A Magical, Ritual, Dream-like Theater: Kadambini, Audiovisual Live [Modul8]

Bart of art collective iduun shares his team’s latest audiovisual performance, Kadâmbini. It’s part live cinema, part music – object – theater, and powered by Modul8 with a fair bit of custom monome wizardry. The Paris-based artist tells us more: I’d like to introduce you our new work, Kadâmbini. It’s an audiovisual and cinema show. […]

Open Shruthi-1 Synth Evolves Deep Sound Capabilities, New 4-Pole Filter, Ice-White Case

Inside this compact white box lurks a lot of sonic power and technical prowess. Perhaps that explains why the newest version of the open source Shruthi-1 now sports a crazy-badass wolf dog cartoon with glowing eyes. Since its launch, the Shruthi-1 has gradually evolved new features, with a fairly sophisticated combination of hardware and extensive […]

A Small World, After All: Freesound.org Sounds on Earth, and an Ambient Musical Laboratory

Through the eyes of satellites, roving Google trucks, aerial imagery, and more, we have plenty of eyes on our planet. But what does it sound like here on Earth? In a Web application and accompanying art installation, the world turns as it echoes sounds recorded around the world on Creative Commons-licensed site Freesound.org. It’s stunning […]

Moldover vs. Traktor Kontrol F1, in Live Sampling-Mash Mayhem [Videos]

Matt Moldover takes on Native Instruments’ Traktor Kontrol F1 in a hands-on demo; NI reportedly gave him a weekend to see if the “controllerism” advocate could do something interesting with their hardware/software combo. The resulting video really gives some insight into what controllerism is all about: the fundamental notion here, whatever you wish to call […]

Mouse on Mars: In the Studio, and Reflecting on Performance, Listening, and Melody

Mouse on Mars’ Parastrophics for Monkeytown has been an early highlight of the year, a record packed with musical ideas in densely-configured arrays of sound. The duo is now taking that music on the road, in ambitious, improvisatory live performances. Perhaps all of this can be summed up in one word: energy. Their studio and […]

Com Truise, Set to DOS Nostalgia, Turned into Music Video Gold

The pace of technology has made past and future fold in on themselves, to the point where old things can look futuristic, what was once techno-shock can become nostalgic warmth, and the future can look dated. Our own Matt Earp waxed poetic on music’s take on these aesthetics by connecting them to worn VHS tapes. […]

SF’s Robotspeak, Music Geek Heaven – And Elsewhere On Earth? [Video, Survey]

There are a few spots in the world that are active hotspots for music tech geekery, and in San Francisco, it’s definitely all about Robotspeak. CNET’s Donald Bell – known to some of us back in the day as terrific IDM producer Chachi Jones – visits the store that once employed him. (This gives me […]

Make Music with Anything: junXion Universal Send-Receive for Mac [Video Tutorial Round-up]

“So,” you say, “I’ve got a … and I want to connect it to a … to make music. How do I do that?” One strong answer to that question, if you’ve got a Mac, is junXion. Developed by the landmark audio research laboratory STEIM – a hotspot in Amsterdam that for years has been […]

Designing the Sound of a Real Car: An Audi, from Silence to Noise [Video]

Hear the idea of creating a car sound, and you might imagine a sound designer working on a video game or film. Imagining that person producing a sound for an actual car could sound like a joke. But as today’s vehicles go silent – whisper-quiet electric cars to human-powered bicycles – the problem of imagining […]

High Speed Photobooth: Participatory, Poetic Slow-Motion

Stretch out three seconds into 3,000 frames: even in our world of digital and photographic wonders, the simple ability of photography and motion to manipulate time remains magical. The lowly photobooth can still delight. Having seen Pablo Garcia’s machines earlier this week, I wanted to follow up with his “High Speed Photobooth,” which combines high-speed […]