Check out the new video featuring DJ Jungleboy rocking Serato Scratch Live with the Stanton SCS.3d multi-touch USB controller below.

And Gamespot has also posted a video showing off Numark’s upcoming Scratch DJ videogame controller.

Stanton also alerted us to another cool demo video for both the Stanton SCS.3d (deck) and SCS.3m (mixer) controllers with Atlanta IDM, sound design and DJ impresario Richard Devine, shown below.

Number of tumbleweeds spotted blowing through the aisles of the 2009 NAMM Show: 0.

Number of dopedy-dope new products for DJs and producers of electronic and hip-hop music: at least the following 13.

While attendance at the annual Anaheim, CA trade show occurring Jan. 15-18 may have been down a bit, attitudes were upbeat, and booths were filled with new innovations for making 2009 another year sacrificed to the art of making music.

This quick snapshot of 13 hits only represents a slice of the newness on offer, and we’ll be following up this week with full, more detailed show reports on the new hardware and software from NAMM 2009.

ABLETON LIVE 8

You didn’t think this German freight train was derailed did you?

Like clockwork, Ableton cranks out a major update of Live per year, and there’s always reason to take notice. Live 8 ($449 download) includes a new groove engine that includes extracting grooves from audio or MIDI and real-time groove quantize; retooled warping abilities, such as warping audio events by adjusting the events on the timeline, a new Complex Warp Mode and slicing audio files to MIDI tracks based on transients; live looping; track grouping; a revamped MIDI editor; crossfades in the Arrangement view; and five new effects: Vocoder, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Limiter and Frequency Shifter.

Live 8 is scheduled for availability this spring, along with Ableton Suite 8 ($699 download), which includes Live 8, a massive sound collection and many virtual instruments, including the new Latin Percussion acoustic drum collection and the Collision mallet instrument. Ableton’s first soft synth, Operator, has also been updated with new filter types, more modulation options and additive wavetable synthesis.

Prices for boxed version will be higher, and upgrade prices will vary.

AKAI APC40 ABLETON CONTROLLER

When Ableton first announced this at their press conference, they should have handed out Depends, because people were peeing themselves over this thing. Perhaps *the* hit of the show for the Remix crowd, the APC40 represents a collaboration between Akai and Ableton to create a dedicated controller for Live 7 and higher. Intended for real-time mixing, remixing and production, the APC40’s 109 buttons, 16 endless encoders with LED rings, nine 45 mm faders and a replaceable crossfader give you complete control of Live’s Session view, effect devices and virtual instruments with little need for a mouse.

The controller’s multi-colored backlit buttons let you know what’s loaded, what’s playing and what’s being recorded. For the $399 retail price, the APC40 comes with a specially designed version of Live Lite, so whether you use that version, Live 7 or the new Live 8, the APC40 automatically works over a USB connection, with no drivers or mapping required.

ARTURIA MINIMOOG V 2.0

Arturia did a great job modeling the Minimoog in its first version of Minimoog V, and Arturia was clear to us that it didn’t want to change the sound of the instrument. So what was there to improve upon? A fresh batch of presets is nice, and recording automation within each preset for up to four parameters opens a ton of possibilities. But that’s just the beginning.

Arturia added a Vocal Filter, which works almost as if to make the Minimoog talk. The new Vocal Filter, as well as Pan, can be used as destinations for an expanded modulation matrix.

Best of all, a new Sound Map lays out the hundreds of preset sounds in a sortable two-dimensional space as a new and effective way for zeroing in on the sound(s) you want. While that’s helpful, the Sound Map’s morphing might blow your mind. By clicking multiple sounds within the map, you can morph between them.

CELEMONY MELODYNE EDITOR

Back at the 2008 Musik Messe in Frankfurt, Germany, Celemony undoubtedly stole the show with it’s DNA feature–Direct Note Access–for Melodyne. DNA lets you access and edit individual chord tones in audio recordings. Those extrapolated chord notes can be edited like other notes within Melodyne, by altering the pitch, position and duration of the note detected, make it louder or quieter, copy/cut/paste and so on.

