You’ll know live visualism has arrived when visualists regularly “headline” the way music does. But if you’re tired of waiting, look no further than Western Pennsylvania, where Pittsburgh’s spectacular Via Festival this week is doing it right. See what they’re doing for a great example of what’s possible when visualists and musicians meet — and, […]

“Panzer” is beyond any mobile studio you’ve ever seen. It’s basically a tank with speakers and a cockpit containing beat-making gear. (Mackie mixer, Roland sampler, Akai MPC, Korg KAOSS, as near as I can see, plus … the machinery to drive the tank.) From the description: Minidumper, Holz, Stahl, Kunstharz, Glasfaser, Audioequipment, Sound 2011 And […]

If you just want to fire up Renoise, the modern tracker/music production app, and not worry about the fact that its innards are hackable, you can. But for a reason why you might at least want to explore customization of this music tool, give the video above a look. It starts sleepy and slow … […]

Hard at work at Music Hack Day Montréal. Ed.: Hacking Web databases to search sounds, remixing tools to automatically create dub tunes, cameras to sequence and analyze images in new ways, Montréal hackers have been busy. Trevor Knight writes from the event with full coverage from Canada, latest outpost of this global music coding phenomenon: […]

You’ve seen a musician or two, no doubt, jamming away on a Moog synthesizer. But German band KARAT’s keyboardist Thomas Kurzhals really tears into it. Chris Stack, formerly of Moog and now producing the Experimental Synth series we cover with some regularity, shot this video interview / performance set, and tells us: I don’t think […]

The very word “robot” comes from a Czech author, Karel Čapek and his 1920 sci fi theater work R.U.R.. In terms that resonate today, class, economics, and freedom play into that narrative, as Čapek introduced not only a word but the modern concept of android. So, it’s fitting that the Czech Republic would be the […]

The beauty of the visualist movement is sometimes, amidst spectacle, you get little gems of creative ideas. Those could, in turn, become the imaginative original products used in live visual sets. And for those who can appreciate such work, even an everyday moment can become creative fodder. Florian Dobler managed to fight the boredom of […]

The beauty of the visualist movement is sometimes, amidst spectacle, you get little gems of creative ideas. Those could, in turn, become the imaginative original products used in live visual sets. And for those who can appreciate such work, even an everyday moment can become creative fodder. Florian Dobler managed to fight the boredom of […]

From behind the long-gone, so-called “iron curtain,” nearly-lost musical innovation is beginning to become available. But perhaps more than any geo-political change, the power of an Internet-based community hungry to share knowledge is making national borders that once isolated information melt away. Earlier this week, I shared reflections I wrote up for Amsterdam’s STEIM on […]

Readers recently observed that your writer/editor is biased toward the aesthetic design of certain controllers. If that annoys you, try to focus on the lighter elements in this article to take your mind off things, and remind yourself that the weekend is near, because you’re probably going to spot that bias arising again. Steinberg this […]