All content archive
December 2023
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208 articles
- December 23
- December 22
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- Dave Grohl has sketched instructions for building a beer bong and how to smuggle hash in a cassette tape, and now they’re being auctioned for charity
- “Don’t steal this groove”: Vulfpeck’s Jack Stratton shows you a classic Nile Rodgers recording technique as he lays down a filthy double-tracked guitar part
- How to choose the right reverb for your mix
- How to design a 'glide and rise' lead synth patch
- SampleRadar: 505 free junk drums samples
- Show Us Your Studio #15: "My Prophet-5 Rev 4 has helped me evolve to a whole new level of musician. I'm new to the synth world but I'm lucky to own one of the best ones!"
- Sampleson SkyWaves review
- Computer Music 330 February 2024: free downloads
- December 21
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- Arturia releases _Efx Refract, a new unison plugin, and makes it free for the holidays
- Our 15 favourite metal and heavy rock guitar moments of 2023: featuring Wolfgang Van Halen, Nita Strauss, Nuno Bettencourt, Paul Gilbert, Metallica, Periphery and more
- ARMNHMR: "Minimal Audio's Rift and Xfer's Serum are by far the most-used plugins in our toolbox"
- How to use short delays as an alternative to reverb in a mix
- How to design a tape-inspired string synth patch like Moby's Porcelain
- Audigo review
- Liam Gallagher and John Squire confirm their first single together
- Hauschka on discovering new sounds with prepared piano and effects pedals: "I wanted to make experimental music without a laptop - creating sounds with a piano that had the same qualities as electronic music"
- 6 "wrong" production techniques that turned out right
- The year in pop: how Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Harry Styles and Elton John conquered 2023
- Baby Audio's new Beat Slammer plugin makes punchy, parallel compression easy and you can have it for free
- Musik Hack on refining UI design with the Master Plan plugin: "I want to make something that allows people to express themselves purely and not feel like they’re having to make compromises"
- Ujam UFX Reverb review
- Harley Benton JA-25TH Firemist review
- December 20
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- The 2023 Drumeo Awards are now live: here’s how you can cast your vote
- “People say it’s like going to Wonka’s candy factory”: PRS Guitars is offering tours of its Maryland factory
- Learn to play four easy classic Christmas songs on guitar
- Quick! The Kemper Profiler Player is already discounted at Thomann
- How to use parallel 'New York'-style compression to dial in the perfect dynamics
- The best new guitar gear of 2023: our favourite guitars, amps and pedals that we played this year
- Neural DSP unveils the Morgan Amps Suite, a guitar amp plugin for players “seeking an unparalleled blend of warmth, responsiveness, and harmonic richness”
- How to design a harmonic 10th synth bass sound
- My favourite album of the year: MusicRadar’s writers name their top records of 2023
- Let's get experimental: How to use your gear the 'wrong' way to come up with new ideas and unfamiliar sounds
- "An exquisite collection of sprawling soundscapes and evocative cinematic worlds": Another day, another free plugin, but UVI's Christmas gift for you this year does sound amazing
- "It's like having a collaborator in the studio, but it's AI": Survey reveals how many musicians are using AI, what they are using it for, and the top 10 AI tools of 2023
- AI meets sampling: Coalescence uses machine learning to reimagine what a sampler plugin can do
- Can you really upgrade Push 3 in less than 30 minutes? We put Ableton's new Upgrade Kit to the test
- December 19
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- “I’m sure if we found another tape where Jimi’s voice is buried, I know I could use something similar”: Eddie Kramer talks AI and digital audio restoration, and hints at more Jimi Hendrix recordings to come
- Mr Black brings back the Deuce Coupe, refreshed, upgraded, with up to +56dB of gain from “one of the most responsive and dynamic overdrive circuits ever created”
- Kemper Profiler Player confirmed: "The little green beast premium pedal"
- Jack Antonoff on re-recording Taylor Swift's 1989: "I don’t work with any soft synths, so everything is a sound that’s made in the room. The funny thing is that you can't recall the sounds"
- Sleep Token speaks! Drummer ‘II’ gives first ever recorded interview: here’s what we’ve learned
- The story of David Bowie and Bing Crosby's Little Drummer Boy: "David wasn’t going to do the show, and his mum said, ‘No, you HAVE to work with Bing Crosby!’ She was a fan"
- 10 of the best releases in electronic music this year
- "It's the original synth on steroids": GForce announces AXXESS, a vintage ARP AXXE emulation with a 21st century blade
- Devin Townsend talks Infinity and beyond: "It was a lot of folk music… a lot of abstract orchestral music – because of Star Wars, because of The Dark Crystal... and then Def Leppard, Metallica and Enya and we’re good to go"
- It’s a Brit-voiced fire-breather, finished in green snakeskin, and it’s available to pre-order: Here’s everything we know about Slash’s new signature Magnatone amp
- There's a new free Rhodes plugin for you to download... but it's not an electric piano
- “This pedal is my tribute to my Dad”: Red Witch unveils the Falcor Modulator, a special limited run of analogue BBD modulation pedals, each wholly unique
- “He was one of the great ones”: Artists pay tribute to Amp Fiddler, the influential Detroit musician who has died, aged 65
- What is distortion and how does it actually work?
