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Organizers of Synthfest France let us know that this year’s event will be held in Nantes on April 19/20/21, at the same location as last year.

The event features a trade show, presentations, tutorials, live performances and more. In addition, the event will again feature a Tombola (raffle), with some great prizes, including an Osmose, EssenceFM, Eagan Matrix Module, Wofi and more.

This year’s event will include a presentation by developer and inventor Christophe Duquesne, who will discuss the synths of Hans Zimmer’s Dune 2 soundtrack.

Preview of what you can expect to see at Synthfest:

Confirmed participants include:

1010music

Adam

Alexis Faucomprez

Algam

Arnold Turboust

Arturia

Axel Fischer

Baloran

BLL instruments

BVR instruments

Charlotte Dubois

Chris Calcutt

Christian Lamalle

Christophe Duquesne

CSFI

Cynthia Caubisens

Datafone Studio

DeLaurentis

Embodme

Enjoy Electronics

Eric Joly

Expressive E

Faselunare

Fcpro.Audio

Filling Distribution

Francis Rimbert

François Bréant

Frédéric Renaudin

Fred’s Lab

Fulgur audio

Guillaume Bonneau

Haken Audio

Heritage Synthesizers

HLabs

Jean-Claude Dubois

Jean-Marc Tournier

Jean-Yves D’Angelo

Jérôme Bridonneau

Joranalogue

Kaona

Kiviak Instruments

Kodamo

Korg

KR Home-Studio

Kurt Ader

L1V3

La Voix du Luthier

Larix-elektro

Laurent Evain

Laurent Juillet

Louis Penalva & Xavier Laufenberg

Man behind the machines

Marc Caro

Manfred Veber

Michael Geyre

Michel Deuchst

Michel Geiss

Morphor

Nanopolis

Nord

Nori Ubukata

Novation

NRSynth

Oberheim

Odalie

Olivier Delevingne

Olivier Grall

PH Modular

Philippe Brodu

Piano de Voyage

Piano LED

Process Formation

Projet Home Studio

PWM

SACEM

SawUp

Schmidt

Sequential

Shure

Sifasile

SoundMit

SSL

SynthFood

SynthR

Tao Boisserie & Maxime Thaveron

Theresyn

Thierry Demougin

Thierry Rochebois

This Is Not Rocket Science

Tinhu

Touellskouarn

TriaR-X Synth Project

UNAC

Université d’Angers

UVI

Vanessa Bertran

Vika Yermolyeva

Vintage Synth&Co

Wally Badarou

Wee Noise Makers

Woodbrass

Yves Usson

Details and a full schedule of events are available at the event website. Tickets are also now available.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hardwell has become the latest artist to release a Producer Pack for the iOS versions of GarageBand and Logic Pro for iPad. His free content bundle includes more than 400 Apple Loops, five drum kits, more than 40 Alchemy synth patches and a Live Loops grid, all ready to be used in Apple’s mobile music-making apps.

“I’ve never shared my sound design secrets,” says Hardwell, but with his free Apple Producer Pack for GarageBand iOS and Logic Pro for iPad, he’s breaking that habit.

Dutch DJ/producer Hardwell has established himself as one of the biggest names in big-room EDM, collaborating with a slew of famous artists, remixing the likes of Rihanna and Coldplay and headlining festivals around the world.

“I’m obsessed with making kick drums,” says the Dutch EDM maven, and now he’s giving you a load of them to use in your own music.

Looking back across his career, Hardwell says: “When I started as a producer, the samples never sounded the way I heard them in my head, so from that point on I started developing my sound design skills. I just started to watch tutorials, read about it; how compressors work and all that, and making my own samples, especially kick drums. I’m obsessed with making kick drums.”

Hardwell goes on to explain that, in dance music, the kick drum is the “fundamental of the whole song,” adding that, “writing chords and melodies, I’m not thinking ‘oh, those chords should be really next level, something that people have never heard before’, so it can something really familiar or something really new, as long as the emotion is there.”

One his collaboration with Apple, Hardwell adds that “I’ve never shared my sound design secrets – this is the first time I’ve released a proper sample pack. If you’re a beginner and you download this pack, just start messing around with it. Everything is set to go – you can just drag and drop loops and use them in all your productions.”

You can download the hardwell Producer Pack from inside the iOS versions of GarageBand and Logic Pro for iPad. For more information visit this link.

Organizers of ContinuuCon 2024, the sixth international Haken Continuum conference, have announced that the event will feature a panel discussion focusing on some of the unique synths featured on Hans Zimmer’s Dune 2 soundtrack.

The event is scheduled for April 26–28 in the Pittsburgh suburb of Carnegie, Pennsylvania. Continuum and Osmose players and interested musicians can look forward to a reception on the opening night and two full days of presentations, workshops, and demonstrations by some of the world’s foremost authorities on the Haken Continuum and EaganMatrix.

Zimmer hired ContinuuCon organizers and EaganMatrix developers Edmund Eagan and Christophe Duquesne to design and perform sounds for the soundtrack, along with Expressive E’s Guillaume Bonneau. The above image captures, from left to right, Christophe Duquesne, Edmund Eagan, Hans Zimmer & Guillaume Bonneau in Zimmer’s studio.

At ContinuuCon, Eagan and Duquesne will play audio examples from the film and reveal programming techniques used on the Dune: Part Two soundtrack.

In addition:

• Eagan will provide instruction on EaganMatrix programming.
• Continuum inventor Lippold Haken will discuss the Continuum’s most recent updates and unveil plans for the future.
• Duquesne will demonstrate his latest experiments in additive resynthesis.
• Electronic musician and ContinuuCon organizer Russ Hoffman will discuss Chick Corea’s treatise on best practices for playing music in an ensemble.
• Thereminist and Continuum expert Rob Schwimmer will discuss Continuum performance technique.
• Canadian composer Tony K.T. Leung will demonstrate an expressive controller of his own design that allows a string player to control eight dimensions of the EaganMatrix using familiar performance gestures.
• Engineer Mark Smart will explain how to control a 3-dimensional laser show using the Haken Continuum and Native Instruments’ Reaktor software.
• Paul Dempsey will present the HC-One plug-in, which allows VCV Modular software to interface with EaganMatrix hardware devices.
• David Gerard Matthews will discuss and demonstrate the Ondes Martenot, a precursor to the Continuum.

Ticket sales for the annual electronic music event are ongoing, with early-bird pricing ending on Monday, March 25. Conference tickets are $280 until that date and $320 thereafter. See the event website for details.