Tag: digital music

Roland Aira P-6 Sampler Review: Great Sound, Complicated Interface

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In addition to crunching your samples into digital oblivion, you can process them with a ton of different effects like reverb, delay, a multi-mode filter, and most importantly, a vinyl simulator for that true 404 flavor. The six sample pads across the front aren’t velocity-sensitive, but they’re large and responsive enough to do some basic finger drumming.

Unfortunately, chopping a sample spreads it across the smaller keyboard on the bottom, rather than the larger sample pads. Those keys are tiny, mushy, and unpleasant to play. Still, if you want something small for tossing together lo-fi or boom-bap beats on the go, the P-6 isn’t a bad choice.

A Tiny Tool Kit

When building a beat, you’ve got quite a lot of tools at your disposal. You can place steps manually using the step sequencer, or play them in live to keep things off the grid. You’ve got 64 steps to work with, plus probability, sub-steps, micro-timing, and motion recording to add complexity and variety.

Then, once your loop is ready, you can use a handful of effects to create on-the-fly builds, breakdowns, and fills. Most notably there are Scatter, Step Loop, and the DJFX Looper borrowed from the SP-404.

Scatter is divisive, to say the least. It adds stutter and glitch effects based on preprogrammed patterns. It can sound OK when used sparingly and with the right settings, but it is anything but subtle and can turn more complex and melodic beats into unlistenable chaos.

Step Loop simply loops the steps you hold down on the sequencer. It’s a more flexible and interesting take on the sort of beat repeat effects you can find on other devices like the Teenage Engineering PO-133. It’s great for creating live fills and variations while jamming. It’s truly one of my favorite performance features on any piece of music gear, and I’d love to see it on more stuff.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

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November 24, 2024
Activo P1 Review: Wired Sound, Tired Looks

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Acclaimed portable audio brand Astell & Kern has engaged in what I’m going to call a “reverse Toyota.” The Japanese hero of affordable, reliable motoring wanted a piece of the premium automotive action, and so developed an entirely new luxury brand called Lexus. (Fun fact: The brand name stands for “Luxury Export US.”)

Astell & Kern, having established itself as the planet’s leading purveyor of high-performance, high-bling, high-priced, high-resolution digital audio players, has developed Activo. It’s a subbrand that allows Astell & Kern to compete in those areas of the digital audio player market it has long since abandoned in its remorseless drive upward.

Mind you, when you line up this P1 device against competitors from the likes of FiiO and Sony it doesn’t really seem all that affordable. Entry level is relative, and the P1 has been pitched into an area of the market that is, if anything, even more competitive than the rather rarefied areas Astell & Kern is contesting these days.

But then it’s not as if the Activo P1 hasn’t been equipped to compete; a quick glance at its specifications is enough to confirm it has what it takes. Is it worth the extra cost for Astell & Kern lite? That depends on how much you care about looks.

Photograph: Simon Lucas

Great Converters

The crucial digital-to-audio conversion of the P1 is taken care of by an ESS ES9219Q Sabre dual-DAC arrangement that’s able to handle digital audio files of up to 32-bit/384-kHz and DSD256 resolution. Amplification comes via the Astell & Kern Teraton Alpha system, which the company deems good enough for taking care of business in digital audio players costing 10 times as much as the Activo P1.

An octacore processor promises a slick and responsive user experience, and the interface itself will be familiar enough to anyone familiar with Android devices. The inclusion of the Google Play store as an embedded app means it’s easy to add to the collection of music-playing apps (Apple Music, Qobuz, Spotify, and Tidal, as well as a dedicated Activo player). Sixty-four gigabytes of internal memory is low, but the SD card slot can expand that by as much as 1.5 TB if you supply your own card.

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November 1, 2024
Elektron Digitakt II Review: The Most Versatile Sampler and Sequencer

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The original Digitakt sampler and sequencer, despite being seven years old, remains an incredibly capable device beloved by many in the music world. So how does the latest model, which looks nearly identical, hold up to the fan favorite?

Under the hood, the Digitakt II is a significant upgrade in almost every way. Unfortunately, it also comes with a significant price increase to $999, from $799. With used Digitakts going for as little as $400, the choice between the two isn’t as clear cut as you’d expect.

