Ironing Shirts? Making Music? Combine Them!

Made In Iron 2 from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo. Matti Niinimäki of Finland has combined a common household chore with music control. He transforms an iron and ironing board into a wireless music controller, capable of generating wobble bass, slicing beats, sampling, and anything else he might devise. The ironing board itself is self-contained, sensing […]

Tinchy Stryder and Crew on Ten iPads – No, Actually, It’s Really Good

I’ve begun to dread the appearance of iPad jams in my inbox; you may feel the same way. When affordable digital synths were new in the 80s, there were various embarrassing videos as vendors like Casio showed off the new capabilities. Listen! Who needs a real trumpet when you can use a keyboard that sounds […]

78 Minutes of HD Audiovisual Immersion: Ableton + Resolume, Live Across Media

Procrastinatus Part I from procrastinat.us on Vimeo. Procrastinatus Part II from procrastinat.us on Vimeo. A/V crew Procrastinatus send us their latest: it’s over an hour of a live set, fusing stylish silver-and-monochrome abstract visual loops with tightly-composed sounds. The project is the work of Emil Bardh, Olof Schröder, Emmanuel and Jonatan Moreno, working in the […]

A CDM Holiday Gift Guide: Musical Goodness, All Under $200

Photo (CC-BY) JD Hancock. We users may sometimes gripe, but music technology gives us an impossibly wide variety for which to be thankful. From free (as in beer, as in freedom) to high-end and spendy, from software plug-in to acoustic instrument to solid-state electronics to toy, you’d run out of time and money long before […]

Jamming with Cloud Samples: Tim Exile + SoundCloud Recording

Tim Exile, laptop virtuoso, vocalist, and Reaktor software creator, has apparently taken a liking to the recording features SoundCloud is touting. He’s got a novel idea: you record samples into SoundCloud, he takes your samples and incorporates them into his set. It takes someone like Tim to pull that off; it should be a good […]

Portastudio on iPad, with Faux Cassette, and Everything Old is New Again

If it’s an iconic piece of hardware or software, there’s at least a decent chance you could be seeing it in virtual iPad form soon. Tascam’s Portastudio, released today, is a particularly striking example. The famed, budget cassette multitrack recorder, the box on which countless demos and quick songwriter creations was forged, appears on Apple’s […]

Wintry Samples: Recording Snow, Free Snow and Ice Drum Samples, Gnomish Choirs

Photo: Frank Bry, courtesy his blog The Recordist. It’s winter in the Northern Hemisphere. For some of us, there’s little need to remind us of snow and ice. But if you fancy adding some frozen sounds to your music, we have both free samples and expert recording tips to help get your cold on. Frank […]

An Interactive Installation Makes Visitors Part of the Show in Mexico

El Criollo – Interactive Installation from Hotpixel on Vimeo. Interactive technology is often celebrated for its ability to make visitors and onlookers into participants. Here, in a show in Mexico, that involvement is literal, as custom software weaves the words and faces of museum visitors into a portrait of the Mexican nation today. From the […]

Kinect VJ, Anyone? Live Visual Performance with Kinect

Kinect Test @ /// Lazercrunk from /// *** this.riley *** \ on Vimeo. Spotted: Our friend Riley Harmon, experimenting with Kinect as a live performance tool in Pittsburgh, in what I expect will be the first of many such performances coming around the world. playing around testing the kinect @ brillobox pittsburgh Openframeworks.cc tuio.org/​ osculator.net/​ […]

Utterly Brilliant Fan-Made Jonathan Coulton Music Video, with Lilypond Notation Cameo

Shop Vac from Jarret Heather on Vimeo. Jonathan Coulton is nothing if not a hero for the age of Internet music. The Brooklyn-based troubadour inspires worldwide adoration from fans, not least in the form of music videos made spontaneously for his songs. “Shop Vac” by Jarrett Heather is easily one of the cleverest music videos […]