The biggest catastrophic event in artists earning a living is not the Internet, and it’s not piracy. It was the advent of recording. Some people got rich. Other working musicians wound up out of a job. If you pay attention to that history, it puts recent changes in a different context and on a different […]

I believe it’s possible to be a responsible business, and to be a responsible consumer. When you’re the business lecturing your consumers on what they should be doing, well, that can produce an awkward situation. Let’s leave it at saying that a certain blog post stating obvious things has resulted in what can best be […]

It’s more than nostalgia or retro charm. Somehow, as we reflect on early digital creations through modern filters, we see something oddly new. And so it is with the animated GIF. In an unusually-frenetic video from the USA’s viewer-supported public broadcaster, PBS, you can trace the animated GIF from its early history through some surprisingly-fresh […]

The iPad has proven a tablet can be a powerful tool for music. It’s also been mostly alone. Android-powered tablets have suffered from lackluster audio performance. Compound that with low popularity in the marketplace and fragmented OS updates, and the platform has largely scared music developers away. Android devices also lack the richness of the […]

Plenty of music videos resort to the “just shoot a dancer, dancing about” formula. But a video by Haale Gafori for The Mast proves simply transcendent. High-speed photography captures every percussive twitch of the dancer, who explodes clouds of particles (flour?) against a void-like black. It’s elegantly shot and edited, finally interpersing shots that project […]

Spherikal from Ion on Vimeo. Speaking of Cinema 4D and eye candy, here’s a lovely set of etudes on the sphere, a compelling example of the many ways one can approach a modeling problem. Remarkably, the whole project was just a student project, but quickly ascended to popularity among the discerning eyeballs of the Vimeo […]

One of the handful of USB 3.0 devices currently available: the new “SuperSpeed” port on a Verbatim hard drive. Photo (CC-BY-NC-ND) auxo.co.kr. “SuperSpeed USB” or USB 3.0 offers major forward advancement for hardware ins and outs, with faster throughput (yielding up to ten-fold speed gains over USB2), improved overall performance, and lower power consumption. That […]

Touring as Haale in 2009, The Mast’s vocalist Haale Gafori. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Sean Richardson. We watch an exquisite music video on Create Digital Motion today for The Mast’s recent single “UpUpUp,” so it’s only right to call attention to this terrific New York-based duo. Combining acrobatic percussionist Matt Kilmer with skilled and silken-voiced composer/singer Haale […]

Come on in; the water’s fine. A chain of remixers cross oceans as they remix “Oceandrift,” by Kelp. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Derek Keats. The opening track is aptly-named, a diving bell launched into aquatic depths of ambient sound. But on this release, it’s just the beginning of the journey. From Kelp’s track “Oceandrift,” a set of […]

What are they building in there? Create Digital Music teamed up last fall with Amsterdam’s STEIM, a hub for musical research and invention, to invite makers of musical inventions to show their unique creations. Above, some excerpts of some of what we showed, capping off with a massive improv chorus of everyone making a racket […]