- Evian Christ: "I still use Cubase 6 from 2011 a £50 Casiotone CT-S100 that I got from Argos. You can get good results without using much gear"
- It's a dirty dozen for Teenage Engineering's OP-1 Field, as 12th update delivers a crushing blow full of lo-fi filth
- December 18
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- Fender Highway Series Parlor review
- “Everything is pretty much played live apart from the drums”: Dua Lipa and Mark Ronson on the making of Dance The Night, from the Barbie movie
- Scientists explain why Seeb's remix of I Took A Pill In Ibiza has racked up 1.7 billion Spotify streams: it's all down to "micro-rhythmic nuances", hard work... and playing left-handed
- It turns out that the Billie Jean chord stab sound is more complex than we thought: it needed 3 Yamaha CS-80 synth layers and vocal ‘oohs’ from Michael Jackson
- The blues guitar highlights of 2023: our favourite artists, performances and albums – featuring Jared James Nichols, Jackie Venson, Eric Clapton, Kingfish, Nat Myers, Eric Gales, Samantha Fish, Buddy Guy and more
- "Tiny, tinny and totally pointless": The story of the world's "smallest and silliest" synthesizer
- Fender are feeling festive and giving away an extra $75 when you buy a $500 gift card this Christmas
- John Oates reveals that his new single was produced completely in GarageBand: “I played all the instruments, programmed the keyboards and sang all the vocals as well”
- Fred again.. confirmed as producer on Kanye West and Ty Dolla $ign's collaborative project Vultures
- "You cannot tense up, you have to be super loose" – top session guitarist Tom Bukovac returns with another great lesson and this time it's on picking
- Austrian Audio MiCreator Studio is perfect for capturing those important moments
- December 15
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- Melodics launches Acoustic Drums program
- Do guitar solos matter? Kirk Hammett says non-musicians won’t remember your solos – but “they are gonna helluva remember a great melody and they’re really gonna remember a great song”
- Hudson Electronics updates Ariel Posen’s signature Broadcast preamp pedal with added germanium for “subtle boosts through to heavily-distorted sounds”
- Funny Little Boxes Skeleton Key review
- Issue 404 of Future Music is out now
- Masterchannel unveils the world's first AI clone of a mastering engineer, Wez Clarke AI: "It’s opening up what I can deliver to a much wider audience"
- Trackers, video games, soldering irons and bitter rivalries: 5 reasons why the '80s was the ultimate decade for computer music-making
- Load up on must-have studio tools with all Waves plugins slashed to just $29.99 - plus buy two, get two free
- Beverly Hills Cop is back… but Axel F sounds very different to how you remember it
- Epiphone joins Gibson’s Certified Vintage lineup with five holy grail models to celebrate 150 years of the brand in style
- How to use Beat Breaker, Logic Pro's glitchy, beat-smashing new plugin that rearranges audio in real time
- “This is so exciting for all involved”: Here’s what happened when Vulfpeck’s Jack Stratton sat down to try and recreate Stevie Wonder’s I Wish Rhodes electric piano sound in his DAW
- Jam Pedals just released a vintage octafuzz inspired pedal that is so cool it comes wearing a green zip-up suede jacket
- Fantastic Twins on creating imaginary characters with vocal effects and the Eventide H3500: "The machine is basically endless, especially when it comes to working with vocals"
- December 14
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- The making of Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever: "George Harrison went to the store and bought a ginger root, boiled it and had me stick my head in the pot to get the ginger steam to open up my sinuses. Then I ran in and did the take"
- Electro-Harmonix Andy Summers Walking On The Moon Analog Flanger / Filter Matrix pedal review
- "I was standing crying at the synthesizer, so I pulled out a card and it said 'just carry on'. I did and created something I still like today": How Brian Eno's mysterious Oblique Strategies could help your music production and your life
- Universal Audio UAFX Ox Stomp Dynamic Speaker Emulator pedal review
- Antares’ Vocal Reverb plugin promises to make your singing sound all the sweeter (with a little help from AI, of course)
- Synchro Arts' Revoice Pro 5 promises to make complex vocal editing easy
- Here’s what the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 4th Gen gives you that other budget audio interfaces don’t
- 9 of the best new bits of studio gear in 2023
- December 13
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- 6 of the best new DAWs in 2023
- St Pancras State of Mind: Alicia Keys becomes the latest big-name musician to play the public piano at London station
- 6 AI-powered plugins that can help you make music
- "Status Quo locked Spandau Ballet in the toilets": The story behind the recording of Band Aid's Do They Know It's Christmas?
