Sunday night in Manhattan, the MeeBlip makes its public debut. If you want to check one out in person, ask any questions, etc., come check it out. (I’ll also have my battery-powered rig: one Vox amp on batteries, one MintyBoost battery pack for MeeBlip, one Rock Band 3 keytar.) And that’s just the beginning – […]

Visualists are no longer safe from the addiction of modular racks. LZX Industries is bringing the Eurorack modular system, popular with a new generation of modular synthesists, to video. And in abstract, acidic washes of color and light, the results are mesmerizing. Modular systems remain a significant investment. LZX’s “minimal” systems run over a grand, […]

Checkerboard Step Sequencer V2 from Josh Silverman on Vimeo. Shall we play a game? Have your checkers chops ready, because Josh Silverman’s Checkerboard Step Sequencer, a tangible interface for music, will test both your game mettle and your grooves. Built with the open source coding tool OpenFrameworks and Ableton Live as sound source, the checkerboard […]

Making music, making blips and bleeps, turning knobs, plugging in keyboards, and having the freedom to modify your gear – these are good things. And that’s why I’m so excited that today is the day the MeeBlip launches. It’s been several years in development, but now it’s finally here. It’s a hardware box that makes […]

Love patching. Hate running out of patch cords. For all the quantity and inventiveness of iOS music-making software, only a few titles have become contenders as must-have apps. KORG’s iElectribe often tops those lists. What makes the iMS-20 especially interesting news is that it may have a bit of an edge even on hardware. Touch […]

Shigeto – “Escape from the Incubator” from Ghostly International on Vimeo. As I noted in the opening for my recent Processing for Android tutorial, there’s no substitute for the immediacy of drawing with pen and paper. Even as digital artists, it can be a necessary first step to wiring up the visual parts of our […]

tricil – The Emancipation from Clear Notice on Vimeo. stretta – Calculus from Clear Notice on Vimeo. Forget the iPad app or cross-media visual interpretation for a moment. “Enter Calico,” the compilation debut of new electronic label Clear Notice Recordings, begins with some damned fine music listening. In a world after shallow labels like “IDM,” […]

The tracker for the rest of us – now more customizable. Click for full-sized version. Ever wish your music software could do something your way, something it can’t do now? Wish you could just get in there and change it yourself? That’s some of the ambition of Renoise 2.6, the multi-platform music creation tool. By […]

Earlier this week, I took a quick overview of what options you can choose for connecting MIDI to the iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. Make no mistake: the coming of iOS 4.2 will broaden your options for mobile MIDI on Apple gadgets. But I realized a somewhat glib comment in my story made some folks […]

To many users, it’s been a long time coming, but using Pro Tools software no longer means working exclusively with Pro Tools hardware. Pro Tools 9, announced today, is a “software-only” version. That is, you can use it with your hardware – your audio interface, your DSP tools of choice, even the built-in audio hardware […]