I spent a few weeks putting the latest Digitakt through its paces and comparing it to the older model, and ultimately realized the new version is probably not worth the upgrade for my (and many others’) purposes. That said, if you’re a power user who always wants to try the latest and greatest, it’s a fantastic piece of gear.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

Endless Possibilities

Physically, the differences between the first Elektron Digitakt and the new Digitakt II are extremely subtle. The monochrome screen is white instead of yellow. The instrument specific labels under the keys are gone, there are a couple of new buttons, and some labels have changed. Otherwise the two are nearly indistinguishable.

I cannot possibly cover every feature of the original Digitakt. In fact, I’m going to have to gloss over even some of the changes to the newest model. It is an incredibly rich machine that would take tens of thousands of words to comprehensively explain. Instead I’ll be focusing on the most important features and changes.

If there were two major strikes against the original Digitakt it was that it only handled mono samples, and storage was pretty paltry, even by 2017 standards. Personally, I didn’t find the 64 MB of RAM (equaling 14 minutes of mono samples) per project terribly restrictive, but the 1 GB of drive storage did lead to a lot more time wasted actively managing samples. By increasing the RAM to 400 MB (72 minutes of mono or 36 minutes of stereo samples) and the drive to 20 GB on the new model, the storage issue is largely solved.

While having support for stereo samples is nice, I actually find the increased storage to be the main new feature I love. Part of that is down to how I primarily use the Digitakt II, which is as a drum machine. Stereo is just less of a necessity when you’re primarily working with percussion.

The Digitakt II is more than capable of handling melodic parts, and it even comes preloaded with single cycle waveforms so you can play it like a synth. But because the 16 sequencer tracks are monophonic, playing chords requires either using multiple tracks and sequencing the notes individually, or just sampling chords. And even though there are five different “Machines” (Elektron’s term for how a sample is handled, e.g. one-shot, stretch, repitch, etc.) your results will vary greatly depending on the source material.

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September 6, 2024
Martin Shkreli Made Copies of His $2 Million Wu-Tang Album—and Hid Them in ‘Safes All Around the World’

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The members of PleasrDAO are, well, pretty displeased with Martin Shkreli.

The “digital autonomous organization” spent $4.75 million to buy the fabled Wu-Tang Clan album Once Upon a Time in Shaolin, which had been produced as only a single copy. The album had once belonged to Shkreli, who purchased it directly from Wu-Tang Clan for $2 million in 2015. But after Shkreli became the “pharma bro” poster boy for price gouging in the drug sector, he ended up in severe legal trouble and served a seven-year prison sentence for securities fraud.

He also had to pay a $7.4 million penalty in that case, and the government seized and then sold Once Upon a Time in Shaolin to help pay the bill.

The album was truly “one of a kind”—a protest against the devaluation of music in the digital age and the kind of fascinating curio that instantly made its owners into “interesting people.” The album came as a two-CD set inside a nickel and silver box inscribed with the Wu-Tang logo, and the full package included a pair of customized audio speakers and a 174-page leather book featuring lyrics and “anecdotes on the production.”

In a complicated transaction, PleasrDAO purchased the album from an unnamed intermediary, who had first purchased it from the government. As part of that deal, PleasrDAO created a non-fungible token (NFTs—remember those?) to show ownership of the album. The New York Times has a good description of what this entailed:

To tie “Once Upon a Time” to the digital realm, an NFT was created to stand as the ownership deed for the physical album, said Peter Scoolidge, a lawyer who specializes in cryptocurrency and NFT deals and was involved in the transaction. The 74 members of PleasrDAO … share collective ownership of the NFT deed, and thus own the album.

Makin’ Copies …

But after purchasing the album and sharing the collective ownership of its NFT, PleasrDAO discovered that its “one of a kind” object wasn’t quite as exclusive as it had thought.

Shkreli had, in fact, made copies of the music. Lots of copies. On June 30, 2022, PleasrDAO said that Shkreli played music from the album on his YouTube channel and stated, “Of course I made MP3 copies, they’re like hidden in safes all around the world … I’m not stupid. I don’t buy something for $2 million just so I can keep one copy.”

Shkreli began taunting PleasrDAO members about the album, telling one of them, “I literally play it on my Discord all the time, you’re an idiot” and claiming that PleasrDAO was concerned about an album that “>5000 people have.” Shkreli claimed on a 2024 podcast that he had “burned the album and sent it to like, 50 different chicks”—and that this had been extremely good for his sex life.