The first product using DNA was supposed to be Melodyne Plug-in 2 last fall, but since then, Celemony had rebuilt the product around DNA functions to the extent that a new name was in order. Melodyne Editor ($349) is set to come out this spring and will work as a stand-alone app, as well as a plug-in.

EASTWEST/QUANTUM LEAP SILK

It’s easy to get lost in specs, concepts and jargon at NAMM, but fantastic sounds still rise above all the rest. For Quantum Leap Silk - Masters of the Silk Road ($595), producer/composer Nick Phoenix recorded renowned musicians playing dozens of authentic instruments from China, India and Persia to create a brilliantly sounding and ambitious 25 GB collection of ethnic instruments.

Recorded at major studios using vintage Neumann microphones, Neve consoles and Meitner converters, Silk also takes advantage of EastWest’s new Play 64-bit sample engine, which includes scripting, micro-tuning and a convolution reverb.

EDIROL P-10 VISUAL SAMPLER

Edirol has transferred sister company Roland’s moxy for audio samplers into the video realm with this compact box. The P-10 allows you to capture video clips from DVDs, video cameras and other sources and then trigger them in tempo with effects and with the audio optionally intact if you want to play full music videos for example.

You can also capture still images from video clips and play sets of images as slideshows. The P-10 uses SD memory cards up to 16 GB, which would give you 4 hours of video storage in the Motion JPEG format it uses. With 12 pads and 72 pad banks, you have potentially hundreds of video clips at your disposal. A live input lets you capture videos of your surrounding and immediately play them back to the crowd.

KORG MICROKORG XL

Falling into the gap between the original MicroKorg and the Korg R3 synth, the MicroKorg XL ($750) features the acclaimed analog modeling from Korg’s Radias synth engine, a built-in 16-band vocoder (gooseneck mic included) and a simplified editing system using three large dials and a backlit LCD menu. With its 37-note velocity sensitive mini-keyboard and optional battery power, the MicroKorg XL is compact and ready to fit into a cramped studio or live setup.

While small, this full-featured keyboard includes USB and MIDI controller capability, audio inputs for the vocoder, an editable arpeggiator, 17 effects from the Korg Kaoss series, and it excels in a wide variety of sounds from filthy basses to sharp lead synths and lush, evolving pads.

MOTU BPM

Although frequently unsung, MOTU’s virtual instruments carry famously deep functionality to go along with impeccable sound. It’s latest effort, BPM, a beat production tool for urban and electronic music, continues that tradition.

With the intent of letting you make beats almost as fast as you can hear them in your head, and to stop you from relying on someone else’s loops, BPM gives you 15 GB of 24-bit/96 kHz of percussive material, but you can also sample your own sounds or drag-and-drop sound from your desktop to BPM’s pads, which are compatible with any MIDI pad controller on the market.

Just a few of BPM’s seemingly infinite features include drum layering, patterning sequencing, loop slicing, groove quantizing and unlimited effects processing with its included effects. You can create your entire rhythm track in BPM as a stand-alone app, but it’s not meant to be a one-stop-shop only. With universal plug-in compatibility, it features multiple outputs and many export options for you to use your beats in a DAW session or transfer them elsewhere.

MOTU VOLTA

One of the few “from out of nowhere” surprises at NAMM, MOTU introduced Volta, a virtual instrument plug-in that allows users to play and automate modular synthesizers–and other hardware equipped with control voltage (CV) inputs–right from their workstation software.

To pull off that task, which no other software has done before, Volta receives conventional virtual instrument MIDI note, automation and controller data and then converts it to a control voltage signal, which it sends through an audio interface as DC voltage that can drive a standard CV input. It’s important to point out that the audio interface must have DC-coupled outputs;

Volta also has a Calibration button that can automatically tune analog synths by sending voltages and measuring the pitch response. It can even tune self-oscillating filters.

