Cigarette lighters in the air may have given way to smartphones – but it’s hardly fitting at a concert to watch everyone checking their SMS inbox. In a new twist, Dan Deacon concerts use all that computational power in people’s pockets to make these devices part of the show, refocusing fans on the music. The […]

Okay, perhaps Moogfest has a built-in advantage in its theme. Affection for Moog among synth aficionados is akin to affection for chocolate or unicorns – perhaps not universal, but darned widespread and passionate. But looking at the lineup for Moogfest, it’s apparent how the name of just one early pioneer of electronic musical instruments can […]

What should a hardware mixer for real creative applications, live performance, and VJing look like? Vixid’s Vincent Julien answers that question in the latest video interview from our friends at lvx.tv. He talks mainly about his philosophy and why this hardware went the direction it did. But he also reveals what the next generation might […]

Introduction to note~ for Max from Musikforschung Basel on Vimeo. For musicians, this could be the Max external to end all Max externals. Max has long been a powerful, open-ended environment for creation. But sometimes you want a piano roll, or a score, or a timeline. Efforts to do that in the past have been […]

If mapping wasn’t already a horse race, it is now. ArKaos adds significant mapping technology to version 3.0 of their high-end media server, MediaMaster Pro, out now and shown at the UK’s PLASA show this month. Now, of course, here at CDM, we’re eager to see the next phase of ArKaos’ mapping strategy, which involves […]

Forget the adage about “dancing about architecture” – talking about music is important. But talking about music is made more meaningful by listening, the real reason we do what we do. And so, we’re pleased to follow our profile of Australia’s Enig’matik Records with a collaborative sampler. It’s a diverse selection of tracks that lets […]

Simple, hands-on synths are sometimes chided for being overly simple, cut-down versions of the infinite possibilities of modulars or digital instruments. And they might even seem anachronistic, throw-backs to old instrument designs. But if you need someone to explain the appeal of these instruments, you could do worse than Adrian Utley of Portishead, seen here […]

Reinventing music software for a handheld is no minor challenge. Make it too much like desktop software, and you wind up with something crammed with features that feels awkward and overly heavy in a mobile context. Pare down too much, and you’ve got something that behaves more like a toy and can’t hold up to […]

Computers give you sophisticated ways of connecting to online music. But do you ever miss that physical object of the radio? Or wish that a speaker could be just as smart when, with a sigh of relief, you’ve pressed the laptop lid shut? Skube is a design experiment from Copenhagen focused on making portable devices […]

Designers in Residence 2012: Yuri Suzuki from Design Museum on Vimeo. Amidst an onslaught of disposable, impossible-to-repair electronics and waste, the best weapon to fight back can be know-how. That’s the message in a beautiful short film that paints a portrait of sound artist and designer Yuri Suzuki, a resident of London’s Design Museum. (Via […]