To those of you from Mississippi, Louisiana, and other areas hit hard by Katrina, if you’ve got Web access and reading this, we’re thinking of you. It’s especially important for the music community to come together to help each other out around the world. Musicians often lack insurance, and are especially vulnerable financially, as all […]

Bored with keyboards and drum pads? How about light-sensitive photocells with customizable control options, all in a spacey case that looks like it escaped from Sun Ra’s Arkestra? Tony Amendolore of ElectroKraft has a new MIDI controller creation he calls the Lunar Module: Multiple photocell “portholes” light up blue for feedback; use as a Theremin-like […]

Amos responded to my call for people who’ve actually built the Sound Lab Mini-Synth discussed yesterday. Check out his lovely work setup: very neat and tidy. If you check out Amos’ blog skyline-7, you’ll see he’s had more luck with guitar pedals — actually, that’s probably a better first DIY project than tackling a whole […]

Our informal “DIY day” continues here: Fabienne Serriere follows up her how to get started with Csound tutorial with a walkthrough on how to build your own MIDI hardware, complete with custom sensors. It’s quite nice, but the aesthetics are a wee bit on the unfinished side (think raw, open breadboard). Now we need her […]

Now that this time I actually did my homework, more on Fabienne Serriere, the talented sound hacker who’s given us the two-part tutorial on custom MIDI control and Csound (see previous post.) From whatthehack.org: “multichannel audio specialist and futurist fabienne serriere (aka fbz) is a franco-american software, hardware and embedded interaction designer. she believes in […]

For fans of dub, there’s just nothing like a delay loop, with feedback cranked up and echoes going going going going going going going . . . okay, you get the idea. Our friends at Audio Damage have just created a US$39.95 plugin that gives you all you need for trippy dub effects: Audio Damage […]

Two things most people don’t care to understand: physics and how the heck your car works. But you’re different. Why, you probably already know that phase cancellation occurs when a sound source is delayed slightly (by a real-world reflection, or in recording and mixing), so that two coherent waveforms of opposite phase are superimposes and […]

Tokyoplastic’s Flash animations have won them widespread acclaim, including a Sundance Online award for their film drummachine. Their animation is hip, sexy, and centers around fabulous sound design with dramatic musical cues. Don’t miss the drum machine in particular — because nothing can compare with watching someone use their head as a mallet. To find […]

MAKE:blog reports on a build-your-own synth project that could be just advanced enough to be interesting, just simple enough that you’ll get through it without a disaster: Sound Lab Mini-Synth [Music from outer space] Looks perfect — a simple but capable design. And if for some bizarre reason this is too easy for you, you […]

Christopher Scheidel has been hard at work cleaning up his sophisticated Apple Logic Pro Environment template, which he uses to manage his guitar + keyboard + Mac Mini rig while performing. He’s been nice enough to share it with us: Logic template [Download] See Christopher’s site for further information. He promises more soon, including a […]