Tired of looking at knobs with labels like “oscillator” and “filter”? Wish you could build an “ultimate instrument” that did what you want? Normally, we’d give you practical ideas like building it in Max/MSP or Reaktor or Pd, but you could also just go and make an imaginary instrument in an animated video: The Ultimate […]

As reported here last week, Apple’s 7.2.1 update to Logic Pro and Express adds ReWire support to Intel Macs. Logic 7.2 also revamped the way ReWire works on all machines, so it’ll benefit all Logic users, not just Intel Mac owners. But the addition of ReWire means you can now fire up a Core Solo […]

While on the topic of locating yourself using sound, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to Freesound, the fantastic community sound library (currently pushing some 17,000+ Creative Commons-licensed samples). If you’re not yet familar with Freesound, you can broadcast your recordings to the planet, free for use in music worldwide, and pull recordings without […]

Any other industry, and a manufacturer Website with nothing but user stories about a product would be just another marketing ploy. But this is the music and audio tech industry, and, frankly, we love our tech toys and use them in interesting ways. It’s little surprise, then, that the Wires Suck! Website, dedicated to Frontier’s […]

Follow your ears! Yes, there was a time when aural senses were vital to location and geography. In the spirit of resurrecting that spirit, Spencer Kiser’s projects look at new ways of mapping using sound. Full details on his thesis page, but in brief: Sound maps: Field recordings in Forest Hills, Queens (outside Manhattan) are […]

PACE Anti-Piracy announced today that InterLok 5.4 for Mac will support both Intel-native and Universal binaries. What did I just say? Let’s translate that to English: if you’ve been waiting for music software to go Intel-native on Mac, one major hurdle was just cleared. PACE provides the copy protection in a broad range of Mac […]

Cybersonica is underway in London, bringing with it wild, new sound art. Organizer Chris O’Shea puts it this way: The works selected . . . move beyond the ‘screen, keyboard, mouse scenario’ and respond to physical input, proximity, sound, kinetics, elapsed time and the surrounding environment. Check out the preview videos, photos, and descriptions at […]

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 […]

Launching us into the weekend are some fabulously fun Flickr finds, forwarded by fine folks and friends: Pheezy (aka Evan Cordes) got a look at the sirens, automated pianos and drums, and other mechanical musical wonders on display at the National Gallery’s installation of Ballet Mechanique, as seen here previously. He took some photos of […]

Novation’s SL series seeks to finally liberate us from manually assigning MIDI controllers to software, by automatically assigning its generous set of controls and displaying parameters on a lovely high-contrast onboard display. It could be just the thing for laptop-based performers, but a lot of us already have more keyboards than we need. If it’s […]