Texas-born, Detroit-raised, New York-based artist Matthew Dear has a new EP, to be followed by a full-length in 2012. It’s worth mentioning now for two reasons: one, the driving, “chugging” rhythms of the single, “Headcage,” will pop into your head and stay there, led by Dear’s vocal ability to croon and groove simultaneously. Second, the […]

First revealed last month, PreenFM is an open source hardware synth. As the name implies, it’s an FM synth, with some very serious specs: up to six-operator FM synthesis with some nine algorithms, up to 4-voice polyphony (depending on algorithm), glide, selectable LFOs, modulation matrix, and preset banks with SysEx support. It’s all usable via […]

The Melodyne editor, which promises to make working with audio as fluid as working with MIDI, has long had some impressive technology under the hood. But it’s as the tool gradually matures in terms of workflow and usability that I think it could win some additional converts. Melodyne 2.0 is a major update to the […]

A lot of people have waited a long time to see this happen. Lemur software running on the iPad, courtesy Liine. Click for bigger version. Before the iPad, before the iPhone, and indeed before the masses understood touch interfaces would be a big deal, there was the Lemur. Dazzling people with high-contrast, colorful controls, this […]

What do you do if you can’t find an instrument that you can play the way you want? In the digital domain, you can just invent one. So, when Brooklyn-based artist Nick Demopoulos wanted a controller that’d allow him to articulate digital instruments more like a guitar and less like a keyboard, he built his […]

We’re living in an age of the Neo-Baroque/Neo-Rococo, in which technique creates marvelous illusions, when technique and thought can create dazzling effects. And as the technology matures, that work begins to evolve genuine playfulness. It’s not enough to see the novelty: that novelty is now conveyed through real wit. At least, I feel fuzzy, optimistic […]

What is sound? What does it mean, and why does it matter? It’s never too fundamental, too basic a question to ask ourselves again when we make music. So, I’ll leave this trailer otherwise largely without comment, except to say, it’s well worth watching (or re-watching). Touch the Sound, produced by German director Thomas Riedelsheimer […]

Ce n’est pas un phonographe. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Roadside Guitars. Gibson Guitar has announced in a press release they’re acquiring the Stanton Group, which includes, aside from the well-known Stanton DJ brand, KRK monitoring products and Cerwin-Vega loudspeakers. It’d be easy to see this as a guitar company buying a DJ company, but it’s more than […]

Who says technology doesn’t last? The Apple II platform will be 35 years old in April, yet it’s still going strong. It even gets a brand-new drum machine software, launched this month, complete with eight wavetable-based drum sounds, and a clever sequencer. The surprise: the whole combination, delivered on a 5 1/4″ floppy disk, can […]

In a marvel of DIY engineering, one intrepid user of the tracker-made-modern music making environment Renoise has reconstructed the basic elements of the Ableton Live interface. With quantized clip launching on channels and even a crossfader, it’s unmistakably a copy of what Ableton does. I don’t think you’d dump your install of Ableton for this; […]