It's a keyboard wrapped around a pole. Rotate it, and you can play in a different key or mode. Run your finger along it, and you've got a scale. I suppose what makes this useful is the ability to find scales and modes more easily, with one downside: you've got to play a pole. (See […]

The Miami Winter Music Conference has an enormously overwhelming line-up of events. InternetDJ has the scoop on which events to check out. Here's what CDM sees as the big events: Remix Hotel should be fun again, and it's both chill and free. Wednesday BPM Magazine is hosting an all-female lineup — though we look forward […]

There's just something about an echo chamber, magical spaces that have the power to transform sound. An article in Nature (discussed at collision detection some weeks ago and more recently at aptly-named blog Echo Generation with anecdotal evidence) Mayans may have built the El Castillo pyramid with specific audio-filtering capabilities. Echoes can sound like chirping […]

With everyone hacking into the new PowerBook bump sensors — accelerometers built into the PB to protect the HD if you drop it — it was only a matter of time before someone figured out a way to control music by tilting. Bumptunes is a script that lets you, um, tilt, rock, bump, or otherwise […]

Rockstar Games, the people behind Grand Theft Audio, have turned their attention to music with a free 8-track looping application built entirely in Flash, free for online use. Beaterator features: 8-track / 240-bar sequencing from anywhere with an Internet connection, free Built-in stock sound bank from the likes of Matthew Dear (or upload your own […]

We've got more details on Beaterator from Rockstar's web developer (unofficially, of course, but he has some interesting info on how it came about, as a predecessor to the very-cool 2001 creation Rhymerator.) Now, if Rockstar could just create a killer music video game . . . Hit read more for details. Most of the […]

If 2004 was the year of the blog, then 2005 will be the year in which everyone has an idea of what the big new blog trend will be. Here at CDM, we've considered the options, from Podcasting to videoblogging and yes, even smelloblogging (in which odors are delivered via RSS feed to fitted nostril […]

Ever routed audio a few feet to an outboard effects processor? How about routing your audio all the way to Oberhausen, Germany? Thanks to the online Tank-FX (link in German), you can. A server feeds your audio sample into the tank and records it with a pair of Rode NT-5s, adding a nice, natural reverb […]

Tom at MusicThing scooped CDM on the Japanese cat costume accessory for your Big Briar/Moog theremin, but I'm surprised he didn't point out the other oddities at the same site, like a Matrioshka (Russian nesting doll) theremin shell. You know, given nearly-unlimited choices of things to wave my hands over, I just can't think of […]

While we're on the subject of theremins, sure, you could build one yourself — this is one of the single most popular DIY electronic projects of all time — but would you feel like a pro "gigging musician"? Bob Moog, who cut his teeth building theremins before he'd even thought of building modular synthesizers, has […]