WORLD OF MUSIC ; PORTABLE KEYBOARD - Latest Portable Music Keyboards, Synthesizers and Music News

Ahead of Superbooth 2025 in Berlin, Instruō has launched Seashell, an analog semi-modular desktop synth with a modern edge.

Bridging the knob-twiddling hardware world of modular synthesis with the software landscape via an accompanying plugin, Seashell aims to bring perfect integration with your DAW or software control environment.

Now Ableton has launched a new firmware update for Move, which looks to be its most significant update yet. Ableton Move v1.5 Major Update Adds Sample Slicing, Auto-Filter Device & Enhances MIDI I/O.

When Move launched, one of the most common complaints from potential users was its lack of automatic sample slicing. Although Move allows users to sample using its audio input, onboard mic or internal routing – and lets users manually spread a recording across different pads – at launch it lacked the ability to automatically slice a loop to be triggered across different Drum Rack pads, in the way Live allows.

With the 1.5 update, Move now offers that option to slice a sample into equal regions, with the amount of slices set by the user. Users can then adjust the individual slice points in order to fine tune the process.

Move 1.5 also significantly enhances the device’s MIDI capabilities. Move can now simultaneously send and receive MIDI across its four tracks, which can each be configured with its own MIDI in and out settings. Move can also now receive MIDI clock settings from external devices.

It’s worth noting that Move uses its USB port for MIDI I/O, and doesn’t have conventional MIDI input and output ports.

Live’s newly overhauled Auto-Filter device also comes to Move 1.5, along with a range of presets. The update also adds some refinements to how Move functions when controlling Live, along with a variety of bug fixes.

These new updates join several other enhancements to the Move workflow that have been added since launch. These include the ability to sample using the device’s USB port, as well as improvements to the arpeggitor and quantize modes.

The 1.5 firmware is currently in public beta, head to the Ableton beta program site to find out how to join.

Move itself is available now, priced at £399/€449/$449, also available at Amazon site. For more info visit the main Ableton site.

Ahead of Superbooth 2025 – kicking off in Berlin on Thursday 8 May – Moog has shared a cryptic teaser video that confirms the company will be releasing a new synthesizer: Messenger.

The video is a surreal experience that depicts unidentified workers visiting the forest to install microphones in the ground, before we’re shown a Severance-esque scene in which more creepy corporate types get their Jackson Pollock on, while one plays the new Messenger synth. (If the Severance connection seems a little random, cast your mind back to the fourth episode of the show’s latest season, in which Miss Huang somewhat inexplicably plays a Moog Theremini.)

“A new mode of communication has arrived,” reads the caption for the video. “A carrier of universal language, a catalyst for human connection, a machine for deeper meaning. This device translates ideas into actuality. It exists in a space where experimentation meets expression, where the sights and sounds of the natural world intersect with notions of the cosmic beyond.”

Based on what we can see in the video, the Moog Messenger is a compact monophonic synthesizer, featuring two oscillators, a sequencer, arpeggiator, a 32-note keyboard and a hands-on, knobby interface.

Judging from the image below, it looks like there’s also a multimode filter onboard with four modes, an arpeggiator and a 64-step probabilistic sequencer.

“Keep on listening,” the caption reads. “We’ll have more to share with you soon.”

We’ll have full official details on the Moog Messenger when they are announced May 8th.