In this video, Jessy Lanza dives deep into her lead track “Don’t Leave Me Now” and shows off all the layers that went into her “Doofy Bass”, the techniques behind her soft-yet-powerful vocals, how she combines VSTs with analog synths, and her favorite vocal sample in the chorus. Artist and producer Jessy Lanza’s latest album, Love Hallucination marks her first full-length release since moving to Los Angeles, a journey that has influenced and emboldened her sound. Lanza’s music has been a fixture on the decks for the past decade, and Love Hallucination marks a new chapter in her evolution. The ..read more

Nestled in the trees, light streams through a mid-century residence-turned-studio as A-list artists and up-and-comers fill the production suites. The Futuristics (Alex Schwartz and Joe Khajadourian) realized this vision of a collaborative space after decades of working together and crafting hit after hit for artists like Halsey, G-Eazy, Wiz Khalifa, Justin Bieber and many others. Their ability to pen and produce ear-catching pop songs is rooted in their practice of making talent comfortable, prioritizing connection, and digging into the real-life topics on artists’ minds—exactly what their stu ..read more

Contest Details: Love is in the air and we love the sound of it! Make a love song using Arcade and you’ll be entered to win a $2,500 grand prize or one of ten $199 Sweetwater gift cards! Winners will be randomly drawn after February 14th and announced on February 21st. We will also be picking our favorite videos and reposting them on our social media channels so let’s see what you got! Step 1: Record A Video Showing How Arcade Is Used Record a vertical video (keep it short! no longer than 60 seconds total) showing us the love song you made with Arcade. Make sure to show the Arcade interface fo ..read more

CONTEST DETAILS: New year, new music creations await! Show us how you make music with Co-Producer’s Pack Generator and you’ll be entered to win a $2,000 grand prize or one of ten $199 Sweetwater gift cards! Winners will be randomly drawn after January 31st. We will also be picking our favorite videos and featuring them on our website and social media channels so let’s see what you got! Step 1: Record A Video Showing Your Process Record a vertical video (keep it short! no longer than 60 seconds total but at least 15 seconds of a song/beat) showing us how you make music using our new AI tool, Co ..read more

Field recording is the art of capturing sounds in the world beyond the studio environment. There are a multitude of applications for this audio—storytelling, news-gathering, sonic portraits, podcasting, data-collecting, and of course making music. Artists utilize found sounds in a variety of creative ways—from the percussive samples of Tune-Yards, to the poetic soundscapes of Claire Rousay, to making beats out of random objects via the tutorials of Andrew Huang.  We wanted to explore some of the unique considerations when field recording for the purpose of creating music. We turned to pro ..read more

Music production is an art that fuses the technical and the creative in a pursuit to craft something that both sounds good through speakers and that moves the listener to feel something. Easier said than done. Whether starting from scratch, building out ideas, or getting a track to the finish line — when you hit a wall there are many techniques you can use to tunnel through. We reached out to our friend (and Arcade expert), producer/writer OSCILLATR (Dylan Bowes) to share some of the tips and tricks he uses when creating his sample-heavy pop songs. The Blank Session… Sometimes getting started ..read more

Experiments with analog tape and the exploration of its practical limits have led to some of the most sonically-satisfying production, music creation, and instrument-building techniques. From crafting scores out of snippets of tape as Delia Derbyshire did at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, to the playback of individual keyboard-triggered phrases on the beloved Mellotron (used on countless records — Beatles and Led Zeppelin included), to the long-format layered loops in the work of Brian Eno, Steve Reich, and William Basinski — tape looping and sampling are cornerstones of electronic music. Paire ..read more

The dance floor is a space for freedom, connection and celebration. Yet, when electronic music producers Maude Vôs and Marie Nyx looked around, they found that there was a need to elevate their diverse community—which lacks representation in the larger commercial industry. Together, they formed Delusional Records, an inclusive label and collective devoted to showcasing LGBTQIA+, female-identifying, nonbinary and BIPOC artists—amplifying their work, and aiming to inspire the next generation of artists to see that there is room for them on the decks. Can you tell us about Delusional Records—its ..read more

Thousands of people create great music every day with Arcade, and we want the world to hear it! Show us what you #MadeWithArcade and you could get more than just likes and comments. We’re giving away $3,000 to one lucky winner, $199 Sweetwater gift cards to 10 others, and we’ll be sharing many of the submissions on our channels—so lots of visibility for your music. Art is subjective, so we’ll be drawing a winner randomly instead of choosing a favorite—that way everyone will have an equal chance. It just takes two simple steps to enter: Step 1: Post on Social Post a new video of music you made ..read more

Once all of the elements of a track are complete and before it goes out into the world, mixing is a critical step. Getting every layer to work together across the frequency spectrum takes subtlety and finesse. While many tracks find themselves in the hands of a professional mixing engineer, a number of producers go on to mix their own work. For those of you who take this path, we teamed up with longtime Output collaborator, mixing and mastering engineer Mario Borgotta, to explore mixing from an industry professional’s perspective. He shares his top five techniques for improving a mix in this ..read more