Shkreli even offered to send copies of the album to random internet commenters if they would just send him their “email addy.” He also told people to “look out for a torrent” and hosted listening parties for the album on his X account, which reached “potentially over 4,900 listeners.”

We know all of these details because PleasrDAO has sued Shkreli, claiming that he is acting in violation of the asset forfeiture order and that he is misappropriating “trade secrets” under New York law.

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August 28, 2024
How the ‘Slamming Door’ Sound Became Embedded in Hip-Hop History

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Similar to the G-Funk sounds that still make plenty of cameos in West Coast hip-hop (see: Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin’ But a ‘G’ Thang”), the stomp sound isn’t something Barber actively notices. It’s simply “in the air now.”

Barber points out that the “Grindin’” beat spawned other imitations. There’s “Tipsy,” by J-Kwon, with a similar low end to “Grindin’,” though the song’s Tribe-like stomp is actually a sample of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” Incidentally, Barber’s children have recently started listening to this song because of country artist Shaboozey’s platinum track “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” which interpolates J-Kwon’s original.

There are other production breadcrumbs like Tribe that show up over and over again in hip-hop, Barber notes, such as Three 6 Mafia member Juicy J’s trademark “yeah, ho,” or the shaker used in the late ’90s by D-Dot Angeletti, Jermaine Dupri, and the Hitmen. Yet another distinctive shaker was popularized by Atlanta producer Zaytoven a decade later.

Staying Power

The Korg Triton is particularly important to the Evan Ingersoll, better known as Chuck Inglish, a rapper, producer, and one half of the hip hop duo Cool Kids. He first learned how to make beats on the now-iconic synthesizer.

“Grindin’,” if Inglish recalls correctly, dropped on the same day he graduated from high school. A friend showed Inglish the Korg Triton. He went to the B116 Percussion Kit and showed him all the sounds from the Neptunes beat.

Two decades after the Clipse dropped “Grindin’,” the Cool Kids used Tribe in “SCAM LIKELY,” a track off their 2022 album Before Shit Got Weird. Inglish, along with Don Trevino and Slade Da Monsta, produced it. A spoiler for Cool Kids fans: He also used the sound on their upcoming album in a way that he tells me is “cheeky.”

The Tribe sound has a nostalgic, familiar feeling, Inglish says, one that has become an ingredient in a growing recipe book of beats. As another example, Inglish points to “Dilemma” by Nelly and Kelly Rowland, which uses an “ahh!” sound found in a Roland M-DC1 rack module, which has since been heard on tracks by the likes of Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, and Migos, largely in part because of the producer Zaytoven.

If you used the sound right after “Grindin’” came out, “you’re damn near biting Pharrell,” Inglish says. But 22 years have passed. “Now, it’s common knowledge.”

In the ’90s, people dipped back into previous decades for their sounds. So one reason we might be recognizing the “Grindin’” beat is that producers are referencing these now-vintage sounds.

“I believe there’s a type of energy required for anybody to even be curious or discover your song,” Inglish says. Tribe is a sound people’s ears gravitate toward, one that provides familiarity when hearing a fresh batch of beats for the first time. When someone hears that stomp, “it’s an instant I like that.”

He compares it to the staying power of Jordan sneakers. “These kids weren’t even alive to watch Michael Jordan,” he said. “But that doesn’t stop them from rocking Jordans. And they can go back and see how impactful Jordan was.” The Tribe sound, or “Grindin’ stomp,” gets repurposed in a similar way, he says. “The nostalgia just carries. That sound was from something that you’re familiar with, so you’re more warmed up to hear it.”

Sound on Sound

Like many who work in the field of audio production, Lehmkuhl doesn’t just love music, he loves sound. Outside of his home studio, he’s recorded entire libraries of sounds using ambient recordings captured on a Tascam recorder in a Costa Rican rainforest.

Photograph: Natalie Behring

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August 2, 2024
The Best New Albums of Spring 2024

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One assurance of navigating the vast expanse of social media is that The Discourse never stops. It’s: death, taxes, and never-ending discourse. Mass consensus is all but extinct. More than anything, fandoms dictate so much of conversation today.

