Featured Showreel: VJ Fader, Around the World in Pixels

As 2011 winds down, here’s a good end-of-the-year resolution: get your showreel together – or get some inspiration from others. Our friend James Cui (VJ Fader) put together his latest reel. Based in LA but working internationally, he’s been a very busy guy, working with Processing and Max/MSP and Jitter to code custom solutions, from […]

Angry Birds in Christmas Lights, and a Green Message for Lighting

There is a time of year when the short days, hours of travel (this time over some 8000 km in the air), and holiday season make me want to post silly, insubstantial things. This is one of those posts. But, let me make some attempt at profundity: 1. Microcontrollers have put interactive lighting in the […]

Lovely Christmas Songbook for iPad, Built with Open Source Scoring Tools (More Platforms Coming)

Have an uncommon yule with tools and music from the Commons. That’s the pitch (so to speak) of the Ultimate Christmas Songbook, an iPad app built with 50 Christmas songs and a fully free and open source notation engine. Making use of public domain songs, the number of songs available continues to grow as the […]

From Christmas Tree Lights, A Lo-Fi Ableton Synth

It’s that time of the year, when the halls echo with the sound of … horrible electronic synthesized Christmas tunes, playing on endless loops from strings of lights and other cheap electronics! But wait – what if you could take those sounds and embrace their low-fidelity, chippy sounds to more inventive musical purposes? Turn to […]

Epic Audiovisual Mix, Produced with VIDEO-SL

If you’re already in holiday mode, sapped by the shortest day of the year (at least if you’re in the Northern Hemisphere), and looking to kick back with some audiovisual stimulation, this should do the trick. (I know it appeals to me, after 15 hours crossing the Atlantic yesterday.) The radio show Solid Steel regularly […]

iPhone’s Siri Plays a Real Grand Piano, Raps with Notorious B.I.G.

Music lovers are hacking Apple’s Siri voice recognition technology. By connecting to some of the “intelligence” of the cloud, these tools can make your phone rap or send music files to a player piano for instant musical playback. First up: Yamaha’s piano taking requests, thanks to music grabbed online. A Yamaha rep explains: Yamaha consultant […]

Create Scores on the iPad, Don’t Just Read Them: Notion

Consumption, or creation? When it comes to notation and musical scores, the iPad (and tablets, generally) has fallen on the side of reading rather than writing, display rather than creation. Notion for iPad, a mobile version of the desktop notation software, looks poised to change all of that. See video, above, for an overview of […]

VIDEO-SL, Video for DJs, Turnablists: $99 Deal, CDM Giveaway, and How it's Used

VIDEO-SL is the video plug-in for Serato’s Scratch Live, extending the turntablist / virtual vinyl metaphor from sound to the realm of video. Once loaded, you can manage video clips and control them with vinyl or CD as if they lived on records, a clever rendition of something that would technically be impossible (or at […]

VIDEO-SL, Video for DJs, Turnablists: $99 Deal, CDM Giveaway, and How it’s Used

VIDEO-SL is the video plug-in for Serato’s Scratch Live, extending the turntablist / virtual vinyl metaphor from sound to the realm of video. Once loaded, you can manage video clips and control them with vinyl or CD as if they lived on records, a clever rendition of something that would technically be impossible (or at […]