Two of Roland’s most influential early products are the TR-808 and TR-909 Rhythm Composers, and each year on August 8th (808) and September 9th (909) the community celebrates by sharing favorites created with the classic tools and Roland offers great sales and launches awesome new products. This year is no exception, and we are covering each of the new products separately.
Continuing the September 9th tradition of new product launches, Roland has announced two new GROOVEBOX products that reintroduce a concept they pioneered back in 1996 and that remains relevant with artists today.
Last fall Amazon announced the Echo Auto, promising all of the power and convenience of Alexa in your car, and started taking sign-ups for orders. This week they started allowing people to actually buy the device, so I immediately jumped when my invite arrived!
I am in no way a movie buff, and it takes something pretty unique to pique my interest. The trailer for Yesterday immediately caught my attention as a unique story coupled with Beatles music. Directed by Danny Boyle, the movie is about a struggling musician who after an accident realizes he is the only person who remembers the Beatles.
In many ways, you can compare the Roland R-07 to a smartphone microphone the same way you’d compare a DSLR to a smartphone camera. Except that while cameras have consistently and considerably improved on phones, the audio input has merely crept forward.
I’ve long been an advocate for making music on the Apple iPad – to me it has been a key reason to always have one by my side. But while it is a great device to allow for chaining up synthesizers and recording occasional audio one track at a time, that has been pretty much the end – until now.
With the ever-growing vinyl boom gaining more ground among young music fans, there’s been no shortage of interest in vintage audio gear. Hipsters have been trolling through thrift stores in search of discarded stereo receivers, turntables, and even tape decks. Countless guides have been written about setting up a premium hi-fi setup—I even wrote one myself.
Roland has been making great strides in connecting with aspiring musicians in recent years with their GO series of devices – they allow an affordable entry point with capabilities that never feel like a compromise.
When I needed to learn keyboard basics, I did what many people I knew were doing — I bought a cheap, plastic mini-key limited device with a small set of second-rate sounds. It accomplished the task of letting me learn notes and communicate ideas — but little else.
With the solid audio and video quality of modern smartphones, there isn’t much else anyone needs to stream live … unless you want multiple cameras and true professional quality. Enter the Roland VR-1HD, a mixer for dynamic multi-camera broadcasting to bring your live streaming videos to life.
Founded back in 2001 by two college roommates who sought to change the ticket marketplace for fellow fans, Vivid Seats has since gone on to become the largest independent ticket marketplace. Featuring tickets to everything from thrilling sports and esports matches to the hottest musicals and comedy tours, Vivid Seats recently shared some interesting data about one of your favorite bands!
In our house, more music is played through our Amazon Echo devices than anywhere else. We use Amazon Music, but also Pandora, Slacker and Spotify … and pretty soon Apple Music! Today Amazon announced on its blog that starting December 17th you will be able to add a new skill to Alexa: the ability to play songs and playlists from Apple Music!
Music box sets are both a mixed bag and a touchy subject – on the one hand, they are pretty obvious cash grabs made by repackaging material mostly already available with unreleased music of often questionable value; on the other hand, often the collection is an absolute gem for the listener.
I’m a bit of a gear nut. My rig is filled with expensive pedals, vintage amplifiers, and more patch cables than God ever intended. My pedalboard is a source of pride. It does my heart great joy whenever I play a show and a crowd of gearheads gathers around my gear with their mouths agape.
When I looked into adding a synthesizer to my sonic palette, it seemed like the obvious choice was the ubiquitous microKORG. The microKORG is one of the top-selling synthesizers of all time, and with good reason—it features a wide variety of sound and features in an inexpensive, easy-to-use package. It’s been used by everyone from the Killers to LCD Soundsystem to teenagers in their bedrooms. But as I was researching, I discovered a number of limitations that soured my desire for a microKORG. The arpeggiator was rather limited, there was no built-in reverb effect (and I needs my reverb), and I was…
It’s a rare day when the Senate passes a unanimous vote—especially as polarized as our nation is right now. But last month, they managed to do just that when they passed the Music Modernization Act.
A few weeks ago, a Google rep called my wife’s business to talk about how Google Suite could help her with her business. As part of the experiment, they wanted to ship her a free Google Home.
I’ve been collecting vinyl records for around twelve years now. So as a musician myself, I’ve obviously always dreamed of putting my own music to wax. So when my band went into the studio to record our second album, we wanted to make that dream a reality.
For a relatively new company, Strymon has built itself a massive reputation for premium performance. Go to almost any band’s live show, and there’s a very good chance you’ll see at least one Strymon pedal on the guitarist’s pedalboard. However, that performance isn’t cheap. The only Strymon stompbox with a list price below $299 is their OB1, a compressor and clean boost, and even that is about twice the price of similar pedals by other companies. But there are plenty of effects companies with pedals in the multi-hundred dollar range, but few of them are as ubiquitous as Strymon’s units….
I play a lot of shows. Okay, that might be an understatement. I play two or three shows every week.
A couple of weeks ago, I got a text message from an old family friend. “Hey—would you be interested in a keyboard? I have no use for this one.” The keyboard in question was a Novation Lunchkey 25 MkII, one of the most popular MIDI controllers on the market. It’s an offshoot of Novation’s famous LaunchPad series, which rose to prominence when this video by Madeon went viral. I don’t have very much MIDI experience, but I’m not one to say no to instruments (my wife agrees, gesturing vaguely at the piles of guitars and keyboards filling up most of our…