There are many high-tech solutions to making fashion into a musical instrument, like embedding sound circuitry, sensors, and wireless transmitters. Designer Alyce Santaro has found a low-tech, but ingenious, solution: weaving a special textile out of recycled audio tape. Dresses, flags, and even messenger bags can suddenly incorporate audio materials. In 2003, Alyce built a […]

Ed: The dynamic duo of hits in a wide variety of genres, Joey P. and Dale “RamBro” Ramsey, have contributed to albums selling over a combined 75 million copies. For CDM, they look at another dynamic duo: the combination of Cakewalk’s Project5 with Propellerhead’s Reason on Windows. Both programs tout an all-in-one design, but there […]

I get a regular stream of Q&A in my inbox, so as a new feature on CDM I’ll be answering selected questions for all our readers. Today, we’ve got a new Mac switcher wondering if an iMac will suit his needs, and a reader who wonders why he hasn’t been able to find any of […]

While we’re on the subject of Novation, the good folks at Novation / Focusrite were kind enough to sponsor the Phildelphia Laptop Battle covered here on CDM. They have a great write-up on what went down. They also got to raise the stakes: competitors battled not only for bragging rights, but free gear. So who’s […]

FaLaLaLaLa.com is a site dedicated to “Preserving Memories of Christmas Vinyl Past.” It’s a vintage holiday galore, with album art, music downloads, and lots of notes for albums like Christmas with the Big Ben Banjo Band and the Rock ‘n Rhodes Christmas by The Rhodes Kids. (Not ringing any bells, so to speak?) Best, by […]

The week before Christmas and New Year’s is usually totally dead, but apparently some software developers were clearing house and getting updates out the door before going on vacation: Reaktor 5.1 (Mac/Win) is actually a major new update with new instruments and sounds. The update is a whopping 80 MB; upgrade via NI’s update manager. […]

Here’s an instrumentation for the analog lover: a room full of modular analog synths and analog keyboards, packed with classics from Moog, Yamaha, Roland, and Korg. Composer Matt Hodson writes to tell us about his “London Synthesis Orchestra,” an ensemble filled entirely with synths: My latest project … ‘the London Synthesis Orchestra’. Based on using […]

Gijs Geikes has been hard at work since we last saw his latest bizarre Walkman Tape Player / Game Boy Sequencer. A new model sync with the Little Sound Dj cartridge: plug in a Game Boy, and other goodies (like a Walkman tape player and Stylophone keyboard), and you can create wild, screaming patterns like […]

Interactive artists and musicians have long experimented with sensor-packed gloves for controlling music, sound, and video. There’s Laetitia Sonami, who controls Max/MSP with her Lady’s Glove, and many other projects like the Hypersense Complex flex sensor glove-cum-gestural software as seen here this summer. Laetitia’s glove is elegantly sculptural, as seen below, and with years of […]

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 […]