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 […]

In June 2005, we first saw the Tenori-On, a futuristic music-making device covered in a grid of interactive, lit buttons, designed by the talented interactive artist Toshio Iwai as a prototype for Yamaha. Last week, Yamaha revealed some details about plans to make Iwai’s experimental device into a shipping product. (I missed this in preparations […]

Music tech gear rarely surfaces in the mainstream. I never saw a Roland Juno and Cubase on Seinfeld. The Hercules DJ Controller did make it onto a recent episode of “24”, however, says CDM reader DJ Klachik: I was just watching the 5th season of “24” on DVD, and in chapter 21, I saw this […]

Grid-style sequencers and touchscreens are a marriage waiting to happen, and not just on pricey gadgets like the Lemur. The mysterious Froggy Frog has built a simple, clever drum controller, arrayed in a convenient grid intended for touchscreens (but usable with a mouse if you just want to try it out). Originally spotted in a […]

While I haven’t gotten official word from Korg, it appears the KAOSS Pad KP-3 is now official, as reported widely. (First full scoop this time appears to be SonicState (who have the most details) after a leak and later confirmation on Music thing.) Here’s what’s new, along with some other competing musical “grids”:

Poor Monome, with just 64 buttons. Back in the 90s, Nicholas Fournel (who just sent us his MIDI tablet software) built a massive plexiglass touch-screen instrument called the Semekrys. Two of them were sensitive to a 1000×1000 grid. (Okay, not quite the same as 64 buttons, but then this is transparent and looks absurdly cool […]

Toshio Iwai, creator of Electroplankton, is working on a new digital musical instrument with Yamaha. It’s called the Tenori-On and, at least from an industrial design point of view, it looks beautiful. And if you’re in Spain, you can check it out live in action.

We’ve added the ability to insert YouTube videos directly into forum posts. This will have all sorts of useful applications, but right now we’re having fun: Posting YouTube Videos Full instructions at the link above, but you’ll see a tag in the posting interface. As with all YouTube videos, you need Flash Player installed for […]

The Monome is a new music interface with LED-backlit pads, a USB interface that transmits OSC and MIDI data to a computer, and — here’s the unusual part — open source, hackable firmware and software interface. Touch the pads, and you can use this as a step-sequencer and remix tool (as in the example), but […]