-fashioned for him: a book.

And it isn’t a memoir. Well, not a straightforward one anyway. Instead, it's a proper weighty tome that tells the story of electronic music, a genre he played a not-insignificant role in shaping himself.

Machines: History Of Electronic Music will be published via Thames & Hudson in November and purports to cover the whole nine yards, from Luigi Rossolo’s 1913 Futurist manifesto The Art Of Noises, via Surrealism, Bauhaus (the art school not the goth band), Westdeutscher Rundfunk, the BBC Radiophonic Workshop and Kraftwerk. The book also charts the technical breakthroughs, such as tape manipulation, the switch from analogue to digital recording and AI-assisted music.

Contributors include Vince Clarke, Gary Numan, Nicolas Godin of Air, Richie Hawtin, Armin Van Buuren, Hans Zimmer, Gillian Gilbert of New Order and - perhaps rather more unexpectedly - Pete Townshend.

But as well as being a history of the music, Machines sounds like it will be a must for devotees of the actual hardware, too. The publisher’s blurb promises that Jarre "invites readers into his formidable archive - one of the world’s largest and most significant collections of electronic and electro-acoustic instruments.

“Through these machines, Jarre traces the evolution of a century of sonic experimentation, underscoring the ideas, technologies and cultural movements that shaped electronic music as we know it today.” It also features “130 curated, specially photographed examples - from iconic modular synthesizers to rare prototypes and bespoke one-offs.”

It also sounds like there will be plenty of personal reminiscing from the 77-year-old electronic pioneer. Machines, Thames & Hudson say, “is the account of an artist whose life and work are inseparable from the history of electronic music itself. Jarre reflects on his childhood fascination with reel-to-reel tape machines… Personal anecdotes and expert commentary are interwoven with rare archival material, technical schematics, recreations of sonic experiments, and sequenced stills from legendary live performances.”

The book is out on 24 November and, if you’re into doing the pre-order thing, head over to the Thames & Hudson website.

Vochlea – the company responsible for Dubler 2, a plugin that allows you to use your voice as a real-time MIDI controller – has announced the release of DubBox, a new app that applies the same concept to drum programming by converting vocal percussion into drum loops.

Aimed at producers and beatmakers that work out rhythmic ideas vocally, DubBox can transform spontaneous beatboxing into sample-based drum patterns.

This is achieved by training the software on the user’s vocal sounds, which are then used to trigger drum samples in real time with velocity sensitivity, which can then be recorded, quantized and exported as audio or MIDI.

DubBox can learn up to eight vocal sounds per project, each of which can be mapped to samples from its built-in library or imported sounds.

Stocked with 10 packs, the app’s sample library covers everything from classic 808s to futuristic sound design and industrial percussion. Each sample has individual controls for gain, pitch, tone, drive and filter, and can be assigned to choke groups.

Once samples are configured, the user can record to a click or freely with up to 20 takes of overdubbing, and DubBox will detect the BPM of a performance before stretching and quantizing the results accordingly, while preserving the feel of the original take. When quantizing voice recordings, DubBox’s Voice Warping function time-stretches the entire take to the grid rather than re-triggering individual hits on each beat.

When you’re happy with the results, you can export your input vocal, the sample track or a mix of both, or export a MIDI file to drop into your DAW.

"Everything we build starts from the same belief: the voice is the most immediate instrument there is," said Vochlea CEO George Wright in a press release.

"Dubler 2 turned it into a live controller for your whole studio. DubBox is a new instrument for a new player, the beatmaker whose beat is already in their mouth. Beatbox in, finished drum loop out."

Priced at $39/€39/£34, Vochlea DubBox is available now for macOS and Windows.

Find out more on Vochlea's website.

Fledgling Hong Kong-based synth outfit Mach Devices has unveiled the MD-7, a stylish, innovative and open-source mini-synth controlled via motorized discs that might look a little familiar to owners of the Teenage Engineering TP-7 field recorder.

The MD-7's two discs can not only be used to navigate menus, dial in parameters and scrub through sequences – as demonstrated in the Instagram video embedded below – but also provide haptic feedback that the company promises will allow users to "stop looking at the screen and start feeling the patch". (This will be helpful, as the screen is fairly compact.)

What this means in practice is that the discs don't merely sense rotation, but also communicate information to the user through the varying response of their FOC motors. The synth will adjust the resistance of the discs' rotation depending on the parameter that's being tweaked, and can simulate mechanical detents that represent stepped values or even create "virtual walls" when the end of a parameter's range is reached.

MD-7 is also equipped with a backlit keyboard comprised of 13 button keys, three smaller buttons and the aforementioned 1.65" IPS display. In the product images, the display squeezes oscillator, filter and envelope controls for the MD-7's synth engine into its limited real estate, which admittedly looks a little crowded. (Mach Devices notes that the UI shown is in development and subject to change.)

Speaking of the synth engine, no specifics have been provided, but the display shows a basic subtractive architecture with four oscillator waveforms, a resonant multimode filter and a standard ADSR envelope. The promo video also shows a drum looper and 16-step sequencer, its playback being controlled DJ-style by the motor discs, which is an interesting touch.

Aside from the haptic discs, the most intriguing aspect of MD-7 is its open-source software platform: Mach Devices says that the instrument's firmware, including its DSP engine, modulation system and sequencer, will all be publicly available on GitHub, meaning that owners can customize its operation and build their own features, workflows and even new sound engines.

As for connectivity, MD-7 features dual USB-C ports – one for power, and the other for MIDI and audio output and mic input from compatible USB microphones. There's also a 3.5mm headphone output and a microSD card slot for storage.

Comparisons are unsurprisingly being drawn with Teenage Engineering's distinctive designs, but the MD-7's price is one point on which the two companies diverge: the synth is generously priced at $299/£230.

After going viral on Instagram, the MD-7 is currently sold out for pre-orders, and Mach Devices says it will be available in September 2026.

Find out more on Mach Devices' website.

InMusic – the parent company of Moog Music – has donated an extensive collection of vintage synthesizers, prototype models, schematics and letters to the Bob Moog Foundation Archives.

The vast collection of 4,489 items includes a Fairlight CMI, a Synton System 3000 modular system, and a bench-model Minimoog Voyager prototype.

There are also letters and schematics from legendary synth pioneer Bob Moog's personal office files and effects, alongside rare product catalogues and industry magazines dating back decades.

The donation shines a light on Moog's personal and professional life, revealing thoughts, ideas, and providing fascinating insights into his relationships with other visionaries like Wendy Carlos and Herb Deutsch through letters of correspondence.

The Bob Moog Foundation was established in 2005 to pay tribute to the godfather of subtractive synthesis and an icon of electronic music. The collection now consists of over 15,000 materials, preserved at the so-called 'Moogseum' in Asheville, North Carolina, where Moog lived for the final 25 years of his life.

"The Bob Moog Foundation serves as an essential steward of one of the most important legacies in electronic music," said Joe Richardson, President of Moog Music and Executive Vice President of inMusic.

"We are proud to contribute these materials so they can be preserved and made accessible to researchers, educators, musicians, and fans."

The Foundation's Executive Director Michelle Moog-Koussa added: "This donation helps solidify the Bob Moog Foundation Archives as a world-class repository for Moog and electronic music history. Every donated piece helps us tell the story of Bob's complex, indelible legacy."

Visit the Moogseum's website.

A listing has appeared on music gear marketplace Reverb for a Yamaha CS-80 that the seller claims belonged to legendary Greek composer and producer Vangelis, priced at a whopping £400,000 – more than $534,000 in US dollars. (And that's with a 10% discount.)

