New York, New York: A wonderful town. Declaring random days for music conferences and — wait, huh? Jailing Game Boy musicians? Let’s deal with the weird news first. Remember how there’s a big 8-bit music concert tomorrow (Saturday) here in Manhattan? Our friends Nullsleep and Bit Shifter from the International Chiptune Resistance concert were arrested […]

Tokyo-based DJ Daito Manabe has devised a unique use for a turntable: he hooked it up to a multiple-PowerBook rig so you can scratch 34 tracks of sound or sit back in a vibrating chaise longue. I asked Daito how this works, and responded in an email that reads a bit like a poetic riddle: […]

Wired News has just stumbled onto 8-bit music a la vintage computers and Game Boys. Christopher Null compiles a terrific set of links in there, including Alexei Shulgin, who covers rock standards on a 386DX. (Via the always-excellent LSDJ mailing list, for users of that Game Boy cartridge — though Nanoloop lovers show up, too.) […]

Ah, the life of a Mac user. You can buy your PC every time you want, but the Mac user lives in constant fear of buying a new PowerBook two days before Apple unveils a surprise upgrade. I’m in that very boat right now, and then Apple announces it’s holding a press event today in […]

As CDM expected, Apple has unveiled new hardware: New PowerBooks are available now, with 1440 x 960 resolution on the 15″ (the old 17″ resolution) and 1680 x 1050 (equivalent to the 20″ desktop display) on the 17″ model. Battery life is improved by 22%, and the models support the Apple 30″ display, but prices […]

Apple’s PowerBook announcement is a little disappointing for power-hungry mobile musicians (more pixels, but no more power), but their desktop news is drool-worthy. By next month, they’ll be shipping quad G5 systems (dual processor, dual core), and they’re shipping dual-core machines now, all with faster RAM and faster video. The Power Mac line, starting at […]

An incredible amount of stuff coming up here in NYC: VJ Book: Paul Spinrad’s new The VJ Book is packed with interviews and how-to information and ships with a DVD full of VJ samples, mixable content, and demo software. (Paul and I got to work together on an upcoming issue of Make Magazine, which you’ll […]

Finally, the power to choose: some of the best bundled synths are getting unbundled so you can use them with whatever host you want (cough, Ableton Live). Days after Cakewalk launched their own Dimension Pro synth (a Pro version of a synth that’s included in Project5), the folks at Image Line (better known as the […]

Video is increasingly part of performance, and you’ll notice the major VJ hardware makers — Roland/Edirol and Korg — also happen to be musical instrument manufacturers. Roland and Edirol are even building in automatic communication between their keyboards and their VJ hardware, from low to high end. I think video will increasingly become part of […]

So, you want to make some noise, but you don’t want to spend a lot of cash? Check out PowerFX’s new bargain-basement sample-based subtractive synth, the Swiss Army Synth. (via Harmony Central) It does virtual analog synthesis, it does sample playback, and it’s dirt cheap. This bad boy has an interface only a mother could […]