Scheduled to ship in the first quarter of this year as an Audio Units plug-in, Volta does not have a price attached yet. Its capabilities are vast, but the bottom line is that Volta gives you the same or comparable access to sequence, control and automate your modular and other analog synths, Moogerfoogers and other CV gear that you have over your current soft synths.

NATIVE INSTRUMENTS MASCHINE

We’ve all heard a lot about the combining of software functionality with hardware control. However, until now, the combination has usually come from a fairly traditional piece of hardware having a software component to it, or software being controlled by a piece of general-use hardware. Native Instruments wants to change the game with Maschine ($669), an instrument in the tradition of the tried and true “groovebox,” but made from the ground up to combine the tactile control of hardware with the modern immense capabilities of software. And unlike many other music products before it, Maschine’s hardware is made to work with its software 100 percent, and vice versa.

If you’re used to the traditional groovebox and drum machine workflow, you should have no problem diving into Maschine. You get 16 pressure-sensitive drum pads that illuminate to reflect sequenced patterns, eight rotary encoders and plenty of buttons to keep your hand off the computer’s keyboard and mouse. The package comes with several gigabytes of sampled material for you to make your music, and the hardware doubles as a MIDI controller for your DAW and other instruments.

OPEN LABS MIKO LXD

Open Labs has been going as crazy as its hip-hop endorsers over the last year. At NAMM, it unveiled updated hardware specs and a much-improved software OS for it’s all-encompassing, computer-in-a-keyboard workstations. Among a full line of introductions, the Miko LXD stood out for the Remix crowd.

The 37-key workstation comes with a full software bundle including 60+ virtual instruments, including FXpansion Guru and the Livid Instruments Cell VJ software, all running over Windows XP Home. And you can load your own PC-compatible DAW, DJ and other software into the Miko. In addition Open Labs, has developed Riff, its new virtual instrument host software that makes switching between instruments seemless, and lets you create real-time virtual controls that can be mapped to effects or other parameters.

Miko LXD includes the touch-sensitive computer display and three built-in control modules, two of which are new. The new Bump MP module gives you Akai MPC-style controls such as note repeat, as well as transport controls, hold, pad tune and more. As an original innovation, Open Labs has included a 17th pad called Last Pad. This pad basically plays whatever the sound is of the last pad you hit, letting you perform fast rolls more comfortable on two pads instead of one.

Also new, the Mix/Edit controller gives you controller over as many as 128 channels of audio from within one set of 8 encoders, 8 lighted buttons and 8 faders. Miko LXD begins as $4,599 and is available to order now.

SONIVOX PLAYA

In a coup for cash-strapped cats who want to get into music now, Sonivox Playa supplies the basic tools for urban music production in one stand-alone app or plug-in for $149. That price includes 400 Sonivox instruments (for reference, Sonivox created the instrument sounds for Ableton Live 7), including basses, brums, synths, ethnic sounds, guitars, strings, brass and more. There are also effects, EQ and 50 construction kit-style layouts for the 16 programmable and assignable virtual pads. With MIDI learn, Playa is compatible with any MIDI controller.

WALLANDER BRASS

A lot of companies were trying to show off either their modeled brass or their sample-based brass collections at NAMM, but none that we heard were as impressive as Wallander Instruments Brass 1 ($599). Wallander’s acoustic behavioral modeling does a remarkable job of reproducing the nuances of notoriously difficult to replicate brass instruments. Brass 1 includes models of French Horns, Trumpets Trombones and Tubas and claims to be CPU friendly enough to produce full orchestra-worthy arrangements on a laptop. With modeling, you also don’t have to make room for gigabytes of audio material.

