We’ve been on the hunt again, and for this week’s Around the Web we’ve found you a couple of free gems as well as news of a brand new expansion for Maschine from Native Instruments. Icebreaker Audio’s Akebono First up, an interesting an unique set of samples from Icebreaker Audio: the Akebono. The Akebono is [...]

Right from the tough production spicing up some well known breaks on the opener, I was fully tuned into Grant’s self titled Grant LP. Gritty and full sounding, there’s hints of sounds as diverse as Madlib, Portishead, and Shocklee on the LP. The beats are complemented by an excellent use of vocals, chopped and distorted and [...]

We’ve been a fan of Livid’s for a while at OD, catching up with them at shows when we can (check our YouTube channel for an interview with CEO Jay) and we really liked their Block controller last year, and their gradual growth from small boutique to genuine player in the controller market is admirable. [...]

This week’s assignment is short and sweet – just like your results will (hopefully) be. How often do you sit down to make some music and instead end up endlessly tweaking a minute detail like the tail of a hi hat or getting a kick to sound ‘just right’ – in the end realising that [...]

This week’s Pocket Tip follows on from our free download earlier this week, and is all about getting started with Reason’s combinator device. Want more in depth tutorials to the Combinator? Let us know!

Another three of our favourite stories from around the web this week, with a cash saving promo offer on iZotope’s latest, Reason’s Rack Extensions getting closer and closer, and an update to a very cool, low cost way of slicing your samples… iZotope Iris Introductory Price Ends Soon! First up is is Iris, the new [...]

Going lone wolf is all well and good, but sometimes a collective is the way forward – Wu Tang, Odd Future, Soulquarians, the list goes on. There’s nothing like being part of something that makes everyone stronger, and that’s why this week we’re featuring Mud in our Music We Love. Mud is a collective of [...]

We love to confuse around these parts. If you read last week’s Assignment you’ll know we urged you to spend the weekend making some of your own presets… and now here we are giving you one of our own?! Well, never let it be said I don’t take my own medicine, as this weekend I [...]

Nobody likes cookie cutter music, right? That stuff that sounds like it’s been pressed from a single mould, devoid of any personality, all sounding exactly the same? Well, if all you ever use when you’re making music is someone else’s presets, sooner or later you’re going to run into this exact problem. On the other [...]

This week’s Around the Web is a compilation of a few of our favourite news items of the week – read on for free plugins, workflow keyboards, and updates to the Ohm Force range with a discount to celebrate! Blue Cat Free Plugin Bundle Update We love free plugins, especially when they’re cross platform and [...]

This week’s Pocket Tip is a neat trick that will save you tons of time in Ableton Live. While we were making the guide I couldn’t help but play around with some of the things it made easier for me to give you guys a little gift on us – a super slicing preset! Carry [...]

I know that Dilla tribute projects are ten a penny… perhaps more. It’s always easy to listen to some Dilla beats, but all too often the artists who jump on the tracks just aren’t up to scratch – and even when they are, the aforementioned glut of projects means that there tends to be a [...]

Evolve is, at its heart, a Native Instruments Kontakt Player sound library much like Damage before it. To say ?before it? is a bit of a stretch, though, because a Kontakt 2 Player version of Evolve has been around for a few years now. The update we?re reviewing brings it into line with NI?s latest [...]

Old people, huh? They just don’t get electronic music (there are exceptions of course… but it would be terribly rude of me to exemplify them as being old. Perhaps you guys would like to do it in the comments!). Right up until the point where she completely gave up feigning interest, my grandma would ask [...]

You’ll have noticed from our videos that we’re a Mac based studio over at OD, but FL Studio is worth firing up BootCamp for. We reviewed FL Studio 10 last year, and in the year since the guys at Imageline have been beavering away to make FL Studio 10.5′s highly touted Performance Mode the next [...]

This week we’re taking a quick look at how to make better and more realistic drums with group mutes. It’s not just drums that’ll benefit though, it makes a big difference for chopping things up hip hop style too – check it out!