"This is Vangelis' very first Yamaha CS-80," the product description reads. The seller Synthesizerman describes the synth as "fully functional with its original stand and lid", and says it's in "excellent condition", aside from small cosmetic blemishes and a cigarette burn on one of its keys.

"This is the real deal. Early prototype no serial number. It can demolish a whole block of flats. This is the 'Spiral' CS-80, historic. Priced accordingly."

If this is a legitimate claim — and it's important to note that there's no evidence provided that this synth actually belonged to Vangelis, other than the seller's word — then this would be a "holy grail" synth and a collectors' item of historical significance.

The CS-80 is one of the most sought-after vintage synthesizers and regularly fetches five-figure sums on the second-hand market. A well-maintained example that was verifiably owned by Vangelis (the musical figure most closely associated with the instrument) would represent a rare, museum-grade piece of musical history.

What's more, if someone forks out the asking price for this CS-80, this could well be the highest price ever paid for a celebrity-owned synth, far surpassing the $115,200 paid at auction last year for Florian Schneider of Kraftwerk's EMS Synthi A. (Interestingly, Schneider's Sennheiser VSM-201 vocoder fetched more than double that, selling for $256,000.)

Though this CS-80 has the potential to smash that record, the fact that it’s been casually listed on Reverb rather than sold through a professional auction house with independent authentication is likely to dissuade buyers from parting with their cash.

The seller claims that the CS-80 was used by Vangelis on Spiral, widely regarded as a landmark release in electronic music history, and an album that laid the groundwork for the vastly influential Blade Runner soundtrack and demonstrated the power of Yamaha’s then-innovative CS-80.

The CS-series instruments were some of the first fully integrated polyphonic synthesizers and some of the earliest commercial synths to feature preset memory. In a 1984 interview, Vangelis himself called the CS-80 “the most important synthesizer in my career", describing it as "the best analogue synthesizer design there has ever been.”

This iconic instrument was pivotal in shaping the futuristic, ethereal soundscape of Vangelis’ score for 1982 classic Blade Runner, but even if this CS-80 was indeed used on Spiral, there’s no guarantee that Vangelis – who recorded with multiple CS-80 synths – reprised it for later projects.

Whether the listing is genuine or not remains to be seen – we've reached out to the seller for comment.

For Rogét Chahayed, every hit record begins the same way: with a musician chasing an idea. Whether he's digging through Kontakt libraries, improvising at the piano or jamming alongside fellow producers, his role is rarely to finish a song from start to finish, but to spark ideas that an artist can transform into a global hit.

It’s an approach that has made Chahayed one of modern hip-hop and pop's most trusted collaborators, and he’s developed a workflow designed to capture inspiration the second it strikes. Looking back on some of his biggest credits, he explains how both technology and collaboration have become equally important parts of his creative process.

“I began as a piano player before shifting into keyboards, but realised that there was a whole world of VSTs that I needed to get into. At first, I was just showing up to sessions with one keyboard, but then it changed to a laptop loaded with Kontakt.

“When I started making a little money, I'd go to Guitar Center, try the keyboards and find myself coming up with all these amazing ideas. I thought to myself, wow, if I had a studio with all these keyboards on a wall I’d be coming up with stuff all the time.”

Success eventually allowed Chahayed to build the studio he'd always imagined, and one that’s designed to capture spontaneous musical ideas before they slip from view. “I finally built my home studio, which is a really amazing place. I have two walls of keyboards with about 30 or 40 synths and a Steinway piano alongside a Fender Rhodes and a drum kit.

“Saying that, over the years, I've developed an amazing system with my engineer Julian Vasquez where I’ll just bring a Nord Stage 4 and my laptop, which has millions of sounds organised for easy access to strings, synths, brass, woodwinds, basses and guitars. It’s like I’m playing one of those games where you're in control of an army and you have access to this whole artillery of sounds.”

Going deeper on his working process with Vasquez, Chahayed explains: “Julian’s usually recording me 24/7, so while I'm coming up with stuff he's locking in a tempo and recording it into Logic just in case somebody hits on a moment. Then he’ll put it into Ableton and start building a session around it.

“Since we built this routine, it’s been like an indestructible weapon. We produced J Lo's album This Is Me… Now, Bruno Mars and Rosé’s APT. and Drake’s Janice STFU on this system, which is designed to capture whatever’s happening in the moment through jam sessions.”

Despite all of the technology at his fingertips, Chahayed still believes the best productions are built on rhythm rather than technical virtuosity. “I've always strived to discover what they would call the perfect loop... four bars, eight bars, four chords or whatever, but I think it's less about technique and more about rhythm. That's why I think Scott Storch is one of the greatest producers of all time - the way he approaches production is so attractive to me because his rhythm is so strong.

“When I first started making beats, I was trying to be Oscar Peterson and doing way too much noodling and riffing. Mel-Man used to say to me, ‘Hey, they teach you how to play all these notes in conservatory, but they don't teach you how to play with rhythm, and you have terrible rhythm’.

“You've got to fill the spaces in between and it's probably harder than people think to consider how you’re going to contribute to a genre or sound and insert yourself musically. The cut-and-paste approach means you’ve got to find the perfect riff for the perfect bassline or few bars because rappers are always saying something different, and the beat is just a mattress for them to float on.”

This philosophy played a key role in one of Chahayed's earliest blockbuster records: the opening of Travis Scott's Sicko Mode, which began life as an improvised late-night studio session. “It started out as a session cooked up with Hit-Boy. We're still friends today, but in this particular scenario it was just another night of going to his studio and making ideas without any aim or direction.

“On this occasion, we were at Chalice Studios in Hollywood sifting through sounds and I was looking through the Kontakt factory library and saw a sound called the Rapman Waw and thought, ‘That's a cool name for a sound’. I didn't know there was a Casio keyboard from the ‘90s called Rapman, but I pulled up the sound, played this chord and thought, whoa, I’ve never heard a crazy organ sound like that before.”

Chahayed completed the progression, layered it with bass and watched as Hit-Boy immediately jumped behind the laptop to transform the idea into the frantic, off-kilter foundation that would eventually become the opening movement of Sicko Mode.

From there, the beat took an unexpected journey before finally landing in Travis Scott's hands. “Within a month or two, he’d sent the beat to Jay-Z who held onto the Sicko Mode part one intro beat for about a year, but didn’t do anything with it.” Chahayed continues. “After that, Hit-Boy took the initiative and sent it to Travis who called him the next day to say, ‘We've got a crazy song.’ It was originally for a track he made with Drake, but I didn't hear a bounce of it until I heard Sicko Mode on the day his Astroworld LP came out.”

Throughout Chahayed’s career, not every success has happened overnight. His long-running relationship with Doja Cat stretched back years before either of them celebrated a mainstream breakthrough. We asked the producer how it all started. “I'm really grateful for my friend Yeti Beats because he’d been working with Doja since she was really young and approached me saying he’d love for me to meet an artist he was working with.

“I didn't really know who Doja was, but she loved the sounds I was playing and her vibe and approach wasn't like anything I'd ever seen. Her talent was clearly enormous and she wrote three or four songs to all the beats we'd made together in one sitting.”

That early faith was eventually rewarded, as years of collaboration culminated in the global success of 2021’s Kiss Me More. “As the years went on, I knew there was something really special there, and she had a big viral moment with the song MOOO! Fast forward to 2021 and Kiss Me More was our first big hit, which felt like a reward for all our patience, but she didn't really have many collaborators in the studio - it was just Yeti, Kurtis McKenzie and Jerry, our engineer.”

