When Thom Yorke starts a new superband – and adds the Chili Peppers’ Flea, Radiohead producer and multi-instrumentalist Nigel Godrich, and percussion from both Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) and Brazillian virtuoso Mauro Refosco (Chili Peppers, David Byrne) – you can bet people will pay attention to the music. Spoiler alert: the first single has the […]

It’s hard to believe it’s been 12 years since the introduction of Korg’s influential KAOSS Pad. Now, Dutch developer Victor Bergen Henegouwen gives a nod to the Korg hardware with a new iPad app. And Victor writes CDM to let us know it’s hit the iTunes Store now. Like the original KAOSS Pad, you can […]

NFOP SESSIONS #13: Phantom – Albuquerque from Tonje Thilesen on Vimeo. Far from being an icy presence in front of an unmoving operator, the laptop has quietly become second nature. As tools mature and musicians gain comfort, music software can at last become another instrument. So, let’s get comfy and close with some musicians who […]

“What’s creative coding?” At last, we have a five-minute video that, in rapid-cut wonder, explains the answer to lay people – and can be a serious dose of inspirational adrenaline to people doing it. (If designers and artists had locker rooms, watching this before tackling that next Processing tutorial might be in order.) Cover the […]

3D printing is transforming digital information into objects in ways we haven’t seen before. However, a project has been making the rounds through online media partly because it recalls a familiar object: the musical record. Amanda Ghassaei’s 3D-printed record sounds crude, but it makes clear the connection of data to printed, physical form: take a […]

Happy New Year, from the future. It’s too late for sci-fi movies with a dateline of 2013. If you want something futuristic, you’ll just have to get to work. That’s what we’re doing in Berlin at CTM Festival later this month, with some of our favorite artists and engineers and designers and artist-engineer-designers. And we’d […]

DJ tool makers keep working on integrated hardware/software solutions – as they should. But meanwhile, creative DJs and hackers keep rolling their own, personal solutions – as they absolutely should. Here’s one of the latest in action. Stewe on the DJ TechTools forums rigs a four-deck, four-effect mapping for the CNTRL:R, the Livid Instruments-Richie Hawtin […]

Owners of Android phones and (if you’re out there) Android tablets have had a rough time of it as far as music apps. A lackluster market combined with inconsistent-to-awful audio performance have kept the bulk of mobile development on iOS. But if you do have an Android phone or tablet, we’ve got a beautiful app […]

Paint digitally, and animate with friends: Tagtool’s live “multiplayer” painting project has already been a live visual hit as a non-commercial project. The “DIY” version relied on custom software and a gamepad; various artists created their own hardware. Now, Tagtool has come to iPad, which makes for easier painting and broadened appeal. Tagtool had always […]

Microsoft’s Kinect has proven a compelling proof of concept for gestural control of music. But it could be just the beginning of mass-market gestural sensing technologies. The Leap Motion, like Kinect, promises to be affordable gear. Unlike the Kinect, the hardware is even more unobtrusive, and gestural control is more precise and responsive. Given the […]