You may or may not know that in addition to all things music production, I’m also a turntable nut. C2C have thus been on my radar for a long time, considering they’re in strong contention for the greatest turntablism group act of all time, completely dominating the DMC Team Championships for pretty much the entire [...]

UVI Instruments have just released an entirely free instrument for their UVI workstation player. Based on the Roland EP-09, a simple four voiced keyboard with a basic arpeggiator, Analogic Piano 09 is a good looking, simple to use if somewhat limited instrument, given extra value by the additional free content in the UVI Workstation. Each [...]

When thinking about our Assignment for this week, I got inspired by the latest indie game to hit those virtual shelves of the Xbox 360 Marketplace: Fez. In many ways, Fez embodies what’s so cool about chiptune. The aesthetic takes the best of what made old school, sprite based games so cool and applies it [...]

Finger drumming, or pad playing, or whatever you want to call it, is a skill that despite pads being so popular a feature on production gear very few people regiment themselves to practice with them in the same way they would another instrument. Jeremy Ellis is one of – in our humble opinion – the [...]

This week’s Pocket Tip is a look at how we can use filter resonance to change, subtly or dramatically, the character of a sound. Check it out, and as always let us know what you think!  

We’ve had our eye on JuSoul for a while now, and his recent offerings have been quality through and through. Rock Bottom is ostensibly a beat tape, but it feels more like an album – and a good one at that… which is perhaps why Rock Bottom has a name of its own rather than [...]

Audio Technica have a bit of a hit on their hands with the ATH-M35s. For their price, they easily stand up to competition even if they?re not perfect. If you?re in the market for some affordable, good quality headphones without too many issues, read on. Whilst it?s true that there?s no substitute for good monitor [...]

So often we rely on our drum and percussion lines to get us into the ‘groove’ when we start on a track that if we’re not careful, two things can happen. Firstly, we end up just writing a track around a drum loop – and that default drum loop in your head is almost certainly [...]

We had an opportunity to have a play with the Keith McMillan Instruments QuNeo back at MusikMesse, and came away super impressed. Due for release very soon, QuNeo rocketed to global attention after its phenomenally successful KickStarter project. This deserves a story in itself; while most manufacturers throw out cost centre compliant ‘me too’ products [...]

This week’s Pocket Tip is a quick look at a setting you may leave well alone a little more often than you should! Changing the amount of voices in a synth or sampler instrument can have a big impact on the way it sounds, watch the video and see!

I have to admit that prior to getting put onto this track, I hadn’t heard of Filastine, but now I’m definitely a fan. A standout characteristic of the man’s style, especially evident in Gendjer2, is a convincing marriage of traditional acoustic instruments and modern electronic sounds, the two elements working in harmony rather than – [...]

It’s here! As a gift to all our members, OD101: a Free Foundation Course to Help You Begin Your Quest to Make Music at Home is now available for free download! A beautifully illustrated, free, 43 page ebook that will teach you about sound, rhythm, melody, and all the gear you’ll be using in your studio, [...]

We took a look at Samplebasedlife waaaay back, and the idea is something that’s really stuck with me ever since. We’re actually looking into a cool way to provide you with some OD sounds, but not just your bog standard sounds that you could get from anywhere: sounds with a context. Enough of that for [...]

There’s no music without sounds, but being a musician and a sound designer are two skills – nay, artforms – that aren’t required to go hand in hand. We put sample and preset libraries into three rough camps. There’s the hyper-real, ‘next best thing’ sample libraries that replace a concert grand or Balinese gamelan in [...]

The first in our new series, Pocket Tips, deals with portamento. Head over to the forum and leave a comment if you’ve any suggestions for future Pocket Tips!

Updates are slow while we nail down the final version of Oh Drat 2.0. We promise it’ll be worth the wait… GET IN TOUCH

Propellerhead?s baby feels like it?s been around forever ? that said, I remember opening up the beta of Reason 1.0 for the first time like it was yesterday. In the more than 12 year lifespan of Reason, it?s undergone a few major upgrades, but a quick ?what?s new? just isn?t good enough for us… The [...]

