Talking Synth Ace musician Michael Bearden shares his tips on finding the right synth for your sound Synthesizers open up entire new worlds of music. With today’s technology, synths—digital and analog, software and hardware—offer nearly limitless options when it comes to creating sounds and textures. Synths allow musicians of all stripes to generate music from scratch or completely shape existing material to taste. But how to best harness the... 

How to drive your tracks to the next level with customized virtual percussion So many of our favorite recordings would collapse without their own flavor of boom boom pow—the powerful percussion elements that propel a song at the drop of a beat. Whether you’re creating hip-hop, rock, jazz or R&B, your music will almost always benefit by integrating some form of percussion. But what if you don’t have access to Neil Peart, Lars Ulrich, Carter...