If the album business model is collapsing, the frantic rush to everything else is at least interesting. Hip hop as a genre, of course, came from a deconstruction and reconstruction of the album, from the early evolution of DJ techniques and sampling. So, the fact that Wu Tang is skipping the conventional release altogether is […]

Before there was computer code, there was music notation. And before there was forking code or remixing music, there were centuries of variations to the musical code, stored in notation. So it’s fitting that musicians would begin to use GitHub – built originally as a repository for programmers – to store notation. And that means […]

While my elected representative gently weeps? Yes, don’t miss this video, going social today, from Japan, in which a guitarist perfectly times playing to a politician’s sob story. You might assume this isn’t relevant to CDM. But let’s say it hits the whammy bar — on your MIND. Earlier this month, I attended the NIME2014 […]

Here in the northern hemisphere, it’s the season of overabundance – bounties of overflowing fresh picnic fare, sun that stretches deep into the evening, celebrations and friends and saying yes to everything and no to nothing. And musically, we’re well into 2014’s surfing safari, atop the crest of a wave of new music. So for […]

In the digital age, the metaphor for DJing has been fragmented. You’ve got big wheels, but they represent missing turntables and don’t provide visual feedback. You’ve got CDJs, but then the waveform and the wheel are still separate. You’ve got vinyl records, but then you have to look at a computer screen to see where […]

Tablet or phone or touch-enabled desktop computer – now it doesn’t matter. A free tool called (for the moment) Nexus lets you make any browser a canvas for music. iOS, Android, Windows, Mac – if the browser is there, your creations become omni-platform. Shown at the NIME (New Interfaces for Musical Expression) conference in London […]

Imagine if you could go back in time and tell yourself you could some day you would have a copy of Fruity Loops that supported up to 512 gigabytes of RAM. Well, while it’s doubtful anyone will use that theoretical capacity, technically speaking that day has arrived. The big news: you’re no longer limited to […]

The technique is called convolution, and it uses the power of digital audio theory to combine sounds, as if one is heard “inside” another. And if you’ve heard of it before, you probably associate it with reverb – rightfully so, as you can produce highly detailed, realistic reverberation with the technique. But as celebrated film […]

Sonicstate has a First Look at the new Modulus 002 from Andy McCreeth on Vimeo. It’s been a while since Britain produced a polysynth with analog filters. So perhaps it’s fitting that SonicState gets up close with the modulus.002, in a lavish, nearly half-hour tour of the instrument, as this luxury instrument goes head to […]

So, you’ve assembled a nice collection of synthesizers. Maybe there’s hardware – some KORG volcas, a MeeBlip or two, or even modular. And of course, you have software synths, as well. Playing each individually – that’s kind of limited. Why not treat these as the digital instruments they are? That’s the idea behind Polymer, a […]