G’day, pleased to meet you – This is the first installation of ‘dithered is the new black’, a weekly column about all the great music one can find online – usually for free. I’m atariboy. (Cris Pearson in ‘real life’) I make music (see atariboy.com) and design software (see plasq.com). Lets get to it . […]

Okay, CDM readers. We’ve got a dual challenge this week: what headphones are perfect for gigging, perfect for DJing, and make a perfect birthday present? Reader-turned-CDM columnist atariboy writes: I am looking for some good headphones for my girlfriends (jemgirl) birthday later this week. Around the $100 mark. Will be used for DJing/gigging. The Sony […]

Back in April, we reported on an M-Audio Palm-Sized Recorder, which the company was showing at the German MusikMesse conference. Think CompactFlash-based device, 24-bit/96 KHz WAV/MP3, mic / line / digital ins, USB 2.0 connection. (Specs subject to clarification/change.) Now, M-Audio has shown the portable recorder again, at the Barcelona AES Conference (which CDM ranks […]

Here’s your typical PR hype: “because guitarists deserve, and WANT, some anus-stretching.” (We know computer musicians, remix artists, drummers, keyboardists, etc. do, too.) The Metasonix Butt Probe — sorry, the “TX-2” — is a $549, hand-made, hand-painted tube-based distortion effect, complete with fist, ream, and scre parameters. Tube-based so that it has a lovely, warm, […]

To make Friday truly a Day of Shame (hey, you have the holiday weekend to recover, at least if you’re in the US), I bring you: truly offensive, awful, and nausea-inducing album covers. No, not World’s Worst Album Covers (as pointed out in December by Music Thing.) The Museum of Bad Album Covers. (Hear that’s […]

Reader Dave Chalmers sends us a link to his blog; he writes: It is a collection of tips and tricks aimed at the practicalities of doing live video on no money, but it is very applicable to VJs too, as it discusses playback formats, projector setup, etc. etc. This is all based on my own […]

A fun discovery today from one of our favorite sites, EM411: a new set of ‘chip’ emulators is available from mmonoplayer. Available in a few flavors including Max/MSP externals, PD externals, and a few Pluggo-powered VST’s, the Atari 2600, 5200, 7800, ColecoVision, Sega Master System, GameBoy, NES and IntelliVoice are available. mmonoplayer claims that additional […]

It’s nice to see the Web abuzz about digital music downloads of one of the great geniuses of all time, instead of, you know, just another that mash-up. In that spirit, I point you to BBC’s Radio 3 for hours of great weekend listening: Beethoven Symphonies 6-9, BBC Radio Orchestra They’re quite decent recordings, though […]

Ed: My VJ Day spilleth over a bit, so just a little more VJ coverage before we return to the usual music stuff. -PK Holly Daggers is another superstar VJ, having toured with folks like Fischerspooner and the Black Eyed Peas. (Holly’s probably reading this, so maybe I shouldn’t mention the Hillary Duff thing — […]

Ben Dove’s String Thing is a cello-like instrument with four metal bars that can be struck or stroked. Like a fretless instrument, pitch is continuous. Building String Thing: Laser Pointers and Vibrating Rods: What’s great about the String Thing is two-fold: first, it’s an ingenious design, and second, Ben rigorously documents how he did it, […]