PC and Music News

Hal Leonard Books, the musician‚s best source of books on the music business, audio technology, instrument history, and more, is now shipping Power Tools for Reason 6 ($39.99) by Andrew Eisele.

Power Tools for Reason 6 is a comprehensive book that provides a quick-start tutorial that not only gets you up and running quickly, but also delves into advanced sequencing and mixing techniques.

The popular Rhody R1 instrument, included as part of the Electric Pianos add-on, has found a replacement and successor in Rhody R2, available in the latest Pianoteq update 4.1 as a free update. The sound, presence and response are all improved with increased accuracy.

By using the new exciting effects in Pianoteq 4, such as Amp, Chorus, Tremolo, the new Tine noise parameters, or even the Blooming parameter (firstly intended for the Steelpans add-on), the Rhody R2 can be transformed into amazingly expressive variants.

Ohm Studio next collaborative event called Cheeeeeers! will hopefully heal the world after the chaos spread by the Plague.

From now on, they are looking for people interested in assisting the Ohm men organize sessions and help people on technical topics (and why not give a musical hand too).

As a company based in France, they cannot always monitor things happening at 9PM in California for example.

Ohm men don't speak all languages either and some participants are not always at ease with English.

F you like your House music deep and sexy then this is the pack for you.

Crammed full of just under 300 Deep House key loops and single hits this sample pack contains enough deep house hooks & grooves to keep your tracks sounding fresh and downright jazzy for years. The loops section of this sample pack ranges from loose grand piano riffs through to the latest chord progressions in various organ sounds and styles.

Ableton is pleased to announce the beta version of Live 8.4, featuring native 64-bit support. Registered Live 8, Suite 8, Live Intro or Live Lite 8 users can download the beta now.

The 64-bit version of Live allows the use of more than 4 gigabytes of RAM. This means that Live users can now work with Live Sets (including Sets using third-party plug-ins and ReWire configurations) that are much larger and more memory intensive than in the 32-bit version.

The 64-bit version of Live works with PCs running Windows Vista/7/8 (64-bit) and with Intel-Macs running OS X 10.5 and up. The 64-bit version of Live 8 does not support Max for Live, video, or The Bridge. Ableton is currently working with its partners to add support for these features.

The release version of Live 8.4 will be available later, as a free update for registered Live 8, Suite 8, Live Intro or Live Lite 8 users.

Native Instruments today launched a major time-limited special offer on their highly successful MASCHINE product line, reducing the price of MASCHINE to only $399/399 EUR and the price of MASCHINE MIKRO to a mere $249/249 EUR until August 31st 2012.

This represents a saving of $200/200 EUR on MASCHINE and $150/100 EUR on MASCHINE MIKRO compared to the suggested retail price.