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July 2023
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246 articles
- July 31
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- Gear up with the hottest deals from Sweetwater
- Extreme metal drummer Nick Barker's kidneys are in "full failure", a GoFundMe campaign has been set up to help
- SampleRadar: 505 free rave synths samples
- Watch Weezer drummer Pat Wilson play guitar with Foo Fighters at Japan's Fuji Rock festival
- Fila Brazillia: "Growing up, we were super analogue – guitars, bass, drums; proper bands. But as we got into machines, we used the best of both worlds"
- Vivian Campbell shows his Gary Moore and Rick Nielsen signature Les Pauls for Def Leppard
- 7 easy steps to positioning your studio monitors correctly
- The Crumar Spirit synth is making a comeback – here's why you should care
- It's here! No it's not! Is Behringer's $99 Pro VS Mini synth finally available to buy?
- Blackstar has made its greatest amps into a plugin
- Artists fight back: Cardi B throws microphone at concert goer who spills drink on her – her vocal carries on anyway
- Producer Bullion has some simple advice for musicians: Don't listen to other people's music when you're working on your own
- Generate unlimited free samples with AI: TextToSample is a free VST3 plugin that puts an AI-powered sample generator inside your DAW
- Paul Reed Smith: "They're gonna try to write guitar maker on my gravestone – I would want it to be 'a good family member'"
- Download Excite Audio Lifeline Console Lite for free and add instant analogue character in your DAW
- July 30
- July 29
- July 28
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- Fender partners with Loog for a range of child-friendly 3-string electric guitars
- Roger Waters on his dramatic Dark Side Of The Moon Redux: "It's been part of our lives for 50 years and yet we are still not yet breathing in the air"
- Tosin Abasi declares John Petrucci the GOAT and gifts him an Abasi Concepts ēmi 8-string in a cult classic Picasso finish
- AI researchers turn brain scans into music in first steps towards mind-reading AI instruments: "The next step is to reconstruct music from a subject’s imagination"
- "I never would have seen that and I'm really grateful to him for that" – Rivers Cuomo reveals how The Cars' Ric Ocasek dramatically changed his guitar tone for Weezer's Blue Album
- Watch Billy Gibbons tear it up on a custom Fender Strat made out of cardboard – with Matt Sorum playing cardboard drums
- Is Milkman's The Amp Stereo the analogue pedal platform you've been waiting for?
- Marshall pays tribute to the amp that started the legend with the all-new compact 20-watt Studio JTM
- Ash Walker: "Some people say they never put reverb on bass, but they obviously didn’t listen to a lot of dub records"
- Sample-hunting Daft Punk fans make huge Discovery as Todd Edwards reveals the source of samples used on Face to Face
- Eagles founder and bassist Randy Meisner, dies aged 77
- July 27
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- Did Synyster Gates just reveal a signature amp alongside his new Ernie Ball strings?
- How to tune a piano: plus, the pros and cons of doing it yourself
- How many songwriters does it take to make a hit record? Way more than it used to…
- ZEN-Core goes hardcore: five classic synths for your DAW or Roland hardware
- Minimal Audio's Fuse Compressor plugin promises to make multiband compression faster and more intuitive
- Ben Howard explains his refreshingly simple songwriting demo process: "Acoustic guitars through voice memos on iPhones sound really good"
- Issue 399 of Future Music is out now
- 8 guitar tips to help you sound and play better for free
- Enjoy the confidence of long-lasting acoustic guitar tone with Elixir® Strings
- "It's the only time I get to spend with my mother": The story of Sinéad O'Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U
- The ultimate guide to modulation effects: phasers, chorus and flangers
- "This disgusting world broke her and kept on breaking her": Stars pay tribute to Sinead O'Connor, who has died aged 56
- July 26
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- Happy 80th birthday Mick Jagger: here's 5 of the Stones' finest moments on record
- "I see things on the horizon that are very troubling": Vernon Reid on the future of generative AI for vocals and guitar
- Muse are opening an online store on Reverb and selling a ton of stage-played gear – including Kemper Profilers loaded with Matt Bellamy’s tones
- "I don't see this as a threat": David Guetta says AI will win the music-making battle, and he's fine with that
- 5 songs you need to hear by Steely Dan: "Like a lot of kids in the ’50s, we were looking for some kind of alternative culture, an escape from where we found ourselves"
- Shure SM7B vs Rode NT1: Which mic is best?
