Designing a piece of gear, an interface, is a musical exercise much as is sketching a written score. It’s particularly apparent in the simple but descriptive “x0x” grid of the step sequencer on the Roland TR-808. Graphic designer Rob Ricketts has made some beautiful, arresting posters that simply provide those patterns. Apologies if you’ve seen […]

Music trade shows are typically full of sensible and useful instruments. They may not always represent something revolutionary, but people find homes for them in their musical lives. Of course, the world’s fair futurist in us may want something really different. It was a real treat to get my hands on the AlphaSphere, a UK-engineered […]

I’m immediately attracted to things I can’t identify, so here’s one of the less expected bits of hardware from the Frankfurt Musikmesse show’s digital audio 5.1 hall. (That’s the hall’s actual number – surround sound similarity is coincidental.) Someone at Pioneer worked out how to combine the timer used in chess, the boombox, some DJ […]

Endeavour’s Evo Series One, which we looked at in the fall, does something different with the conventional keyboard: it adds a touch-sensitive surface to the top of the keys, allowing you to run your fingers up and down the keys for added expression. I got a chance to try the Evo today, and I’m impressed. […]

We’ve got lots of other news from Messe to share soon – so don’t worry, this isn’t becoming the Propellerhead News Network. But since I’m starving and going to dinner, you can spend those 40 minutes watching the Propellerhead “keynote” press presentation I saw yesterday. This video is for the moment the only way to […]

Reason’s Rack, a walled garden no more. Hmmm… “reason.” “Logic.” I’m calling my next musical creation “Inanity.” Sound good? Who’s in? Photo (CC-BY) Marco Raaphorst. He’s a fan. Users want more: that much is clear. But for years, Reason has famously (or infamously, depending on your point of view) resisted plug-in formats as a way […]

Live in Frankfurt, I’m here at Propellerhead’s pre-Messe announcement event with CEO Ernst and team. What’s new: A US$1 iOS app that’s designed for music-making on a bus. Multi-touch interface, built around quick access to tonality, rhythm, and pattern – but the Reason engine under the hood. The same as Reason on desktop. After years […]

The center of the macular portion of your eye is called the fovea; it’s the portion of your retina that most nearly represents what you’re looking at directly. I adopted from my father the phrase “thinking off the fovea.” It means tackling a problem not by focusing directly on it, but what’s at the periphery. […]

Lisbon, Portugal-based multimedia studio Dub Video Connection shares their 2011 showreel with CDM, as they play big-screen visuals with some of electronic music’s biggest acts. (Yes, it helps having this kind of showreel and documentation!) I love the high-energy abstraction and patterns amidst high-contrast ephemeral imagery, so I asked the artists to tell us a […]

Who says every music production tool has to be either a traditional DAW or Ableton Live? Not Renoise, for one. I’m running out of things to call it. Modernized tracker? Tracker on steroids? Music production tool from an alternate history in which conventional DAWs were ignored and everybody just kept on using trackers? How about […]