Spherical harmonic modulation of a globe with vertices that produces unusual additive synthesis? I’m already sold — and then I read the kicker: the experimental plug-in Harmonical can also blow your speakers. Now this is a must-have. Okay, before you get too excited: yes, you can blow your speakers with any loud signal. And while […]

If you haven’t seen it yet, The History of Sampling by Jesse Kriss lets you interactively navigate the links between sampled songs and samplers. Jesse’s site pulls data from the-breaks, a huge collection of sampling rap music. The real story, though, is how this site, and many other nifty new sites making rounds on the […]

Radio streams are just the start: there are countless reasons why you might want to sample audio from an application that lacks recording capability, from Game Boy emulators to experimental soundware. Last month, CDM shared a few tools and asked you for tips for app-to-app recording. Here are the results (which I’ve tested further): Mac […]

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to attend the 2005 IMC Expo at NYC’s Chelsea Art Museum, a showcase of new interactive sound/visual installation works. The show featured everything from “volumetric” LCD light cubes to sci-fi-style interactive displays to installation toys. For an overview of the new works: [wpg2]archived/imc/[/wpg2] Coverage Elsewhere: See core77’s […]

If you’ve dreamed of navigating through virtual reality worlds with just your hands, a la the movie Minority Report , you’ll like the prototype of CINE (Collaborative Immersive Network Environment) by Miro Kirov, Houston Riley, and James Tunick with advisors Jean-Marc Gauthier and Frank Migliorelli (yes, it’s those crazy NYU ITP folks again!) Full-body gestures […]

Two- or three-octave keyboards from M-Audio? Whatever. Try the “original” mini-keyboard: the toy piano. Doron Altaratz hacked a toy piano for use as a video controller: play keys, and this visual organ responds with smoothly-shifting visuals. (VJs will know Doron as the alter-ego of VJ Sputnik.) For more on IMC Expo plus pictures, see the […]

I don’t care who you are. Odds are, your musical instrument collection is nowhere near as large, strange, and wonderful as Eric Schneider’s. I covered his vast Web collection in March, and he wrote to let me know that it’s gotten larger: near 200 pieces, more than can fit online. Recently, Eric did manage to […]

Once upon a time, “composers” wrote only for Classical instruments. The greatest found ways of pushing their instruments — even violin pizzicato was once avant-garde extended technique. Now, of course, composers are writing for film, digital media, multimedia, robotic guitars, cell phones, and yes, video games. While Hollywood movies have remained conservative in their taste […]

We heard about it first here in CDM’s comments (after I made a joking comment about music via ping-pong), but Music Thing gets the scoop on it in action: students in the New Interfaces for Musical Expression course at NYU have in fact rigged up a ping-pong sample playback controller. (Photos & descriptions at MT) […]

As some thought my post about Pd was meant to convey all available free software, I am rounding up the major free applications, open source applications, and commercial applications for DIY sound-making. (Wasn’t my original idea, but, hey — good idea!) We’ve covered them routinely, but it would be great to have them linked from […]