Jason Freeman, a professor and musician from Georgia Tech, wrote a Java application which scans your iTunes library and creates your own “signature” out of small audio samples from your songs. From reading his technical docs, it’s more sophisticated than you’d think — the program finds your most played songs and then uses an FFT […]

Urs Heckmann is a prodigy of plug-in development, so when he sends something new, we pay attention. And in a world of a look-alike synths, Zebra2 does seem to qualify as “new”: a next-generation “wireless modular synth.” Didn’t quite get that? Think four joystick control, multiple sound-making techniques, massive, graphical sound sculpting and more:

Looking for gifts for others, or yourself? Or a way to drop hints about what you want? CDM is here to help. Next up for digital musicians ready to give and receive: music with a conscience, and books worth reading, many suitable as stocking stuffers.

Musician and author Mark Nelson tries out the highly anticipated M-Audio MicroTrack recorder for O’Reilly Digital media. Mark takes the test seriously, actually heading out into the field (Maui) and recording with it. (See Hawaii, above. Now why don’t I get to do a review like this?) The verdict? The recorder isn’t perfect: no real […]

Welcome, Computer Music readers — feel free to drop me a line. Here’s a roundup of Max/MSP resources, as a companion to the feature story on Max I wrote for Computer Music Magazine. Max is a deep, deep program, but to get you started, I’ve lined up: Unusual controllers for performance (tablets to game controllers) […]

Little late on this, but Matrixsynth last week points to a DIYer who built a Minimoog clone. Doesn’t look entirely completed, but it’s certainly an interesting idea . . . except that if you’ve got this much time, why not build something new? The Packrat cartoon by David Lovelace has something to say on the […]

Going to The Yale School of Music? Here’s some good news: the Associated Press reports that, thanks to an anonymous $100 million donation, advanced music studies will be tuition-free. (via) The 200-student school was already an elite institution; now you can expect it to be more so. Yale isn’t the only institution to have free […]

While we’re on the subject of free, here’s a massive collection of free VST plugins for Mac and Windows: Rocketloop It’s really great to see everything in one place; makes it much easier to navigate to what you need. Unlike some other sites, Rocketloop is perfect for window browsing. You’ll stumble across imaginative synths like […]

Kevin of The Nettles has this quandary about music-synchronized Christmas lights: There’s this Xmas lights video (make sure that you have your sound on): Wizards of Winter [new, better link] Lots of other video links to crazy Christmas light displays [Ed: Updated those links; thanks Afro! -PK] Do you happen to know the origins of […]