- Did Michael Jackson really use a sampler demo riff for the intro to Beat It?
- "Ready for any scenario": AIAIAI launches lightweight and affordable XE version of its TMA-2 DJ headphones
- July 25
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- Electro-Harmonix unveils the incredible shrunken Pico POG – its “smallest and most powerful compact Polyphonic Octave Generator yet!”
- Old Blood Noise Endeavors expands its clock fader-equipped BL series – and our minds – with the dreamy BL-37 Reverb
- Metalheads can now score hundreds off Jackson, Strandberg, Schecter, ESP and more in Guitar Center's wicked Metal Mayhem sale
- Peter Green classic interview: "I'm only Eric Clapton's replacement, I'm not Eric Clapton"
- "The fact that people still want this blows my mind" – Fender Tom DeLonge Strat officially returns after 19 years, alongside a capsule collection of To The Stars accessories
- Great Eastern FX launches silicon version of its Focus Fuzz – the fuzz pedal for players who don’t like fuzz
- Half of the 10 most-streamed rap albums on Spotify are by dead rappers
- Chase Bliss teams up with Empress Effects for the Reverse Mode C – a trippy multi-directional delay pedal with modulation
- "Makes the white dot spawn little golden play heads": Brinta could be the granular sampler we all need, just to calm down a bit
- "The biggest challenge for the digital products is not the tone" – John Petrucci doesn't believe modelling can provide the kind of 'random' moments that tube amps can yet… but Neural DSP has got the closest to "the missing piece"
- July 24
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- Learn to play Djent-style double kick with TesseracT drummer Jay Postones’ double pedal drum lesson
- "Nobody wants to hear that today" – has the musicianship in contemporary pop music become too simplistic? Duran Duran's John Taylor weighs in
- Entangled Space is the kind of bonkers effects processor Aphex Twin probably wishes he had 30 years ago
- Neutral Labs's Elmyra 2 is a filthy drone synth with an unhealthy attitude
- Get Paid Guide hopes to "put more money in the pockets" of UK musicians by demystifying metadata and royalties
- Carmen Vandenberg is now playing guitar in Morrissey's live band
- Download 23 free plugins or create and submit your own to win a cash prize in KVR's Developer Challenge 2023
- "They stole our ideas" – John Lennon on the Yellow Submarine film and the unexpected Beatles recording of its soundtrack song, Hey Bulldog
- July 23
- July 22
- July 21
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- Nita Strauss: “I am extremely satisfied with digital. If I didn’t think it sounded as good I would have redone it through real amps”
- Watch the synth sounds from some of The Prodigy’s biggest hits being recreated using the original hardware
- 10 ways to use generative AI in your music production
- D16 Group teases Drumazon 2 drum machine plugin: get in line for a new kind of 909
- "He was the last of the greatest generation of singers and musicians" – tributes paid to Tony Bennett, who has died at the age of 96
- Slash is planning a new solo album featuring Demi Lovato and an all-star cast of vocalists
- Is the Seaboard RISE 2 the perfect bridge between electronic music and traditional instruments?