Whether you’re checking out inaugural address videos online at work, playing hooky to stay home front of the tube, unemployed and in front of the tube anyway or shaking your fist while thinking about how you can move to a more conservative country, this inauguration day for Barack Obama has significance for most Americans and many people around the world.

Just in time for the big day, the music video directors “Gold”–the duo of Richard Farmer and Sinuhe Xavier, who won MTV Video Music Awards for his Gnarls Barkley “Run” video–have released this stop-motion animated video for Adam Freeland’s remix of Daft Punk in tribute to President Obama. Fans of Robot Chicken and universal health care may get a kick out of it; meanwhile, McCain voters who think “The King of Queens” and “Touched by an Angel” are great entertainment will probably want to barf in their Cheerios.

Propellerhead just announced the winners of its 2008 Bassline Battle, and the funk has definitely hit the fan. The celebrity panel of judges, including DJ Babu, Mocean Worker, Mix Master Mike and others, displayed an expert ear and understandable bias toward filthy, gritty and above all funky basslines. You can listen to the winners here.

The requirement of this contest was simple: turn in the best bassline you can make using Propellerhead Reason. Adam Fielding, an English music student took the top spot in both the public and judges panel votes, after Propellerhead received more than 300 bassline submissions. For his Grand Prize, Adam will take home a grip of nice gear from KRK, Novation and Focusrite.

Think you could do better? Well hey, enter next time. This contest was sponsored in part by Remix, and you can always see what other contests we have happening on our contest page.

My bandmates and I just got back from a two-week tour of the Midwest and East Coast, and because we’re still doing most everything DIY (except for some help from our booking agent, who is fantastic), it required months of saving up, planning and making Excel spreadsheets. We went through every single detail over and over and still came out $500 over budget in the end. But even when you’re playing to 15 people on a Monday night in a city where you’ve never played before (Cincinnati, in our case), there’s nothing more fun than touring. That said, if we didn’t like our songs, hadn’t practiced a ton and weren’t totally prepared, it wouldn’t have been nearly as enjoyable; even when you’re well-rehearsed, something always goes wrong.

Here are a few things I learned on the road that may help you musicians out there who are planning on touring soon:

1. You must read Tour:Smart: And Break the Band by Martin Atkins.

2. A Rand McNally 2009 Road Atlas Large Scale map book in combination with a PDA running Google Maps is very helpful. But we still got lost…a lot. It’s best to bite the bullet and buy or rent a GPS system that can tell you which way southwest is on whichever street, rather than having to guess. Either that, or add a compass to the mix.

3. Be polite and introduce yourself to every band you meet on the road (more of this in the Editor’s Note in the Dec. 2008 issue of Remix).

4. If you are the band treasurer, lie to your bandmates about how much you have in the band bank account. If they don’t think the band fund is flush, they won’t be begging for the band to pay for Jameson shots.

5. Don’t use any band money to pay for alcohol.

6. Don’t drink any alcohol before you play a show. I know this can be hard, but we made that rule about halfway into the tour, and it made a world of difference. You already know that it’s bad idea to drink and drive because your reaction time is much slower when you drink and then get behind the wheel. The same goes for playing an instrument. Forget hitting all your cues if you’ve had ten beers before you hit the stage. If you’re a complete virtuoso who has never missed a note in your life, then you may have one beer before you play. If you’re pretty consistent as a musician, then bring your first beer of the night onstage with you. Me, I just drink water until the show is done. I drink beer and then I end up belching into the microphone, which is not pretty. Plus, I forget lyrics and biff guitar chords. No can do.

7. Remember to have fun. Things can go wrong on the road, and they will. If you stay calm and remember that you’re having fun, it’ll be easier to solve problems (like your van dying halfway between Minneapolis and Chicago).

8. Read all the parking signs, and then read them again. And if you buy a ticket to park in a lot, especially to park your RV in overnight, make sure you know when the ticket expires. In Chicago, they’ll also nail you for parking in “multiple spots” because your stupid RV sticks out, even though no one is parked around you.

