Audio

A low cost guide to making music with your Mac, part three

Here we are with the long-awaited third part of my series on how to make music with your Mac. In the first installment, we looked at audio hardware; in the second installment, we discussed digital audio workstations. Today we’re going to look at useful DSP (or digital signal processing) plugins and software synthesizers to help aid in your music making.

Again, a disclaimer: these are only a small handful of the options open to you. There are thousands of Mac-friendly synths and plugins out there, and you can spend as much time playing with demos and tweaking presets as you can making music. Having said that, these are a few tools I’ve personally found useful in my quest to become a halfway-decent digital producer.

More after the jump.
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Korg nanoSeries music controllers

Korg is introducing the nanoSeries line (Japanese link, Google translation) of digital music controllers. There will be three USB-powered models: a 25-key velocity sensitive mini keyboard (nanoKEY), a 12-pad mini drumpad (nanoPAD), and a 9-fader mini mixer (nanoKONTROL). As you can see they’re clearly intended for use with a laptop running the Korg Legacy Collection synthesizer software or similar, and nicely integrate with the white MacBook.

The Korg nanoSeries is expected in October for around $100 - $120 each.

[via Engadget]

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BeatMaker: sample studio for your iPhone or iPod Touch

Developer Intua has just announced BeatMaker, a sampler / sequencer for your iPhone / iPod Touch that allows you to record and make beats on the go. It appears to function similarly to hardware like the famed Akai MPC sampler, allowing you to create loops and beats and play them back in real time. BeatMaker also includes a three-channel EQ, synchronized delay and a bitcrusher, for those of you who like to rock the 8-bit sound.

No word on availability and pricing yet — Intua is, like almost everyone in the Apple world, waiting for more info on the iPhone App Store. Developer Mathieu Garcia also says that, though MIDI won’t be in the initial release of BeatMaker, it’s planned for inclusion in upcoming versions, along with Open Sound Control, the successor to MIDI that’s becoming standard in more and more music-making apps these days. Read

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A low cost guide to making music with your Mac, part two

Last time, I looked at hardware audio interfaces for getting sound into your Mac. But now that you’ve got it coming in, what do you do with it?

You need a DAW, or digital audio workstation. DAWs are to audio what Photoshop is to image processing: they allow you to layer, mix and manipulate your sound into something resembling music. Most DAWs also allow you to incorporate MIDI sequencing to drive your hardware or software synths.

DAWs vary in terms of feature set and usability. At the high end, recording audio is a highly technical process, and many DAWs look like the control panels for nuclear submarines. But don’t be discouraged if it all doesn’t make sense at first — as you learn the underlying concepts behind recording digital audio, all those little buttons and windows will become second nature.

There are a lot of different DAWs out there, but we’ll take a look at a few of the Mac offerings here. These are the main contenders in the field, along with a couple of interesting also-rans. Read the rest of this entry

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Logic Express Update 8.0.2

In addition to the other updates released today, Apple has also released an update to Logic Express 8. Software update gives us the following information about the update:

Logic Express 8.0.2 addresses specific customer and compatibility issues of Logic Express 8.0.
This update is recommended for all Logic Express 8.0 users.

You can download this update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support downloads website.

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