- “It is like playing last night’s lotto numbers”: John Mayer explains why he has never learned a blues guitar solo in his life
- RZA’s first E-MU SP-1200 sampler is up for auction: your chance to own a piece of Wu-Tang Forever
- "I think my head exploded" – The Gaslight Anthem showcase duet with Bruce Springsteen on new song History Books
- Roger Waters reveals his first 'Redux' recording of Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon with Money
- July 20
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- "Certain people in the band at that time didn't like me doing things outside the group" – remembering when Eddie Van Halen joined Michael Jackson onstage to play Beat It without a rehearsal
- The Asparion D700 is a modular DAW controller that you can make as big as you like (within reason)
- The producer's guide to the Roland SH-4d
- Blur's Graham Coxon: "The Coffee + TV chord shapes are just ridiculous"
- "Probably the loudest 30-watt amp on the market" – Orange reveals the Orange OR30 amp, but it can be tamed
- Open your mind, because Recluse Audio has made all of its plugins available for free: “What is frequency? What is pitch? What is rhythm? They’re kind of the same thing”
- Here’s how you may be able to download a plugin emulation of a classic ‘80s Tascam PortaStudio for free
- Watch the incredible Nathaniel Murphy play U2's With Or Without You on a Mosrite double-neck guitar (with some help from a colleague)
- "It was the antithesis of Bohemian Rhapsody and on the same album" – Brian May on the Queen deep cut that doesn't get the love it deserves
- Boss reveals its first new guitar synth pedal system in over a decade: the GM-800 and GK Series
- July 19
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- 9 ways learning the piano can benefit your wellbeing and creativity
- “If you’re a drum ‘n’ bass producer you just become familiar with the varieties of Amen”: Sub Focus on his love of the classic break and how he uses it
- John Petrucci launches new company Tonemission, announces IR Collection
- Sonible’s AI-powered smart:gate plugin promises to trump its rivals by being ‘content-aware’
- Braids return to their DIY roots on Euphoric Recall: "We embraced that punk mindset of doing everything ourselves - it was the only way for us to get our energy back"
- Artiphon aims to “reinvent the musical instrument” with Chorda
- "I wasn't likely to upstage Brian or Freddie": Queen's John Deacon - a tribute to an elusive bass giant
- Yamaha has discontinued the Montage, but says that a new synth workstation is coming in October
- Paul McCartney goes on tape in A Life in Lyrics, his major new podcast series - "I wanted to become a person who wrote songs and wanted to be someone whose life was in music"
- July 18
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- Zultan introduces Mellow Series low-volume cymbals
- PRS has made John McLaughlin a jaw-dropping Private Stock signature model
- “I’m sorry, most of the guitar players who I admire could not in their lifetime play that gig”: Nuno Bettencourt explains why the Rihanna gig is way tougher than rock
- Strymon reveals its new compact delay pedal Brig: and it's all about celebrating the analogue Bucket Brigade sound
- Walrus Audio takes guitar tone deeper into the ambient reverb rabbit hole with Slöer
- Blur and Smiths producer Stephen Street champions the CD format – and says bands might need them with the cost and time of pressing vinyl going up
- 9 tips for losing the laptop and embracing DAW-less creativity
- Epiphone unveils 150th Anniversary guitar lineup – all-original, limited edition electrics steeped in the brand’s history
- Here’s the moment when a stage-invading fan grabbed Bryan Adams’ microphone and started singing Summer of ‘69
- "I don’t think anyone else had ever attempted something like that" – Brian May chooses his best performance from the Queen back catalogue
- The ‘Lizzo effect’: has the star made the flute ‘cool again’?
- Roland Bridge Cast owners can now access hundreds of AI-powered royalty-free tracks to use as livestream background music
- July 17
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- "It sounds exactly like the record" – guitarist nails Kurt Cobain's Nirvana In Utero distorted tones with two pedals, a Fender amp and some insider information
- "Chords are depictions of emotions" – 5 Joni Mitchell songs that showcase her guitar and songwriting genius
- Dr Dre reveals he turned down the chance to produce his “heroes” Prince and Michael Jackson: “What am I going to do with them?”