9. If in an RV, stay at campsites wherever possible, and try to book in advance. Campsites are great ’cause you can hook up the RV to electrical outlets and a water line, dump waste into a special hole in the ground (gross) and take a real shower. If you’re in a van and don’t have a friend’s house to stay at, you can always find a cheap motel (or what I lovingly call The Crime Scene Inn). But someone should probably sleep in the van every night, unless you’re a girl. That’s the benefit of being the one girl in a band full of smelly dudes.

10. If you’re RVing it, you can buy pots and pans and cooking utensils at thrift stores and then give them away at the end of your route. Cooking on the road saves a lot of money.

11. If you see an animal in the middle of the road, and you’re driving in a giant RV, I’m afraid you have to hit it. It makes me sick to my stomach to say this (I refuse to kill bugs, let alone animals). But you can’t swerve in a 30-foot RV, and you probably can’t in a 12-passenger van, either.

12. Play your best show at every show, even when you’re just playing to the other bands, the bartender and the sound guy. The bar owner might buy a CD and ask you to come back on a more popular night (like a Wednesday as opposed to a Monday), and the other band you’re playing with may just break out, become superfamous and take you on tour with them.

13. Bring replacement cables and adapters, and prepare to go to a music store at least twice in a two-week trip (and not for fun).

14. If you’re in Kentucky, do try moonshine, but make sure the guy giving it to you isn’t blind because it may have been the moonshine that made him that way.

15. Do not give people an opportunity to steal your gear. Do not leave it in sight and unattended.

16. Take naps whenever you can. It’s easy to get sick on the road. You need to sleep to keep the flu/colds at bay.

Anyone else have some good touring advice you want to share? Feel free to comment….

I know we mainly cover the production angle in Remix, and that mainly pertains to all things regarding recording instruments, sampling, DAWs, software, etc. But I’m guessing a fair amount of you produce singers or do some singing yourselves. I’ve been singing since before I could put a sentence together, but it wasn’t until last year that I actually starting working with a vocal coach. I guess you could say I just had “raw talent.” I’ve been recording, playing live and touring for a long time, but I was never trained. I felt like I had to be trained to play the saxophone (back in my middle school and high school days), and I took guitar lessons, but I never feel the need to take vocal lessons. That was until I hit a wall with a particular part I was trying to sing while in the studio. My friend Dusty DiMercurio (who works for Digidesign) turned me on to The Voice Studio (www.thevoicestudio.org) in San Francisco, and I started training with a supercool instructor, Heather Pierce, who is also the frontwoman for a awesome band called Karmacoda (www.karmacoda.com).

Suddenly, I realized I’d been singing all wrong. Okay, not all wrong, but not all right, either. I was working my voice and vocal chords too hard, and I was losing my voice more than I should. If you see pictures of me singing, I often have my mouth really wide open. It looks like I’m really going for it…because I am. I tend to write vocal parts that run the gamut of my range, and I really push myself to run all over the place on the scale. It’s not histrionic in the R&B sense (hitting 25 different notes on one word), but I don’t make my job particularly easy, either.

I started to learn about something called “Speech-Level Singing.” Basically, it’s about singing like you talk. It’s more natural sounding, and it makes it a hell of a lot easier to hit the notes.

When I sing live, I think I’m fairly solid, but I miss the mark (even if by a little) sometimes. I want to improve the odds of making the mark. Speech-Level Singing helps with that, and it also helps with endurance when you’re singing night after night and improves the consistency of tone, agility, flexibility and range.

