Lesson learned — again. Working on assembling your leap second compositions in Apple Soundtrack Pro, I hit repeated kernel panics, the rare but reboot-forcingy Mac equivalent of the Windows Blue Screen of Death. (More info: Kernel Panic FAQ; BSOD History.) Sounds like a Soundtrack Pro problem, right? Wrong: I removed some suspect plug-ins in my […]

Our blog buddy Matrix just sent this one: how do you create music that embodies an operating system? On our bad computer days, I suppose that would involve crashing death metal and lots of expletives. Let me rephrase that: how do you create music that embodies Windows Vista when Microsoft has hired you? Legendary guitarist […]

It’s my 2006 New Year’s Resolution: give you loyal readers a new site design, new features, new forum, and fix all the things that have been driving you and me crazy about the current site. (MSIE6 Windows users on lower resolutions? I feel your pain.) We’re making headway, switching from Mambo to the brilliant open-source […]

Release a synth with the heart of a PC, and it’s only a matter of time before someone tries to use it like a PC. Sure enough, Korg’s flagship OASYS, with an Intel CPU and a Linux-based OS, has been hacked to run off-the-shelf distributions of Linux and Windows from its CD drive: Karma Lab […]

You wear it on your shoulder, but it’s not a guitar. It’s a US$425 MIDI controller, powered by SONAR and photocell sensors for Theremin-like control in the air. It could be none other than the latest creation from instrument builder Tony Amendolare, aka ElectroKraft. You might have seen this instrument in November (see post and […]

“I just want to record and edit audio tracks — what do I need?” A lot of the software for recording and editing multiple tracks of audio is, admittedly, overkill for the basic user. That could make the new creation from WinAMP creator Justin Frankel appealing. (More bizarrely, he also created a cross-shaped effects processor […]

Even on the far-flung Western coast of America, 2005 is about to end, meaning to all of CDM’s readers around the world, a very Happy New Year! Thanks for a terrific year. It’s been amazing getting the feedback I’ve gotten in the first full year of this site’s operation: the readers here are a truly […]

First post of `06: Thanks to Tom Whitwell for pointing me to the pages of a magazine for which I write, Keyboard, to find out that soft synth maker Arturia is in fact recreating the Prophet-5 synth. Sequential’s original Prophet-5 is a perennial favorite on lists of vintage instruments, so it’s little wonder Arturia has […]

It seems Dave Bryce of Dave Smith Instruments couldn’t wait until next month’s NAMM trade show to confirm the existence of the DSI Mono Evolver Keyboard, which he did yesterday in a thread on Harmony Central’s User Forums. Those pining for a modern version of the Sequential Circuits Pro One are about to get their […]

Converting sample rate and bit depth to lower-resolution data, as you’d do when a project was finished for output to CD and online files or when converting prior to assembling a project, is a dangerous task. It’s the moment at which you can lose a lot of what you put into your sound: the spectral […]