Dierdre: French Electronica Vocalist Breaks Out

Dierdre, formerly singer with Ekova, is now lending her sultry French vocals to a fantastic, diverse solo debut called One. It's just hit the playlist at CDM HQ and sounds fantastic; check out a wealth of links for more information from The Suburbs are Killing Us (currently my favorite listening-to-music blog). Check the North American […]

BetaBugs and Other Free Plugins and Hosts Roundup (Windows)

Hey, kids, you know what time it is? It's Free, um . . . Wednesday. In which we try, mostly unsuccessfully, to keep up with the ongoing flood of free audio stuff for Windows. BetaBugs has added BugPass (bandpass filter which can double as a notch filter), and Moneo (deconstructs a stereo signal and remaps […]

Airfoil: Any App’s Audio to Airport Express

Rogue Amoeba, those virtuosos of routing audio in any Mac OS X app, have released Airfoil, their new application for routing audio from any Mac app to Aiport Express — not just iTunes. (The app was originally going to be called Slipstream, as we reported here.) Finally, you can listen to BBC Radio 6 from […]

Circuit Bending: Reed Ghazala on Free Learning, Teaching

Circuit-bending, the art of creating new instruments from old ones by creatively 'damaging' them with what would normally be no-nos (like short circuiting them), is spreading. Noah Fleischman of Roil Noise wrote in to talk about the resources that had been helpful to him getting started, a letter CDM published February 5. Circuit bender Reed […]

Stanton’s Pretty New Turntables

Digital interfaces and such aside, the turntable is clearly here to stay — having outlived the casette tape, it now looks like it will outlive the CD, too! (Watch out, computers — you could be next.) With sales booming, isn't it time for a design that looks a little more, how shall we say, 21st […]

DJ Mixer Features iPod Connection

After Numark's introduction of a USB DJ mixer, I was immediately excited to read in the fine print that Stanton's added an 'iPod connection' to its "soon-to-be-shipping" RM.404 and 406 4-channel DJ mixers. These are the same mixers with very-cool red backlighting on knobs, via Stanton's Illumiknobs(TM) technology. Wow, the iPod thing really is happening. […]

HP to Develop iPod-style DJ Player/Instrument

We've been saying for ages Apple needs to develop a music player for DJs. Jason O'Grady has been saying it for two years. Well, Apple, HP is likely to beat you to the punch: The owners of the Playlist club in London (which features a night for iPod DJs just like APT here in NYC) […]

Inside Mac Radio: iPod, Mac mini and Mac’s Future

My friend Scott Shepard has a great lineup for this week's Inside Mac Radio Show. There's a  theme: think iPod + Mac mini + OS X = bigger Mac market share. Apple's iPod Czar Stan Ng talks about the much-better battery life on last week's new iPod revision and how Apple plans total world domination […]

MadPlayer Handheld Music Maker, Other Toys

Just listening to music? Now that's a little dull. Kevin of prog-Celtic band The Nettles points us to the MadPlayer, a handheld music toy that features an algorithmic music generator – beat/groove generator, a mic/sampler, karaoke, and Internet access for sharing or connecting to your Mac or PC. Some pros have even picked it up […]

Jef Raskin, Macintosh Project Creator and Composer/Musician, Dies

We're saddened to learn of the passing of Jef Raskin, a multi-talented pioneer in computers and interface design who is best known for originating the Macintosh project at Apple. He died on Saturday. While the Macintosh was ultimately the result of contributions and vision from the large team that evolved, Raskin set out its original […]