By contrast, Chahayed explains how songs destined for pop's biggest stars often take on a life of their own, evolving through countless revisions before reaching the finish line. “A good pop song can go through 14 or 15 versions. Even in the case of Bruno Mars and Rosé’s APT., we had a completely different version before Bruno got on it, but it went through a version that we thought was pretty special, although we didn't think it was going to be the global hit that it was.

“One year later, Bruno hops on it and does his thing, so we’re just planting the seeds of good songs and ideas that will either end up finding their way to a really big chart position or get stuck on a hard drive forever.”

More recently, Chahayed found himself adapting his approach for Drake, with his ideas often pared back to let the vocal take centre stage – a process that was particularly evident on Iceman standout Janice STFU.

“In the case of Drake, I’d already played the horn riff on Laugh Now Cry Later, but there was also this Janice song. We didn't hear his vocal or even know what the song was called, but we knew from our source that he liked the loop we’d sent. Basically, what I’ve noticed is that a lot of the sounds that we did for those songs got filtered to become more background.

For Chahayed, it's a reminder that a producer's job isn't to dominate a record, but to give an artist the strongest possible foundation to build upon. “If you hear the original version of Laugh Now Cry Later or Janice STFU, the beat, synths and horns are really in-your-face, but after Drake did his thing, they're used as support rather than the main riff.

“Drake’s voice is so much like an instrument that it needs support rather than to be led by a sound, so the delivery of an idea has to be big and crazy – and if they like it, they’ll take it from there and make it work for him.”

• Read more: "If I was going away on a trip and could only bring one keyboard, I’d bring that one, because I know where every sound is blindfolded": Grammy-nominated producer Rogét Chahayed on the stage keyboard he can't live without

What is it?

Tascam’s a tried and tested brand in the field recorder space. It’s a frequent flier in our guides to the best field recorders, a brand that fields fierce competition in just about every price bracket, and the source of some of music’s most iconic recording devices (looking at you, Portastudio).

In previous products, Tascam’s already flirted with the audio-visual market, but the new FR-AV series goes all-in. This is the FR-AV4 – a brand-new four-track field recorder, designed as a compact and high-performance device for location recording, and as a compellingly seamless addition to audio-visual shoots.

The FR-AV4 is the second and largest in the FR-AV series, which takes some cues from camera-friendly Tascam recorders past, but also takes things in a maximalist – and thrillingly pint-sized – new direction. The FR-AV4 boasts 32-bit float recording at up to 192kHz, built-in timecode generation and HDMI sync, in a form factor so slim you could probably post two through someone’s letterbox.

The four tracks in the FR-AV4 are serviced by four combo XLR/TRS inputs, each of which is furnished with individually toggleable 24/48V phantom power, and Tascam’s own Ultra HDDA preamp design – which offers a wide gain range and an impressively low noise floor too. Inputs three and four can be superseded by a separate stereo 3.5mm input, for receiving audio from another camera or external device. There’s 3.5mm TRS ins and outs for the FR-AV4’s built-in timecode generator, and, handiest of all, a pair of HDMI ports that cover a great deal of clever business.

For one, connecting a camera via the FR-AV4’s HDMI port allows audio and video to sync, as well as enabling the camera to control record start/stop. With a monitor recorder plugged in at the other end too, via the FR-AV4’s HDMI out, 4K/8K video can be passed through with the FR-AV4’s audio embedded (and with the camera’s own audio, too, if you like). Game-changing simplicity for small rigs! Finally, the HDMI ports can also be used to daisy-chain multiple FR-AV4s, for virtually limitless extra tracks, all synced, and all slaved to the record button on the first in the chain.

There’s clever digital business going on inside the FR-AV4 too. It’s a high-fidelity field recorder, capable of recording up to 32-bit/192kHz audio. The dynamic range of 32-bit float trivialises gain-staging and, coupled with the four XLR inputs, makes this a potent partner for sound design and literal, bona fide field recording.

Each channel in the FR-AV4 gets some sound-sculpting tools too, including a four-band EQ, limiter and noise gate. All of this, in something roughly sandwich-sized – and powered by four AA batteries, or 5V bus-power from the USB-C port. Which is also a conduit for the FR-AV4’s second life as a six-in/two-out audio interface. It works hard for its price point.

Performance

As a musician with little professional experience shooting video, and being that I’m reviewing this field recorder for a publication with Music in the title, I’m actually not touching any of the Tascam FR-AV4’s AV-friendly features. I’ll leave the evaluation of anything video-like to other, more video-y people, and focus instead on its core multitrack field-recording functionality, which is excellent.

My first session with the Tascam FR-AV4 was to capture the ambient sound of an industrial passageway in the same building as my studio space; I wanted to experiment with quadraphonics, capture some spooky atmospheric sounds, and grab an impulse response for that spooky, atmospheric industrial-passageway reverb. Setting up for this was a dream, and a healthy portent of sessions to come.

The FR-AV4 has two embedded screw holes for camera tripods, on the top and bottom, so you can mount it any which way you choose. Getting it situated, connected to my four pencil condenser mics and ready to record was a matter of minutes – which, looking at the front panel for the first time (and not having looked at the manual at all), was far quicker than I expected.

Navigating the FR-AV4 is actually extremely intuitive, if a little tedious when you want a setting quite deep in the multi-page menu. Thankfully, almost everything I wanted to adjust was only a couple screens away, and I instinctively found it with ease.

As well as the big-picture cool stuff on display with the FR-AV4 – the per-channel EQs, the limiters, the ambisonics decode function in the menu that Tascam don’t even mention on their product page – there’s also a number of small, user-friendly touches that demonstrate a real thoughtfulness on the part of Tascam’s engineers. My favourite is that you can easily group multiple tracks to a single gain control, allowing you to keep your relative levels while broadly adjusting the whole mix.

The only place where the thoughtfulness outstrips its returns is with the screen, which is a touchscreen, but also far too small to reliably use without fat-fingering the odd input. Still, in places, using the screen is a small and welcome time-saver.

As for the results: I was blown away, in the most boring of ways. I recorded at 32-bit float/192kHz, and captured everything. The cold, sustained quality of the passage in three dimensions; the soft hum of air conditioning units some hundred metres away; birdsong and children played in the neighbourhood past the car park; even the band rehearsing in the studio below. I messed around with gain settings, and, predictably, could not create a situation with poor results. The audio is clean, clear and uncoloured; a reliably professional standard.

As a USB audio interface, the FR-AV4 is almost as seamless to use. Being able to run it in 32-bit float is a welcome feature, and one which is conspicuously absent from Tascam’s new entrants in its DR-X series. A tiny bit of menu-diving and you can manage all the FR-AV4’s functions in-unit, including a handy SD card browser and exporter.

If I were the type to nit-pick, I’d throw a minuscule amount of shade at the placement of the USB-C port. It’s on the left-hand side, close as can be to the front face – and in front of all the I/O accordingly. It might be easy to access on location, but when transferring files or using the FR-AV4 as an audio interface, the trailing USB-C wire only gets in the way.

A broader nit-pick would be that Bluetooth monitoring and timecode sync – a key feature in Tascam’s eyes – is locked behind the purchase of a separate Bluetooth adapter. I’m generally not a fan of paywalling core features, particularly when this paywall seems a bit arbitrary (£47/$61 for the necessary Tascam AK-BT2 adapter). Still, I ultimately consider these nit-picks small for a small four-track with big features.

Verdict

It’s safe to say that I’m a big fan of the Tascam FR-AV4. It’s trivialised multitrack recording in the field in a number of ways, most impressively through its diminutive form factor. Seriously, it will probably fit in your coat pocket.

