Welcome, Keyboard Laptops Live and Computer Music Readers! Feel free to say hi and check out the rest of the site. Photo: Vello Virkhaus with Red Hot Chili Peppers in London (thanks, Vello!) Live visuals for keyboardists? Absolutely: if you’ve got MIDI chops, slick new tools can help you tickle projected imagery while you tickle […]

Jackie Passmore is a talented VJ touring with Ladytron (and, in spring 2006, Stereolab). There are some talented genes in this family: her brother was the lead programmer of Acid. (Sorry, not the other Acid I was thinking of.) Thanks to sponsorship from Korg, she accompanies her Apple laptop with a Korg video mixer and […]

There are two ways you can get close to a new 200e analog synth from Buchla. Either (1) Spend $19,850 for an 18-panel unit or (2) Be Jim Aikin, and review it for Keyboard. Buchla 200e: Programmable Modular Synthesizer [Keyboard Magazine Review] (Thanks to Matrixsynth for pointing to this, and a Buchla video.) I can’t […]

The iRocker is a set of tools for guitarists you can load on your iPod. For beginners, iRocker includes a virtual chordbook with 200 chords and fingerings, plus a guide to scales. 5 different chord progressions / riffs are provided for playing along. More useful to most of the readers here, though: iRocker includes a […]

From the Share Skype site comes an interesting application of voice conferencing: getting your band together. As a background, our band Liquid Playground is reuniting and performing for our 10 year college reunion at Princeton in May, but the problem is we haven’t seen or played with each other for 7 years. time heals most […]

That time of year is upon us: two wonderful things, shopping, and receiving toys. So, while I normally start thinking about Christmas after Thanksgiving, I now come to you. Why should you submit your own ideas to CDM’s upcoming holiday gift guide? You’ve seen something cool, and you want to evangelize it to your fellow […]

MIDI Optional, Glowing Green Bars Standard I know what you were thinking during the silent news week as I was on vacation: “if only . . .” If only someone would release a synth based entirely on vacuum and gas-filled tubes. No pretty sine waves, mind you: only saw, square, and square with suboctave. And […]

Work in digital, but dream of tubes? You’re the target audience for the Vacuum Tube Valley Audiophile and Music Expo. Apparently, the fall show just took place in Arcadia, CA, but the spring will bring the tubes to my neck of the woods: North Brunswick, NJ, just outside of New York City. This retro-looking show […]

Sorry, couldn’t resist running that headline. Michael sends us (via Eric at Metasonix) a shot of Robert Rich’s incredible modular synth setup. That’s one eclectic rig, complete with a Butt Probe TX-1 stomp box squeezed in among other gear. And yes, that’s an M-Audio Ozonic keyboard and a PowerBook running Ableton Live, proving that in […]

Nearly 1000 stories and one year after creation, we’re rolling along here at CDM. I’m on a weeklong vacation from major editing duties, though I hope to share an occasional dispatch in the meantime. After I get back November 18, some big developments will be coming here at CDM as we begin work on a […]