Boss GX-100
Price: £469
With BOSS's tone technologies and a well-constructed sleek design, the GX-100 delivers top-level performance everywhere you play. This guitar effects processor has 23 amplifier models and over 150 effects derived from the flagship GT-1000 at a more affordable price. You can craft great sounds quickly and easily with the intuitive colour touch display alongside reassuringly well-made knobs and switches. Up to 15 simultaneous effect blocks provide unlimited tone possibilities, coupled with deep real-time command via onboard footswitches, an expression pedal and external control support. This pedal board really is a one-stop-shop for interesting and wonderful sounds, with great opportunities for recording, performing, and demonstrating the many effects that are possible with modern sound design.
LUMI Keyboard
Price: £299
LUMI have entered the piano learning scene with a very colourful package. The keyboard itself is a 24-key, full spectrum, illuminated keyboard – which you can expand with other LUMI Keyboards, to increase the number of keys available. For its size and weight it plays reasonably well. You’ll need to pair it (via Bluetooth) to a compatible iPad or Android tablet to use it (as the keyboard has no speakers built in) but once you do, that's when the magic begins. The app is extremely well designed with pieces to play to, lessons to progress through and plenty of other exercises to fully engage pupils. There are a plethora of awards and trophies to win by logging in each day to the app and playing, and the whole thing has a game-like feel as you work towards targets. This could definitely complement more traditional 1-1 teaching or be a compelling choice for in the classroom as it is very easy to adjust the difficulty for individual students.
Ableton Note
Price: £4.99
Ableton Note is Ableton's first official foray into the mobile music-making space. Designed specifically for the early stages of the music-making process, Note is a playable app featuring a curated selection of Ableton Live's drum kits, melodic instruments and synth sounds. You can easily use them to come up with beats, chords and melodies, or create your own sound palette altogether by recording the world around you into Note's sampler instruments. By uploading your projects into Ableton Cloud within the app, you can continue to work on your ideas on your computer in more detail. It really does feel like an extension of Ableton Live, but at the fraction of the cost.
BBC Archive Sounds
Price: Free
The BBC Archive is by no means a secret, but even I was surprised at how vast it is. This arm of the archive, which covers sound effects, is massive (over 33,000 recordings) and makes for a very interesting peruse. Amazingly, you are able to download nearly all of them as long as they are not being used commercially, so they are a great option for in the classroom or for school projects. The website itself has recently undergone an overhaul and the result is a database that feels modern and is easy to search through, with some excellent recordings.
