As seen on Slashdot: a group of students at MIT have constructed a Disco Dance Floor, with over 1,500 LEDs and covering 128 square feet. Dance on it, and pressure sensors trigger some 4,000 colors. Jeez, I knew I shouldn't have gone to Sarah Lawrence; these MIT folks don't mess around. Not only are the […]

Dance Wednesday continues, so get your dancing shoes on. You can trigger audio and video with a Dance Dance Revolution pad (or any USB game controller). Resources: You'll want some kind of PS2-to-USB converter so you can plug it into your computer, for starters (here's an example). Then check out software like STEIM's JunXion (Mac […]

Updated: PACE copy protection has been updated and will be compatible with the shipping version of OS X 10.4 Tiger. Read CDM's updated report.

Even Bob Moog's circuit boards are gorgeous. Qwave (via a Harmony Central message thread) couldn't just admire his Minimoog Voyager keyboard from the outside — he had to check out the guts. That has ignited some controversy over the lack of discrete transistors in the analog Voyager, but I think people are overreacting. The ultimate […]

It's the attack of the clones. The latest is a clone of Clavia's Nord Modular keyboard, the EUR 149.00 North Mood. (via Gearjunkies) The VST plug for Windows/Mac painstakingly sampled, sometimes note by note, presets on the original Nord. Supposedly it's an instrument "without compromises" — but here's a significant one. Part of the whole […]

The Princeton, NJ chapter of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) is celebrating 50 years of the RCA Synthesizer on Thursday, April 14. (PDF info) Automatic lounge music: The RCA Mark I wasn't exactly what we'd think of as a synthesizer. Developed by RCA engineers Harry Olsen and Hebert Belar, its original intention was to […]

Straight from the files of "Looks-like-an-April-Fool's-but-it's-real": From owlProject: The Log1k and iLog are instruments built from logs. (via near near future) The Log1k is a log with a gearbox motor that spins wooden disks to produce rhythmic noises, complete with "touch-sensitive switches" — wait, as opposed to non touch-sensitive switches? Don't forget the flat panel […]

Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is shipping, with delivery by April 29. US$129 to upgrade, but there's a bundle with the new iWork and iLife (including the superb GarageBand 2) for $249, and students/faculty can nab it for US$69. My OS philosophy remains: if you're an audio person, don't ever install the OS upgrade the […]

Scott Wilkie from M-Audio talked to Scott Sheppard's Inside Mac Radio show on April 9. Obviously M-Audio's new iControl is the first controller designed specifically for GarageBand, but what about other applications? Scott's answer was clear: If you're using Logic Express or Pro, YES If you're using anything else, NO Does that mean even track […]

Off-topic, but this is just too cool to pass up — and there's a CDM tie-in, too. Regular reader Cris 'Atariboy,' the musician/graphic designer who did the UI for music software like Rax, Zebra, and Bidule, has been busy. Via plasq, the folks who brought us the Musolomo live sampler instrument, comes Comic Life, a […]