Sneaks are a good thing. Photo (CC-BY) Pink Sherbet Photography / D. Sharon Pruitt. Let’s start with what’s really important: Chris McCormick’s squeakyshoecore tunes may well make you tap your All Stars and smile. The words “algorithmically-generated acid” and mention of the multimedia patching environment Pd might not suggest feel-goody, cheery, geeky-sounding electronic grooves, but […]

A tower of plastic, and a photographic reflection on the strange physical form music took at the height of the CD. Photo (CC-BY-SA) William Hook. Can music as a physical object have value and meaning again? For many music enthusiasts, that affection has turned back to the vinyl record, not the CD. (How many artists […]

It’s about time to tear up New York City with creative projection mapping, and The Architectural League in New York has a spectacular venue to do it. On September 25, the League’s Beaux Arts Ball descends on the Audubon Terrace complex, an extraordinary setting with various nooks, crannies, and galleries. [See photo gallery] From the […]

All photos courtesy/(C) Alessandro Cortini, for CDM. Call it cable addiction. Italian-born musician Alessandro Cortini, known for his live keyboard work with Nine Inch Nails, retreated into the studio with classic and contemporary Buchla modular synths to make “SONOIO.” Guided by his uniquely personal compositional style, he was able to wrangle that mess of chords […]

Visualization often wins out over sonification when it comes to making data clear. But sound has one key advantage: it can make time and scale apparent, by tapping directly into our perception of forward time. Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto, born well into the Nuclear Age in 1959, uses that property to chilling effect. The sounds […]

prettyugly from madbutter on Vimeo. Brooklyn-based interactive artist Robert Stratton writes to share his interactive, modular LED display system, currently on view through the end of August in a window on 53rd Street in Manhattan, between 5th and 6th across from the Museum of Modern Art. The project uses proximity sensors built by Sensacell. This […]

Is it time to get a round tuit? Photo (CC-BY-ND) Denise Mattox. For this book review, we welcome guest writer Andy Farnell, who himself has a terrific book on interactive sound design and free modular patching environment Pure Data, entitled Designing Sound. It began as a review of a book on using free software – […]

AudioMulch 2.1: Time signature support from AudioMulch on Vimeo. Does music production need more software with more features? Probably not. Could it use a little spice in its rhythms and time signatures? Absolutely! So, while I already have great respect for the idiosyncratic, underground-favorite AudioMulch, the addition of custom time signatures in the video above […]

Trifonic: Making Pads with Spectral Dronemaker from Next Step Audio on Vimeo. Brian of the music production team Trifonic completes his two-part series on synthesizing sounds with Native Instruments Massive (which shows nicely here, though you could also translate these techniques to similar semi-modular synths). Part one from May covers oscillators, filters, and other features, […]

Many musicians and producers appear to be betting that the killer app for iPad will be Ableton Live. That is, they’re interested in controlling Ableton Live’s live performance engine, running on a full-featured Mac or PC, from the iPad as a touch control surface. Little wonder: the iPad, at US$500, has what’s likely the best […]