- What’s the biggest selling electronic music gear of 2023, we hear you ask? Reverb has the answer and it might not surprise you…
- Jacob Collier and his mum turn up the “Home Alone warmth” with a moving rendition of John Williams’ Somewhere In My Memory
- "Hotel California is six minutes, the intro is a minute long, it stops in the middle with no drums, and you've got a two-minute guitar solo at the end. It's the absolute wrong format for a single" – Don Felder on the story of an Eagles classic
- Build your dream home pedalboard: take a deep dive into the collection of pedals we feel add up to the ultimate home rig
- Spitfire Audio Albion Legacy, Loegria & Iceni review
- SoundLad Liverpool Clean Machine review
- How to gift plugins to a musician this Christmas
- The bad, the good and the ugly: How AudioPilz's meme-fuelled Bad Gear became YouTube's funniest music tech series
- The SoundForce SFC-08 could be the most affordable route to owning a ‘hardware’ Oberheim OB-X, though you’ll need to bring your own synth plugin
- 8 of the best new plugins in 2023
- December 12
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- HeadRush rolls out FRFR MKII powered speakers, “voiced for accurate, linear delivery of amplifier and cab emulations” to get the best out your amp modeller
- The Strymon Cloudburst is the top-selling new pedal on Reverb in 2023, but overall Boss is still… the boss!
- An £85 short-scale S-style with a HSS pickup configuration, Harley Benton’s ST-Junior HSS SBK Standard Series might be the ultimate beginner electric guitar
- Algoriddim’s “next-generation” djay Pro 5 is here to power-up the party season with improved stem separation, crossfader transition presets and support for fluctuating tempos
- This Ariel Posen video masterclass in how to use tremolo, rotary and filter pedals might make you reconsider your entire pedalboard
- Arturia's V Collection X gets a Yamaha CP-70 electric piano emulation, along with 5 other new instruments, classic plugin rebuilds and three expansion packs
- If you can describe it, you can sample it: Output's AI-powered Pack Generator will instantly generate a free sample pack based on your prompts
- "Our prices range from 'not for the faint of heart' to 'if you have to ask, you can't afford it'": The 6 most expensive synthesizers that you can buy right now
- Stone Deaf just dropped the ultimate wake-up call for electric and bass guitar tone, pairing octave-up fuzz with OctaPulse tremolo for the Rise And Shine
- Strymon UltraViolet Vintage Vibe Pedal review
- Watch Mark Lettieri demonstrate the simple genius of his ‘Tiny Chords’ approach to rhythm guitar
- Universal Audio UAFX Lion '68 Super Lead Amp pedal review
- Bearcubs: "Your musical ideas aren’t precious creatures. It’s OK to completely mangle and destroy a sound"
- Plugin Boutique just obliterated the price of our favourite Universal Audio plugins - score up to 86% off
- D16 Drumazon 2 review
- December 11
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- Ex-Slipknot drummer, Jay Weinberg makes first live appearance since split, sitting-in with The Bouncing Souls
- Plogue’s Chipsynth C64 plugin promises to be “the SID synthesizer you’ve been waiting for,” and a dream for lovers of ‘80s 8-bit music-making
- How Lee "Scratch" Perry's studio magic shaped popular music: “The studio must be like a living thing. The machine must be live and intelligent, then I put my mind into the machine and the machine perform reality”
- 5 songs you need to hear by Tom Petty
- A free chord lesson from one of the greatest guitarists on the planet
- “I really wanted the whole thing to sound like Animal Crossing”: Billie Eilish and Finneas reveal that Barbie song What Was I Made For? has a Nintendo influence as they break down the track together
- Matteo Mancuso channels Eddie Van Halen on a cover of You Really Got Me
- The perfect Christmas gift for guitarists is on sale right now – save $65 on the Positive Grid Spark with free bag
- "It's got a very particular sound”: The soundtrack to Ridley Scott’s Napoleon movie features a piano that was once owned by Napoleon himself
- Cherry Audio Harmonia review
- December 8
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- Sepultura announce split, so does this mean Eloy Casagrande is going to be the new drummer in Slipknot?
