Ask A Sound Guy

The thing about recording and music production is that theres so much gear. Everytime I open up the newest Sound on Sound, EQ, or Computer Music, I just see slew of equipment that either a) looks awesome b) would be of great use to me in my own personal studio or c) both A and B. So when I saw Sanjay make a post about Native Instrument’s newest piece of heaven, the Maschine, I decided to write something about all the coolest eye-catching gadgets that I’ve seen and want.

1. JazzMutant Lemur / Dexter [link]
These things have been kind of mythical to me: I’ve heard about them for some time and hadn’t had a chance to touch one until I went to AES last year. And, holy shit, are these things amazing. They’re used by everyone from Daft Punk to Justice and even acts like Deadmau5. In fact, Daft Punk uses four of them when they play live. Needless to say, these things are amazing.

Both the Lemur and Dexter are open-source, 100% touch-screen controllers for pretty much anything you want to use them for. The Lemur can be used with any software that supports MIDI or OSC commands, while the Dexter is designed to be a sort of DAW controller (you can use it with Logic, Sonar, Cubase, and Nuendo). That being said, those are the DAWs that JazzMutant supports for their controller, but I’ve heard of people using it for “unsupported” DAWs like Live and Pro Tools.

The Dexter can be used on said DAWs right out of the box; no mapping needed! Meanwhile, the Lemur has to be mapped for whatever you want but with that comes (almost) unlimited customization and freedom. The demo I saw put the Lemur to use with Native Instrument’s Reaktor (one of my favorite plug-ins ever). It worked so well I couldn’t believe it.

Some extra bonuses: you can get a controller that gives you the functionality of both the Lemur and the Dexter (for a few extra bucks). Also, for all you video-junkies, you can use the Lemur for your favorite video applications. You can chop and destroy video loops just like audio loops.

How Much? A little short of $2,000. Prices vary, so be sure to look around.

In Action!

2. Akai APC40 [link]
Akai’s renowned for their MPC, so it makes sense that when they started to create a controller for Abelton’s Live that it’d be much like the MPC with the same style of pads, knobs, etc. This controller is supposed to work out of the box with Live 7 (and probably 8). It looks slick and would be totally useful when using Live in a live setting.

How Much? Around $400. Pretty affordable. But remember: you’ll need Live to use this controller to its fullest potential.

In Action!

3. Yamaha Tenori-on [link]
Sanjay’s already covered the Monome (which you need to buy as well), so I’ll introduce you to this device instead.

Think of it as a sort of LCD-style Monome. Instead of the Tenori-on controlling a program (like the Monome or Lemur), you load sounds inside of the Tenori-on and sequence them on the device. The way the visuals work on this thing are…pretty amazing. At the very least its music hardware as art.

How Much? $999 (according to the site).

In Action