There’s so much more to this device than covered in this review that makes it a compelling buy for multimedia creators at any level – though the £699/$999 cost will naturally give some pause for thought. I think the price is actually quite justifiable, given its outsized feature set and sheer practical utility.

MusicRadar verdict: The Tascam FR-AV4 is a four-track field recorder with its gaze levelled squarely at the audio-visual world. It’s a multimedia darling, with HDMI pass-through, sync and audio embedding – but for me, the real smarts are in the audio. High-fidelity multitrack recording through phantom-powered XLR ins and whisper-quiet discrete preamps, all in a box the size of your lunchtime sandwich? Genius.

Audio examples

Also consider

Hands-on demos

Tascam Official

Specs

• Inputs: x4 TRS/XLR mic/line; x1 3.5mm TRS line/camera; x1 HDMI-A; x1 3.5mm TRS timecode input
• Outputs: x1 3.5mm TRS line/camera/timecode; x1 3.5mm TRS headphone; x1 HDMI-A; x1 USB-C
• Phantom power: 24/48V
• Recording formats: WAV/BWF, MP3
• Recording fidelity: 16-bit/24-bit/32-bit float, 48/96/192kHz
• Recording media: SD/SDHC/SDXC (up to 512GB)
• No. of channels: x4 input tracks, x6 recording tracks (inputs + stereo mix)
• EIN (equivalent input noise, mic preamp): ≤–127dBu
• Dynamic range: ≥133dB (inputs 1-4)
• Display: 1.9-inch (4.8 cm) LCD touchscreen
• Power requirements: x4 AA batteries; USB-C bus power; AC adapter (sold separately)
• Battery life: 17 hours
• Dimensions (WHD): 184 mm × 42 mm × 130 mm
• Weight: 756 g (including batteries)
• Contact: Tascam

“It's quite a strange sounding song, in a way,” says Alexis Taylor, reflecting on his band’s 2008 single Ready For The Floor. “You wouldn't really write it down as an idea: Let's have gentle falsetto vocals referencing a Batman film, while singing about a kind of brotherly connectedness – and try to be inspired by UK garage music and Prince.”

It’s this eclectic and at times eccentric mix of reference points that makes Taylor’s band Hot Chip such an enduring force.

Operating at the intersection between dance music and indie pop, the London five-piece have taken something of a mix-and-match approach to songwriting over the years, blending synth lines and sequenced beats with live percussion, rhythmic guitar lines and an inventive approach to arrangement that often subverts the structures of traditional pop music.

Formed in 2000 by Taylor and schoolmate Joe Goddard, Hot Chip evolved into a five-piece by the time of their debut album Coming On Strong, adding Al Doyle, Owen Clarke, and Felix Martin to complete a fluid lineup that sees members regularly shifting roles both in the studio and onstage.

The band’s breakthrough came with Mercury-nominated second album The Warning in 2006, which was followed by 2008’s Made In The Dark and 2010’s One Life Stand.

This month sees Hot Chip reissuing all three albums. Ahead of the release, we sat down with Taylor, Goddard and Doyle in the band’s London studio to talk about the making of Ready For The Floor, the Grammy-nominated second single from Made In The Dark and – along with The Warning’s Over And Over and Boy From School – one of Hot Chip’s most popular tracks.

“I think Joe just played it in the middle of us working on something else in the studio,” Taylor recalls. “It was a bit of a surprise to hear all of these sounds that he'd been working on. We were midway through something else and took a pause, and then we heard these drum sounds and that main synth riff.”

That initial sketch was created by Goddard in his home studio, although as he explains, to call his setup at the time a ‘studio’ might be overselling it.

“The computer and a small amount of gear was just next to my bed,” he says. “There was a kind of spaghetti of black cables all over the floor, which traumatised my wife and still does.”

The core elements of Ready For The Floor were sounds sequenced from a Moog Modular, a synth the band would later buy in hardware form when the System 55 was reissued in 2015, although at the time Goddard had to settle for Arturia’s Modular V emulation.

“I’d just got this soft synth version of the Moog Modular,” he says. “I think I was very excited about that synth at the time, because I used that to make the beat and the main chord pattern in the song as well.

“I’d probably just learnt that you could use a synth to make drum sounds, which is something that we still love doing today. It kind of makes things feel a bit more unusual.”

The main body of the beat comes from rounded, bouncy synth kicks interspersed with stereo ‘laser’ tom sounds and noisy snares. The result is a very electro-sounding pattern, where the drums fall into the territory somewhere between beat and bassline. There’s a distinctive shuffle to the track’s rhythm too.

“We were all really into UK garage at the time,” Goddard explains, “so it's got a kind of off kilter feel a bit like that.”

That workflow was typical of Hot Chip’s creative process at the time, where Goddard would bring loose ideas to the band during rehearsal or studio sessions, and the remaining members would then work together to form them into a proper song.

“We have moments when all of us bring in ideas to the studio, but it's always been my passion to make drum tracks and bass lines as the beginnings of things,” Goddard tells us. “I often make beginnings and present them to everyone to be finished together.

“On this song, I definitely would have started just making that drum beat and then making bass and chords to kind of fit in the funkiest way I could with that drum rhythm.”

“It was inspirational,” Taylor continues. “It was just instantly exciting-sounding and interesting. I think the vocal ideas came very quickly. I’ve got quite vivid memories of us all hovering around the computer and thinking, ‘oh, I've got an idea’. Those are the most fun moments for me, in the studio, where you hear something new and you just can't get the recording done quickly enough. You're reacting to the music and to the atmosphere.”

That atmosphere, as the band recall, had a slight edge to it on the day Ready For The Floor was written.

“I think there was something a little bit tense, maybe from what we'd been working on previously,” Taylor explains. “I don't remember what song that was. But the words are partly about breaking that tension and communicating and speaking. And sort of getting stuff out in the open. That's part of what the song talks about. But being a typical Hot Chip song, it's also got these weird allusions to the Tim Burton Batman film for some reason.”

That allusion comes in the form of Taylor’s repeated mantra, ‘you’re my number one guy’, lifted from a scene in which Jack Nicholson’s Joker confronts a crime boss played by Jack Palance in the 1989 film. The line in the film is delivered with an aggressive undertone, although Taylor takes the phrase more at face value.

“In this case, it wasn't really meant to be a kind of threat or anything. It's more taking that phrase from pop culture and just using it in a different context. We’re singing positively about, you know, ‘Oh, this track sounds great. Joe, you're my number one guy. We can do this, we can make this brilliant bit of music all together.’”

The approach of all members chipping-in is evident when the band opens up the track’s stems for us in Cubase. While the beats and chords provide a backbone throughout the song, the rest of the arrangement is built out of a collage of often short ideas. Taylor’s simple vocal hook is fleshed out with harmonies from other members; percussive guitar parts start and stop; simple synth riffs create layers of counter melody.

“We have this thing that somehow happens where there's something on every album that sounds like the Coronation Street theme," Goddard says, soloing at meandering riff played on a Dave Smith Poly Evolver, which does have a passing resemblance to the trumpet motif that precedes ITV’s long-running soap opera.

It’s just one of numerous ear-worm synth motifs that make the song memorable. Another is a telephone-like melodic line, as well as another descriptively named ‘cow synth’ in the stem files – both of which potentially originate from a cheap Casio Tone Bank keyboard.

“There's sounds in there from a keyboard that I bought for Joe for two pounds at the car boot sale,” Taylor tells us.

Hot Chip’s studio resources have come a long way since the band recorded Made In The Dark. We meet them in their current studio, situated next door to the room Doyle was using as a studio at the time the album was made, but now stocked with an envy-inducing collection of music hardware, including the Moog Modular, a Yamaha CS-80 and racks of vintage drum machines and outboard.

