If you want to mash on some arcade buttons for your DJ or live set, your perfect hardware may have arrived. Sure, okay – you’ve seen this before. DJ TechTools followed up on their original, DIY-centric Midi Fighter with the swanky-looking Midi Fighter 3D. The industrial design was gorgeous, replacing the homebrewed original with a […]

Here’s digital music of a different variety: the stunningly-modern music of Hungarian composer Bela Bartók, transcribed for four electric guitars. Where’s the computer? Glad you asked: think computer music software (Notion, which looks lovely here), and an iPad and Bluetooth page turner. There’s no way you’re playing this string quartet and turning pages, unless you […]

resolume pack one. from beeple on Vimeo. Beeple is one of the stars of visualist culture, and his packs of motion graphics represent best of the breed. So, download these. Get inspired by them. And by all means, if you use them, use that Creative Commons license to share some of your own original content […]

According to legend, on Christmas Eve animals magically gain the ability to speak. If there’s a similar date for sound-making machines, it may have coincided with the work on the latest of two releases from a Mouse on Mars-curated netlabel. Mouse on Mars have quietly started “Recommended Records” as an online-only outlet of free, full-length […]

So, you want to go beyond conventional, piano-style keys and guitar frets. Even if the ultimate goal is hardware, the touch interface of iOS is a lovely blank canvas on which to experiment. In the latest app, the work of UK-based graphic designer Paul Betowski, the Theremin proves a jumping-off point to other instruments, like […]

Baarregaard & Briem – “Love With You” from Harald Haraldsson on Vimeo. It begins with the hopping groove of a house track, and it’s shot using only light, projection, and an array of empty bookshelves. But somehow in the volumes of those shelves, Icelandic director Harald Haraldsson creates an abstract expressionist composition, rotating in fragmented […]

It looks like it might be some sort of synthesis board game. But the grid above is actually a way of using touch to design new hybrid sounds. And it could appeal to both newcomers and synth die-hards alike. Wolfgang Palm must really like his iPad. The digital synthesis pioneer, the founder of classic maker […]

January may be the season of New Years’ Resolutions and detox routines. But rather than force yourself into promises you can’t keep, why not find a friend with whom you can form good habits together? It’s definitely working for two pairings in Berlin. After the apocalypse-obsessed December 2012, and some end-of-year music reviews that seemed […]

A hackable, playable drum synth not afraid to sound digital: count us in. If you liked last week’s Dam-Drum 2.0, here’s yet another grungy beauty with four triggers and knobs. The frauAngelico also features nicely-low-fidelity drum samples, performance controls, and a built-in sequencer, just like Dam-Drum 2.0. It has some tricks up its own sleeve, […]

MIND OUT : PROJECT LONGARM from e on Vimeo. The idea of technology being apart from nature may be entirely backwards. Patterns and logic in code spring from the organic engine of human brains, and can be at their most effective when they mirror the natural world. And so it is that you can cover […]