Korg M1 Keyboard Workstation, Reborn on Nintendo DS

The original M1, definitely larger than a DS. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Kevin Phillips. Having made their own DS-10 instrument, Korg and DS developer AQ Interactive yesterday presented something new for the handheld Nintendo. This time, they’re revisiting one of the all-time greatest hits of digital synthesis, the Korg M1 workstation. Markus Schroeder tips us off that […]

Powerful 3D Tech, Housebroken: Unity, OpenFrameworks, Blender, Dog in Action

Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo. Right on cue, after mentioning that game engines like Unity can become powerful tools for live and interactive visuals — not just digital “games” in the conventional sense — here’s an example, via the Unity Twitter feed. SNIFF, by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George, combines the […]

Unity 3 Game Engine Approaches Mind-Blowing Upgrade

Unity, the commercial game engine, has long been a development tool of interest to those working not only in games but other live and interactive 3D visuals. In contrast to traditional tools, Unity is simply friendlier to designers and programmers alike. It’s what you’d imagine a game engine to be. After first attracting developers on […]

Hands-on Visuals, Literally: MIDI Glove + Modul8

STOPMOTION 2.0. Controlado en directo por sensores from Rubén Fernández on Vimeo. Madrid-based artist Rubén Fernández sends along his most recent project, which layers stop motion video with novel live control. The material itself is composed of stop motion footage produced with everyday materials, most notably beer and soda cans. The stop motion footage was […]

Unity Game Engine 3 Adds Real-time Audio, Mod Tracker Features

Nearing the release of Unity 3, the popular multi-platform game engine, the dev team offers thoughts on what excites them most in the upgrade. Amongst those features are some tasty introductions in sound. Real-time audio features could make Unity an appealing environment for people working on experimental 3D interfaces for sound or adding more interactive […]

Remembering Keith Barr, Founder of Alesis, Lost Last Week

Photos courtesy Spin Semiconductor. I was stunned last week to learn of the death of Keith Barr, the founder of Alesis and a beloved, legendary engineer of music technology. He was 61. An analog engineer gone digital, he led the charge to make digital reverb and studio recording affordable, and even after his Alesis years […]

monome Me: Community Tour, Tunes to Hear

Pauk (Pau Cabruja) using a Monome 256 attached to a guitar strap, photo by Lara Jaruchik. Courtesy monome Community Tour The monome is coming to your town. Unlike tours organized by commercial product vendors, a grassroots effort by monome users pledges to share the music made with the monome and give back to a larger […]

Ready-to-Play, Tuned Beer Bottles, and Other Design Experiments with Sound

From label to physical shape to the boxes they come in, these beer bottles have been reimagined for musical aims. Cheers! All images courtesy the artist, Matt Braun. What if blowing tunes on beer bottles was raised to the level of musical science? Through even the mundane medium of packaging, design can transform the everyday. […]

Apple-Centric Observers Get the Facts Wrong: H.264 Still Ain't Free

CC-BY-NC-SAFrancesco Lodolo. Addendum to the previous story: an “end user” and an “application” are not the same thing. Watching comments from some users dumping on Firefox and Opera because they don’t understand this is painful. Watching it come from journalists is even more so. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what today’s announcement […]

Apple-Centric Observers Get the Facts Wrong: H.264 Still Ain’t Free

CC-BY-NC-SAFrancesco Lodolo. Addendum to the previous story: an “end user” and an “application” are not the same thing. Watching comments from some users dumping on Firefox and Opera because they don’t understand this is painful. Watching it come from journalists is even more so. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what today’s announcement […]