The day the iPhone was announced at Macworld, some of us immediately wanted to use it as a simple multi-touch controller for music. It’s no substitute for a dedicated, large, expressive multi-touch controller like the JazzMutant Lemur. But it’s also far less expensive, useful as a phone/Internet device/media player, and could easily be a simple, […]

Yes. You can now VJ from your iPhone, controlling your Max/MSP/Jitter patch via Safari and the new aka.iphone object from Masayuki Akamatsu of aka.wiiremote fame. The aka.iphone object is a work in progress, but stay tuned, there’s much fun to be had. Can anyone say “pocket Lemur”?

Making interfaces more transparent … literally, in this clever shot by Steve Roe. Touch and multi-touch interfaces are getting lots of attention, but they pose one major problem: there’s no tactile feedback. Those supposedly “primitive” buttons and knobs and such start to look a lot better when you realize your fingers are used to touching […]

Tired of flat surfaces? Joanie Lemercier, known by the name antivj, was seen here recently with a terrific tutorial on Wii VJing. Now antivj is back with a terrific video performance, projecting onto 3D forms. just did a new video, and I thought you might be interested as well: it’s a visual performance I did […]

Here’s a blast from the past — an algorithmic compositional blast from the past, that is. M is a unique piece of software for “interactive composition.” With patterns, cycles, and conducting options, you can create algorithmically-generated music, adjusting various parameters for sophisticated results rather than sequencing directly. It’s a totally different approach to working, something […]

Chris O’Shea sends along his latest project, a collaboration with sound designer and composer Owen Lloyd called Drop Spin Fade. Part of the Future of Sound tour, Drop Spin Fade allows users to position, sculpt, and play with sound in a 3D environment using gestural control. Drop Spin Fade The music/sound environment: Through a series […]

Photo courtesy Richard Lainhart and his dream studio. Electronic musicians are used to getting their gear on the cheap, and there’s something beautiful about that. But that doesn’t take away from some of the short-run, brilliant instruments out there. Topping the list: Buchla’s 200e, which continues the stories tradition of the Buchla modular synths, and […]

For many of us, few movies can inspire sound design quite like Star Wars. From the clash of lightsabers to the screech of TIE Fighters to … well, seriously, the whole set of movies sounds damn fine, even if you skipped the whole film and put the sound effects on loop. On its 30th anniversary, […]

Massive musical makers meet-up! Clockwise from top left: the all-in-one sound suitcase AudioPint, ultrasonic Thereping instruments, Steve Cooley links sound and 3D image, and one-upping Nike with a sensor-driven performance shoe. Next week, all week I’ll be in the Bay Area, California for Maker Faire, the Burning Man meets Science Fair meets World Expo meets […]

We’ve seen DJ parties with iPods and now handheld remote controls for DJ software. But what about building mixing features into the portable player itself? That’s the idea of the Pacemaker, a new portable player promised for Fall. Pacemaker site (Warning: auto-plays music) Tonium, the mysterious manufacturers’ site DJ features and mixing are internal to […]