- Learn guitar for the price of a coffee - Fender Play is only $3.13 per month with this colossal 75% discount
- Learn a great warmup exercise for the winter holidays with this acoustic guitar lesson
- Damon Albarn slams The Rolling Stones and their new album Hackney Diamonds: “Making exactly the same music but not that good. There must be no joy in doing something like this"
- The classic clip of Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, Howard Jones and Thomas Dolby playing the 1985 Grammy Awards is not just the most '80s thing ever, but - thanks to John Denver - a lesson in synth history
- The launch of Suzuki’s new Omnichord has been "postponed", but the good news is that it will be at the 2024 Winter NAMM Show
- How to play like John Lennon: 4 key guitar lessons from the early Beatles era
- Thank you for the Glaze: Native Instruments' holiday giveaway is a $49 Play Series instrument packed with free vocal samples for pop, hip-hop and R&B
- "Hell, let’s do it": John Lennon wrote and recorded Instant Karma in one day. Here's how it happened
- John Lennon's 10 greatest songs with the Beatles and beyond, ranked by you
- Nile Rodgers, Justin Hawkins, Katie Melua and more advice on how to deal with life on the road
- It's game on for Roland and its all new Ice White Edition Bridge Cast
- Sonic Charge Synplant 2 review
- The story of Fairytale Of New York: “I sat down, opened the sherry, got the peanuts out and pretended it was Christmas…"
- BOSS celebrates its 50th Anniversary with a collectible supplement in the new issue of Guitarist magazine – plus a special interactive online timeline
- December 7
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- There’s something missing in your monitor setup and Kali Audio might just have the answer with the WS-6.2 Sub
- Jackson expands its Japanese made MJ Series with a pair of high-end shred-ready RR24MGs in two classic pinstripe finishes
- Ableton’s Push 3 Upgrade Kit is here, and it looks like it’s incredibly easy to turn your MIDI controller version into a standalone instrument
- Nevermind the other festive guitar deals, the iconic Kurt Cobain Jag-Stang has 20% off at Fender
- How Meduza almost abandoned billion-streaming global hit Piece of Your Heart: “We couldn’t figure out what to do with it - we were actually close to junking it”
- Lzzy Hale and Kramer team up for one of the loudest looking electric guitars you’ll see – a Voyager finished in high-voltage Black Diamond Holographic Sparkle
- Nail David Gilmour’s Wish You Were Here tones with Crazy Tube Circuits’ Hi Power, an amp-in-a-box drive pedal based on a Hiwatt amp and Coloursound Power Boost
- "It was the machine that made electronic music accessible": The 5 vintage synths that gave us synth-pop
- Wampler has made a new version of its wonderful Tumnus overdrive pedal – so is this Germanium version better or just different?
- Playground Sessions review
- Bitwig Studio 5.1 is now available and adds "10 new characters": is this the most creative DAW ever?
- 6 of the best new Eurorack modules in 2023
- Catalinbread opens up the Sinkhole, “a harmonically-rich ‘hole’ reverb with an impossibly deep four-voice chorus” for other-worldly guitar sounds
- Ubisoft’s Rocksmith+ can now teach you to play piano as well as guitar: use the 'falling notes' method or the sheet music view
- 6 of the best new controllers and sequencers in 2023
- Has guitarist Andy Wood just made the ultimate Eddie Van Halen pedalboard?
