The wonderful, sometimes-inspiring, sometimes-daunting capability of the computer is to make any sound you like. Give someone an open toolbox, and they really limited only by skill and imagination. Graphical modular environment Reaktor by Native Instruments has a reputation for crunchy granular sounds and elaborate, multi-layered glitches, and those are to some of us certainly […]

Ed.: He’s worked to translate classic hardware like the landmark Rutt-Etra to digital media – in that case, working with its original co-creator. He’s been a virtuoso of Mac visual development, building his own tools and working out an innovative way of piping live textures between applications in ways never before possible. And he’s been […]

Android just got a whole lot more interesting for hardware development. We can already run music apps and tools like Processing and (via libpd) Pure Data patches on Android. Now, you should soon be able to plug in joysticks, custom hardware, sensors, and other devices and make Android a go-anywhere live music and visual platform. […]

In the blurring areas between gaming and creation, toys and tools, there’s certainly a lot of action, spurred on by platforms for sharing software. Pulse is a new title for the iPad, an ambient rhythmic gaming experience with a unique interface centering around a series of concentric circles. The graphic design looks gorgeous in its […]

What makes music software popular? Simple recording, DJ, and remix apps unsurprisingly do well. But perhaps as a testament to the importance of individual music expression, some stranger entries do, too. And those less-typical software creations can give you new ways of exploring music creation and performance. Just take Nodal. GarageBand sits comfortably at the […]

Speaking of vvvv and audiovisual work, Boris Vitazek sends his thesis project Lucid, built with vvvv and Kinect. The documentation is a bit rough, but as an experiment, the project shows some great potential. I find myself drawn to seeing the image of the camera in the work – something that has been more present, […]

I believe that when we hear music, we employ visual centers in our brain in the way in which we experience its sensations and understand its patterns. But actually visualizing music and sound on the computer is a wonderfully impossible project, fraught with challenge. Somewhere in the struggle to do so, terrific things can happen. […]

Game makers and (particularly Mac) utility developers have joined forces to do various bundles of their software. I have to say, I generally like the model – particularly the fantastic Humble Bundle of indie games. That collection not only encouraged people to try adventurous (often experimental) independent game titles, but gives some of the proceeds […]

MilkyTracker, the free and open source GPL tracker tool, is now available on Android, thanks to some cross-platform goodness. (Developers: see SDL-lib, which brings a flexible multimedia library to Android and enables a host of multimedia and games, and the NDK, Google’s JNI-based toolset for C/C++ on the platform.) So, what does this mean? It […]

May has brought two new Web projects from manufacturers – one a titan name from analog hardware, another the king of the software studio. In each, the product itself is downplayed to focus on artists actually making music. That means if you’re looking to kick off your summer music making with a little inspiration, you’ve […]