This dead-on send-up of British educational programming takes a look at the world of music and music-making, from that music you young people like so much (“the Bensons, or the Ombudsman”) to the “Harrington 1200” music synth shown here, which you’ve probably never seen “because it costs almost a thousand pounds.” (Boy, would that you […]

Anyone trying to follow announcements out of the Intel Developer Forum this week can be forgiven for developing a headache: One Day. Four Keynotes. Infinite Leaps. [Intel.com] Infinite leaps? I think maybe Intel’s going a little nuts now that they’re working with Apple, headquartered on Infinite Loop. (Only Apple would name their office drive after […]

Todd Hartmann writes to say he’s updated his MIDI splitter / transposer utility, built in Java for Windows, Mac, and (if you know what you’re doing) Linux. Plenty of other tools can do this, but Todd’s tool is free, cross-platform, portable (you can take text-file preferences with you), and — here’s the cool part for […]

The Web is buzzing about some sketchy details of a pre- pre- pre-production synth from a new company called Sonoric Instruments. There are some preliminary sound samples and lovely product renders: hey, if nothing else, these guys can make some attractive imaginary case designs.

This year is all about more bandwidth for audio production, and one of the buzzwords you’re likely to hear a lot more of is PCI Express (PCIe). We’re only just now seeing cards that use the cutting-edge bus, but over the coming months they should become more commonplace. Granted, if you’re like me and focused […]

We’re all for interface innovation and TC Electronic does fantastic audio processors. But their new “MINT” interface technology not only wins for silliest meaningless acronym since synth maker Kurzweil’s “V.A.S.T.”, it also looks like the interface panels from a Klingon warship in Star Trek III. What’s going on here? (Hint: it might actually be cool […]

My God, it’s full of knobs. The Audities Foundation is a not-for-profit we can all get behind: their preservation is the “preservation of electronic musical instruments and associated documentation for use in museums, recording studios, modern instrument research and new music/dance/film works.” (So they’re saving these things for us, right?) Most importantly, via Analogue Industries, […]

Solving a problem none of us knew existed, Motorola has patented a method for entering notes into a cellphone via an “intuitive” method that emulates frets. Pay close attention, and see if you can make sense of this: . . . an input specifying a root note (FIG. 2) indicating a position on a neck […]

Alesis has always managed to make good hardware synths at low prices, and the quality of their analog-modeling synths (see our review of the Micron) has been stunning. The Fusion is a particularly impressive deal, with multiple synthesis engines (sampled, physical modeling, virtual analog, and FM) and even a genuine-article Alesis HD 8-track hard disk […]

Over a hundred years ago, Thomas Edison first attempted to record sound and moving image in synchronization (a task that still challenges undergrad film students). The results were believed lost for many years, until the sound was recovered on a broken cylinder. Edison’s original experiment actually failed, but in the hands of legendary film and […]