Music visualization in Processing by yours truly. If you’re in the LA area, I’m teaching a reasonably beginner-friendly workshop in making musical tools with visual interfaces, using entirely free software (Processing and Pd, on Mac, Windows, Linux, and if you like, Android). It’s this coming Thursday night, September 8 – the perfect way to get […]

PocoPoco is a delightful, fanciful device that takes music control into the realm of kinetic sculpture. Normally, the relationship of music controller is primarily about the operator making physical actions. With PocoPoco, the hardware itself moves. The essential musical structure is familiar: it’s the grid of light-up buttons, with strong similarity to the ongoing interaction […]

Photo: Marsha Vdovin. As they did with the monotron synthesizer, Korg has quietly released schematics for its the analog drum synthesis portion of its monotribe synth and step-sequencing rhythm machine. You just see the bits that make the drum sounds, but that’s the interesting and modifiable part. In order to grab the download, you’ll need […]

Resolume Avenue 4 has been announced today, with a beta version for Resolume owners due September 19. And it’s looking like a very nice upgrade, indeed. Having vastly improved stability, now functionality in Avenue is looking really mature, building on the almost Ableton-style audiovisual clip metaphor introduced in Avenue. I just played a short gig […]

Resolume Avenue 4 has been announced today, with a beta version for Resolume owners due September 19. And it’s looking like a very nice upgrade, indeed. Having vastly improved stability, now functionality in Avenue is looking really mature, building on the almost Ableton-style audiovisual clip metaphor introduced in Avenue. I just played a short gig […]

Novation has unveiled their newest product, a line of USB MIDI keyboards called Impulse. Shipping in September, they’ll run street/dealer prices of US$249.99 for the 25-key, $349.99 for 49 keys, and $399.99 for 61 keys. This pits Novation squarely against some similar MIDI keyboards, including the M-Audio Axiom to which I gave the nod in […]

Universal Audio has a big set of updates to their DSP software out today. It seems worth sharing in part because I find the (faked) look of that Ampex reel-to-reel does give me a warm and fuzzy feeling, even if it mainly makes me want to get in a studio and hear the whir of […]

Barcelona-based artist Evan Roth does beautiful translating motion into three-dimensional, sculptural forms, among his other digital works. In “Graffiti Analysis,” 2010 (video just posted), he algorithmically averages motion capture data from fifteen local tag artists to produce projected motion revealing the process and a squiggly sculpture seen here. Graffiti Analysis, Barcelona, 2010 ABS Thermoplastic 31cm […]

While we’re on the subject of making music with Kinect, the 3D computer vision camera with depth-sensing, here are some other experiments into how music might work. As with the classic Theremin, those musical gestures tend to be mapped against two-dimensional axes in space. And from there, things become wide open. Johannes Kreidler, a musician […]

In a whimsical proof of concept, artist and inventor Dan Wilcox harnesses the depth-sensing powers of the Kinect camera to turn a room full of drifting balloons into music. It occurs to me that the basic spatial model can be seen as descended directly from the Theremin – way to go, Leon, still relevant today. […]