- SampleRadar: 435 free glitch vocal samples
- Fred again.. reveals that the bass sound in 2022 single Jungle was created using a sample of a “dodgy cable”
- Lose the laptop: How to go DAW-less and make electronic music without a computer
- 11 saxophonists, 4 re-recordings and a £17,000 haircut… The tortuous tale of George Michael's Careless Whisper: "I wrote it totally in my head. I worked on it for about three months in my head"
- July 15
- July 14
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- EVH Gear unleashes another hybrid monster electric guitar design in the shape of the limited edition Star
- Shred a dirty word? Nita Strauss says it’s a compliment: “I like it. Give me the shred term all day long”
- Watch Jacob Collier get wild with his custom Strandberg 5-string and unleash his inner child on new single WELLLL
- Blur's Damon Albarn: "For me, the last great guitar band was Arctic Monkeys"
- Audiobazooka will tell you when plugins go on sale or are free so you’ll never miss a deal again
- Tom DeLonge is posing with what looks like a possible reissue of his signature Fender Strat
- Pearl & The Oysters: "We fell into the vintage analogue synth rabbit hole in our teens and have been obsessed ever since"
- The Eagles’ Joe Walsh says he has no fear of AI in music because “it can’t destroy a hotel room”
- Manson Guitars unveil Limited Edition Matthew Bellamy Signature MB-1 Blanta Edition guitar
- “It’s like the Blues Breakers meets Guitar Slim meets Joe Bonamassa, Josh Smith and co” – Joe Bonamassa shares cover of Slim’s classic Well, Well, I Done Got Over It
- Steve Vai hails Devin Townsend as “a bona fide genius” – but admits HevyDevy’s talent was “a little squelched” when he fronted his band
- Show Us Your Studio #5: "There's an immediacy with synths and guitars you just don't get with the PC"
- The Streets’ Mike Skinner says that “music is quite easy to do,” and that “young people are really good at it - they’re almost better at it”
- Korg’s Nautilus AT brings aftertouch to the high-end workstation keyboard
- July 13
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- Electro-Harmonix announces the Andy Summers Walking On The Moon flanger pedal
- Alex Lifeson teaches Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett the solo to Rush classic Limelight
- BT reveals that he’s been working on “a series of AI music-making tools” that have helped to inspire his new album
- Why David Rhodes is using a Helix for most of his live guitar tones with Peter Gabriel – with the exception of two pedals
- Gibson is now selling guitars direct to the UK and EU on its website – including the Mod Collection
- Disclosure announce surprise release of Alchemy, their new album, and say that it contains no guests and no samples
- Nathan Fake: "I’d love to get a Yamaha Z1. I’ve got a thing for these obsolete ’90s digital synths that seem a bit unwieldy"
- Is this the cheapest MIDI home music studio you could buy in 1988?
- Logic Pro's monster synth: The ultimate guide to Alchemy (Part 1)
- Effects pedals: True bypass Vs buffers – what they mean and why it matters
- July 12
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- See Tony Iommi become an honoury 'Vampire' as he joins Johnny Depp, Joe Perry and Alice Cooper to perform Black Sabbath's Paranoid in Birmingham
- Up close with the ultimate Dumble Overdrive Special Jason Isbell calls “possibly the greatest amplifier ever made"
- Sonicware’ ELZ_1 synth gets an enhanced successor, but it’s available in very limited numbers
- Funny Little Boxes unveils the limited edition overdrive pedal it's taking to the Brighton Guitar Show – inspired by The Levellers
- Gretsch previews new Streamliner guitars ahead of September launch
- Sinevibes releases 4 new effect plugins for Korg’s Logue multi-engine synths
- Fender unveils the Suona Collection – limited edition, super classy Thinline versions of its Strat, Tele and Jazz Bass
- A bemused Taylor Swift fan reveals that her Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) vinyl has been pressed with an album of rare ‘90s UK electronica
- Stop AI 'crushing' music, urges leading industry body: "Taking other people’s work without their permission contravenes basic principles of property rights"
- The Cat came back: Cherry Audio gets its claws into a ‘70s synth classic as it releases a plugin emulation
- Is Amazon Prime Day a good time to grab a MacBook Pro deal? These chunky discounts say yes
- Issue 324 of Computer Music is on sale now
- July 11
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- Bassist Bruce Foxton on the story of The Jam's That's Entertainment: “It was a bit of a departure for us, because it was acoustic”
- Did Metallica correct Lars Ulrich’s 'One' drumming for the official audio of their performance at Download Festival?
