Native Instruments crams its powerful music-making software in a standalone groovebox

Basically everyone in the music world right now is trying to break away from the PC. It’s not that DAWs and VSTs don’t have their place. But there’s a growing desire to put actual hardware in front of people and all the better if that hardware works...

Look closely, this rack of speakers is actually a mechanized drum-kit!

Maverick creator Love Hultén is turning drumming into a visual art form of sorts! Slagwerk-101 is an audiovisual sculpture that uses a series of percussive instruments and turns them into a physical interpretation of a digital drum-machine. By simply mounting sticks on, which are actuated using a signal board that reads MIDI signals and converts them into real beats, Slagwerk-101 is perhaps one of the most tongue-in-cheek interpretations of the words Electronic Dance Music.

The setup involves individual instrument units that come together in a modular setup. This modular nature allows Slagwerk 101 to expand or contract, and be laid out in a variety of different ways. The individual drum modules include everything from kick drums, to snares, toms, and hi-hats, to even some unusual ones, like the tambourine, a pair of hands (they’re wooden), and a Saturday Night Live classic, the cowbell. Sticks are attached to electromagnetic solenoids, and can be plugged right into individual modules using quarter-inch jacks, and can be routed to the signal board, which translates beats playing from a connected laptop. The result is a set up worth geeking out over. The laptop sends beats to the drum-kit, which play the loops back in real-time with stunning response time… Professor Terence Fletcher from the movie Whiplash would be pretty proud of this machine’s tempo.

Designer: Love Hultén

Model:Cycles review: An affordable and approachable FM groovebox

Fair or not, Elektron has a reputation for making complex and kinda pricey electronic music gear. Last year though, it made a serious play for the entry level with the Model:Samples ($299), an affordable, sample-based groovebox that simplified...

Behringer clones more well-known synths from Moog and Roland

Behringer isn't about to slow down in its effort to clone classic synths. The company has introduced two more not-so-subtle modernizations, headlined by the System 55 Modular Synthesizer (above). The Eurorack-friendly design includes more than 20 r...

Roland’s pioneering MC groovebox line is back

While, what we've come to call "grooveboxes" have been around for some time, it was Roland that first used the term and really pioneered these sort of all-in-one music production boxes. But, the company quietly let its MC line of loop-based musical i...

Uno Drum is a $250 drum machine loaded with features

IK Multimedia surprised many last year expanding beyond its normal niche of portable MIDI controllers and iPhone recording interfaces by launching an actual synthesizer. And, not only that, it turned out to be quite a capable competitor to the Volca'...