Music Tech Content

Perfect Circuit •

Inventing Electronic Music: Raymond Scott

In the late 1940s and beyond, electronic aural alchemy was taking place in the audio labs of Raymond Scott. Using self-engineered electronic instruments, he spent decades researching the secrets of synthesis, sequencing, and the collaborative composition of music between humans and machines. While his work did impact some of the most consequential figures in electronic music history, like Bob Moog and Herb Deutsch, in large part, Raymond Scott’s engineering accomplishments existed in a vacuum; t...
Lutefish •

Getting The Band Back Together: Jimmy River Band

The Jimmy River Band is proving that distance doesn’t have to keep a great band apart. Spread across three cities and hundreds of miles, they’re still playing to big crowds, opening for national acts, and performing at festivals and venues across the Midwest. How? They use Lutefish to practice in real time, learn new material, and go into full-rehearsal overdrive mode ahead of major shows. We caught up with the band to hear how Lutefish helped them get back on stage and stay there.
Guitar.com •

Remote band practice: can it work? Testing the Lutefish Stream with a real metal band | Guitar.com

The Lutefish Stream aims to make remote jamming a much more creative and enjoyable experience by promising zero-latency audio thanks to its bespoke hardware and tech… but how best to test its capabilities? Getting heavy, obviously

Guitar.com's Cillian Breathnach roped in their Epimetheus bandmates, set them up in different spaces, and set them a task – can a doomgaze band stay locked in when they're not in the same room?
Lutefish •

Lutefish Stream Set Up Guide 🎵

Welcome to the video setup guide for the Lutefish Stream: the device and platform making real-time online music collaboration a reality.

Whether you're here to set up your new device or just learn more about Lutefish this quick guide provides the following instructions:

✅ Device setup
✅ Scheduling sessions
✅ Instrument & mic connections
✅ Troubleshooting

Navigate​ video chapters below:
0:00 - Intro
0:11 - Account Setup
0:27 - In the Box
0:37 - Setting Up the Stream Device
1:34 - Scheduling a Jam Session
1:46 - Connecting Instruments
2:01 - Joining a Session
2:12 - Setting Levels
2:22 - Latency tips
2:30 Troubleshooting
Lutefish •

Artist Spotlight: Maelstr’m

When starting a garage band, Craigslist guitarists may be a dime a dozen, but the group Maelstr’m needed mandolin and fiddle-wielding rogues well-versed in pirate odes. Eventually, group leader, Rav’n, did piece together such a crew: characters like Greenbeard, the bassist, and Sprinkles Rumblebottom, who packs keys and guitar. But finding such specialized scallywags meant making one huge sacrifice; the group is spread over an enormous geographical area spanning from Detroit to New Orleans.
Mael...
Lutefish •

Artist Spotlight: Trip To The Morgue

Old-school thrashers, Trip To The Morgue, have been using Lutefish to stay on track while navigating crazy schedules. The band’s shiny new record deal and national tours don’t leave a lot of time for onboarding new band members or creating new songs—but the group found a way. We caught up with Trip To The Morgue’s lead guitarist, James Patrick McCosar, to learn how playing together online using Lutefish has kept the band productive and even allowed them to add on a new guitarist who lives hundre...
Premier Guitar •

Save Time and Stay in the Flow with Audio Presets & Session Recall

Lutefish, the real-time music collaboration device and platform, is excited to announce a suite of new features designed to simplify setup, streamline collaboration, and offer more flexible subscription options for Lutefish Stream users. These latest updates, Audio Presets, Automatic Session Recall, Improved Scheduling with Contact Visibility, and a new Yearly Subscription Plan, are all about making it easier than ever for musicians to jam together, no matter where they’re based.
Perfect Circuit •

NAMM 2024 Coverage: In Depth

NAMM returns! And this year, it's reclaiming the ancestral January 25–28 time slot. It’s the time of year when music gear manufacturers and enthusiasts the world over converge in bright and sunny Anaheim, California to get the scoop on some of the year’s biggest releases. And while NAMM is a convention for the musical instrument/equipment retail business as a whole, it’s an exciting time specifically for those interested in synthesizers, drum machines, effects, studio gear, and other electronic...
Perfect Circuit •

