Composers and arrangers, you know the problem. Sure, you’d like to be able to immediately hear every note you put down on a score played by real musicians, but it’s just not possible. You need to turn out a quick demo, or make a rehearsal CD for a singer, and that means turning to your […]

Image-Line’s FL Studio is a huge underground “cult” hit for digital music making. It’s Windows-only, and it seems to get more love from the European press than the US writers for some reason (maybe because Image-Line is stingy with free press copies). But it’s got some great pattern-based features for those of you who like […]

Our friend James Grahame (of Retro Thing, Reflex Audio, and hopefully soon to become a guest contributor on CDM 2.0) has launched his first book: Essential Retro: The Vintage Technology Guide (See also James’ announcement, Music thing) Why should CDM readers be buying this book? Because the table of contents looks like a list of […]

I couldn’t be more proud to share this one: over a year in the making, my book Real World Digital Audio is now hitting shelves: Real World Digital Audio [Official Book Site] I launched this project with Peachpit Press because we wanted to compress the broad range of skills you need to master music production […]

Just came back from the ITP show at New York University and had a blast. (Ah, yesterday. Remember when we still had a transit system in this town? Good times.) I know we have some readers over there, so, NYU students, faculty, and ITP visitors, drop me a line. Let me know about your work […]

It’s not too late. In the spirit of procrastination, I offer my last round-up of products. Mail order these suckers “rush” or stop by your local music store, and you’ve still got time. (Or, if you’re really lucky, you’re giving to someone like me with a January birthday and the “holiday season” just extends onward […]

Kids today. They’re at a concert, but they’re too busy texting and chatting on AIM on their cellphones. For Generation Why?!, we now have lighter images for your cellphones, so you don’t have to be bothered to take your cellphone and a lighter to the next Pussycat Dolls show. Available for US$1.99 (US customers only?) […]

Most of the world is living in the dark ages of headphones. (iPod earbuds, I’m looking at you.) That’s sad, because it’s a great time to buy pro-quality headphones: they’re better-sounding and cheaper than ever. One trusted maker is Audio-Technica, which has generously taken its previously Japan-only headphones and released them here in the United […]

Let’s cut straight through the marketing-speak on the Intel’s new notebook platform. As usual, Intel is likely to give its new platform a confusing name that sounds like a pharmaceutical product (Centrino?), and will make weirdly vague feature claims, like the new platform will be “better at running music.” (If they meant running Cakewalk SONAR […]

Imagine playing a duet with a robot: that’s the idea behind Haile, a robotic percussionist that can “improvise” based on analysis of live playing. Project Page with Video Clips [Gatech.edu] Gil Weinberg, Assistant Professor and Director of Music Technology at the Georgia Institute of Technology, who created the project with the help of grad student […]