On reflection though, the band admit that part of the success of tracks like Ready For The Floor and Over And Over might lie in the naivety of their songwriting and production at the time.

“There's a point to be made about how we didn't really know what we were doing,” Doyle says. “We were still learning our craft at the time. We were definitely very interested in production, and we were listening to lots of cool music and trying to replicate our heroes, but we had a pretty basic setup.

“There was nobody around us that was teaching us how to do this stuff, so we were having to figure it out ourselves. We probably made some quite weird decisions, or just did things that you wouldn't do if you were in a more professional studio or working with a producer.

“It's difficult to get back into that mindset,” he continues, “because it's difficult to unlearn what you already know. It's funny to think that these songs that were earlier in our career have made this tremendous connection with people.

“I think that is something to do with the directness between thought and expression. You're just thinking of an idea and getting it down in whatever way is available to you. People respond to that because there isn't a set of production layers between you and the listener. I think that is quite instructive.”

Watch the band break down Ready For The Floor in full at the video at the top of the page. Hot Chip’s reissues of The Warning, Made In The Dark and Coming On Strong are out now.

Belgian composer, organist and musicologist Sander De Keere has signed to Brighton-based indie label Phantom Limb and released a new song titled Pt 6.

Recorded on a faithful replica of a 1763 Contius baroque organ (constructed in 2022), the seven-minute composition is designed to pay homage to this heritage instrument and explore how it can be reinvented and reinvigorated in the modern age.

"You feel the music through your whole body", De Keere said of playing the organ. "It's incredibly physical. Each register holds a sonic character, and combining them becomes a kind of alchemy."

The song was recorded at the historic St Catharina Church in Wondelgem (Ghent, Belgium), and this spiritual setting seeps easily into the landscape of Pt 6, a track that smoothly blends minimalism and electronic experimentation.

This reflects De Keere's place in the world of music; born in Ghent and raised in Brussels, he focuses on bridging the gaps between historical music and contemporary sound, supplementing his releases with classical music lecturing and broadcasting.

On Pt. 6 De Keere's aim was to create "landscapes that challenge expectations of what a pipe organ can be", with nods to early sacred music, mid-century minimalism, the classical avant-garde and modern electronic experimentation.

And his ambitions run far beyond this release. Having signed to Phantom Limb, the rising Belgian composer is preparing to release his debut album later this year. Watch this space.

Following the release of the Rolling Stones' 25th studio album, Foreign Tongues, Technics has created a limited edition wireless earbud in collaboration with the iconic British band.

According to the Japanese audio brand, "this exclusive collaboration unites Technics' signature audiophile engineering with one of music's most iconic legacies," in a joint project designed to "deliver every note as intended".

The new Technics EAH-AZ100 wireless earbuds feature the band's legendary red Lips & Tongue logo on the rubber case, while the earbuds themselves are built for exceptional clarity across the full frequency range, and include new technology like a Magnetic Fluid Driver – supposedly the first of its kind in the industry.

The product enters the market two weeks after the release of the Rolling Stones' new album, which debuted at number one in the UK. It became the group's 15th chart-topping album, and their third consecutive number one LP after 2023's Hackney Diamonds and 2016's Blue & Lonesome.

Mick Jagger recently opened up about his experiences recording Foreign Tongues, explaining how producer Andrew Watt pushed them to use tape for Chuck Berry cover Beautiful Delilah.

"I said, ‘What does it matter? If someone listens to it on their phone, they don’t know it was cut on tape — it doesn’t make any difference,'" Jagger said. "[But] we cut it on tape and we did it live. That was old style."

Only a limited number of people will be able to experience the new record via Technics' new earbud collaboration, with just 5,000 units available to customers. And compared to other wireless earbuds on the market, they're not cheap: the EAH-AZ100 is currently available via Technics , Amazon and through Bravado for $299/£259.

If you're someone that makes music, it's probably happened to you at least once. You're playing an instrument, making a beat or experimenting with ideas in your DAW, and something brilliant comes out unexpectedly – but you weren't recording.

Once you've hit the big red button, though, sometimes you can't quite recreate the magic of the idea that came out when you least expected it, and the moment is lost forever.

GhostTape is an app for macOS from developer Type 9 that promises to make sure that never happens again. Running in the background, it constantly captures your system audio in a circular buffer that can run anywhere from 1 minute up to an hour, so that no great idea goes unrecorded when inspiration strikes.

Captured audio is stored in your Mac's RAM, and GhostTape won't write to your SSD until you choose to "rescue" a file from the buffer, so the app won't clog up your drive or cause issues like disk thrashing. When you want to retrieve something you've played, the audio is then converted to a WAV file that you can drag-and-drop into your DAW or use elsewhere.

As well as capturing your Mac's entire system output, GhostTape can record through your audio interface, your Mac's internal microphone or isolate audio from specific applications, like Spotify or Safari, with independent buffer lengths for each source.

The app is intended to be a "set-and-forget" background utility that you never need to think about until you need it. To that end, GhostTape's Haunt function will automatically pause and resume recording from a given source when activated, meaning that if an app is closed or a device is unplugged, you won't need to restart the buffer when it's reopened or reconnected – GhostTape will detect the source and resume the recording from where it left off.

Type 9 claims that GhostTape is "incredibly lightweight" and operates with a "minimal footprint", so it won't eat up your CPU or impact your DAW's performance, despite the fact that it's continuously recording.

In addition to ensuring that you never lose an idea, the makers of GhostTape suggest that the app can help nervous musicians overcome "record button anxiety", the inability to perform at our best that can plague some of us when we know the tape's running.

"With GhostTape, you are always prepared," the press release reads. "You no longer have to manage tracks, arm inputs, or name files before playing. You simply play, and if something great happens, you rescue it from the buffer. It turns the pressure of 'recording' into the freedom of 'performing.'"

"You know how something brilliant usually happens when you’re not recording? We built something that sits quietly in the background and catches everything. No setup, no pressure, just a safety net for the moments you can't plan for."

GhostTape is available now and will set you back $10, with all future updates included. There's a 14-day free trial available too. Find out more on Type 9's website.

One of the best-known names in synth history, Moog Music is the company behind a long list of iconic instruments, from the classic to the contemporary.

That's why we've themed our latest free sample pack around Moog's legendary synths, putting together a generous collection of samples that showcase the multi-faceted sound of Moog's instruments.

The latest edition of SampleRadar is a Moog-lover's paradise made up of 493 samples, spanning everything from arpeggiated loops and filtered beats to experimental FX and acid-tinged multi-samples, all produced using Moog's beloved gear.

• Read more: Why does everyone love the Minimoog?

What you need to know

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice.

Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

Moog synth samples: click to download

Moog synth samples (412MB)

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 95,000 more free samples.

Charli XCX’s seventh studio album, Music, Fashion, Film, will be released on July 24, following up 2024’s world-dominating Brat project with a stylistic move away from the brash electro-pop of its predecessor that leans into a more reflective and guitar-led sound.

Ahead of the album’s release, Charli and co-producers AG Cook and Finn Keane sat down with John Kennedy for an episode of the Tape Notes podcast to talk through the making of three tracks from the project: Card Declined, Rock Music and No One Lasts Forever.

Finishing the record on a contemplative note, No One Lasts Forever features a spoken-word cameo from David Cronenberg, as the renowned director recounts a near-death experience in a monologue that mirrors the themes of impermanence Charli explores in the track’s lyrics.

“This song has made me change the way I think about my life and my art,” Charli tells Kennedy. “That was the journey I was going on while I was writing it.”

