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

Roland has introduced the Aerophone Brisa, the latest member of the company’s Aerophone family of digital wind instruments.

The Aerophone Brisa combines the design and key layout of a traditional flute with Roland’s SuperNATURAL Winds sound engine, which they say mirrors the immediacy and dynamic control of traditional instruments.

Aerophone Brisa features 100 built-in sounds, including flute family instruments such as concert and bass flutes, piccolos, and jazz flutes, along with saxophone, clarinet, trumpet, and other wind instruments. Also included are orchestral strings, world sounds like pan flute and shakuhachi, plus synthesizers and drum sounds.

For flutists, the instrument introduces a unique way to shift octaves by directing their breath between two mouthpiece holes as they play. Flute and trumpet fingering modes are available, along with a special Brisa mode that’s ideal for saxophone and recorder players and anyone new to wind instruments.

Aerophone Brisa’s digital engine allows players to add harmonies and drones, enriching solo and ensemble sessions with tonalities that typically require multiple musicians. There are many ways to control sounds in real time, including customizable thumb and S1/S2 buttons and an integrated motion sensor to apply vibrato, pitch bend, and other effects with simple body movements.

Aerophone Brisa features an onboard speaker, headphone jack, and rechargeable battery, letting you play anywhere. The USB-C port provides audio/MIDI communication with music production apps, and the headphone output can also be used to connect with a sound system for live performances. Bluetooth MIDI is also available to send wireless MIDI data to Bluetooth-enabled devices.

The Aerophone Brisa will be available in November 2025, including on the Amazon site for $1,759.99.

Behringer has reintroduced the BM-15M Resonance Filter, a knockoff of the Moog MF-105 MuRF pedal.

The pedal was originally introduced as the BM-15M MURF Box, but was shortly later pulled from the market. We haven’t seen any explanation from Behringer on this yet, but it looks like copying the ‘MURF’ name may have been a legal liability.

Like the Moog original, the pedal is designed to let you create resonant filter effects, and to let you animate these effects rhythmically.

Features:

• 8 Filters with selectable patterns
• Based on the Moog MF-105 from the ’90s
• Envelope control
• USB/MIDI control
• Rate control for modulation speed
• Resonance control for enhanced filter effect
• Mix control for blending between input signal and MURF output
• Expression pedal input for real-time control

At least some of the initial batch of Behringer’s MuRF knockoff had noise issues, as documented by Starsky Carr in his A/B comparison. Hopefully this issue was addressed with the name update.

The BM-15M Resonance Filter is shipping now from their factory, priced at $129 outside the US, and $50 more ($179) for US buyers.

DSTRTD has introduced Malleable, a new application for macOS and iPad that lets you create custom synthesizers, effects and more.

Here’s what they have to say about it:

“Malleable is malleable. It’s your next synth. It’s your pedal board. It can be your vocal chain or your stereo bus. Use it to control a fleet of Eurorack modules or send MIDI signals to your favorite old school rack units.

Malleable is powered by Cursive, a new programming language developed in-house by DSTRTD to facilitate the creation and manipulation of audio, MIDI and control voltage data.

Cursive was designed for musical performance: it is continuously interpreted in real-time, enabling you to modify your code without disrupting your flow. It’s powerful and flexible yet can be learned easily in just a few minutes.”

Every Malleable preset comes with an intuitive user interface. You can customize these user interfaces, or design your own, with just a few lines of Cursive.

Features:

• You can use Malleable as the source of your sound or as just a single step in your effects chain.
• Custom User Interfaces-Not everybody wants to code and that’s why every Malleable preset comes with an intuitive user interface. And you can customize these user interfaces, or design your own, with just a few lines of Cursive.
• Your Modular and MIDI Toolkit – Malleable comes with a suite of tools that you can use to interact with your modular and MIDI hardware. From arpeggiators and sequencers to ADSRs and LFOs. And all of them are fully editable by you.
• Eclectic Presets-Malleable comes out of the box with a wide array of presets ranging from audio effects to synthesizers. The presets are all open source and designed to demonstrate the Cursive language. You are welcome to edit them and share them however you want.
• Flexible – Malleable is designed to be run as a stand alone application but you can also use it as an Audio Unit plugin within your DAW as either an instrument, audio effect or MIDI processor.
• Visual Tools – Malleable includes both an oscilloscope and a spectrum analyzer. Use the oscilloscope to troubleshoot your Eurorack output or use them together as an educational aide to gain a deeper understanding of audio synthesis.
• Language Functions – Part of what makes Cursive powerful are the many built in functions it includes. These snippets of code instantly provide musical capabilities such as filtering, quantizing, wave folding and more.
• Made for Sharing – By its very nature, anything you make in Malleable is easy to share with other Malleable users. All you have to do is copy and paste your code. Built a new hundred-oscillator drone that you want to share with your friends? Send it to them in an e-mail. Want to share it with the world? Then post it online for anyone to download.
• Light and Dark Modes – Malleable can switch between light and dark modes.
• Simple Licensing and No Subscription – Pay once and its yours. No subscription necessary.

Video demos are available at the DSTRTD site.

Malleable is available now for $179. A free version, with a limited feature set, is also available.