electronic music without the computer
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I picked up a bargain priced TR-8 with X0X expansion on the used market. To be good to be true, right? Right! Whilst the unit sounded great, I found that half of the drum pad keys were getting stuck. I…
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DAWless Setup for Beginners
Are you intrigued about making music without staring at a computer screen? Maybe you read about “dawless” setups or watched clips on youtube of folks pushing buttons and twisting knobs to make a sound that you would like to recreate?…
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Drumbrute Impact Review
Legacy The Arturia Drumbrute Impact is a popular and affordable analog drum machine. A while back I had the larger original Arturia Drumbrute, it was easy to use and tons of outputs, but it had a large footprint and most…
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The Data Lakes New Album
Hope Breaks is the new album released this week by The Data Lakes. Some folks use DAWless to make entire albums, and in the past, I made a few EPs Treading Water and One Up that were about 90% DAWless.…
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PreSonus Eris 3.5 Review
Until recently I was using an old Denon Hifi as my main monitoring solution in my home studio alongside a variety of headphones. The system was proving unreliable, so I looked around for a compact and budget monitor speaker solution,…
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Roland J-6 Review
The Roland J-6 Chord Synth is part of the AIRA Compact series, a line of portable and powerful instruments designed to bring classic Roland sounds to the modern musician. You can check out our reviews of other synths in the…
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Roland S-1 MIDI Control
The Roland S-1 is a tiny 4 note poly synthesizer, that has a great deal of functionality packed into it. Straight away the demos on the device sound impressive and hint at what is to come. Trying to unlock that…
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What is a DAWless Jam?
The term DAWless Jam refers to making electronic music without using a Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). So, instead of relying on computer software like Ableton Live or Logic Pro, we use hardware such as drum machines, synthesizers and sequencers to…
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Analog Cravings with the Behringer Crave
The Behringer Crave is a semi-modular analog synth that offers a wealth of sound-shaping possibilities for a very affordable price – currently retailing around £140/$165. Although this synth is inspired by the classic Moog Mother-32, it brings some unique features…
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Roland T-8 with a MIDI Controller
The MIDI implementation chart on the Roland Aira T-8 is quite limited, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. So I setup the T-8 with an Arturia Minilab 3 MIDI controller to see what works and what doesn’t and finish with a…