The song’s production was handled by longtime collaborators AG Cook and Finn Keane, who made use of heavily distorted guitar and vintage synths (namely the Minimoog and the PPG Wave) to fashion its distinctive sound, along with some unconventional sound design techniques and an AI-powered “audio mosaicing” plugin called Concatenator.

“The biggest difference in general compared to so many tracks that Finn and I have done together separately, and on any project, is this is so audio-heavy,” Cook says. “There’s pretty much no MIDI. Any MIDI that's in there is all chopping up something that we actually recorded or edited. A lot of the guitars, bass, all that, we're playing it in, drum kits and drum machines.”

Cook and Keane tell Kennedy that much of the material for the track came from an impromptu jam session that saw the pair recording and manipulating small fragments of sound from various sources – detuned guitars, processed synths, analogue drum machines and even snippets of other songs on the album – to create textural elements that take the production to a different dimension.

“We have all these little sounds that are throughout the track, all these little bits and pieces,” Cook says. “It’s funny because we’re literally running around the studio with as many things plugged in as possible and just doing the worst sounds.”

“We were trying to find the ugliest things,” Keane adds, “but then we actually did something kind of cool with the drums.”

“The whole second half [of the track] uses bits and pieces of this jam, and one tool I used to really bring the most out of it – apart from selecting and chopping, which felt a little bit predictable – is this weird plugin called Concatenator,” Cook says.

Developed by Datamind Audio, Concatenator is an innovative AI-powered “audio mosaicing” plugin that can transform an entire sample library into a playable instrument using a technique called concatenative synthesis.

Analyzing large numbers of samples using machine learning, Concatenator then indexes each sound by timbre, pitch and amplitude, organizing the samples as a mosaic at the centre of its interface. As audio runs into the plugin, Concatenator rebuilds the input in real time by stitching together tiny fragments of sound from its library that bear the most similarity to the incoming audio.

Cook used Concatenator to create a drum pattern out of the “bits and pieces” he and Keane recorded during their jam session. “This is like a drum loop, but it’s actually made out of pretty much all of those files,” he says. “You can see that we’ve loaded all of these [samples], MS-20, Vermona, Prophet stuff… and any audio file you throw underneath this will actually start finding tiny bits of all the samples that are similar in pitch.”

“It’s weird because it’s a very digital, new plugin, but we’re doing it with all these other things,” Cook says, comparing the glitchy aesthetic of the drum loop to the sound of skipping through stations with a radio dial. “It was a nice way of being able to sample tons of stuff in this really ambiguous, uncanny way that I tend to like. It’s a mix of selecting little regions and letting some bits be chaotic and random and very 3D.”

Listen to the full Tape Notes episode with Charli XCX, AG Cook and Finn Keane on Spotify.

For more track breakdowns and interviews with artists and producers, check out Tape Notes’ YouTube channel or subscribe to their Patreon, where members can access full-length video episodes, exclusive offers, merch discounts, artist gear lists and behind-the-scenes content.

Tape Notes also runs a monthly giveaway offering one Patreon member of their Extended Players Premium tier the chance to win music-making gear: this month, the prize will be a pair of D3V Desktop Monitors from Adam Audio.

Musik Hack, the developer behind the Master Plan, Fuel and SweetEQ plugins, has launched HyFi, an online mastering platform that the company claims can deliver “professional results with minimal effort”.

HyFi’s workflow is intentionally simple and fairly similar to other online mastering services: drag-and-drop a mix into HyFi on desktop, tablet, or mobile, wait a few moments and download a mastered version.

After uploading a track, you can adjust its loudness and tonal character and reprocess the master if you’re not happy with the results. (The first change is free, but subsequent changes cost one credit each.)

The Character setting offers three options – Bright lifts the high end, Warm boosts the low end, and Glue applies “gentle and cohesive” dynamic control – while the Loudness control gives you a choice between Balanced, Full and Loud options. HyFi also includes an A/B comparison tool with gain matching and a reference track.

HyFi's mastering is powered by the same technology as Master Plan, a plugin from Musik Hack that we described as “a hugely impressive modern mastering tool” in our 2023 review. The company says HyFi is designed to preserve the character of a mix rather than fix it, promising “clear, loud and subtly saturated” masters and avoiding the “aggressive EQ curves and heavy-handed changes” applied by some of its competitors.

HyFi accepts WAV, MP3, FLAC, AIFF and AAC files and exports masters as WAV or MP3. Finished masters are stored for 30 days as standard, but you can extend this to a year for one credit.

Avoiding the much-maligned subscription model, HyFi instead uses pay-as-you-go credits. Each credit is equivalent to one minute of processed audio and credits cost between $0.33 and $0.50, depending on how many you purchase. New signups receive 10 free credits, and existing owners of Musk Hack plugins can use their loyalty discounts on HyFi credit purchases.

With the launch of HyFi, Musik Hack is entering a well-established market for automated online mastering populated by scores of platforms offering a simple and inexpensive way to polish a finished mix and make a track sound ready for release.

Many of the most popular services, such as LANDR and Cloudbounce, utilize AI-based mastering, but Musik Hack doesn’t claim that HyFi uses AI under the hood, relying instead on the DSP behind its Master Plan plugin. Though HyFi only currently offers mastering, Musik Hack tells us that the platform will eventually expand to encompass other audio processing tools.

HyFi is available now. Find out more on Musik Hack's website.

• Read more: Who needs a mastering engineer? How to master your music without a professional studio or expensive gear

By the time Rogét Chahayed crossed paths with Skrillex, he'd already worked alongside some of music's biggest names.

Yet despite collaborations with Dr Dre, Drake and Travis Scott, the Grammy-nominated producer and songwriter still describes Skrillex as one of the most naturally gifted musicians he's ever encountered.

Chahayed first worked with Skrillex on Hydrate, a highlight from the producer's 2023 project Quest For Fire that also featured dubstep artist PEEKABOO and vocalists Flowdan and BEAM. Since then, the pair have linked up to collaborate on Baby Royal, a high-voltage cut from the imaginatively titled 2025 album Fuck U Skrillex You Think Ur Andy Warhol but Ur Not!!.

Their sessions reinforced a philosophy Chahayed has carried throughout his career: that memorable records rarely come from expensive equipment alone. Instead, it's curiosity, instinct and the ability to hear potential in even the most unlikely sounds that separates truly great producers from the rest.

For Chahayed, the quality of Skrillex's music has little to do with the gear or software that he uses, but the way he treats every sound as raw material waiting to become music. “He’s one of the most remarkable and talented people I've ever worked with and full of life and energy, but you don't feel like you're with this mega-superstar DJ,” Chahayed tells us.

“He's one of the most enormous talents in the world and one of the only people who treats the computer like an instrument. You’ll graze a key by accident and he’ll say, 'What was that?' very much in the same way that Dre is very sensitive to sounds.

“I could hit this table and he'll make a crazy snare out of it, so he’ll take whatever’s available and make it work. Sometimes we’ll be in a room with multi-million dollar speakers and he'll be sitting on the floor listening to a song on the worst quality headphones with his laptop doing his thing. To me, that’s very grounding and cool.”

That approach extended to the studio itself, where Chahayed says Skrillex regularly proved that creativity outweighs even the most sophisticated setup. “There was a day when I went to one of his studios but was feeling kind of lazy and didn’t want to bring any crazy equipment. All I brought was a shitty quality Korg KROSS keyboard and a lot of those sounds are not good.

“They're very basic and in-your-face, but there was something about it that I thought could work and I remember making 10 different beats with him and every sound was hitting because Skrillex is really good at taking raw, fake sounds and making them pop out and cut through.”