Even so, spring has been a particularly fertile time for music drops: Drake released a diss record that featured an AI 2Pac (it’s terrible), Taylor Swift issued her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department (also not that great), and Pharrell, the ultimate polymath, quietly released an album that was available exclusively via a promotional website, forgoing the route of major streaming platforms like Spotify and Apple Music (which is probably why you are just now hearing about it). Oh! Song lyrics, apparently, are also getting dumber.

Chatter has only intensified around all of these things—and so much more—in the previous weeks. There are days where finding common ground feels like a concept of a bygone analog world. Of course, good music is all around us, despite what one study claims. Maybe even more so than at any recent time I can think of. I myself have a hard time keeping pace. What can’t be denied is the uncanny originality of the following seven albums on our Spring Music List. Each project is a showcase of distinct artistic evolution. Think of them as small leaps of invention.

This is what the future is meant to sound like—all potential and unlimited imagination.

When Kendrick Lamar decamped from TDE to start pgLang, a creative agency with his manager Dave Free, there was speculation that TDE’s best days were over. Even with an impressive roster—ScHoolboy Q, SZA, Isaiah Rashad, Ab-Soul and Jay Rock—there was no guarantee that the LA record label could preserve its dominance and reputation, a sizable portion of which was owed to Lamar’s prowess: five albums, 17 Grammys, and a Pulitzer Prize (the first for a rapper). With Blue Lips, an essayistic blend of Black history and brutal reality, Schoolboy Q confirms what we’ve all been wondering: he’s the future of TDE, and it’s in good hands.

The second installment in a trilogy of musical reclamation, Cowboy Carter is all high points. Spurred by confrontation and grounded in the lore of Southern tradition, the album unravels like the best Beyoncé records do: pure sensation, total astonishment. (Have you heard the operatic flex on “Daughter”? Chills.) Only, this time it’s personal. Years ago the scions of country music said she had no place in its walled garden. So she paved a path all her own and became the first Black woman to top the country albums chart as a result. What’s not to love?

Maggie Rogers will probably never make a better song than “Say It”—from 2019’s cosmic Heard It in a Past Life—but her latest, Don’t Forget Me, is a nirvana-inducing project full of transporting earworms. The swooping cinema of “It Was Coming All Along.” The serene contemplation of “All the Same.” The blissful regret of “On & On & On.” Don’t Forget Me is the high priestess of indie pop at the summit of her powers.

Canadian experimentalist BADBADNOTGOOD never plays it safe. Their music is full of big ideas, near-impossible swings, and arching feats of imagination that sometimes leave listeners woozy with delight. (Go listen to Talk Memory right now.) Throw Baby Rose into the mix—who is one of R&B’s most promising young acts, and sounds like Nina Simone (yes, that Nina Simone)—and the result is Slow Burn, a six-track opus of utter, unforgettable feeling.

None of it mattered. The historic placement on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. The inaugural Grammy win for Best African Music Performance. The fact that “Water” was on almost every 2023 best songs list. Or the whispers that she might be the second-coming of Rihanna. There was no album, and because there was no album, many wondered if she was just another one-hit wonder. But we can put that chatter to bed now. Sunkissed and sultry, the South African singer’s self-titled debut is a slow-winding hybrid of amapiano, R&B, and pop that courts themes of love, loss, and longing (to say nothing of its impressive guest list: Tems, Gunna, Becky G, and Travis Scott). Get comfortable, because Tyla’s not going anywhere.

“Earth Sign” is a rocket ship that kicks off What Now, Brittany Howard’s sophomore album, and lucky for us it only keeps ascending, soaring higher and braver into a cosmos of astrological tenderness. As frontwoman for the Alabama Shakes, Howard was an immovable force, with a quaking and transcendent voice. As a solo act, she has tapped into a new dimension of musicianship—one that feels more elemental than artistic. Vulnerable and supernaturally forward-moving, What Now may as well be a question, because it doesn’t get much better than this.

Hip hop’s resident trickster debut album is a mashup of sound, color, and sensation. There’s a reason Tierra Whack songs feel so lived-in: she wants to build a theater in your mind. One where you can roam, play or rest at will. World Wide Whack is exactly that, a funhouse of fantasy and swirling originality. “Accessible,” “Imaginary Friends,” and “Two Night” are my current favorites but there are no wrong answers. Go ahead and hit Play.

And because there is an abundance of good music right now, seven more albums worth your time:

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April 27, 2024