When KORG’s Tatsuya Takahashi is involved in a project, you can expect some hackability. KORG surprised the music tech community by releasing filter schematics for its monotron and designing the boards for the monotron and Monotribe in such a way that opened them to modifications – like adding much-needed MIDI capability absent on those first […]

KORG’s volca line of affordable analog instruments isn’t yet available everywhere, but they’re slowly, slowly trickling into the world. KORG hasn’t yet sent any to CDM, and we’re generally hearing “September” from most retailers, but Japan has got a few. One of those was store-bought and brought back to Berlin, and I got to play […]

Shnth is a digital synth in a wooden box with a surprisingly open-ended programming language. It’s like a lo-fi sonic computer, touched with your fingers via a handmade interface, and with sonic capabilities that can be re-programmed over USB. And there’s a coloring book to go with it, too, with pictures of Max Mathews and […]

Game jams have already begun encouraging creative, improvisatory game jam, by gathering designers and artists together and motivating them with tight deadlines. But here’s a new concept: what if all the games could talk to one another? What if they could all respond to the same basic game inputs, but with differing results? Using the […]

With so many choices, some beautiful software synths simply fall through the cracks – or fail to keep up with tastes and attentions. TONE2, maker of a number of nice soft synths, has therefore decided to put its FireBird synth out to pasture, releasing an update and marking down the price from $79 to free […]

Residents of Windsor, Ontario widely report hearing a humming sound – one no one has been able to identify, but at least some claim to have recorded. And now, for the first time, you can get that hum as a synth for Ableton Live (or any other environment, via the audio files). It’s the latest […]

There’s a beautiful river of information for electronic musicians out there, if you can only navigate its currents. In our new series, we pick out some of the best selections, since we can’t always squeeze in a full article of every terrific gem out there. It’s like a window into our inbox. And for the […]

Billy the bookcase says hello. Augmented reality has sometimes seemed like a solution in search of a problem. But two new apps suggest some degree of utility. And as Google struggles to convince people they want Google Glass, smartphones and tablets are proving just fine for occasionally overlaying visual information on an image. At top, […]

Billy the bookcase says hello. Augmented reality has sometimes seemed like a solution in search of a problem. But two new apps suggest some degree of utility. And as Google struggles to convince people they want Google Glass, smartphones and tablets are proving just fine for occasionally overlaying visual information on an image. At top, […]

Summertime may conjure images of Ibiza and middle-of-the-road festivals in Europe and America, “summer jams” and the musical equivalent of the beach book. And there’s nothing wrong with that; anyone who would deny people the pleasure of listening and dancing to music they love is kind of a jerk. But this stereotype can also obscure […]