These days, we’ll take all the joy we can get. And what better way to spark joy than to start a karaoke party? Singing is good for the soul, and this portable karaoke setup makes it easy to belt out your favorite tunes anytime and anywhere.
Roli is best known for its squishy, multitouch, pressure-sensitive music keyboards and controllers. Those are great. But the new Roli Lumi goes in a different direction. It’s a small portable keyboard with light-up keys. And not the kind of light-up keys you might see in a movie set during the 1970s disco scene: These light up keys help you learn to play the piano.
Piano lessons will never be the same.
The Synclavier is a digital synthesizer from the early 1980s. Synclavier Go! is an iPad app that mimics the classic synth. But this post isn’t about those. It’s about the Synclavier Knob, an accessory for the app.
The Synclavier Knob is a single knob on a mounting plate the size of an iPad mini. That’s it. Oh, and it costs $399.
If you play an electric musical instrument, and you also listen to music from your iPhone, and you also (perhaps) have a pink neon flamingo on your nightstand (bear with me here), then you will L-O-V-E the new Roland BTM-1, a combo Bluetooth speaker and guitar/synth amp.
Let’s check it out.
The $249 Jamstack is a Bluetooth speaker that clips onto your electric guitar, hooks up to your iPhone, and lets you run iOS amp simulation and effects apps. It’s like adding a teeny-tiny amp to your guitar, only with way more wires.
For practice, it looks pretty neat — but for recording, it seems killer.
Podcasting on iOS is perfectly feasible, as long as you don’t want to use Skype or FaceTime to talk and record the audio at the same time. The new RødeCaster Pro mixer/recorder neatly sidesteps this issue, as well as putting everything a podcaster might need into one sturdy box. And because the hardware is made by Røde, it’s probably pretty good.
Roli makes touch-sensitive controllers for music apps, and they come in Blocks, little modular units that can be snapped together via magnets to form bigger, better controllers. They’re kind of like Transformers for music. Now, Roli will now sell you a GarageBand-friendly version of its amazing Songmaker Kit, optimized for use with the Mac version of GarageBand.
But what if you already bought a Songmaker Kit? Should you return it and buy the new one? Nope. The hardware is exactly the same, all you need is a software update.
Today we’ll see what the Songmaker Kit GarageBand Edition can do, and find out how to update your own Blocks to use it.
Remember the Roland Go Mixer? The little pocket-size audio mixer that hooks up to your iPhone via its Lightning port, and lets you record a whole band at once? I do, although God knows I’ve tried to forget it. What looked like a promising product turned out to be missing basic functionality. Now, though, Roland has introduced the Go Mixer Pro, and it looks like it fixes everything from the original Go, and more.
Roli’s new Songmaker Kit is a kick-ass portable music-making setup that hooks up to your iPad, iPhone or Mac. It consists of a mini version of Roli’s amazing Seaboard keyboards, along with a couple of the company’s modular Blocks. Everything connect via Bluetooth, creating a custom music workstation that’s easy to use and extremely portable.
Let’s take a look at the Roli Songmaker Kit and see how you can use it to make music anywhere.
Short of learning air guitar, hooking a guitar up to your iPhone is just about the easiest way to get started playing music. But it’s not just for practice, or goofing around at home. You can record and edit serious music with an iOS device, and even produce whole records.
But we’re already getting ahead of ourselves. Today, we’re just going to hook things up and rock out.
As someone who plays guitar and records my own music, I’ve been really keen on trying to record an EP using iOS only. I’ve done it on a Mac before, but since the introduction of the iPad I’ve been wanting to record on a touch interface. I’ve used an iPad mini, and it worked well, but with the introduction of the iPad Pro, I wanted to give it another go. Here’s what I’ve learned so far.
Who doesn’t want to play piano? Learning to tickle the ivories must be right up there with writing the great American novel: Many of us have a hankering to become more musical.
The fantastic $299 ONE Light smart keyboard is the way to go if you want a piano that will show you how to play without hiring a teacher.
The magic of what Moog has done with this analog stompbox isn’t completely evident until you plug an expression pedal into it.
Certainly the drive tones are exceptional and the controls provide a myriad of useable and inspirational tones, but the expression pedal unlocks Moog’s industry-leading love of sonic experimentation.
We loved the original UE Boom and the new 2.0 version is even better. The UE Boom 2 is stain-resistant, stylish, shock-resistant and completely waterproof. We’re not sure who is trying to listen to their tunes underwater, but if that’s your jam … you are good to go.