There are three parts to your voice: chest voice, mix voice and head voice. Between each part, there is what’s called a bridge. According to the Voice Studio, that is “where the resonance shifts from one area of the body to another.” With this technique, you can learn how to make those transitions flow better by narrowing the vowels and not widening your mouth too much. You produce the sound more easily, and it sounds better, too. For example, there’s a line in one of my songs that goes up over my mix-voice bridge into the head voice and back down again. The line is, “Something pulls me back inside.” Heather has me sing it with a different accent to narrow the vowels, so I can get up over the bridge (which is the A flat above C) and back down with less trouble and effort. Now I’m less freaked out every time that part of the song comes up. When I practice the part, it now sounds a little like, “Sew-ew-um-thin pools meh beck insoid.” And when I hit “thin,” the highest note, I drop my jaw a little to accommodate the sound. Now I’m not singing with my mouth as horizontal but more vertical. I think it’s fascinating. I’m smoothing out my voice, making things easier on myself and becoming a better singer. Now, why didn’t I do that ten years ago?

You can read more about it Speech-Level Singing here: www.speechlevelsinging.com.

Ah, toys, gadgets, gear. Every week it’s something new that gets us excited about making music and questioning our commitment to financial responsibility.

This last week split my wig a few times with some cool announcements, so here are the best of the best, in a list as random and unorganized as my desk.

Stanton DaScratch

This touch-sensitive USB MIDI DJ controller, aka SCS.3d, promises fast response and easy customization. It can control an entire computer DJing system from one compact device or easily add to your existing system.

DaScratch introduces Stanton’s StanTouch technology, which is supposed to incorporate finger movements familiar to DJs, such as scratching, scrubbing and circular touch-pad navigating. The main surface works in three modes–Slider, Circle and Button–in which the surface responds to touches in different ways. In every mode, DaScratch responds to multiple simultaneous touches. If you buy more than one of the $249 units (available now), they can snap together to create a larger control surface.

Dave Smith Instruments Mopho

OK, one question: Did it really take this long for someone to think of calling a MOnoPHOnic synthesizer the Mopho, or is Dave Smith just the first one with the cajones to do it? Well, I for one say bravo to curse word innuendo.

But moving on, the Mopho actually looks like an extremely badass synth for a $439 list price (available now). The one-note/two-oscillator analog synth features a synth engine based on the DSI Prophet ‘08–one of the greatest 21st-century analog synths–with the added bonus of two sub-octave generators–one per oscillator–for additional girth and crushing basses. It’s got an audio input for passing sounds through the legendary Curtis lowpass filter; it includes 5-pin MIDI ports; and at only 7.5-by-5 inches, it’s very portable.

IPJ “iPhone Jockey” Software

Dude, these apps from Japanese company New Forestar are only in beta, but to my knowledge are the only apps for the iPhone/iPodTouch that attempt to turn them into mini CDJ-style audio players. Two iPhones and a mixer? That’s what up.

The features of these apps include a jog dial with virtual scratching and tap tempo, a pitch fader, play/pause button, cue button, forward and backward buttons, a seek bar and a time display. In addition, they’ll use the iPhone’s accelerometer to issue sound effects when you shake the device. No word yet on when the programs will become available.

D16 Decimort

What’s your favorite “mort?” Voldemort, Mort from Family Guy or maybe it’s the Decimort, the new bit-crusher plug-in from D16 Group. Decimort aims to recreate the highly sought after coloration of vintage samplers such as the E-Mu SP-12 and SP-1200 and the Akai MPC 60mkII that was the result of encoding techniques, lower sample and bit rates and conversion circuits.

Decimort’s main sections include a decimator with controls for bit rate and sample rate and a filter with four filter types and controls for cutoff and resonance. It’s available now for preorder at 29 euros. After the first week of October, the price will be set at 35 euros.

Universal Audio Moog Multimode Filter

On the heels of it’s recently announced UAD-2 DSP platform, Universal Audio has announced the released of the Moog Multimode Filter plug-in for UAD-1. UAD-2 users who buy the UAD-1 version now ($199) will receive the UAD-2 version for free when it’s available.