- Slash teams up with Ryan Gosling for Barbie soundtrack power ballad I’m Just Ken – and Wolfgang Van Halen is on it too
- Remembering when Trent Reznor, Lindsey Buckingham, Josh Homme and Dave Grohl formed a supergroup at the Grammys
- Physical Audio's Modus synth plugin promises to 'push the boundaries' of real-time physical modelling synthesis
- New research suggests that silence is something you can actually hear
- “This is a guitar for any level... It’s a wonderful platform” – Epiphone launches the Alex Lifeson Les Paul Custom Axcess
- Behringer teases 3 new synths, including one that “even Uli Behringer doesn’t know about”
- Electronic Audio Experiments introduces the all-new Sending V2, a digitally controlled analogue delay that Josh Scott has hailed as “a masterpiece”
- Cuckoo: "Gear isn't the way I find inspiration. The gear isn’t what creates: it’s what’s on the inside that matters"
- Pioneer DJ owner AlphaTheta buys Serato, bringing two of the biggest names in DJ hardware and software together
- "His dedication to Gibson’s quality and legacy is beyond reproach" – players pay tribute as Cesar Gueikian officially announced as President and CEO of Gibson Brands
- July 10
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- Olivia Rodrigo sits at the piano to deliver a stripped-back version of Vampire, and says that her dad is introducing her to Depeche Mode and The Cure
- Arrangement 101: How to escape the 4-bar loop and turn ideas into complete tracks
- Casio says that Elton John’s Glastonbury performance helped to inspire a 133% rise in sales of its keyboards and pianos in the UK
- Get up to 30% off fantastic Donner products with these unmissable Amazon Prime Day deals
- Brad Paisley calls Joe Bonamassa "the best guitarist in the world" before their onstage jam in Nashville
- SampleRadar: 493 free Moog synth samples
- Jane's Addiction's Eric Avery on the challenges of writing a great bassline and why he was drawn to teach himself the bass guitar because of his shyness
- "Auto-Bounce gives people their life back": Tom Salta's time-saving plugin automates the laborious process of bouncing stems and mixes in Logic
- Korg releases Gadget VR, a virtual reality music studio for Meta Quest headsets
- July 9
- July 8
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- "It's difficult when you’re a DJ and a singer. I'd have ringing in my ears after every show." – Koven why they created their custom in-ear monitor setup
- See Pearl Jam's Mike McCready in a thrilling guitar duel with Jason Isbell and Sadler Vaden on a borrowed 1960 Strat
- Paul McCartney's 12 greatest Beatles bass performances: "I did get quite proud to be the bass player. Once you realised the control you had over the band... They can’t go anywhere, man. Ha! Power!"
- 8 ways to make the most of your Teenage Engineering OP-1 Field
- July 7
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- Tony Iommi admits that, yes, sometimes he got carried away playing guitar solos – but Ronnie James Dio was his enabler
- Ringo Starr has named his “career-defining” Beatles song, but you’re probably more familiar with the version that he didn't play drums on
- Show Us Your Studio #4: "I'm a huge fan of Arturia's gear - The KeyStep Pro really changed how I look at production"
- "A lot of Therapy? songs use octaves and this made things really simple" – Andy Cairns praises the E-HX Nano POG and the Boss pedal he's used for 40 years
- A super-rare 1985 Fender Performer has gone up for auction and it looks like something Tosin Abasi would be into
- "Insane beat-machine from the future": This nuts beatmaking software has one of the most complex interfaces we've ever seen
- Fender admits it has been using Epiphone bridges for the Squier Strat-O-Sonic – but says this Paranormal activity is just a blip
- "This may be his best drive" – Bad Monkey champion and JHS founder Josh Scott is blown away by Brian Wampler's new $99 overdrive and distortion pedals
- Did John Mayer’s triumphant last-minute support slot for Ed Sheeran prove the Fractal FM9 is the ultimate fly-rig?
- 5 essential songs guitarists need to hear by Bruce Springsteen
- The story of Black Shuck by The Darkness: “You wouldn’t exactly hear Bon Jovi writing about a church in Blythburgh, would you?”