Looking back, Chahayed says those sessions proved that great production is all about imagination, and the ability to make magic with a limited set of tools. “He really showed me that it's not about what you have; it's how you use it - I get the feeling I could go to Toys R Us, buy a $40 keyboard and he'll just make something out of it. Skrillex really is proof that you don't need anything but a good ear.”

And yet for all of his technical brilliance, Chahayed claims it's Skrillex's attitude in the studio that makes working with him so enjoyable. “There's no ego there. Every time we work together it's just this insane exploration of sounds, and he likes to keep it interesting and fun.

“I’ve had some of my best days making music with him, and he's always been a great collaborator and friend. I’m hoping to get back in the studio with him soon!”

• Read more: “It's not just about the money – I just wanted my name on there because it was my work and somebody else took the credit”: Rogét Chahayed on signing away his contributions to Kendrick Lamar's To Pimp a Butterfly for "a few thousand bucks"

He might be best known as a synth-pop artist, but Howard Jones was originally on a path to becoming a classical pianist.

At the insistence of his mother, Jones took lessons as a child, but in a new interview with Rock & Roll High School, he says that she also had a love of pop music. And, as he was looking for someone to inspire him, he found one artist in particular who was able to bring these two worlds together to create something truly spectacular.

“I saw the classical music as my way to get good at playing the pop and rock stuff, because Keith Emerson was my hero, and he was a brilliant concert-level classical pianist and also the best rocker you could get, for keyboards,” says Jones. “So he was an absolute hero.”

Jones’ first foray into rock music came at school when he formed a band, Warrior, writing what he describes as “complex, 20-minute, multi-sectioned pieces that were very, very difficult for the rest of the band to learn and play.”

They managed it, though, and it was the drummer from that band who gave Jones his first taste of owning a synth.

“He made me a monophonic synth from an electronics magazine kit,” he confirms. “Having seen Emerson at the Isle Of Wight Festival in 1970 playing the huge modular Moog, I'd heard how amazing synths could be in that context, and [I was looking for] any chance to get anywhere close to it. The synth he made me would go out of tune all the time, but it was a synth, and it was amazing.”

What of the ‘one-man electronic band’ concept that would eventually become a Jones trademark, though? Where did that idea come from?

“I was teaching piano, and one of my students lent me a drum machine,” he remembers. “And so I put the drum machine on top of the piano and was playing along to the terrible, like, bossa nova rhythms and stuff that you had in those days. It was very primitive, but it sparked this idea of the one-man electronic show – that I could have keyboards and the drum machine and, you know, link everything together with MIDI and triggers and little sequences, and that's what I set about doing.”

Jones would go on to have hits on both sides of the Atlantic, carving out a successful niche in the ‘80s synth-pop landscape. The influence of Emerson remained, though, notably on the synth blasts that feature in the intro to 1983 hit What Is Love?

“I think there's a lot of Keith in my work,” agrees Jones, “But yeah, you know: fanfares – that's what I think of it as. Absolutely, 100%.”

Chase Bliss has announced that it is discontinuing Chompi, the cute and colourful sampler launched by manufacturer Chompi Club in 2023 following a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign.

Effects pedal brand Chase Bliss acquired Chompi Club in 2025 with the intention of continuing product development and manufacturing Chompi itself, but has now made the decision to cease production of the instrument.

After merging with Chompi Club, Chase Bliss planned to produce a backwards-compatible Chompi with the same processor and slightly different hardware, meaning that owners of any Chompi would have access to the same firmware.

"That turned out to be a pretty bad idea," Chase Bliss said, for reasons explained in a video shared on the company's YouTube channel titled "We changed our mind".

The announcement in the video is a little ambiguous, but what's clear is that the company has shelved plans to develop and release a Chase Bliss-made Chompi or to work with Chompi Club on a second version.

"We are not working on that Chompi thing we described in the other video, or Chompi V2," Chase Bliss founder Joel Korte said. "We'll do one firmware patch for Tempo to address a few minor bugs but beyond that, nothing else directly in Chompi world is planned," he added in the comments.

Appearing alongside Chompi Club co-founder Tobias Hendrickson, Korte told viewers that Chompi's Tempo firmware – an alternative version of Chompi's firmware released in March that fundamentally changed how the instrument worked, adding an arpeggiator and sample-slicing functionality – took longer than expected to develop and caused the team to run into the limitations of the device's hardware and processing power.

"The manufacturing process was also turning into a bit of a puzzle, and so we found ourselves in the position of essentially recreating an existing product that was already maxed out," Korte explains in the video description. "It would have been time-consuming, expensive, and limiting for future ideas. It just didn’t make sense."

"We just can't really do what we would've wanted to do on the existing architecture," Korte added in the comments.

"For me, this is not in any way a sad thing that we're reaching this conclusion," Hendrickson said. "As it is now, Chompi is complete. I don't know how excited I am about making another one that has to stick to those same constraints."

Chase Bliss will continue to provide support for those that already own a Chompi, and as of the video's publication, the company has 250 units remaining and there is still stock available on the Chase Bliss website. If you've previously considered picking up a Chompi, this is your last chance.

Though Chase Bliss has made it clear that Chompi as we know it is being discontinued, Chompi Club's Chelsea and Tobias Hendrickson will be remaining with Chase Bliss, and Korte says the engineering team is currently working on more than 10 new projects.

Head over to Chase Bliss' website to grab one of the last remaining Chompi units.

Before becoming one of hip-hop's most sought-after producers, Rogét Chahayed spent years honing his craft as a conservatory-trained pianist, composer and session musician.

That technical foundation, combined with an apprenticeship under Dr. Dre and Mel-Man, has helped him develop a musical identity that's landed him credits on some of the biggest releases of the past decade.

Having contributed to tracks such as Travis Scott's Sicko Mode, Doja Cat's Kiss Me More and Drake's recent chart-topper Janice STFU, Chahayed's studio reflects a balance between classical musicianship and modern production. Packed with hardware synths though it is, he still enters studio environments with the same instruments that first sparked his love of music.

Asked which pieces of gear he simply couldn't live without, Chahayed doesn't hesitate before naming the keyboard that's central to his creative process. “My number one keyboard is definitely the Nord Stage 4, but I combine some of my favourite sounds from the Stage 3.

“If I was going away on a trip for a week and could only bring one keyboard, I’d bring that one, because I know where every sound is blindfolded. It's also a performance keyboard and when you're recording a performance in the studio it's going to resonate like that on the record.

Meanwhile, when it comes to creating depth and texture, two keyboards consistently earn a place in Chahayed's sessions. “Another one that I love is the Korg KRONOS, which is fantastic for layering and organising sound categories. There are a few sounds on there that are just brilliant and it has the perfect combination of what you might call low-quality or low-tier sounds and ones that really cut through.”

“Another keyboard that I love to use is the Prophet X, which has an unbelievable sound selection. The 8Dio sound engine is the same that the Native Instruments and Kontakt people use, so it’s very cinematic.

Though Chahayed now owns a vast collection of instruments, he fondly reminisces about lusting after gear during his early days as a musician breaking into the industry. “When I started making a little money, I'd go to Guitar Center, try the keyboards and find myself coming up with all these amazing ideas.

"I thought to myself, ‘wow, if I had a studio with all these keyboards on a wall I’d be coming up with stuff all the time.’” Fast forward a few years, and Chahayed has built that very studio, which he describes as an “amazing” space to work in.

“I finally built my home studio, which is a really amazing place,” Chahayed says. “I have two walls of keyboards with about 30 or 40 synths and a Steinway piano alongside a Fender Rhodes and a drum kit.

