The Akai LPD-8 is one fantastic portable controller with velocity sensitive pads you can really pound. Unlike it's Korg counterpart, the Akai is built to be thrown in a backpack and can take a beating. My only complaint is the knobs are a little small, I'll probably find some that I can replace them with. Any thoughts?
Native Instruments' free Kore Player works great and the sound packs available for both the Player and Kore 2 are unbelievable. My favorite this year is Deep Reconstructions. This pack offers some of the most amazing effects patches ever heard, from glitchy electronica to swirling psychedelia. In my book this pack just barely beat out Sonic Fiction, which is amazing itself. Check them out!
Nucleus Soundlab's Reason Wizardry is the best video tutorial series ever recorded on sound design for Propellerhead's Reason. Jeremy Janzen teaches many of the tips and tricks he uses when designing sounds with Thor and Reason's other instruments. I studied electronic music in college and still learn valuable tools each month. Well worth the $9.95 a month!
Camel Audio's Alchemy was released at the end of 2008, but I only picked it up in December and have spent the last 3 weeks trying to get my head around this amazing soft-synth. Granular, spectral, virtual analog, additive, and sampling synthesis - this synthesizer has it all.
When Moog announced the new Midi Murf Moogerfooger I was skeptical. Don't get me wrong I love my Murf pedal, but I didn't see the point of having a midi connection on one, until I found out that you'd now be able to program your own patterns with the included Midi Pattern Editor software! Moog just made my favorite Moogerfooger even better ;-).
2009 was the year of the grid controller. From Akai's APC40 to Livid's Block everyone was playing follow the Monome. For my money the best of the bunch has to be Novation's Launchpad. Cheaper than it's competition by a couple hundred dollars and more portable to boot; the Launchpad feels great and comes with Novation's tried and tested Automap control software, making this controller more than just a one trick pony.
Recently dubbed "the best Reason ReFill in 2009" by Steelberry Clones, Nucleus Soundlab's latest ReFill Pantheon II is a must have for all Reason users, and I'm not just saying that because I worked on it ;-). This refill has some of the loveliest pads I've ever heard produced on the Reason platform, as well as dirty basses, strange percussion, soaring leads, and epic arpeggios. Plus 8 .rps demo songs produced using sounds from the ReFill by artists like Tom Pritchard and Adam Fielding. In a close second for best Reason ReFill is NSL's Synthetic Kits, which I reviewed back in August HERE.
One of my favorite effects pedals is Casper Electronics' Echo Bender and Peter Edwards introduced a cosmetically souped up version in 2009. The distorted and glitchy sputtering echoes are the same, but the case now has rollbars, wooden endcaps and a dedicated battery compartment. Nice work Pete!
Honorable mention goes to Propellerhead's Record, Ableton's decision to fix the bugs in Live 8, and Dave Smith's Tetra synthesizer. What are some of your favorite finds of 2009?
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