Illustrator and director Dave McKean did the impossible to produce MirrorMask, his film collaboration with Neil Gaiman. He built his own animation studio, and did a lot of the work generating texture maps, designs, and even compositing on his own. I’d love to track down Mr. McKean myself on this, but in the meantime, there […]

Loopers and phrase samplers can be fun tools, but odds are you’ve wished a hardware or software looper would work more musically. Aaron Leese has designed a prototype system, combining a piece of USB hardware, wireless USB pedals, and Windows software, that intends to do just that: Imagine seeing a musician who could play a […]

Technology is creating some unusual new opportunities for composers. Aside from producing music for video games, we can now get inside your head while you’re working out. (Well, okay, we could do that before via, erm, Walkmans and such, but now it’s more interactive.) Electronic duo The Crystal Method has produced a continuous album called […]

Early 2006 brought us the blockbuster Intel Mac ports — Logic, Live, Reason, and (most recently) Pro Tools LE — but now, finally, plug-ins are flooding in with Universal Intel versions. Just in over the last week: BIAS Peak 5.2 brings Intel-native support to the old standby Mac audio editor. With Soundtrack Pro now available […]

Ticklebooth is a charming collection of personal vidcast and miscellaneous video links – both amazing and terrible – from around the web. Choice cuts include, Otafuku Rex – Do Me, Zioni – Soo Tall, classic Michel Gondry, Ratatouille (new Pixar trailer) and Monalisa Descending a Staircase:

Looking quite handsomely like 70s stereophile equipment, a couple of prototype Ableton controllers have shown up on the website of Kenton, the UK MIDI manufacturer: Kenton Electronics MIDI Controllers; AB mini (shown left) and AB DJ (right) Via Gearjunkies, who I swear are wired directly into some sort of psychic network that tells them when […]

As reported on CDMusic, Max/MSP/Jitter is in beta on Mac for version 4.6 (Max) and 1.6 (Jitter). Intel Mac native support is just half the story; Mac and Windows users alike have a whole bunch of goodies to enjoy in Jitter:

As reported on CDMusic, Max/MSP/Jitter is in beta on Mac for version 4.6 (Max) and 1.6 (Jitter). Intel Mac native support is just half the story; Mac and Windows users alike have a whole bunch of goodies to enjoy in Jitter:

Rivalries are good: they keep software developers competitive, leapfrogging each other in features. They keep the pressure on, and having seen what happens when one company gets a monopoly (Microsoft Office, I’m looking at you), progress generally slows. Notation users have benefited from the Finale/Sibelius rivalry, and that competition continues to produce better and better […]