Guitar Hero makes you feel too much like you’re in a Japanese video game arcade? (Heck, they have taiko drums and stuff.) Rather use it as a way of reinventing how you play the guitar — aside from, of course, spending thousands on a robot guitar from Gibson or experimenting with new tuning systems? Here’s […]

Speaking of 20th Century spirits, Matrixsynth sends us a photoset of rare images from the demonstration album put out by RCA for their Mark II synthesizer. We’ve looked at the Mark II on this site before; it’s a little like the Model T of electronic synthesis: RCA Mark II Demonstration Record What I especially love […]

The Princeton, NJ chapter of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is celebrating 50 years of the RCA Synthesizer on Thursday, April 14. (PDF info) Automatic lounge music: The RCA Mark I wasn't exactly what we'd think of as a synthesizer. Developed by RCA engineers Harry Olsen and Hebert Belar, its original intention was to […]

While everyone else modulates the 70s, 80s, and even 90s, step back to the 1950s – with a complete array of test oscillators, vintage sound equipment, mixers, patching, and tape. It’s Berna3, and it’s possibly the most retro electronic music software … ever.

It’s the end of an era in music notation software. 35 years after its introduction as Coda Music Technologies’ Finale, the landmark scoring software is at the end of its life. Developer MakeMusic is offering a steeply discounted crossgrade to Steinberg’s Dorico, and says Dorico represents “the bright future of the music notation industry.”

Repeat after me: there’s never too much music. So sure, while artist are not always hyped, a particular music project isn’t associated with anything trending or might be tough to package – the sounds hit you. Here are some picks for Bandcamp Friday you very possibly won’t see elsewhere, but … you don’t need to, because you’re here.

We talk about the Mac, but ultimately the Mac was a vehicle for GUIs – icons, mice, scrolling, toolboxes, painting. We talk about the iPhone, but the iPhone turned out to be about mobile photography and apps and touch. Get too hung up on the (very pricey) initial hardware, and you might miss some of the potential of what Apple is doing with what they call spatial computing. And you’ll also miss how some of these threads in interaction design started – as with those other examples – long before Apple.

It’s the most on-sale time of the year. You know the drill – but here are some select picks out of the flood, including some sales on tools that happen only this week, both for music creation and live visuals.

Beloved boutique plug-in house Audio Damage has found a heck of a retirement for 33 of its vintage plug-ins: it’s giving them away for free for macOS and Windows. Here’s a complete guide and an ill-advised test scenario. Audio Damage’s Chris Randall explains in a blog post: Everything Old Is New Again… Here’s the skinny: […]

Sometimes the way out of darkness is hitting play – to reach deeper feelings in a way only music can. The challenge can be just getting the track queued. All due respect to algorithms, half the joy of doing that is finding someone you trust.