Miro 4 Media Tool Promises the Quality of Closed, Only It's Open; Could Be HTML5 Dream Utility

Miro 4, an open source video player, has long been promising at least on paper as a means of sharing and watching open video. But the delivery in early versions was shaky, suffering from stability issues in some cases and simply failing to provide a compelling use case in others – particularly with browsers and […]

Miro 4 Media Tool Promises the Quality of Closed, Only It’s Open; Could Be HTML5 Dream Utility

Miro 4, an open source video player, has long been promising at least on paper as a means of sharing and watching open video. But the delivery in early versions was shaky, suffering from stability issues in some cases and simply failing to provide a compelling use case in others – particularly with browsers and […]

End of Train Device, New Album from Your Editor, and an Experiment in Releasing Music

A closer look at Richard Bailey’s artwork, made in paint, and not digital. Yes, I create digital music, too. One of the things I’ve loved about CDM is the chance to share music making, from the construction of the tools to the production of performances and recordings. If that’s all we ever get out of […]

New Performance Controllers: Midi-Fighter Pro will Face Grid+Fader Rivals

With game-style arcade buttons – and the pre-mapped combos to match – DJ TechTools’ latest wants your pocket full of quarters. Midi-Fighter images courtesy DJ TechTools. What should DJing with a computer look like? We’ve seen over a decade of products that can emulate the vinyl turntable experience, of course. But a native hardware interface […]

No Rapture, But Rapturous Music for the Occasion

New Yorkers weren’t buying the apocalyptic narrative in 14th Street as I snapped this – perhaps because they didn’t want to see the Yankees – Mets series interrupted. But check into Foursquare Rapture? Sure! A hive mind mentality is quickly infected with a meme, engaging partly consciously, partly unconsciously in a shared hallucination, projecting a […]

Music for Dieter Rams: Alarm Clock Becomes Melodic, Minimal Treat; Music and Good Design

Tuning into the design aesthetics of Dieter Rams. Here, a Braun RCS 9 radio design, photograph (CC-BY-ND) by Ruper Ganzer. Composer/producer Jon Brooks has a love piece for the Braun AB-30 alarm clock, and its iconic designer Dieter Rams, entitled, appropriately enough, “Music For Dieter Rams.” “Every sound on this record, from the melodic sounds […]

Impossible Architectures, in Real-Time Music Visualizations by Abstract Birds (vvvv)

The ultimate compliment to a visualization of music would be giving the unseen structure, changing the perception of the music not only by granting it visual embellishment, but producing a new experience of the composition that fuses sight and hearing. Abstract Birds, working with French new media organization Arcadi, legendary Paris digital research center IRCAM, […]

Party Like it's the End of the World: Eclectic Method Apocamix

Audiovisual superstars Eclectic Method hop on the apocalypse bandwagon, resulting in a rockin’ audiovisual mix that can get your Judgment Day parties started right. Although, as I keep having to correct people, this is technically the Rapture that some say will be happening this weekend, not the full blown “end of the world.” That leaves […]

Party Like it’s the End of the World: Eclectic Method Apocamix

Audiovisual superstars Eclectic Method hop on the apocalypse bandwagon, resulting in a rockin’ audiovisual mix that can get your Judgment Day parties started right. Although, as I keep having to correct people, this is technically the Rapture that some say will be happening this weekend, not the full blown “end of the world.” That leaves […]

Vinyl Poised to Make Further Gains; Time To Ask, “What Does it All Mean”?

Kids today, with their new-fangled desire to listen to music cut into grooves on big circular platters… Photo (CC-BY) Matthias Rhomberg. At first, it seemed like it might be just a blip: amidst generally declining sales of physical music, down sharply from their 1990s boom, vinyl sales were trending up. The reversal started with a […]