Since starting on classical guitar around 2000, Diego has become a multi-instrumentalist at heart, but specializes in keyboards and electronic instruments. A sometimes member of various At the Drive-in-adjacent El Paso-based bands, Diego fell out with the scene/sound and does his own things now. He’s worked as a staff writer for the zZounds Blog and a product specialist at zZounds for well over 10 years. If you ask Diego’s significant other, his true talent is cooking.
Beat Tools: Multidimensional Control
Here’s a koan for your day: How do you express multiple dimensions when you’re stuck in only one? A few companies like ROLI, Expressive E, Sensel, and stellar designers like Roger Linn, Keith McMillen, and the late Don Buchla (to name precious few) have tried to answer this riddle in the musical realm. With devices […]
Novation Circuit Tracks: A Hands-On Music Production Workstation
Lose yourself to the music (and not your bank account to the moment) with Novation’s Circuit Tracks, a music production workstation designed for hands-on producers. Kitted out with two polyphonic synths and two MIDI tracks, plus four drum tracks, Circuit Tracks takes everything that made their infamous original Circuit groovebox a legit studio mainstay — […]
Polyend Tracker: A Groovebox Like No Other
When was the last time you played on something really special? Poland-based instrument maker Polyend — a favorite of artists like Aphex Twin, Sigur Ros, and The Chemical Brothers — dug deep into video game music history to make the world’s first hardware tracker, the Tracker. In our exclusive video, the Tracker’s innovative features are […]
Yamaha YC61 Video Demo
Yamaha’s YC61 stage keyboard uses VCM (Virtual Circuitry Modeling) technology to recreate the subtleties in tone and control of classic organs and electric pianos by recreating — virtually and physically — connections between transistors and resistors that drive certain sonic qualities other digital keyboards simply can’t match. And in our exclusive video, we take the […]
Akai MPK Mini MK3 Video Demo
Create hair-raising, goosebump-inducing music wherever you go, with Akai’s MPK Mini MK3 — an ultra-portable battery- and USB-powered MIDI keyboard with a reimagined Gen 2 enhanced dynamic keybed made for the world’s finest keyboard players. Make all the music you want, with the expression you need, on eight backlit MPC pads that trigger your favorite […]
Legends: Parliament-Funkadelic
Exactly what kind of band is Parliament-Funkadelic? Although the focus of our video above is their totemic single, “Flash Light,” the brains behind it — George Clinton, Bootsy and Catfish Collins, Bernie Worrell, Eddie Hazel, Junie Morrison, and Garry Shider, among many others — were always one group. To distill every nook and cranny of […]
The Beginnings of FM Synthesis
Editor’s Note: This post covers the origins of FM synthesis through a historic and technical lens. For more on the video above, please see the section labeled “Notes From Our FM Synthesis Video.” Black. Queer. Transgressive. In 1986, in some deep backwoods of Huntsville, Ontario, appearing right on the cabin doorstep of a young Beverly […]
Beat Tools: MPE (MIDI Polyphonic Expression)
I’m going to ask you to do something today: spare a thought for the old keyboard. Whether at school, in the living room or at a music store, everyone at some point in their life has plopped themselves in front of one and struck a note. Intrinsically, we know how they work. On acoustic pianos […]
PreSonus Atom SQ Review
From trackers like Renoise to DAWs like Ableton Live, Bitwig Studio, Logic and more, I believe I’ve seen/used enough tools to understand how most work. So, truth be told, I both admit to: A: Never using PreSonus’s entry into the digital audio workstation world, the Atom, three years ago, and B: Jumping at the chance […]
