With takes on the Vince Guaraldi Trio and Tchaikovsky, the sound-slicing members of the monome community have turned their button-encrusted devices to spreading holiday cheer to you, for free. A new, CC-licensed album is available for download. (One caution: CC licenses don’t cover sample clearance for works sampled on these albums, so beware.) They wouldn’t […]

If you could only pack one controller in your backpack, and weight, size, and cost were at an absolute premium, the Akai MPK mini would be tough to beat. The latest salvo in the ultra-compact controller wars, Akai has taken the keyboard, pad controllers, and encoders from its LPK25 and LPD8 and packed them into […]

Human beings remain impressive organic technology; we’re gifted with extraordinary abilities to detect tiny variations in facial expression. But that minor miracle of perception can be an animator’s nightmare, once you edge into the realm of attempted realism. The key is to reach the other side of the so-called “uncanny valley.” Perhaps even more impressive […]

For years, anyone with doubts that soft synths had become commodity needed only to look to Crystal. Not only is this proprietary synth completely free-as-in-beer for Windows and Mac, but it could easily be your only synth if you so desired. Crystal is a semi-modular instrument with the usual trimmings – subtractive and FM synthesis, […]

Call it future shock. Love of retro gear is more than nostalgia; sometimes it takes time to appreciate what technology means. And so, today, classic digital samplers and drum machines like the E-mu SP-1200 and SP-12 can inspire even greater passion than they did when new. Today, producers can feel love not only for retro […]

The need is simple: musicians want to sketch ideas on the go, then craft them into finished tracks with their familiar arsenal of sound tools at their desk or studio. Yet for all the mobile music software on iOS — and need to differentiate your offering — we’ve seen relatively few music tools that make […]

I’m fortunate this weekend to be able to be part of Invisible Instructions, a combination art exhibit and music lineup at Culturefix, the same LES venue where we host Handmade Music. “High Priest” HPrizm of Antipop Consortium is playing and (see Soundcloud) this evening is teaching a “signal to rhythm” digital audio workshop with Spacecraft […]

NOISEPLUG from smider on Vimeo. The art of making sound software and the art of making electronic music can be closely bound with one another. That means tools that embody a certain compositional idea. You can choose to use them or abuse them – or simply gain some insight into the sonic imaginations of the […]

Media Browser – Loading and Organizing from Vidvox on Vimeo. VDMX5 from Vidvox has really demonstrated what a semi-modular visual tool can be, with an open-ended set of live visual tools and powerful support for Mac features like Quartz Composer. It can be daunting to really wrap your head around, but once you do, it’s […]

MIDI in Ardour – and now, Ardour suddenly becomes viable for a wide swath of users. If a free and open source DAW sounds like a tall order, it is. And so it’s little surprise that Ardour 3, the biggest upgrade to this solid music production workstation, has been a long time coming. What might […]