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. […]

Apple just killed their implementation of Java on the Mac – which just happens to be the only really usable implementation of Java on the Mac. There’s no other way to say it: Java developers on the Mac have relied on Apple’s implementation, and that implementation is not moving forward with Mac OS, period. I’m […]

What if you could make any device or any software a re-programmable musical instrument, effect, or soundmaker? Your phone could be a touch-controlled effect, your tablet a sketchpad for interactive drum sequencers. Patches assembled on your desk on a computer could be taken with you in your pocket. And what if you could do all […]