A toy controller – in a good way. The Mustang Pro guitar controller for Rock Band 3 is equipped with a full MIDI implementation and standard 5-pin port to connect to synths and computers. Since the very first Guitar Hero game, musicians have found ways of converting game music controllers into genuine music controllers, through […]

iOS has proven some of the appeal of on-demand interactive artwork and audiovisual toys. But even the iPad is limited to a 10″ screen; these days, the biggest screen in the house that isn’t a TV is often attached to a computer. (In fact, I regularly run across people who use a large computer monitor […]

iOS has proven some of the appeal of on-demand interactive artwork and audiovisual toys. But even the iPad is limited to a 10″ screen; these days, the biggest screen in the house that isn’t a TV is often attached to a computer. (In fact, I regularly run across people who use a large computer monitor […]

Play testing Rock Band’s challenging new play modes. You know, challenging — kind of like music. Alli Thresher, community moderator, and Jessa Brezinski, intern. What Harmonix has achieved with Rock Band, and their original Guitar Hero, is remarkable. At their core, these games are descended from arcade rhythm games, reducing music to simple coordination of […]

Must-read: Chris Adamson, one of the few developers with real experience with Java and multimedia, lays out just how bad the situation is with Java on the Mac: shoes[1].drop(); I think the problems here are not insurmountable – it’s just a matter spending energy on the future of development in Java, not ranting at Steve […]

Life was so much easier for bands in the 20th Century. Now, record sales are slumping, and the music video bar has been raised to near-absurd levels. Of course, against these immense pressures, people make incredible stuff. For Austin, Texas’ David Crowder Band, it meant getting into Lite-Brite — to the tune of 700,000 pegs. […]

Music software development includes some of the most sophisticated, expressive software out there. But it has long faced serious challenges in sales – audio software still appeals, generally, to a small slice of people, made smaller by factors ranging from piracy to the sheer complexity of available audio tools. As computing’s distribution model for software […]

From Wendy Carlos to the Swingle Singers, artists have proven over and over again that great music is great music, regardless of instrumentation. (Music historians would be just as quick to point out that most Classical performances don’t really match the original instrumentation, anyway.) So, since it’s Monday and we’re due for a distraction, we […]

I was pleased today to happen across the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim Museum building, peering out at me from YouTube’s logo today. See above for some fantastic, inventive projections mapped to the most famous architectural spiral on Earth. YouTube is also doing a live video event. It will, naturally, require darkness here in Manhattan. […]

I was pleased today to happen across the landmark Frank Lloyd Wright Guggenheim Museum building, peering out at me from YouTube’s logo today. See above for some fantastic, inventive projections mapped to the most famous architectural spiral on Earth. YouTube is also doing a live video event. It will, naturally, require darkness here in Manhattan. […]