Kaoss Theory: History of the Korg Kaoss Pad

One of the most powerful aspects of music is the player's expression. Just as the notes you choose deliver a message, you truly make them your own when you add bits of emotion through the way you play.Compared to other instruments, this is often a shortcoming of synths. We’ve got mod wheels, aftertouch, and a few other tricks, but the bulk of our expressions need to be programmed in. This gives us more control, but the trade-off is that we lose some of the immediacy and spontaneity enjoyed by mo...
Perfect Circuit •

Take It to Go: Suitcase Synthesizers

In the early 1970s, synthesizer development took a U-turn. The focus went from enormous metal hulks to portable form factors, many of which folded up into nifty little cases. The way manufacturers executed these designs varied wildly. Some looked like a smaller version of a suitcase Rhodes piano, basically a synth with a wooden top cover. Others were expertly disguised into briefcases unfolding into downright clandestine-looking mystery machines. With some research and a little expert insight, w...
SPIN •

Online Rehearsals Are Changing the Way Musicians Work - SPIN

Real-time online music sessions are here, and they’re starting to have an impact. Musicians of all levels are flocking towards the efficient proposition of doing much of their work online. Music lessons, group rehearsals, onboarding new band members, and even entire band reunions are taking place entirely online using technology that makes it feel like you’re playing with other musicians in the same room, even if you’re hundreds of miles apart. While we are still learning the full scope of its u...
Perfect Circuit •

History of the Yamaha CS-80 Analog Polyphonic Synthesizer

For many, the Yamaha CS-80 is the pinnacle of vintage synthesizers. Released in 1977, its massive feature set coalesced into a trifecta of layered sound design, novel expressivity, and powerful character. History is filled with brilliant synthesizers. Why is the CS-80 so often referenced as the best synthesizer ever made? What did it do nearly half a century ago that earned such a prominent place in music history? Why does it continue to inspire synthesizer development well into the 21st century...
Perfect Circuit •

10 of the Strangest Synths at Perfect Circuit

It’s a fantastic time to be a synthesizer enthusiast, with a surplus of technological capability and an unprecedented level of public interest in new hardware. Like the depths of a healthy habitat, these favorable conditions have cultivated an explosion of diverse and curious lifeforms, appearing in compounding levels of strangeness, each bending our understanding and pushing our expectations a little further. What this means for you is wholly new avenues of creation, pure of any preconceived tr...
Perfect Circuit •

Super Saws: History, Roland JP-8000, and Beyond

The super saw has been so unanimously celebrated by the electronic music community that many refer to it simply as the “trance sound.” From the late 1990s and beyond, its powerful presence turned melodies into anthems and powered the dance floors of countless warehouses, festival grounds, and everywhere else touched by the electronic music world.Today we dive into the story and mechanics of the lush, organic, fuzzy, and above all else, BIG super saw. And, of course, we’re gonna show you how to m...
Perfect Circuit •

Splits & Layers: What is a Multitimbral Synth?

A multitimbral synth can play two or more distinct sounds, or “timbres,” at the same time. Multitimbrality is useful in all sorts of creative ways, like layering two complementary sounds together, playing different sounds with different parts of the keyboard, or playing multiple MIDI parts from a single multi-channel sequencer. This extra capability makes owning a multitimbral synth a lot like owning multiple synths rather than one.Let’s dig into how this awesome feature got its start, the reaso...
Perfect Circuit •

20 Years of the Korg microKORG: a Retrospective

In 2002, Korg released the microKORG: a small virtual analog synth criticized by reviewers at the time for its tiny keys, lack of knobs, and seemingly undefined purpose in the music market. However, it turned out to be one of the best-selling synthesizers ever. Today, you can find the microKORG’s versatile sound pretty much anywhere in the modern music landscape. It’s been re-released in no fewer than ten different iterations, always commanding excellent sales, despite most of those re-releases...