CDM has a special monthly feature in Computer Music, written by yours truly, “downsampling” the contents of the site into thematic subjects. Online, I’ll monthly post a companion piece full of links — get the coffee! -PK The theme of Downsampled #3 for Computer Music was one dear to my heart: building your own custom […]

Well, if you were depressed to hear that, despite supporting great, original music and being a terrific place for a composer to work, Cyan was shutting doors, you’ll appreciate this news. Cyan is not dead yet says Dean Takahashi in a Mercury News blog. (See Brent’s interview earlier this week with Musical Man of Myst-ery, […]

Okay, music lovers. I’m readying a report on the major subscription services for Windows users. (Napster, Yahoo! Unlimited, Rhapsody) The concept is terrific, and much as I love iTunes and the iPod, the ability to have unfettered free access to music is great. Unfortunately, the service I really love is Yahoo, because of its player’s […]

The line between hardware and software is still, let’s face it, confusing and inconvenient. On one hand, you’ve got your hardware control surface keyboards that work well with software, but without booting your software they don’t make any sound. Worse, you often have to manually assign knobs and faders to your software synth. On the […]

Sorry to disappoint you, but Real World Digital Audio will not be a new MTV reality show where participants live together in a boozed-up recording studio for a few months and have “issues” with their fellow audio engineers. Though I’m still holding out hope for that. No, Real World Digital Audio is my long-delayed book […]

I asked for more wee tykes “creating digital music,” and here’s the first: Excellent choice of synths, too: the Novation ReMote hooked up to what looks like Apple Logic Pro. No more information here, though this is on the Website of net label / artist community Experimedia. Keep practicing, Kayla, and you’ll be on the […]

Love your Nintendo 64 game controller? And your Fender Strat guitar? Can’t choose? Why not have both at the same time? Via Joystiq, Gin Blossoms lead singer Robin Wilson (who is also a contributor to Official PlayStation Magazine) had the idea to combine two classics. StratGame 64 [GuitarMania] Sadly, like the other guitars in that […]

CDM’s resident game composer W. Brent Latta talks to Tim Larkin, the composer behind the eagerly-anticipated, upcoming Myst 5 and the current PC/Xbox title Pariah, and featured in the live game music performance festival Video Games Live. (Sound samples at his site for both games; watch this space for updates on the Myst soundtrack and […]

Tim’s back with another tip. Baltimore bender Peter Blasser has created oddities like the much-blogged worm-powered synth (using worms as connections for a circuit-bend patch bay; via Music thing) and bent wooden synth kits (also via MT). But that’s not all. Blasser, aka Ciato-Lonbarseee, has plenty of other strange creations: Many odd synths, many odd […]

Mystery solved: Cakewalk introduced the Dimension Pro synth for Mac and Windows simultaneously the week of AES. A post on KVR Audio which appears to be from the Cakewalk beta team suggests that Cakewalk is looking for Mac OS X beta testers: Cakewalk is looking for OSX Beta Testers [KVR Message Topic] Cakewalk (aka 12 […]