Here’s list of key features:

• Classic Moog ladder-type 24 dB/Oct (4-pole) & 12 dB/Oct (2-pole) LPF/HPF/BPF
  
  

• Extreme distortion via 0/+20 dB Input Gain, replicating MiniMoog external input
  
  

• Stunningly “analog”: self-oscillation, smooth saturation, zero artifacts/quantization
  
  

• Enveloper Follower, Six LFO wave shapes, and DAW tempo synchronization
  
  

• Mono & Stereo processing with Spacing/Offset features from Voyager
  
  

• Includes Free low-DSP Multimode Filter SE version for high instance counts

Other than music, there’s little that we love here at Remix more than the Adult Swim animated shows of the Cartoon Network. One of their shows that has flown under the radar, Lucy, The Daughter of the Devil, combines our favorite things — irreverent humor and DJ culture — like no other.

The main character, DJ Jesus (pronounced “hey seuss”) is an up-and-coming San Francisco DJ who pulls off miraculous publicity stunts to further his career and dates Lucy, the supposed anti-Christ who’s continually pursued by a bunch of bumbling clergy. Oh yeah, and the devil is in there too. Fans of Adult Swim shows will recognize the ubiquitous voice of H. Jon Benjamin (Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Home Movies) vocalizing several lead characters.

In these few clips, you’ll see DJ Jesus playing with an MPC, human beat boxing and whipping up some miracles. Bounce over to AdultSwim.com for a ton more. (PS: this show is funny, but not made for kids.)

How many times have you fired up your DAW with the intention of writing a track and sat there overwhelmed by too many options, or doodled around with creating the perfect synth sound that never comes, effected the same beat over and over or done everything but actually write some music?

Hopefully, never. And hopefully, you’re the A#1 chief badass of all time. But the reality is, most of us on some occasions get bogged down with all the other aspects of audio production that take time away from the actual songwriting. That’s why a good old fashioned acoustic piano or guitar can be vital. There’s nothing else to do with them but play music.

However, today I received a demo of a new software program that actually does something that’s pretty rare: It identifies a unique problem of the music producer that no one else has addressed, and attempts to solve it.

The program, Tanager SongFrame, is in a sense a pre-DAW. It’s chief focus is to assist you with the process of songwriting, without all the bells and whistles that are necessary for production in a DAW but can be distracting to songwriting. When you’re finished with a song, you simply export from SongFrame, which creates WAV Audio Tracks and MIDI files that show track markers and are compatible for importing in literally every DAW, to be used as scratch tracks for your full production.

SongFrame’s notable features include an audible chord library, thousands of possible chords progressions taken from popular songs and musical compositions from every era and genre, hundreds of placeholder drum patterns, VST plug-in hotsting, audio and MIDI recording, a lyrics module and a SongBit Notebook for saving ideas.

Check out Tanager’s videos for a run-through.

Tanager has also produced a couple of other very helpful musician’s apps. Chorducopia is an audible chord library with more than 50 chords per key to help you in practicing an instrument or with songwriting.

But for traveling laptop musicians and producers, Chirp could be indispensable. Whenever you’re in a spot where you want to make music but don’t have the luxury of playing a MIDI keyboard or other type of controller, you can use Chirp. It’s basically an 18-key musical keyboard and 10-drum pad MIDI controller in software form. It maps its triggers to your QWERTY keyboard and send MIDI messages to your software, just like a hardware MIDI controller does.

Richie Hawtin is always so far ahead of the DJing technology curve, it just may be futile to try to catch up. But that doesn’t mean you can’t be inspired by his innovation to do your own thing. In this video on ResidentAdvisor.net, Hawtin explains his current live setup using Native Instruments Traktor with four virtual decks and an Allen & Heath Xone mixer/MIDI controller (as well as an extra computer just for effects).

If you still think that it’s cheating for laptop DJs to use a software’s auto beat sync, allow Hawtin about 10 minutes of your time to justify himself for offloading that task to his computer helpers. As always, his endeavors are quite impressive.