With the iPad available now and more touch-enabled devices likely coming soon, we finally have hardware that can be both display and controller, visual feedback and input device. While tactile control will maintain its place, these devices can augment performance controls, acting as compositional brains, and can serve as studio creation tools. Yesterday, we got […]

There’s obviously something about big. In the 1988 film Big, the iconic scene featured Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia tapping their way across FAO Schwartz’s oversized piano. Now, it’s the drum machine’s turn. David Crowder*Band drummer Bwack made the oversized stage version of an MPC-style set of drum pads, seen below and on CDM in […]

A 1922 test of Kodachrome color motion pictures predates feature-length color movies by several years. The results are eerily beautiful, a transcendent view through the eyes of someone exploring a medium that is still new technology, and the talented performers able to exploit its potential. At once contemporary and alien, the pictures are also a […]

Whatever the platform, you can expect musicians to do weird things and make noise. (It is, after all, our raison d’être.) In this case, while the input controller is an iPad or iPhone, the emphasis remains on running sound from additional gear, whether an inexpensive hardware synth in the form of a Korg monotron or […]

Before Bieber, there was Hamsterdance – what in 1998 counted for viral on the Internet. In today’s ever-geekier times, even obscure sound software can go viral. Photo (CC-BY) twodolla / Wendy. In this age of the 24-hour news cycle and instant publication of stories, sometimes it’s good to slow down and wait. And thus, while […]

REFORMAT THE PLANET trailer from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo. The journey to complete and release a documentary is a long one, but Reformat the Planet, a feature-length documentary on the chip music scene, has reached the other side. Focused on the hub of artists in New York and the Blip Festival, Reformat the Planet […]

Tab. Delicious. I want the Toshiba Mr. Pibb, myself, however. Photo (CC-BY) Joe Shlabotnik / Peter Dutton. Samsung today teased their upcoming Samsung GALAXY Tab tablet. The mention of “Tab” is forever in my own mind linked to my grade school gym teacher (it was her favorite snack, alongside jelly doughnuts). But hey, it’s better […]

How do you allow musical ideas to flower – technically, creatively, and when finding your musical voice? The floral images reflected in visuals and sound in Christopher Willits’ “Tiger Flower Circle Sun” are evocative imagery, but also an apt metaphor for Willits’ artistic process. The composer and artist spins unique, organic ambient worlds with layers […]

Vimeo Festival + Awards – Overture from Overture on Vimeo. The future is omni-platform. It’s visual content on mobiles, on desktops, and on TVs. It’s not tied to any one distribution platform, either, whether that’s iTunes (which bizarrely managed to co-opt the open RSS format for its own, with iTunes-specific tweaks), or things like the […]

To start our Monday morning right, here’s some nice, rhythmic glitch in the Mac tool Quartz Composer, using a combination of custom and off-the-shelf plug-ins — bless you, modularity. It’s a lovely demonstration of how having an ample set of pluggable tools can help you to produce the results you want. PXN_richterizz from pixel noizz […]