Cakewalk’s Z3TA+ has long been a favorite virtual analog / waveshaping soft synth, so much so that it consistently hits top 10 lists of software classics, even as it’s been (in past, at least) a Windows-only offering. Years, later, though, it’s most definitely due for an update. Cakewalk has released a video of what’s in […]

Producer Sam Greene was so in love with Aalto, the semi-modular, Mac and Windows soft synth whose developer we profiled last month, that he made his own place to share patches for it. Patches are free to download and use in your music, and you can upload your own; the only restriction is that the […]

For a very different aesthetic take on the United States’ Independence Day celebrations, here’s electronic producer Steve Nalepa joining visualist superstar Johnny de Kam for a collaboration. I find it makes for some nice, chilled-out Monday, July 4 inspiration, wherever you are – no marching-band bombast required. Nalepa has been sharing his Ableton skills with […]

Speaking of sound design, here’s a nice weekend diversion for you: “140 dB” is an experimental short film, combining sonic acrobatics with digitally-synthesized motion spectacle, that meditates on the “interaction between sound and physical bodies. The main idea is to show how sound can change objects form and structure including human mental state.” Thanks to […]

Hey, Jitter fans: jit.artkmulti is an external for Max/MSP and Jitter that brings the powerful, marker-based augmented reality capabilities of ARToolKit to Max. We’ve seen a lapse in interest in marker-based tracking, I think, with the advent of technologies like Kinect, but it’s still useful for certain applications – and this makes it really easy […]

What does speed sound like? Sound designer and electronic musician Joseph Fraioli, aka jafbox, was charged with giving a campaign just that feeling. The spot, directed by Aaron Duffy and promoting Google’s Chrome with some clever tricks and photography, has been a huge award winner in sound design because of just how masterfully he pulled […]

Martin Böttger (tsaworks) sends along a beautiful 3D audiovisual concoction, with generated tendrils that drift in and out of light as though they are suspended in fluid, synthetic ribbons of jellyfish tentacles. I asked Martin to tell us more.

Buckle up and project: that was the mission of a group of art “interventionists”, firing guerilla projections at the public installation of artist Sol LeWitt in Manhattan’s City Hall Park. The weapon of choice itself is one of interest: a self-powered mobile projection rig means live visuals can appear anywhere. The production team describes the […]

Working in open source code for any platform, Brazilian artist and developer Jeraman has produced a charming project that imagines musical interfaces in dynamic, whimsically-simple sketches. Like doodled knobs, cartoons of guitar pedals, interactive devices on the touchscreen control musical activity. And because it’s open, cross-platform code, everything from a computer-powered multitouch table to an […]

Derrick May in the Michigan Theatre parking garage, 1988. Photos by Bart Everly. Reproduced courtesy Wax Poetics. In the words of Yogi Berra, the future ain’t what it used to be. Drawing from futurist philosophy and the machine aesthetic of bands like Kraftwerk, the moment at which techno comes into the world is a seminal […]