Reason 7 is available now, in the full version, upgrades, and entry-level Essentials editions. You can download the new release right away – including, intelligently enough, as a torrent for downloads even if Reason users get overexcited. (Cough, Ableton. Hope you’re paying attention.) There are lots of improvements, but the banner features are clearly integrated […]

Re:Sound Bottle -second mix- from Jun Fujiwara on Vimeo. Sampling might feel sometimes like bottling up sounds. But in a project from Japanese designer Jun Fujiwara, the experience is delightfully literal – much to the surprise of people who try it out. As seen in videos, Re:Sound Bottle records sound snippets when uncorked, then remixes […]

Minneapolis-based artist Patrick Flanagan is no ordinary drummer or electronic musician. His rig does everything the hard way – and the results are fantastic. With robotic drum kit mechanically playing acoustic drums, his fingers command complex feats of rhythm and melody from an oversized, custom grid controller. There are idiomatic musical possibilities unlocked by software […]

Motion, light & sound / Kinect & Madlight from things happen on Vimeo. In a teaser video just released by Spain’s Things Happen, a silhouetted performer uses arm position to sweep through RGB colors and trigger sound cues. It’s the latest effort to integrate the immersive media environment with a performer’s body, part spectacle, part […]

Human experience is weird; it’s full of wonder – and it’s also full of fear. The sounds, for me, should also evoke that. Jad Abumrad From reading online, electronic music as a scene seems in a nasty sort of malaise, ranging from existential angst over everything from genre popularity to gender issue crises and pessimistic […]

FL Studio 11 has arrived, hot on the heels of an impressive FL Studio Mobile release. The folks at Image Line have been intensely busy, but what strikes me is that you can now play FL Studio using almost anything, on almost any device. The Mobile version works on Android and touch Windows devices, not […]

You can think about melodies and harmonies in geometric shapes. In fact, instrumentalists playing piano keys or guitar frets have already been doing that for some time. What’s happening with grid controllers like Push – among other alternatives – is that it’s now easy to rearrange melodic setups to see and play these relationships in […]

Some CDM commenters accuse this site of being shills for Ableton, of giving disproportionate coverage to Ableton Live and Push. Others accuse us of being hipsters, endlessly talking about things like 8-bit video game consoles and Nintendo. And so, I’m pleased to come to you today with a 30,000 word, peer-reviewed white paper relating the […]

Amidst a forest of illuminated tubing, the band How to Destroy Angels (with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig, and visualist/art director Rob Sheridan) take to the stage in an abstract digital structure. The stage image is transcendent, a rectangular prism of shifting digital visuals and projected effects. Perhaps it’s best to run this by […]

Amidst a forest of illuminated tubing, the band How to Destroy Angels (with Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross, Mariqueen Maandig, and visualist/art director Rob Sheridan) take to the stage in an abstract digital structure. The stage image is transcendent, a rectangular prism of shifting digital visuals and projected effects. Perhaps it’s best to run this by […]