Edison – Music Made With Buttons

“Ableton Live software is a powerful, flexible environment for creating, performing, and producing music. This unique software demands an equally unique control instrument. Akai Professional and Ableton are proud to present the APC20 compact professional Ableton Live performance controller. The APC20 transforms your Ableton Live experience from constructing tracks on a computer to fluid, musical creation. The second model in the APC series, the APC20 offers a smaller footprint than the APC40, enabling musicians to more easily create a personalized setup with multiple APCs, effects controllers, and other devices.”
More information in Akai’s website

Imagine this implemented as a midi controller. The revolution is coming!

• 29 knobs, 17 pads, 11 faders, over 20 buttons
• a built in touch screen with multi-touch functionality
• a built in Presonus Fire Box 410
• multiple video and audio outs
• a dual layer DVD burner
• memory card reader
• firewire, usb and ethernet connections
• an iPod dock
• a core 2 duo 3.0ghz processor
• 4 gigs of ram
• a 320 gig, 7200 rpm hard drive
• and a number of other features and software somehow crammed into a single 20 lb workstation measuring only 26 inches long!

Entry level price tag: $2,999. That’s a lot of money but the number of features are mind boggling. Not sure if this would be a device I would personally use myself but it sure is tempting… Scope this video and if you want to check out some more information on the D Beat, be sure to view the Open Labs website.

Interesting. I could see a practical use for this being developed eventually.

This was apparently unveiled at the same time as the Akai LPD 8 but somehow we managed to miss that. Anyway, Akai has announced this new ultra-portable midi keyboard for release on the 29th of this month. From the looks of it we can clearly see that the build quality and likely, the playability should exceed that of it’s closest competetion – the Korg NanoKey – which is quite fragile and unimpressive to play.

Features include 25 velocity sensitive keys, octave up and down buttons, sustain, 4 programmable banks and a f#@king arpeggiator! The unit measures approx 13 inches wide and weighs in at about 1 lb.

The MSRP is listed at $129.99 but all online retailers we checked have the listed retail price at $69.99, making this an affordable solution for the on-the-go music producer. More information can be found on Akai’s website.

UPDATE: Multiple reports are filtering in from people who got an early buy on the LPK 25 keyboard confirming our suspicion that it in fact does destroy the Korg NanoKey in every way. Good job Akai!

From Novation’s website:

“Jointly designed by Ableton and Novation, Launchpad places Ableton Live at your fingertips. Whether you’re a DJ, performing musician or studio producer, Launchpad gives you all you need to truly ‘play’ Live.”

Basically what we have here is a mass produced Monome custom tailored to Ableton Live. This device can be used as a clip launcher, step sequencer, equalizer and more. You can even chain multiple units together to gain greater control over multiple functions simultaneously. On top of that, Launchpad was designed with Max MSP (for Live) in mind and will take advantage of the amazing flexibility that upcoming extension for Ableton will offer us – that is, whenever Ableton gets around to making Max available.

Click read more to view a video and for some links with more in-depth coverage of this new device.

EDIT: We just added another, even better video after the jump. Be sure to check it out.

Online retailers such as Musician’s Friend and Guitar Center are already accepting preorders and the device has a listed retail pricing of only $199 which is a lot cheaper than we would have expected. Announced ship date is in the beginning of November. Might just have to pick one of these up.

You can find more information on Novation’s website or at the Create Digital Music blog.

So I was hunting around the net for some tasty vintage 8 bit sounding synth VSTi’s and found one that models a set of patches from the classic Casio SK-1 keyboard. Pretty tight/cheesy but in doing so I stumbled on this hella dope YouTube vid of the original 1985 commercial for this shitty/awesome keyboard. Definitely a good laugh!

I love the little disclaimer at the end:  “soundtrack created with multitrack recording”.

IT’S SO LIGHT!

Akai just dropped a new midi controller called the LPD 8. It packs 8 backlit, velocity sensative drum pads, 8 knobs and 4 memory banks giving you a total of 32 pads and 32 knobs to assign in one slim, easy to carry controller.

Scope it here > http://www.akaipro.com/lpd8

UPDATE: When we posted this, somehow we completely missed the mini keyboard Akai also announced along with the LPD 8. It is called the LPK 25 and you can read a little about it here.

ANOTHER UPDATE: People are starting to get their preorders filled and while Akai’s LPK 25 has been reviewed across the board as being much better than the Korg NanoKey, the Akai LPD 8 is receiving complaints of feeling cheaper and less responsive than Korg’s NanoPad. The added X/Y controller on the NanoPad in addition the a higher quality construction cuts it out as the clear winner here.