Great Free Music-Making Programs
The world of music software has totally democratized the business of creating music, making previously unaffordable studio technology available at prices almost anyone can afford. Modern Digital Audio Workstations include technology that used to cost hundreds of thousands of bucks at a price of a few hundred instead.
But even a “few hundred” bucks is a lot of money, especially to those just starting out, or who aren’t making music professionally. But that doesn’t need to be a barrier to entry because there are some amazingly good music apps out there that are absolutely free to download and use.
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A Musician's Guide to USB
USB, or the Universal Serial Bus, has been with us now for over twenty years. It seems strange to consider the modern world without USB; those of us old enough, however, remember a strange and confusing time.
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Using Backing Tracks - A Beginners Guide
In the modern world, the use of backing tracks is widespread and accepted as an essential part of today’s live music experience.
Each different type and size of act will have different requirements, but there are some common features and things to bear in mind when setting out to use backing tracks for your own live performances. Let’s look at the different possibilities…
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Adding Redundant Inputs to Live Playback
Adding external audio inputs to a redundant playback rig really is as simple as buying an iConnectAUDIO4+, and routing your inputs to be split between two computers. We show you how…
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Playback 101: A History of Live Backing Tracks
“Playing with playback is pretty much the standard on most pop oriented gigs these days. The more solid and stable playback you have, the less stressed you feel.”
Andrew Marshall - Drummer with Billie Eilish
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Ethernet MIDI for Live Musicians - an iConnectivity Guide
Go to any gig or concert nowadays, and the keen-eyed gig-goer is likely to see more computer technology on-stage than ever before. More and more artists are using computers for live concert playback and using plugin soft-synths instead of hardware MIDI modules.
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MIDI over Ethernet - Marvellous RTP-MIDI
iConnectivity Ethernet-equipped MIDI interfaces use a system called RTP-MIDI (Real Time Protocol MIDI). This is a method of running MIDI over standard networks, like Ethernet or even Wi-fi! Yes, that's right, you can even run MIDI over Wi-Fi!
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Monitor Masterclass - Getting the best onstage sound
Monitoring: It's an oft-overlooked aspect of playing live, but one which has an absolutely crucial impact on how you as a musician plays and performs on-stage
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Welcome to 2018 - iConnectivity and the year ahead
We're proudly going into 2018 with two new products: our incredible PlayAUDIO12 interface and our revolutionary software control interface, Auracle.
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Making your life easier! The latest updates from iConnectivity
The past month has seen some big developments, here at iConnectivity, and so we've decided to wrap them all up in one big blog, just in case you've missed some of the great advances and releases we've been working on.
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PlayAUDIO 12 - The must-have interface the pros are queuing up for!
"iConnectivity are light years ahead of everyone else in the playback industry" - find out why the world's best professionals have been queuing up for the new PlayAUDIO12 by iConnectivity
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Make your live shows sound better, with a multi-channel audio interface.
There are a great many reasons why multichannel outputs can improve your live performance. Let's take a look at a few scenarios...
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PlayAUDIO12 - your questions answered!
We thought it would be a good idea to answer some of the most common questions we've received about the PlayAUDIO12 and put them all in one place.
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Perfect Playback with PlayAUDIO12 - Our new interface for live musicians
Today's the day we show our new baby off to the world: the interface we've all been working on furtively behind the scenes, and the one we think might, just might change the way people look at running computer audio and MIDI live...
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The Live Connection - The challenges of connecting to a Venue's PA System (aka keeping your sound engineer happy).
Here's the lowdown on what you need to know about interfacing your audio outputs to your venue's stage box and keeping your Front Of House (FOH) engineer a happy bunny.
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The Challenges of Running Computers Live
A modern computer is so powerful and so capable of controlling virtually every aspect of our live shows, that it's become the heart of many musician's live performances. With that though, comes the great danger that with a computer failure comes a complete failure of the gig itself!
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20th Century Analogue in the 21st Century Digital World
There are some debates in the world of music and audio which seemingly run and run ad nauseum. Perhaps the oldest chestnut of them is the debate between analogue and digital, and which one's 'best'.
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Great Records made on Junky Equipment
Happy with the songs he recorded, the songs were mixed from the TEAC 144 with a touch of Echoplex delay onto a boombox.... which had previously managed to end up submerged in a river by accident. The tracks were a little wonky sounding, with obvious distortion in places, but hey - they're demos right?
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Why the Obsession with Audio Quality?
At what point does the quest for audio quality begin to overtake the suitability of the interface for the job in hand? At what point does the quest for the greatest headroom, the widest bandwidth, and the tightest clocking get in the way of making music?
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MIDI: its history and implementation.
MIDI was a musical revolution and was, arguably, fundamental in shaping the sound of music we hear today.
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