Producing dazzling, elaborate visuals doesn’t have to mean ensnaring live music in pre-defined tracks. In the latest episode of this ongoing series, we look on Create Digital Music at a new show for the act ‘Feed Me’ – the kind of story I love, crossing the Music and Motion boundaries. Here’s a key excerpt on […]

Being popular as a person may be a complex formula. But for keyboard synths, “a fun, cute, cheap date” just about covers it. And — sorry, any snobs out there, but no complaints about that. So it is that Novation has a 37-keyboard that combines lots of sound and effects from the company’s UltraNova into […]

Looks smart. There are smart features coming in version 1.8, too – and you get Massive for free. Photos by Arvid Jense for CDM. In living color: the popular drum machine – combining integrated hardware and software – is more colorful, but also more usable, via updates to the screen and pads alike. We’ve gotten […]

RGB pads, custom hardware colors, and time stretching. Photo: Arvid Jense for CDM. Updated: Maschine is now more colorful (via new hardware), has new accessories including a handy stand, and updated, more usable software. CDM has an exclusive hands-on with the new hardware with impressions, updates on what’s changed in the hardware and software, and […]

Spectacular spaceship showmanship, or actually synchronizing live electronic dance music performances? For Feed Me, aka Englishman Jon Gooch, the show had to be both. Software developer Mattijs Kneppers harnessed Ableton Live, Max/MSP, and Max for Live to make it all work. You may have seen the video; Mattijs gives CDM a unique look even further […]

The new world of projection is big – really big. Planet big. It’s not a dinky projector pointing at a ragged, wrinkled piece of cloth. It’s something that can stand up to one of the world’s great divas. When you’ve got Beyoncé, and you’ve got the General Assembly Hall of the United Nations in New […]

Apple may have started the conversation about the “post-PC” age. But part of what this means is that a “computer” doesn’t necessarily have to be something costing hundreds of dollars, in a conventional desktop or laptop form factor. It could look more like the Raspberry Pi, at US$25 and squeezed into a tin of mints. […]

The basic idea of the turntable, its round rendering of sound as a physical object, still attracts fascination. But is there a way to truly make the same metaphor fit digital media? Peter Adany is the latest to try, with a design proposal and mock-up he’s trying to fund for iPad (and Mac and Windows) […]

Late at night, you may hear them, a distant tapping of fingertips against pads and keys. They are the hackers, geeking away the late hours to make insanely-sophisticated custom musical contraptions, engineering some new forms of dance music or other electronic pattern. Thilo Geertzen is the latest, back with an even more pumped-up edition of […]

You’re going to hear this a lot: “mapping” is more than just “projection mapping.” It’s the liberation of the digital image from screens and cinema-style rectangles, the ability to merge that imagery with any surface or lighting. That’s the idea – then, hand in hand with the idea, there are the tools. Tools both reflect […]