What happens when you unleash a $140 or less, open source, monophonic, hackable synth with a funny name into the world? We’ve found out, and thanks to inventive users, it’s quite nice. Photo by Iain Browne, who also has a hilarious Tumblr. We introduced the MeeBlip, an open source, hackable synthesizer, back in early November. […]

Producer/composer and Reaktor super-guru Peter Dines is back with a new concoction for Native Instruments’ graphical development environment for sound. Entitled the Reaktor Sample Pack, it’s a collection of three granular sampling instruments. Updated with new download links (no more divshare!) Frame is a looping sampler with smooth/crossfading, envelope controls, and built-in saturation, plus graphical […]

Hey, remember this guy? It’s the Nintendo DS, and before shiny iPhones and iPads and Androids stole everyone’s heart away, Nintendo’s handhelds first demonstrated the musical, visual appeal of mobile among hackers and artists. Now, the 3DS could well win some of that spotlight back, perhaps surprisingly so. Our friend Dave Dri has gotten a […]

Hey, remember this guy? It’s the Nintendo DS, and before shiny iPhones and iPads and Androids stole everyone’s heart away, Nintendo’s handhelds first demonstrated the musical, visual appeal of mobile among hackers and artists. Now, the 3DS could well win some of that spotlight back, perhaps surprisingly so. Our friend Dave Dri has gotten a […]

Radio from the past, meet radio from the future. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Nic McPhee. Tired of top 40 hits? Pooped on podcasts? Sapped on streams? What if your radio could generative music that was never-before — and never-again — heard, all from dynamic, algorithmic software? PatchWork Radio does that with Pd patches. It’s not a new […]

I’m Superman! Uh… yeah, so there is some appeal to gestural interfaces for 3D navigation, I meant to say. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Open Exhibits; see note below. The absence of an official SDK has hardly discouraged experimentation and innovation with Microsoft’s depth-sensing camera for the Xbox 360. But Microsoft, via their research and strategy officer Craig […]

I thought the promo video from Elektron perfectly explained, in practical terms, how their recent Octatrack sampler works. You plug it in, push some buttons, turn samples into techno, and then everyone turns into squids and dies. (Hmmm… that does suggest something perhaps a future firmware update might want to address.) But it seems some […]

When it comes to playing a hand-built Fence Bass and recording it live, there aren’t hard and fast rules or techniques you have to follow. But musician, composer, and sound designer Diego Stocco can certainly make the mysterious timbres of his exotic instruments into evocative atmospheres. In “Dustland,” the performance and effects are all recorded […]

What happens when you try to make bleeping and beeping a business? Meet the Beep-It, a simple but addictive optical theremin, and a fun noisemaking impulse buy for sonic enthusiasts. Then, if you’ve ever fancied developing a new idea into a product, learn a little bit about the path of its creator. We hear a […]

[vimeo width=”640″ height=”300″]http://vimeo.com/20111796[/vimeo] Last week, guest writer Momo proposed a set of semantics and abstraction for making audiovisual collaboration more expressive – starting with ideas as fundamental as describing a kick beat. Now, he returns to show us what he actually means in his work, element by element. -Ed. This is the current version of […]