I love controversy. But after a week in which US politicians were talking about World War III (or was that IV) and somehow CDM’s great comment threads wound up on the topics of whether hardware or software was better (discussion = not allowed on this site), and whether starving children would be able to eat […]

Lemur 1.5 was announced today, bringing some significant improvements to this unique multi-touch display/control surface. Specifically, this update addresses a number of complaints about Lemur, including some I voiced in my review for Keyboard Magazine: Easier mapping: MIDI and even OSC assignment was a bit of a chore in the existing Jazz Editor release, partly […]

Resolume have just released Beta 2.4 for public consumption. My favourite addition so far is BPM sync for clips and effects, but this version also includes DMX control for lighting equipment, opening up a whole new level of possibility for staging events. New in version 2.4 beta: BPM Clock With the BPM clock in Resolume […]

Negroponte’s $100 One Laptop Per Child will include creative music making tools for children. Our friend Nathanael Lecaude writes us: Just wanted to let you know what I was working on during the summer, we’re doing a sequencer/algorithmic music generator for the OLPC project. We did all the protoyping in Max and are now porting […]

Cycling ’74 has posted a fascinating set of videos of artists talking about how they use Max/MSP/Jitter. (Thanks, Kevin!) Jamie Lidell talks about approaching Max as a vocalist and being a “one-man funk tornado.” It’s interesting to me that Max/MSP has made the transition with him from his classic IDM style to funk — solid […]

Akai’s MPC hardware was terrific in its day, launching whole genres of music. But today, software like Ableton Live (and FL Studio, and many others that function brilliantly with 4×4 sets of pads) give us the flexibility to make new kinds of music. So, even as the MPC hardware has continued to evolve, many of […]

Alesis has its eyes on the drum market with two new products: The Trigger iO is a trigger-to-MIDI percussion interface for drum triggers. It will go head to head with Roland’s TMC-6. There’s no predicting how good this will be until we see it, but from a marketing standpoint, it looks like a smart direction: […]

Europeans tired of hearing the rest of the world talking about the imaginative music exploration game ElectroPlankton, now you can get your hands on it. Creator Toshio Iwai just got his European edition, as seen on his blog. He’s also taken the lovely photos of the packaging of the different editions shown. He deserves it: […]