“MIDI is just for keyboardists.” Hearing generalizations like that must send shivers down the spines of the 1400+ members of the Yahoo Wind Controllers Group. They have enough to talk about to generate around 500 messages a month, chatting exclusively about MIDI and other digital wind instruments. If that kind of traffic sounds overwhelming, and […]

Looking for new wisdom and expertise on tools like the insanely deep Max/MSP/Jitter? (If you’re using Max, signs point to yes.) Cycling ’74 relaunched their site a couple of weeks ago, incorporating a variety of features that make this an indispensible resource for users of Max and other products. Since late last month, the new […]

Selling CDs? Not in 2006: now it’s about selling loops. AudioBase.com, just acquired and rebranded from the former identity appleLoops.com, already has 1,500 loops for cross-platform use. The whole library costs just US$99 (or $19.50 for a single 200-loop library), and you get instant online access rather than waiting for a shipment. Indie artists, take […]

As great as the potential of advanced touchscreens may be, for music and other media applications, touchscreens aren’t much fun to touch. Close your eyes and remove visual feedback, and you’re basically running your finger along a piece of plastic. (You’d think we could figure out a way to at least texture it without losing […]

As great as the potential of advanced touchscreens may be, for music and other media applications, touchscreens aren’t much fun to touch. Close your eyes and remove visual feedback, and you’re basically running your finger along a piece of plastic. (You’d think we could figure out a way to at least texture it without losing […]

The old standards: the Tin Pan Alley showtunes, reinterpreted by vocalists and bebop jazzers, followed more recently by reworkings of modern pop and rock tunes. The new standards: video game tunes, apparently. Especially if they’re from Nintendo games. The latest in the trend is MetroidMetal, with elaborate, sprawling metal covers of the moody themes from […]

There was a time when skeptics thought mice would never catch on. “People will never give up their QWERTY keyboards,” they said. They were half right: now we take both for granted. Now, more experiments in multi-touch interfaces are appearing by the day. Aside from mysterious Apple patents, we have, via We Make Money Not […]

Correction: A previous story misprinted the price for Pitch ‘n Time for Logic users as US$99. The correct price is US$399. -Ed. Digital pitch and time stretching has a dark secret: much of the time, it doesn’t really work. Make anything larger than a minor adjustment to the pitch and tempo of digital audio, as […]

US$1199 for a brilliant one-voice synth? Resident CDM hardware synth lover Lee reports. -Ed. The Dave Smith Instruments booth at NAMM was a buzzing hub of activity with performances by Parliment/Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell, BT, and even an impromptu appearance by Herbie Hancock. But I still managed to get some alone time with the new DSI […]

Moog synths are known for the prevalence of knobs that scream, “reach out and tweak me,” and the latest versions have enough memory to hold a whopping 896 presets. So why would one need a software/editor librarian? Perhaps because it’s still easier to move presets between banks on a computer than with the LCD on […]