Thomas Dolby is on the road again after 15 years. And how times have changed: unlike the year 1991, the year 2006 means he can blog the whole tour. For starters, he’s posted the gory details of his performance rig “for the geeks and musicians out there.” (You called?) Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 GHz, […]

It’s easy to miss stories among the various cool distractions on Matrixsynth, like videos of synth pioneers Laurie Spiegel and Suzanne Ciani. So, I can’t help but point to Matrix’s extended review of my book, along with some words from me about why I wrote it, even though self-promotion makes me feel funny. Why? Because […]

Among the many “best of” lists spontaneously appearing on the CDM forums, contributors and readers have compiled a fantastic list of inspirational music videos from a variety of acts. One thing that strikes me is the breadth of aesthetics; whereas once electronica had very strong connotations (and the videos with it), these are really high-art […]

While analog enthusiasts tout the benefits of that approach, Texas Instruments is bragging this week about the digital engine that powers Korg’s RADIAS synth, providing both analog emulation and digital processing. Unlike synths, Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips don’t get misspelled English names. Instead, the brain of the RADIAS is the Texas Instruments TMS320VC5502 DSP. […]

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 […]