TRI▲NGLE from Onur Senturk on Vimeo. While various powerful options are available, Cinema 4D has become a go-to tool for three-dimensional motion graphics, including those looking for a factory to produce slick visuals for live performance. Now, that power is free for students. (free as in beer – something I hear students also use for […]

MacBook Air, now starting at US$999 and with USB3 and Thunderbolt onboard. Photo courtesy Apple. Apple, of course, rolled out new Mac laptops yesterday. The most desirable of these – new MacBook Pro laptops with ultra-high-resolution Retina Displays – will require a significant budget, with pricing beginning at US$2199. And it could be worth it […]

ARCHIMEDES Teaser from Jack Whiteley on Vimeo. You’ve seen live shows with projection, and more projection, and LED walls, and LED walls with projection. “Archimedes” is something different. An array of robotic mirrors, looking for all the world like some attachment for the International Space Station, moves in a choreographed ballet behind the artist. With […]

Surrounded by a whirlwind of gear, Sam Barker has been collecting musical tools – vintage and otherwise – since his first track, produced at age 13. Believe it or not, this is his old studio – the new one, with nd_baumecker, we profile below. Photo courtesy Leisure System Records. Being futuristic – really looking forward […]

For all the sophisticated synthesis and remix tools out there, for a lot of musicians, the best thing sound technology can do is just give them a way to record and play. Looping is a simple technique – it involves recording a snippet of sound, playing it back, and then adding layers. But used masterfully, […]

“Chromatoast” is a new series devoted to chroma key from Network Awesome, the site that builds a network out of carefully-selected, often strange and wondrous finds from YouTube. Entirely focused on the compositing technique, the four-week series kicked off yesterday (Thursday June 7) and will continue on upcoming Thursdays. Network Awesome chief Jason Forrest tells […]

You know in sci-fi how you’ll see robots and other machines that can transform, re-program themselves on the fly for a new task? (Okay, sometimes they’re evil robots.) Well, imagine a single-board – looking a bit like an ultra-compact computer – that does that for sound, and you have the basic notion of the RetroCade […]

Try a little thought experiment. In one column, write down everything you want in an audio interface. You probably come up with things like physical controls, proper meters so you can see levels, and lots of ins and outs (including digital and MIDI). Now, in another column, describe what you want it to look like. […]

For people who love video, the sight of a tablet simply screams out for seamless mixing and manipulation of video media. We’ve waited some time for something that really looks like a proper VJ app for iPad. TouchViz, from the creator of TouchOSC, was the first entry to move into this territory, with two-channel playback […]

At Music Tech Fest in London last month, I gave a talk and did an afternoon-long workshop exploring ways of connecting visuals to sound. We worked with pen and paper, with patching (in Pd), with code (in Processing), and via a survey of some interesting recent work, in this case all connected to drawing. A […]