Music made by machines need not turn its back on traditional musical skill – least of all when you literally strap the machines on the back of a master musician. In a fusion of Brazilian tradition and modern wireless, wearable sensor technology, Kyle McDonald shares with us a project that makes drums into an interactive […]
Music
Live radio from Gaza, Khan Younis and Bethlehem-Hebron choirs meet
Music December 24, 2024
Liz Pelly’s Spotify book reveals how company uses ghost content
Music Tech Web December 19, 2024
A Kinect-Based Instrument; Polyphonic Theremin, No April Fool’s Joke?
It’s hard to assemble an April Fool’s Joke involving technology these days, because actual inventions keep proving stranger than fiction. When Google created a prank involving gestures for controlling email, it was only a matter of time before someone whipped up a prototype that actually did the job. The Moog Music company, therefore, may be […]
Hawken, Upcoming Indie Mech Game, Stuns Eyeballs; Learns Lessons from Model Kit Building and Kitbash
The craft of photorealistic gaming has risen to astounding heights, but look-alike art direction can overshadow its technical achievement. Not so with an extraordinary-looking indie title called Hawken. The mech combat first-person shooter, built in the Unreal Engine, is crafted in a way that speaks to the possibilities of digital technique to spin imaginary worlds, […]
Brian Eno's 'Visual Music,' 77 Million Paintings, Streaming Live Today, Inspiring Any Time
Capturing a work that’s designed to be generative is tricky, so think of this as a snapshot. Image (CC-BY) Dominic Alves. See the full set. Brian Eno’s ‘visual music’ paintings, 77 Million Paintings, are streaming live by way of a Berlin startup broadcaster called ikonoTV. That, in turn, makes a good excuse on a surprisingly-wintry […]
Brian Eno’s ‘Visual Music,’ 77 Million Paintings, Streaming Live Today, Inspiring Any Time
Capturing a work that’s designed to be generative is tricky, so think of this as a snapshot. Image (CC-BY) Dominic Alves. See the full set. Brian Eno’s ‘visual music’ paintings, 77 Million Paintings, are streaming live by way of a Berlin startup broadcaster called ikonoTV. That, in turn, makes a good excuse on a surprisingly-wintry […]
Nanoloop Comes to Android, with its Lovely, Minimal Music Idea-Making Interface
I think the first time I really understood handheld music making was when I first tried Nanoloop on Game Boy. While the more-popular LSDJ tracker is powerful, Nanoloop’s interface was unlike anything I’d seen before: aggressively minimal, it embodies in its interface design the feeling of a blank sheet of paper. Adding an idea feels […]
Music from Numbers: An Eclectic, Free (CC) Compilation of Numbers Station-Inspired Tracks
Photo (CC-BY) Chris M, of a Very Large Array. Number stations, making their appearance in the post-war radio landscape, were shortwave radio stations of streams of symbols, mysterious to their listeners and apparently code. Here, the idea of lost and indecipherable broadcasts inspires a wonderfully-varied collection of reflective artists, in a free, Creative-Commons licensed compilation […]
Radiohead King of Limbs in 24-bit FLAC; How to Listen Lossless on Any OS, Device
Why shouldn’t a digital download be better, not worse, than a CD release? Sit in a studio as most of your favorite albums are recorded, mixed, and mastered, and odds are the digital material is being recorded at higher bit depths and sample rates. And while the perceptual record is more mixed, there’s also no […]
Maschine 1.6 Sample Workstation, Now with Plug-ins, Makes a Standalone Workflow Solution
I’ve been following Maschine since prototype stages. The idea was at once obvious and welcome: build a software workstation, tightly integrated with pad hardware control, that fuses hardware sampler working methods with the on-screen flexibility of software. It’s software that focuses on working with sounds and patterns, outside the DAW-style metaphors. Of course, there’s one […]
FL Studio “Fruity Loops” 10 Adds 64-bit Savvy, Smarter Editing, New Pitch, Time, and Harmony Add-ons
The infamous FL Studio “giant screenshot.” Go ahead – eat up our bandwidth and have a closer look at what’s in FL 10, visually; click for the full-size version. FL Studio, aka Fruity Loops, has always been like opening a toybox of sound goodies for sound nerds – up to 30 instruments and 40+ effects […]