The lust for new sounds can take many forms. It leads some to reduce, forcing themselves to stick to minimal choices to channel their creativity. It leads some to reuse and recycle, repurposing old gear. But it leads some into a quest for arcane racks of gear, spaghetti tangles of wires and flashing screens alike, […]

Aw, kawaii! Wait… sorry, poor choice of words. Aw, how… uh… Korg! Yes, in case they hadn’t given us enough reason for adoration lately, the folks at Korg are now giving away cute little USB stick versions of the microKORG if you purchase a microKORG or microKORG XL+. And if that’s not quite your budget, […]

pingtime from videogram on Vimeo. The tables have turned. Forty years after Pong aped table tennis on Atari, we’re watching computers transforming the original game. The table tennis in Pingtime vibrates and warps with sound and projection in an “augmented” experience of the game. The project is immortalized by Bucharest’s Videogram – but we see […]

The “live” in Ableton Live suggests making musical decisions in real time – not slowly with painstaking editing, stopping and editing and drawing, but as you listen and work. But while the onscreen interface is built around the mouse, and the precision of the mouse, focusing on those settings in performance, DJing, or studio work […]

London’s Georgina Brett is part of a generation of solo artists who use layered loops to build trascendental, rotating textures from repetition. Hardware loopers and effects pedals remain the preferred tool here for Brett as for many such artists. But Brett’s work is worth a particular mention for its ghostly, ethereal quality and thoughtful, delicate […]

Installation Water Light Graffiti // par Antonin Fourneau // du 06/06 au 30/06 à Stereolux Nantes from stereolux on Vimeo. Perhaps digitality is necessarily about the ephemeral. That could explain the fascination with making “graffiti” using light and digital paint, participatory but impermanent. The latest twist on the meme comes to us from Nantes, France. […]

Switch off that negative talk: vibrations between musical scenes continue to resonate and grow. Here we have two artists, each somehow evergreen and still blossoming, making the link from past to future feel secure. And speaking of good vibrations, I can think of no better way to get the summer vibes going this weekend than […]

What if your computer could do what tablets do – without having to kludge together multiple devices? That question probably doesn’t keep ordinary people up at night. But with music makers unusually ravenous users of touch software, they might just be at the vanguard of new convergences of creative computing. Picture this scenario. Your computer […]

Choices may be scarce on Android, but there’s a unique amount of passion behind this platform. Choose a high-quality app and the right device, and you can get low-latency audio and even cool features like USB host mode that let you connect a mouse, keyboard, joystick, or MIDI keyboard. (Well… sort of. See disclaimers below.) […]

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of traveling to Taipei, Taiwan for Computex, where Acer was promoting its latest touch hardware. Normally, I’d ask whether there was reason for musicians and DJs to care. But this time, the computer maker is hoping the passion around music will be a factor that woos users to […]