- Pioneer brings Beatport streaming to its flagship CDJ-3000: access 11 million songs from your CDJs
- July 6
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- Journey co-founding guitarist George Tickner dies aged 76
- Joey Landreth and Jackson Audio collaborate on Mini version of their Golden Boy overdrive pedal
- See the first trailer for Bob Marley biopic film One Love
- A synth programmer who worked on Michael Jackson’s Thriller album shows you how to recreate the intro to Prince’s 1999 on an Oberheim OB-X
- This UK man vowed to play ukulele again for the NHS hospital staff who helped save his fingers after a horrific accident – now he's fulfilled his promise
- Hendrix's Epiphone Wilshire guitar is up for sale at $1.25 million
- 8 synths in one: Isla Instruments' Caladan is an expandable, customizable polysynth that lets you swap voices in and out
- X-Ponder is like a “musical AI chatbot” for Ableton Live: play it some MIDI notes and it will play some back for you
- Unable to wall mount acoustic treatment panels? t.akustik's new absorbers might be just the thing for you
- Boss has just unveiled the next step up from its multi-effects classic with the new ME-90
- Voice-Swap is an AI-powered platform that enables fans to legally clone artists' voices, and artists to monetize their own
- Taylor Swift ruled out of headlining Glastonbury 2024 as she announces more UK shows and confirms that Paramore will open for her across Europe
- July 5
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- "You make us play better, man!" – 20 years ago Metallica auditioned a host of bass players to replace Jason Newsted
- Ringo Starr confirms George Harrison features on new Beatles song, adds that they would “never” recreate John Lennon’s voice using AI
- Matt Johnson on his latest Jamiroquai live keyboard setup and how he recreates the sounds that you hear on record
- KMA Audio Machines combines reverb, delay and a limited edition finish for this new version of its Cirrus Shadow pedal
- "I wanted to make a reggae song out of Peaches": JJ Burnel on the birth of that iconic Stranglers bass part
- Adele calls for fans to stop throwing things at artists when they're on stage: “If you throw anything at me I’ll kill you”
- 9 affordable ways to improve your guitar tone
- Matteo Mancuso: “It is not a new thing to be incredibly good at guitar… People want to hear something original other than being good at your instrument”
- "I probably should get recognised" – original Wet Leg member breaks cover, says he's uncredited on songs he co-wrote
- Zynthian 5 is a standalone, open-source music-making device that contains 50 synth engines and 100s of effects
- Mysterious Black Sabbath Paranoid-era live album quietly surfaces on Spotify
- “I was the first idiot to get one. I'd lie awake at night dreaming up shit for it to do”: Trevor Horn’s rig that made the ‘80s
- Nine Inch Nails drummer Ilan Rubin makes statement regarding Q Drum Co. probate lawsuit
- Manon Grandjean: "I love being an engineer, but I didn’t really want to be a producer. I'm an introvert - I like to be in my little corner doing things in Pro Tools"
- Explained: The music theory behind songs from Deadmau5, Floating Points and Frankie Knuckles
- July 4
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- "I've been in search of the perfect fuzz for years" – pedalboard tour with LÜT guitarists Mads Erlend Ystmark and Ørjan Nyborg Myrland
- Remute to release his new album for the Commodore 64: “It's the home computer I programmed and it programmed me… forever"
- Brighten your summer with 20% off select Fender ukes in this super sale
- Cornerstone asked the people what they wanted, the people spoke, and the result is the Colosseum – a twofer drive pedal inspired by the Klon and Blues Breaker
- will.i.am dismisses claims that AI is incapable of musical innovation, and says that it can write a song the same way he does
- Fender moves into retail with opening of flagship store in Tokyo
- Blur pull out of France’s Beauregard festival after Dave Rowntree suffers leg injury
- Tennis great Roger Federer joins Coldplay on stage in Zurich to play the shaker
- IK Multimedia's insane software deal could get you up to 16 plugins for the price of 1
- J Rockett Audio Designs is doing Dumble things again with the new-and-improved Hot Rubber Monkey V2 drive pedal
- Devious Machines thinks that Multiband X6 is a more user-friendly kind of multiband compressor plugin
- Chordify can now display a song’s chords and lyrics as it plays, and offers live chord detection for guitarists
- 5 music theory tools to help you make better electronic music
- July 3
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- Andertons summer sale has landed with sizzling savings on electric guitars, pedals, amps, recording gear, and loads more
- There’s a reason why people are saying that Olivia Rodrigo’s Vampire reminds them of Radiohead’s Creep
- Behringer’s BQ-10 - a reboot of the Korg SQ-10 sequencer - has been leaked
- Fantastic (stock) plugins and how to use them: Ableton Drift
- "I didn't choose it; it chose me" – Petter Carlsen from Pil & Bue on why his guitar choice is a Duesenberg Starplayer Baritone D6
- Cherry Audio and “the roar of the lost synth”: new emulation of a “rare antiquity” set to land next week
- Taylor Swift suffers another Eras tour malfunction as a trapdoor fails to open and she’s forced to run off stage
- Rapper drops video apparently shot in his jail cell: "Appropriate action will be taken" says Canadian Solicitor General
- Noel Gallagher plays rarely performed Oasis B-side live on BBC's Later With Jools Holland show
- July 2
- July 1