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It’s the start of the summer holidays and everything is starting to dry up except for the constant stream of cool music technology. We have a magical footswitch that routes CV by Sleight of Hand, Modal surprise us with a weird futurist mini-synth, Analogue Solutions sequencer gets a name, Elektron turn up the heat and Overbridge might exist after all. VCV Rack gets a VST version and Voltage Modular reappears on the scene, WTF finds a new way to morph waveforms, a new cheap Surface goes for it, Tim Exile wants to indoctrinate us into Endlesss, Hungry Robot Modular is jaming Eurorack modules into tabletopRead More →

Hooray, we’re back. It feels like a lifetime since ive been sat here. Yes, we had an early one because of superbooth last month and so it’s been more like 6 or 7 weeks – but here we are, the end of June and so much has happened. Soma is developing the coolest drum machine ever. There’s a Hard Mod spring reverb synth from Mexico, Ginko serves up a version 2 of Sampleslicer. FL Studio leaps to version 20, Studio One notches up to version 4. Native Instruments give us a good kicking and bit of crushing. Midibot brings probability to your virtual instruments. MutableRead More →

Kerpow! That was Superbooth 2018. It’s an enormous throbbing mass of electronic noise making machines stuffed into a weird FEZ building in Berlin. There were dozens and dozens of stalls and synth builders demonstrating their stuff, releasing new products, unveiling prototypes and lots of performers tweaking their knobs and banging out those beats. And all of it shared with the public for a few Euros. And more often that not you were getting a demo from the person who designed and built the thing. And everyone is having such a bloody good time. So in this months early May monthly I’m simply going to beRead More →

So in case you’re new to the Molten monthly thing, and we’ve had a shed load of subscribers recently – so welcome! – This is where I look over the last month and pick out half a dozen or so bits of new music technology to talk about. It might be hardware, synthesis, modular, it might be software, computer related, it might be industry related or just something cool. And what a month March has been. If you’ve been following this then you’ll know that i had a half arsed plan to make March into a music making month – but i bottled out atRead More →

Yeah I know, it’s almost March but February in music tech terms is sort of that long dark teatime of the soul between the madness of NAMM and the inevitable disappointment of MusikMesse. Not a whole lot going on, other than a bit of snow. Well i’ve managed to dredge up a handful of things like this: Studio Electronics got missed at NAMM but actually had cool boxes and a big knob for the SE-02. MIDI Manufacturers Associated officially adopt MPE and M-CI. Ableton Live 10 is released and gives us lots more of the same. Erica Synths updates their mini modular Pico system. OutputRead More →

Whoosh – that was NAMM for another year – the music technology equivalent of a Jackson Pollack. We were splattered by gear, noise, bleeps and flashing lights. How on earth can we know what was good? Well, never fear, I’m here and I’m going to whizz you through what I thought was interesting in this year’s show. And there was so much of it – i have a massive list of stuff to mention. My overall impression was that Eurorack ruled, synthesizers came in second and computer music hardly even featured. It’s weird how that has evolved. Anyway, I will try to get through thisRead More →