Electronicos Fantasticos! is a Japanese electronic music project led by artist/musician Ei Wada that repurposes old electrical appliances to create new electromagnetic musical instruments.
Their CRT-TV Drums repurpose old analog TVs to be visually striking electronic drums:
The sound is produced by ‘catching’ static electricity from a CRT with your hands and sending electrical signals through your body to a guitar amplifier.
The project has transformed CRT televisions, electric fans, camcorders, air conditioners and telephones as instruments.
Here’s another example, a CRT Guitar:
The CRT-TV Drums are used as part of a complete ensemble of original electronic instruments, as shown in this video:
You can see more examples of their work and performances at their site.
Teenage Engineering let us know that their Choir – a collection of 8 wooden virtual vocalists that ‘sing’ with synthesized voices – is featured as a vocal ensemble in the soundtrack to the movie, Elio.
Elio is the latest animated film from Pixar, and is about a lonely 11-year old boy that ends up going on adventure in space.
In January 2025, composer Rob Simonsen contacted Teenage Engineering about using their Choir on the soundtrack:
“We were looking for an otherworldly sound—something that sounded relatable, that echoed vocalizations, communication that humans could understand, but felt like it was from another world.
I came across these choir dolls and heard their sound. It was beautiful—electronic, but human. Each body is handcrafted. They have a robotic but organic sound at the same time. It felt like a perfect answer to what we were looking for.”
Teenage Engineering provided 24 choir dolls, and developed new firmware to evenly distribute musical notes across the choir.
Recording took place at the Sony scoring stage in Los Angeles, where the Choir dolls were mic’d similarly to a human choir and recorded in the same acoustic space:
Simonsen used the Choir as part of the sonic identity for The Communiverse, a futuristic interplanetary organization. The Choir is arranged similarly to a traditional choral ensemble, but the results have a distinctive synthesized character.
An example of the Choir in use can be heard in the following track, around 3:25 in:
This is the first time, that Teenage Engineering is aware of, that the Choir has been featured in a major soundtrack.
Information about the Choir is available at the TE site.
FL Studio 2025 brings ChatGPT-style AI assistant that offers music production advice and helps you use the DAW.
Image-Line has announced the latest update for FL Studio, its flagship DAW, bringing with it a host of new features that includes several assistive tools aimed at helping music-makers “jumpstart their creative process”.
The headline feature in FL Studio 2025 is Gopher, an AI assistant trained on FL Studio’s reference manual and knowledge base that provides instant answers to music production questions in the user’s native language.
Providing everything from FL Studio support to more general advice on production, mixing, songwriting, theory and more, Gopher is designed to offer quickly accessible guidance without having to leave the DAW.
Also new in FL Studio 2025 is Loop Starter, a feature that helps users quickly generate new ideas via FL’s Channel Rack. Pick a genre from a list of nine different styles that includes amapiano, drill, trap and EDM, and Loop Starter will automatically load up a stack of tempo-synced loops from FL Cloud’s sample library to Channel Rack and create editable step sequencer tracks loaded with one-shots.
Ideas can be instantly re-generated on a per-track basis, enabling users to quickly audition sounds until they find a combination that works as a starting point for a production, which can then be exported to the Playlist. Loop Starter is included with all editions of FL Studio and makes use of samples from FL Cloud’s free tier, so you don’t need a subscription to use it.
FL Studio 2025 also brings a simple but commonly requested improvement: more Mixer Tracks. FL’s Mixer has historically topped out at a maximum of 125 tracks, but Mixer Tracks can now be added and removed, with support for up to 500. Audio Clips have also been updated, adding the ability to stretch, pitch and reverse audio directly from the Clip Properties window.
FL Studio’s latest update also introduces Emphasis, a multi-stage mastering limiter plugin that’s exclusive to the DAW’s All Plugins Edition, and Mobile Rack, a collection of 36 low-CPU instruments and effects from FL Studio Mobile, now available on desktop.
Image-Line has also replaced Image-Line Remote with FL Studio Remote, a new and improved application for iOS and Android that enables you to control the DAW from your mobile device.
FL Studio 2025 is now available as a free unlimited trial or a free update for all license holders.
Find out more about the update on Image-Line website.