After independently releasing one of our favourite LPs of last year, Black Koolaid, Boonie Mayfield is back with another project – this time on film. Doing things independently has gone way past just music in the past couple of years, with independent video makers utilising platforms like YouTube and Vimeo to create their own video [...]

Whilst work goes on hard behind the scenes to revamp Oh Drat and turn it to the best place to turn to on the web for learning how to make music at home, we’ve been doing our research. We’re going to relaunch Oh Drat with a completely free course that’ll teach you all the most [...]

We’ve been fans of Livid for a while, we reviewed Block last year and were quite taken with its aesthetic – and its usefulness, of course. Livid have some modular controls in development that we got to take a quick look at, and I’ll write about them soon, but the star of their stand at [...]

We wrote a full editorial review recently, now here’s our video review after the operating system update. It’s our longest review yet and we still couldn’t include everything we wanted to, let us know if you got bored, wanted more, have any questions, and so on!  

Best Bits: Ability to choose the all in one or controller version Superb workflow for quick creation of a song Better looking black colour scheme But: It?s very big and unwieldy The angle might become tiring to use after a while (even at the lowest) ? we?ll have to see. Key Specs: Four 24 bit [...]

We’ve been following the Akai MPC Renaissance since its announcement, and NAMM gave us the perfect opportunity to get some hands on. Rather than get the same old sales pitch, I decided it would be a whole lot more interesting to get some cool background information from someone who worked (and is still working) closely [...]

It’s the first day of NAMM, and there’s not much to see for the lowly press yet. We did get a sneaky look at the Nektartech Panorama P4, though – check out the video for the scoop!

I hope you live somewhere cold. Honestly. It makes all the difference if, when removing the OP-1 from its packaging ? which is an exercise in artistic design in itself ? if the aluminium chassis is cold to the touch. The build quality of the OP-1 is fantastic; it?s unbelievably solid, from the encoders to [...]

As we run up to NAMM, and after last week’s big MPC news, we can follow up the news of MPC Renaissance with MPC Studio, Akai’s real Maschine competitor. Whilst Renaissance is designed to appeal to the producers who love the centre-stage presence of MPCs of yore, MPC Studio is definitely the one that’s going [...]

You’ll be forgiven for being thus far oblivious to Bitwig. They’ve been quietly beavering away at developing their flagship product, Bitwig Studio, since their inception in 2009, and only just approaching beta. With a team comprising some notable ex-Ableton brains, it’s no surprise that Bitwig Studio has more than a couple of things in common [...]

We’re all used to digital distribution nowadays, but there’s still nothing like a tangible product. Circuitree Records has an impressive catalogue under its belt, but this is a landmark release for them – a 7″ vinyl. A drum kit and rhythm that conjure up electro, an occasional hoover that hints at a distant rave scene, [...]

Phaeleh's big, orchestral, perhaps cinematic sound has helped him stand out in the world of dubstep and get global acclaim. We had a chat...

It's a big one, Damage. 30GB big, in fact, with a similarly large price tag. Should you be digging deep?

 Okay we saw this at NAMM, but didn?t get a chance to take a really good look at it. I?m not sure whether ?absence makes the heart grow fonder? is quite apt but I was certainly looking forward to seeing the KDJ-ONE at Musikmesse and I?m not disappointed at all – in fact, I?m quite [...]

  They?re not at Musikmesse so we?ve not had a chat with them (yet), but one of the coolest announcements of the week is that Propellerhead are finally opening up Reason to third parties – in their own special way. Reason users have long been split into two camps: those who wish there was VST/AU [...]

It sure feels good to be back online! It?s been a long, hard slog to get things refreshed, and technically we?re still in beta mode – hey, if it?s good enough for Google it?s good enough for us!  We?ve revamped the studio, something you?ll see in upcoming videos, we?ve redesigned the site, but the important [...]

We’ve woefully under-used Twitter in the past and as a result found it difficult to get our own shadow to follow us. Part of the reason was that we couldn’t quite get our heads around why we should be tweeting – or even what we should be tweeting about. There have been numerous head scratching [...]

Akai have finally fired back after years of competition from various competitors who want a piece of the MPC pie. We take an in depth look...

