Ableton Goodies: Free Fairlight CMI Sounds, Skins, Amazing Reverb, and … TETRIS!

Want to relive the sweet sounds of the classic Fairlight instrument, because you love the 80s? Want to reskin Ableton so it doesn’t offend your aesthetic sense or blind you and bathe you in blue light when you’re onstage? Do you want a different reverb from a master sound designer and patcher? Do you just […]

Imagine Digital Shoes: Lovely Short Uses Sound Design Alongside Visual Effects

FLIGHT. from a TWiN thing. on Vimeo. What makes this motion effect work is what you experience when you close your eyes. In a clever short film, the directing team TWiN (Jonathan & Josh Baker) imagine shoes that take on a life of their own, as though channeling forces from Tron. Directing that virtual, digital […]

Ephemeral Images in Water: Projection on a Water Fountain, Lichtsicht Biennale [Gallery]

advection | robert seidel | projection on a water fountain | lichtsicht biennale 2013 from Robert Seidel on Vimeo. This goes far, far off the screen. Light dances across water droplets, disappearing into mists, images rippling on reflections on the pond’s surface. Projecting onto a fountain means some seriously-powerful projectors, but armed with that, the […]

Part Sculpture, Part Sound: New Work by Tristan Perich, Lesley Flanigan [Videos, Listening]

From top: Tristan Perich’s new piano with 1-bit masterpiece, Lesley Flanigan surrounded by her creations. All images courtesy the artists. Sound may be invisible, setting the air around us aquiver with little visible evidence. But the objects that make sound are physical, and no electronic music is virtual. Composer/musician/sound artists Lesley Flanigan and Tristan Perich […]

Launchpad + Raspberry Pi = Standalone Grid Piano Practice Machine, Boots in 10 Seconds

A standalone grid musical instrument? Done. And it can be a new way to venture into the worlds of harmony. Marc “Nostromo” Resibois is back with another clever Raspberry Pi hack. We saw him last fall, beating KORG to the punch with his own – digital – MS-20 mini, using the Pi. It’s still appealing, […]

DJing with Step Sequenced Traktor: Remix Decks Meet New Hardware

Light-up colored grids are hardly news in the controller scene. But what makes original, boutique hardware worthy of the name “Digital Warrior” is the unique take it brings to DJing and live remix – pushing the envelope with Native Instruments’ Traktor (all the while perhaps making even Ableton Live a little bit jealous). The new […]

Ableton Goodies: Free volca beats Drum Rack, Drums Smash Effects Rack

We give you news of the thing. Then we give you a virtual thing that helps you with the thing. Then we give you a virtual thing for when you don’t have the thing with you or want a taste of the thing before you get the real thing. Or something. And we’ll keep this […]

Bleep Drum Machine Gets MIDI, $110 Assembled, Glories of “Rad-Fi” Digital [Gallery]

In the box, inside the world of the computer, sound has few limits. It’s clean, it’s pristine; mimicking perfectly-miked drum kits or high-fidelity sounds is as easy as dialing in the gigs of samples you’ve assembled. But … wait a minute. It’s too clean. There’s something beautiful about a digital circuit, screaming and crunching as […]

Light Art, Music, and Audiovisual Creations, Stacked Vertically in 19 Floors: TodaysArt [Video]

Art in light and sound is routinely spread across venues, or sprawling through buildings in the horizontal. Not at TodaysArt. The festival in The Hague, Netherlands went vertical. Taking to the nineteen-floor tower of the former Ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations (Binnenlandse Zaken) and the Atrium of the City Hall, the festival established their […]

Ableton Goodies: Push without Push – Free Lemur Template Puts Shove on iPad

It was only a matter of time. An intrepid Lemur for iPad user has devised a template that emulates Ableton’s Push hardware. Cleverly entitled “Shove,” the template isn’t just a little like Push. It actually allows you to use the iPad as surrogate for Ableton’s hardware. You configure the iPad input and output and then […]