Each month, Lust List rounds up the gear that makes it so we can't feel our faces. This time around we're loving hot music machines, cool photo accessories and more.
Earlier this summer, Search and State released its version of the ugly-ass Hawaiian shirt in the form of a bicycle jersey. I stared at it for weeks wondering if I could pull off the look while riding in the Oakland hills. While I contemplated my fashion boldness, Search and State apparently sold every last one of those jerseys. I decided I need to get my hands on one of the company's tamer garments to see what the Midtown Manhattan manufacturers have going on.
What they are doing is making beautiful bicycle attire in the heart of what was once New York's garment center. The $140 S1-A bicycle jersey is impeccably sewn and has an understated appearance even the most fashion-challenged can deal with. Nice choice on the zipper, too. — Jim Merithew
Buy from: Search and State
I want extra pockets without having to wear goofy cargo pants. So while perusing one of my favorite guy websites, Everyday Carry, I came across a little bag made by Koyono called the bolstr bag.
It's perfect for tooling around Chicago, allowing me to discreetly store a phone, iPad mini, notebook and point-and-shoot camera. Plus, its slim design and asymmetrical shape look way cooler than knee-level flapped pockets on either leg.
The bolstr small carry bag comes in a variety of colors and left- or right-side orientations (as a lefty, I appreciate this design consideration). — David Pierini
Photo: David Pierini/Cult of Mac
If you use your iPad or iPhone (or both!) onstage when you perform, you know how hard it can be to find a good place to put them. Putting your iPad on a flimsy music stand just won’t cut it, and leaving your iPhone on the floor near your guitar pedals is just asking for a stomped-on smartphone.
The solution, for me, has always been iKlip iPad stands, which connect right to my mic stand. The new versions, including a sweet new iPhone mount, keep my iPad and iPhone safe from all musician-based harm, and always at the right height and angle to get at my lyric sheets, set lists and guitar effects.
If you don't have a dedicated roadie or one of those robotic tuning guitars, there's no easier way to tune your ax than with a Snark. Just squeeze the thumb-size mount and slide your headstock between the rubberized grips. Then press the little button on the front of the Snark's colorful LCD readout, pluck a string and get your instrument ready to play.
Lightweight and accurate, the Snark SN-2 All Instrument Tuner works with acoustic or electric guitars and basses, mandolins, banjos, whatever. It's perfect for situations like in-studio radio shows, where you don't want to drag around a stompbox tuner or a large amp that might have one built-in tuner. It also boasts pitch calibration, which lets you tune to something besides A-440, and a metronome that I can't complain about because I've never used it. The Snark SN-2 is a great buy at $39 list (and a steal at Amazon's price of $12.99). — Lewis Wallace
Photo: Jim Merithew/Cult of Mac
I’ve been playing music for coming up on 30 years now, and I’ve tried a ton of music gear. These days, I run a fairly bare-bones setup, with a smaller amp for those close venues, a couple of dual-effect pedals (Visual Sounds’ Route 66 and H2O), and a Boss VE-20 vocal harmony box to thicken up the background vocals in my disco band.
I’ve always had a thing for multi-effect boxes, though, running through my share of a few complicated ones that never quite gave me what I needed in terms of both effects sounds and onstage ease-of-use.
When I heard about TC-Helicon’s new VoiceLive 3 mega-stomp box, with a huge range of guitar effects and amplifier modeling, an amazing vocal-harmony processing system and a stage-quality looping feature, well, I had to try it out.
Sliding two distinctive iRings between my middle and ring fingers on each hand and then conducting the bouncy electronic beat coming out of my iPad mini and into my big fat headphones made me feel less like a conductor and more like an awkward boxer, punching at a touchscreen.
Once I relaxed into it, though, the music started to flow and my hands began to dance; this is one cool iOS music-making peripheral.
The iRing is made for making music, but the potential here is stunning: Imagine a video game controlled with your hands, a webpage that scrolls at a speed you define with your fingers, or an e-book that turns pages with a swipe through the air. This is a truly innovative new product.
To save time, here’s my advice: If you have an iPad or iPhone, a guitar and $300 to spend, then spend it on the iLoud. It’s a small, portable Bluetooth speaker that is way louder than any other Bluetooth speaker, and it lets you plug in your guitar and use your iPhone – wirelessly – to add effects using an app like IK Multimedias’s AmpliTube.
More importantly, the iLoud rocks.