“Over the years, I've developed an amazing system with my engineer Julian Vasquez where I’ll just bring a Nord Stage 4 and my laptop, which has millions of sounds organised for easy access to strings, synths, brass, woodwinds, basses and guitars. It’s like I’m playing one of those games where you're in control of an army and you have access to this whole artillery of sounds.”

Hardware may form the backbone of his setup, but Chahayed says his workflow wouldn't be complete without a handful of software instruments. “I can't live without my Kontakt libraries, so my MacBook is very important and I've been finding some incredible sounds in Native Instruments’ Play Series libraries recently.”

“I began as a piano player before shifting into keyboards, but realised that there was a whole world of VSTs that I needed to get into. At first, I was just showing up to sessions with one keyboard, but then it changed to a laptop loaded with Kontakt.

But what about the instrument that started it all? “I guess the last piece of gear or equipment I need is a good piano. Wherever I am, the piano is always the thing that grounds me; it’s where I discover a lot of movement and things that work with those other sounds, so my Steinway Model B grand piano is one of the most important tools that I own.”

Leading music industry bodies such as the Record Industry Association of America (RIAA) and the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) have launched a joint labelling program to help make fans aware of when generative AI has been used in recorded music.

The project sets out a unified approach to voluntary track labelling, with a distinction between 'AI-generated' and 'AI-assisted' labels, which will be used across digital music services and other partners.

This announcement comes after the revelation in April that a concerning 44% of all new music uploaded to the streaming service Deezer is AI slop. Meanwhile, Apple Music has confirmed that over a third of its uploads are 100% AI.

This move from record industry professionals is all about attempting to combat this significant shift.

“Fans want to know whether and how generative AI has been used in the music to which they listen," said Vikki Oakley, IFPI CEO and Mitch Glazier, RIAA Chairman & CEO, in a joint statement.

They continued: "Given how important human artistry and authenticity is to music lovers all over the world, these labels will provide an immediately understandable and easily scalable approach to transparency. We acknowledge the many ways AI is being used creatively, so we expect to offer fans additional information as adoption of generative AI labeling grows and technology evolves."

According to Noemí Planas, CEO of WIN (Worldwide Independent Network), “For artists and fans around the world, true connections and trust are everything. Clear labeling of AI-generated content is central to this: it gives fans the transparency they deserve and supports the human-centered, safety-first approach that the global independent community has championed through the WIN Principles for Generative AI."

Amid widespread controversy regarding anonymous AI-driven artists such as The Velvet Sundown, those behind the program will hope it can begin to clear up confusion about the origins of recorded music.

“As AI continues to be integrated into the creative process, artists and fans alike deserve a clear way to communicate how and when it’s being used," said Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of The Grammys. "This initiative ensures that creativity, authorship, and artistic intent remain at the center of every song. Giving artists the ability to tell that story strengthens trust and supports a more sustainable future for music.”

If you're looking for a way to lose an hour or two of your day to some good old-fashioned musical procrastination, look no further than YPC, a browser-based sampler that chops up any YouTube video and maps it across your computer keyboard.

Drop any YouTube link into YPC – it opens with Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek loaded by default, an admirable choice – and its 16 pads will be randomly assigned to timestamps in the video, letting you play the sample chops with your keyboard or mouse like a pad sampler.

You can then randomize or set your own timestamps for each pad, adjust each pad's sample length from 0.1s to 8 seconds and time-stretch each sample, too.

YPC accepts MIDI input through your browser, so you can perform with a MIDI pad controller or keyboard, and projects can be shared with other users or exported and imported as JSON files. If your finger-drumming skills aren't up to scratch, YPC also features a basic 64-step sequencer with adjustable swing and BPM that can be programmed via step input or live recording.

Developed by producer Halfpast, YPC takes inspiration from classic Akai samplers with its retro aesthetic and colour scheme. While it's admittedly fairly basic in terms of its functionality, it's free, it's fun, and it's eaten up half my afternoon already. (If you're looking for something a bit more sophisticated, there are plenty of browser-based DAWs that offer far more advanced capabilities.)

The most obvious omission in YPC is a way to export audio once you've recorded a sequence you're happy with – it's understandable, though, as most YouTube videos will contain copyrighted material. However, if you'd like to record YPC's output to use in a track or play with in your DAW, there are plenty of apps available that can do just that.

(This probably goes without saying, but if you're going to release a track with anything sampled from YouTube, make sure you clear that sample with the relevant rightsholders first.)

• Read more: Explore our archive of more than 98,000 free music samples

He might be pretty long in the studio recording tooth, but Mick Jagger admits that, during the making of new Rolling Stones album, Foreign Tongues, he didn’t see the point in going old-school and recording to tape rather than digitally.

The issue was raised when producer Andrew Watt suggested going analogue for one song in particular – a cover of an old Chuck Berry record. “We haven’t used tape for ages, but Andy wanted to use tape for Beautiful Delilah,” Jagger tells Billboard. “I said, ‘What does it matter? If someone listens to it on their phone, they don’t know it was cut on tape — it doesn’t make any difference.’”

Watt got his way, though: “We cut it on tape and we did it live,” says Jagger. “That was old style.”

Jagger’s fellow Stone Ronnie Wood also had a few words to say about Watt, all of which were complimentary. “He’s a great guitarist. He can play my parts better than I can,” he quipped.

Elsewhere, Jagger raised the possibility of the Stones releasing more music that features Charlie Watts, their late drummer. “We had a good track with Charlie [Hit Me in the Head, which is featured on Foreign Tongues] and we’ve got other tracks with Charlie. I keep reading this is Charlie’s final appearance – well, we’ve got other tracks with Charlie.”

Jagger also offered his thoughts on Gen-Z superstar Olivia Rodrigo, an artist who’s already received great notices from many of his peers. He was asked specifically about Rodrigo’s ability to make rock music, a genre that she’s explored extensively across her three-album discography.

“She’s really good at it,” he says. “Everyone thought she was a different kind of singer, but there’s quite a few female singers that have made that transition. It’s not a permanent transition necessarily, but the ability to change styles from what you think their original girly pop stuff is – it’s kind of interesting.”

To be fair to Rodrigo, she hasn’t so much ‘transitioned’ to a rock sound as specialised in it. Yes, her breakthrough hit (Drivers License) was a ballad, but right from the outset, she’s married heavy guitars to her pop sensibilities, and shared the stage with the likes of Weezer, No Doubt, David Byrne, Sheryl Crow and Billy Joel.

She’s also performed and recorded with The Cure’s Robert Smith, and has spoken of being a huge White Stripes fan when she was growing up (and yes: Jack White is a friend of hers, too).

From classics like the Roland TR-808 and 909 through to modern greats such as Elektron's Analog Rytm and Polyend's Drums, hardware drum machines play an essential role in many producers' workflows.

They don't come cheap, though. (Well, some of them do.) So if you're looking to integrate the sound of a hardware drum machine into your productions but haven't got one in your home studio, we're here to help.

Today's edition of SampleRadar features looped beats and one-shots from a variety of beat-boxes, including the Alesis H16-B, Arturia DrumBrute, Nord Drum and Roland TR-8. What are you waiting for? Download and dive in.

What you need to know

All the samples are supplied as WAV files so can be imported directly into your DAW or sampler of choice. Because they're royalty-free, you're welcome to use the samples in your music in any way you like - all we ask is that you don't re-distribute them.

The samples are supplied in a zip file, so you'll need to extract them before you can see them. Enjoy!

Example sounds

Hardware drum machine samples: click to download

Hardware drum machine samples (293MB)

These samples originally appeared in Future Music Magazine. Check out the latest issue for many more.

Head over to the SampleRadar hub to download over 90,000 more free samples.