Fancy winning a late Christmas gift? Nektar are feeling generous, by the looks of things...

We love a good label sampler, and Number Line Records has certainly persuaded us to keep an eye on them.

Phaeleh's big, orchestral, perhaps cinematic sound has helped him stand out in the world of dubstep and get global acclaim. We had a chat...

It's a big one, Damage. 30GB big, in fact, with a similarly large price tag. Should you be digging deep?

This free download from Himal's forthcoming EP is a soulful example of how many heads make light work of a track...

Legendary emcee and producer Cappo tells us about diversification, gives advice on production and working with emcees, and much more...

Do you ever wish your music sounded a little bit more like it belonged together? Think about this...

Au Palais' nocturnal activities are reviewed by Andrew in this Friday's music piece...

Updates are slow while we nail down the final version of Oh Drat 2.0. We promise it’ll be worth the [...]

Propellerhead?s baby feels like it?s been around forever. In the more than 12 year lifespan of Reason, it?s undergone a few major upgrades, but a quick ?what?s new? just isn?t good enough for us...

Boonie Mayfield's latest project is a web series that documents his path through music - appropriately titled Boon Documented. Check it out inside...

Want free one to one sessions on how to make music at home? Read on!

Livid's CEO Jay takes us through the Livid way of making instruments, and Gabe shows us some features on CNTRL-R.

New Operating System, new video. Our longest review yet puts the OP-1 through its paces!

We had a chat with Teenage Engineering at NAMM; watch as David tells us all about how the guys approach creating a synthesiser instrument!

We love getting inside the heads of the people that matter. Cue a chat with none other than Dave Smith...

This just in: Arturia go turncoat in analogue synth shocker!

Akai's brand new keyboard is a surprise hit!

At NAMM 2012 Feeltune's Rhizome has had an update to the software and spawned two successors to its original design...

You'll love this: a chat about the development of MPC Renaissance, what went on behind the scenes, and much more!

We take an early first look at Nektar's Panorama, the Reason 6 control surface.

The OP-1 is nothing if not desirable. But does it live up to the hype? We find out.

Here's the first look at MPC Studio - this is the one that'll really provide competition to Maschine.

Bitwig Studio is coming. Is it Ableton Live on steroids?

We’ve woefully under-used Twitter in the past and as a result found it difficult to get our own shadow to [...]

In case you’re wondering where we’re at with the redesign… More very soon!

Akai have finally fired back after years of competition from various competitors who want a piece of the MPC pie. We take an in depth look...

Fancy winning a late Christmas gift? Nektar are feeling generous, by the looks of things...

We love a good label sampler, and Number Line Records has certainly persuaded us to keep an eye on them.

Phaeleh's big, orchestral, perhaps cinematic sound has helped him stand out in the world of dubstep and get global acclaim. We had a chat...

It's a big one, Damage. 30GB big, in fact, with a similarly large price tag. Should you be digging deep?

This free download from Himal's forthcoming EP is a soulful example of how many heads make light work of a track...

Legendary emcee and producer Cappo tells us about diversification, gives advice on production and working with emcees, and much more...

Do you ever wish your music sounded a little bit more like it belonged together? Think about this...

Just a quick video to explain what loyal readers and viewers amongst you will already know – and the first [...]

Fulgeance's debut LP blends a variety of sounds into his own individual offering to the beats scene...

Steinberg have provided a huge free update to HALion 4, adding a heap of new features.

This week, London's Untold gives The Questions a stab....

Au Palais' nocturnal activities are reviewed by Andrew in this Friday's music piece...

When it comes to the idea of a 'homepage', things have gotten complicated. Let's see if we can simplify...

Maschine's got a new little brother - can Maschine Mikro hold its own? Chris finds out...

Lynx takes us through his favourite gear, guilty pleasure gear, best advice and more in The Questions.

It seems that as studios become increasingly digital, we hanker more and more for some analogue feel. Nomad's new software wants to help...

Tokyo Dawn Records and Colonel Red have launched a remix competition - are you up to the challenge?