Preset libraries are rarely designed with the avid sound designer in mind. Usually what you get is overdesigned patches that don’t really work for your music. Andrew Souter sends an interesting collection today, however: a $15 library for Native Instruments’ Absynth synth with 1,000 wavetables (single-cycle waveforms, the building blocks of lots of classic digital […]

Now having seen fold-up guitars in briefcases, here’s another approach to what to put in your portable guitar rig, from our friend Kevin Johnsrude of The Nettles. Kevin plays both bass and guitar, but he has a more portable rig so he can play music everywhere. Kevin writes: In the photo: The diagonal headless guitar […]

It’s been a while since I looked at widgets for music applications, but here’s a new one, and it might be enough to make me switch back to Dashboard from Konfabulator: BigBlueLounge Dashboard Widget The widget includes a keyboard with built-in sounds (though no MIDI sending, sadly), tap tempo, and three calculators. You can calculate […]

Kevin says it all: Haven’t you always wanted to be a sexy Japanese lead keyboard virtuoso heading her own fusion power trio? Haven’t you always wanted to be Hiromi? I expect some of you would settle for being the bass player. Watch as Hiromi tears away a grand and a Nord synth, simultaneously: For more […]

We’ve been watching Wusikstation for some time; it’s a lovely, gigantic soft synth for Windows that benefits from a devoted community. Version 3 was promised back in February, and now it’s here — or most of it, as there are still new v3 features that won’t appear until a point-one update: Full details from KVR […]

The UK Sony PlayStation site has posted Josh Randall’s keynote at the Cybersonica arts fest in London. Josh Randall, a sometimes CDM reader (still out there, Josh?), is Creative Director of Harmonix, the groundbreaking game shop that created Guitar Hero and other interactive music games like Amplitude, Frequency (pictured), and (soon) Guitar Hero II. Interview […]

I hate ending on sour notes. So, instead, let’s look at some positive opportunities for music distribution. Indie labels and music makers alike on this site I know have no love for Digital Rights Management, but let’s look at some alternatives, from Mozilla-based iTunes alternatives to music on sticks (and reasons to dump iTunes).

Cory Doctorow of Boing Boing responds here to my commentary on platform-agnostic music listening. On a basic level, I’m not saying anything different than what Cory originally did: Windows DRM is broken and frustrates customers, and the MTP connection cripples Windows Media devices by limiting interoperability. (Try plugging a recent MTP device into a Mac […]

My first MP3 player, an original Creative Labs Nomad (one of the first MP3 players), was simple to operate. I took MP3s I’d ripped and dropped them on the device like a drive. So, what’s happened since then? Now music players have grown much more complex, deeply tied to Digital Rights Management. Some new Windows […]