Sometimes, you feel there must be more to rhythm than 16 squares in a row. You realize your ears are analog and alive. You feel the desire to create a soundtrack to the pictures in your head. Sometimes, you simply want to explore a different style of music.

Cognitone updates Synfire Pro and Synfire Express to version 1.7. The entire sound setup and device management was rewritten and the user interface was largely simplified to make sure the Music Prototyping Studio is more intuitive, robust and accessible. Many features were added or improved, making this Synfire the most advanced ever.

Cognitone has released Akai EWI-USB Control, a utility software for the wind controller hardware EWI-USB from Akai Professional. The tool provides controls for all the hardware's parameters and allows for saving frequently used presets to disk. This way a player can keep multiple settings for different setups. The tool is available for free.

Akai EWI-USB Control can be chained between the controller hardware and a sequencer or synthesizer software in order to filter the MIDI data stream in real-time. Four different key switches can be assigned to individual hardware sensors and trigger specific sound articulations this way.