News Round Up 12/6/15

Audio Unit plugins on the way for Apple iOS9, Glasgow’s Arches go into administration, and win a super-rare OSCar synth from Novation.

Analogue Solutions Megacity Step Sequencer. Analogue Solutions introduce their new standalone, fully analogue step sequencer, Megacity. The Eurorack-ready unit comes with a host of unique features that set it apart from similar products, including “steps that run down like tears in the rain”, up to 64 steps (or split into 2 x 32 steps), fill-in patterns, portamento, quantisation, and more. Watch the promo video above, and find out more here.

Does club culture have a problem with bigotry? In light of a recent homophobic rant by producer Ten Walls and problematic statements by Boddika and GFOTY, the Guardian asks whether club culture in general has a problem with bigotry, concluding that “clubs are not yet the utopia that the culture aspires towards”. Read the short article here.

Stream with Apple Music. Starting June 30th, Apple will be offering the world three months’ subscription to their new music streaming service Apple Music for free. The premium price will be $10 per month, with a family plan for up to six family members costing $15. The app will be available on both iPhone and Android. According to their announcement, it will focus on 24/7 radio and “connecting fans with artists”. Find out more here.

Win an OSCar Synth! Novation are giving away a genuine, fully restored OSCar synth (one of only 2,000 ever made) to celebrate their legendary synth designer of over five decades, Chris Huggett. The OSCar monosynth is valued at over £5,000 and was used on albums including Stevie Wonder’s Skeletons. For a chance to win, you must have bought any Novation synth before 31st of August this year, then answer a simple question here.

A New Breed of Musical Instrument. Amsterdam-based designers OWOW‘s new breed of musical instruments empower you to make music in a new and intuitive ways. They’ve created five instruments: Wob lets you control sounds by waving your hand up and down, Wiggle shapes your music by rotating your hand around all axes, Drum makes air drumming real, Pads is a credit card-sized drum pad, and Scan turns drawn dots or lines into sounds. Watch their Kickstarter video above, and support the project here.

Going for a song: the hidden history of music piracy. Stephen Witt, author of How Music Got Free, tracks the recent history of music piracy for the Guardian, focusing on illegal filesharing and the story of the infamous Oink website. Read it in full here.

Glasgow’s Arches Go Into Administration. After losing their nightclub license in April 2015, Glasgow’s world-famous not-for-profit arts venue The Arches has now announced via Facebook that it has been “left with no other choice” than to go into administration and would have no choice but to close down the facility. The directors thanked Creative Scotland, Glasgow City Council, staff team, artists and public for 25 years of support. Read their full press release for the full story here.

UVI’s Rare TRON Keyboard-Inspired Energy. UVI has introduced Energy, a virtual instrument delivering the rare and complex sounds of the 32-oscillator digital keyboard Synergy, whose commercial production of less than a thousand units ceased 30 years ago. This obscure synthesiser delivered futuristic sounds far ahead of its time and helped to shape the iconic timbres of the original Tron movie. Features include: authentic sampling, a performance optimised sound engine, and an expanded preset library. Energy’s intro price is $29, check it out above and here for more.

AU Plugins for iOS 9. Among the many iOS and OS X enhancements announced at the keynote speech of Apple’s World Wide Developer Conference, news of a new Audio Unit “extension point” in iOS 9 is likely to have an impact on music creation as it seems to suggest that AU plugins could be integrated into iOS 9 applications. According to the documentation summary on Apple’s iOS 9.0 page: “The extension point also brings a full audio plug-in model to iOS and lets you sell Audio Units on the App Store.” For more details, check out Sonicstate’s analysis here.