Check 1, 2, 3 — Issue 005
Check 1, 2, 3 — Issue 005 The fifth dispatch from SoundX : Base. One artist, two reads, three things from the room. A Newsletter…
Check 1, 2, 3 — Issue 003
The third dispatch from SoundX : Base. One artist, two reads, three things from the room.
A Newsletter by SoundX : Base · soundxbase.com
Check 1, 2, 3
Issue
003
Date
July 2026
Frequency
Monthly
Based In
Dubai, UAE
Check 1, 2, 3 is SoundX : Base’s monthly dispatch — the signal from inside our world. One artist you should know, two things worth your time, and three things straight from the studio.
— The SoundX : Base Team
Signal Check — Company Updates
What's Happening at SoundX : Base
SoundX : Code · Launch
SoundX : Control — Ships July 30
Control turns the camera you already own into a gesture controller — your hands driving the music in real time, no extra hardware. VST3 and AU across every major DAW, a 14-day trial, and a provisionally patented way of putting the body into the signal chain. Join the waitlist →
Also This Month — Across SoundX : Base
- After Hours, Vol 001 is here. We had to move it — but it’s on. After Hours is a late-night jam with a different genre each edition; Vol 001 is hip-hop — MCs, vocalists and instrumentalists trading verses, covers and originals over a live band, J Dilla pocket, anything goes as long as it grooves. Friday July 10, 11:30pm at Q’s Lounge — the club Quincy Jones built inside Palazzo Versace Dubai. Reservations or walk-ins at Q’s.
- SoundX : Workshops. We just closed another round of FOUR : WEEKERS — the next round of Workshops looks a little different. More on that soon.
- Rolling Stone MENA Music Industry Accelerator — Outcomes. The short is live on Instagram: brand deals, new jobs, film scores, albums in progress — all in the words of our cohort. Watch →
- BRAINSTORM. A recap of our EEG-driven audiovisual performance — and a first live demo of Control — is up on YouTube. Watch →
1
Segment One
Artist You Should Be Following
Max Cooper
Belfast · Electronic / Audiovisual
Max Cooper has a PhD in computational biology. He spent years in genetics research before he gave himself fully to music, and he never really left the science behind — he turned it into the work. His live shows aren’t just songs played out of speakers; he uses the latest technologies and his knowledge of biology to make your body really feel the music.
See It Live
On Being · The 3D Audiovisual Tour
His current show pairs the music with Dolby Atmos sound and vibrotactile floors that push the bass through your body as physical vibration — you feel the low end in your chest before you can name it. He debuted Reflections of Being at London’s Barbican as part of the Feel The Sound exhibition: projection, touch, and sound treated as one instrument. It’s a concert that argues, convincingly, that a show can be something you feel with your whole body.
Start with: On Being · @maxcoopermax
2
Segment Two
Things Worth Your Time
Read. Watch. Think.
— 01 of 02
The Scientists Came for the Dancefloor
Music Culture
Something quiet has happened at the edge of music: some of the most original people making records trained as scientists first. Floating Points finished a PhD in epigenetics before Promises. Max Cooper has one in computational biology. Holly Herndon’s came out of Stanford. We talk endlessly about technology and music merging — the tools, the plugins, the AI. The more interesting convergence is happening in the people. The same mind pulled toward the structure of a cell or the logic of a system turns out to be pulled toward the structure of rhythm and harmony too, because underneath they’re the same instinct: listening closely to something invisible and trying to understand it. Science and music were never opposites — they’re two ways of paying attention. And the records these artists make aren’t colder for it. They hold more wonder, not less, because someone who knows exactly how the machine works chose to be moved by it anyway.
— 02 of 02
Every Great Producer Is Really a Listener
Craft
Production looks like adding — more layers, more plugins, more parts. The best producers do the opposite. Their real skill is hearing what a song already wants and getting out of its way. Now that anyone can make anything, the scarce skill isn’t making — it’s knowing what to keep and what to cut. A producer is a professional listener first and a button-pusher second. The ones worth working with can tell you, in a single pass, which idea is the song and which four are hiding it.
3
Segment Three
From The Studio
Three Things We're Working On Right Now
Launch · 01 of 03
Let the limitation do the work.
Every constraint — a small team, a tight budget, technological limitations — is also a filter. It forces a choice: to do one thing properly. The strongest products, like the strongest records, tend to come when a limitation is treated as a brief rather than a barrier — when you let what you can’t do sharpen what you can. Do that one thing well enough and the tool itself disappears — all that’s left is the result. And a limitation you meet head-on will teach you more than having no limitations ever could.
Songwriting · 02 of 03
AI Can Make a Song. It Can’t Have a Reason.
The machines got good at the notes. What they can’t supply is intent — the reason this song, by this person, right now. That was always the actual job. It’ll hand you a competent song and a competent caption all day — but it’s never felt anything, and it was never in the room. The records that connect are built from a specific emotion, a real memory, something that actually happened to you, and that’s the one thing a model can’t fake. The same truth is what your marketing grows from: the story, the why, the person behind the record. AI can’t live any of that for you.
Songwriting · 03 of 03
Edit like a stranger.
Fall in love with the song while you’re writing it — you have to, or you’ll never finish it. Then, when it’s time to finish, become someone who’s never heard it. The stranger doesn’t care how hard the bridge was to write or how much the second verse means to you; they only hear what’s actually there. It’s also why a producer and a mixing engineer matter more than ever, not less — they’re the humans who pull that feeling out of you and protect it all the way to the master while being able to edit like strangers. Make them trusted members of your team, not afterthoughts.
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