- Sugar Bytes Effectrix2 review
- December 6
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- “This is the proudest and happiest I’ve ever felt”: Taylor Swift is named Time’s Person of the Year
- An Alex Lifeson signature pedal has arrived much sooner than we expected: you can get the Lerxst By-Tor Drive pedal right now
- How Gary Numan's unexpected discovery of the Minimoog paved the way for The Pleasure Principle and the birth of synth-pop: "I just pressed a key and it made that famous Moog sound, that low growl and the room vibrated. It was the most powerful thing"
- How to create an ambient techno atmosphere
- How to spice up a techno track with creative use of effects
- “The union passed a motion to ban the use of synths, drum machines and any electronic devices”: the day the 'Loony' Musician's Union tried to kill the synthesizer (which also happened to be Bob Moog’s birthday)
- Marta Salogni: "Seeing a mixing desk for the first time lit up something inside of me - it's the meeting point of music, art, science and engineering"
- We tried to make a Beatles track using AI-generated vocals - here's what happened
- Erica Synths Black Stereo Reverb review
- 4 of the best new drum machines and grooveboxes in 2023
- December 5
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- "He was an outstanding vocalist and guitar player" – Paul McCartney leads tributes to Denny Laine as the Wings and Moody Blues founder passes away aged 89
- Love Floyd Rose vibratos, hate Allen keys? The Graph Tech Un-Lock Nut could be the electric guitar mod for you
- Japanese ambient musician Michiru Aoyama has woken at 5am to record a new album every day since 2021 – he's now earning $3,000 a month from his music on Spotify and Bandcamp
- “If you want authentic Soldano tube tone with the modern flexibility of digital control, the Soldano Astro-20 is the amp for you”: Mike Soldano’s latest tube amp is a versatile 20-watter with IRs and MIDI
- Max Richter unveils new piano plugin based on the renowned composer's Steinway D SPIRIO | r: "If you want to evoke the intimate stories we all carry inside us, then you will be well served by this instrument"
- Meet XLN Audio's AI-powered "happy accident machine": Life is a potentially highly addictive field recorder and plugin that makes instant beats from found sounds
- Fender marks 70 years of the Stratocaster with new colour options, and limited edition American Professional II and Player Series Anniversary editions
- Moog takes a deep dive into the world of bass sounds with the new Mariana soft synth, and the good news is that it runs on iOS, Mac and Windows
- “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called soundcheck”: Watch Prince shred on his Yellow Cloud guitar as the NPG warm up for their Special Olympics 1991 set
- 7 free plugins you need to know about this month
- "I don't think it ever really goes away" – Brian May admits he still suffers with imposter syndrome
- “I don’t want to generalise and say that he made everything sound good, but he did”: Joe Satriani reveals his strategy for replicating Eddie Van Halen’s tone on upcoming Sammy Hagar tour
- Modalics releases MINDst Drums, a new sampled drum kit plugin that promises realism and authenticity
- RØDE acquires rival Mackie to create audio powerhouse: "Their origin story is uncannily similar to ours"
- 7 of the best new hardware synths in 2023
- Teenage Engineering TP-7 review
- December 4
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- Expressive E Osmose review
- "This video is what happens when you spend your time practicing instead of arguing about gear online" – Julia Przybysz proves groove is in the hands with a stunning bass workout of Michael Jackson's Get On The Floor on a $350 StingRay
- Vince Clarke: "Martin Gore brought along his synthesizer, we looked at the thing and thought, this is a lot easier than learning chords on a guitar and you only need one finger to play it"
- AJH Synth MiniMod Keyz review
- The 7 ways I learned to improve my guitar tone – that won't cost you money
- Believe it or not, the Behringer UB-Xa synth is now on sale - and it’s even cheaper than we thought it was going to be
- 10 Christmas gift ideas for the music-maker in your life under $100
- Learn four guitar chords from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits songs
- Cherry Audio kicks off the festive celebrations with a free plugin emulation of Oberheim’s classic SEM synth module
- "It's just a good-looking toy": Is it worth buying a Teenage Engineering EP-133 KO II when you can do everything that it does (and more) on a free app?
- Expressive E's software instruments push the boundaries of physical modelling and MPE. Get up to 65% off in their Black Friday sale
- December 1
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- Watch Dave Grohl unleash a 36-minute live version of his Play instrumental
- “I am always able to come up with brand-new chords that no one has been stupid enough to sing over”: Page Hamilton on harmonic curiosity and the aggressive expansion of Helmet’s musical vocabulary
- Gretsch Drums launches new beginner-friendly Renegade Series drum kits
- DW unveils limited edition 14”x5” DW MFG True-Cast Snare
- Why does the Epiphone Greeny Les Paul cost $1,500?
- Buy a Taylor guitar and get a second one absolutely free
- Chroma chameleon: Arturia’s limited-edition KeyStep Pro controller comes with blue LEDs and lets you customise the colours of your tracks
- Arturia’s KeyLab Essential mk3 MIDI keyboards live up to their name, giving you all the control you need
- How to create drumless jam tracks or isolated drum tracks of your favourite songs for free
- “It covers my utilities bill”: German electronic musician Hainbach reveals how much his 1 million Spotify streams earned him in 2023
- Manson Guitar Works announces its most affordable UK-made guitars to date with the "very high-spec" one-pickup MA and Verona Junior models
- We tested 4 of the most popular online e-mastering services and compared them to a real mastering engineer. Here’s what happened
- How Gear Acquisition Syndrome almost ruined my life: "I love synths so much that I've lost my grip on reality. Why did I let myself spend 20k on sh*t I don’t even use?"
