Thursday rant time: It’s time to get over loops, stop generalizing about music technology, and find the record button. Poor GarageBand. Loops can be a fantastic tool, a way of sketching out ideas, having virtual instrumentalists with which to practice your chops, or remixed into something truly original, and they’re useful to beginners and pros […]

I’d like to thank the Academy . . . Yes, it’s that time of year when the entire global music press put their heads together to pick their favorite products. It’s a bit like an Editor’s Choice, only with all the editors. The results sometimes lack nuance, and I wouldn’t take them as product advice, […]

Max/MSP and Xcode, correction: Okay, while it might be handy to have a copy of CodeWarrior around, I’m happy to say I was wrong about developing externals. Despite what the PDF documentation says in the Max/MSP SDK, you can now develop Mac externals using Xcode. Check out the new documentation, posted by David Zicarelli. I’ll […]

In a stunning official April Fool’s joke, Apple announced that . . . Wait. Scratch that. Apple actually is running Windows XP on its Intel Macs. Just in case this is the only site on the Interweb you read, Apple’s new Boot Camp technology is available for download as a public beta and will be […]

Native Instruments’ bold claims that KORE is “the worldÃÅ’s first Universal Sound Platform” continue to earn skepticism from some parties online. But even with over a month to go before KORE’s release, there are some indications of how KORE might evolve. Here’s CDM’s current outlook on the situation:

Oh, boy! It’s my favorite topic: whether hardware or software instruments are “better.” Ugh. Anyway, another month, another trade show, another round of new products that attempt to blur the lines. Let’s see how they’re doing: Shown: Mystery synthesist from Synthfool

The Lemur multi-touch touchscreen controller is the rare kind of product that breaks entirely from convention, raising fundamental questions about how we make music. It’s comforting in a way, then, to see disagreement about just how well the finished product works. After over a year of buzz, detailed in-practice reviews of the Lemur are emerging, […]

I have to point this one out in case you missed it: none other than George Massenburg chimes in on CDM’s comments on the new Focusrite Liquid Channel (click through to comments on that story for context): Not sure everyone knows that although digital emulators are quite competent at some chores, others, such as comprehensive […]