Michigan-born, Brooklyn-based artist Shigeto is one of my favorite artists on Ghostly International. AKA Zach Saginaw, Shigeto has been making collages of electronic beats, richly-textural releases, many of them following the narrative of his family’s experience in Japanese internment camps here in the US during World War II. “What We Held On To” is a […]
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Symphony I/O: Next-Gen Apogee High-end I/O, Works with Any Mac DAW Via USB
Looking for all the world like a high-end audiophile stereo radio receiver as much as pro audio equipment, the shiny, new Symphony I/O has arrived from Apogee. It’s a top-of-the-range audio interface designed for low latency, high-quality digital-to-analog conversion, and quality clocking, as well as flexible input and output, coming from a company known in […]
Better Windows Screencasting: Open Source CamStudio with Expanded Support
Don’t let this happen to you. Photo (CC-BY) christa connelly. Recording a screen just isn’t as easy as recording sound, presenting challenges for everyone from visualists documenting work to software imagineers developing software. That means any news in this area on any platform is good news. CamStudio is an open source project descended from the […]
Brilliant LEGO Mindstorms Drum Machine, NXT-606 – New Video
Peter Cocteau’s NXT-606, an 8-bit, sample-based drum machine built on LEGO’s Mindstorms prototyping platforming, has already been making the geek blog rounds. But let’s consider it here as more than just novelty. First, there’s a new video which better demonstrates the instrument, how it functions, and how it was developed. Second, there are design features […]
Ableton Users, Grab Gigs of Custom Instruments for Free
Inside an Ableton instrument sample. Photo (CC-BY) Cliff Beckwith. Live’s Instruments can be a terrific way to explore Ableton Live – rather than simply giving you black-box preset sounds, these include custom racks that can be customized, disassembled, and warped to your own applications. I’m a fan of the work of some of the folks […]
MOTU DP Gets Native iPhone, iPod, iPad DAW Control Free
Mixing, transport, and other shortcuts now appear on Apple mobiles with the newest version of MOTU’s Digital Performer (DP) DAW on Mac. Photos courtesy MOTU. First-party touch control is gradually coming to big-name DAWs. There are plenty of third-party applications that allow control of music software, but until now, we’ve only seen Cubase iC from […]
Mary Anne Hobbs Leaving BBC Radio 1, Marking End of an Era
Performing live at SONAR, courtesy the artist. Mary Anne Hobbs has announced that she is leaving BBC Radio 1 after fourteen years to pursue other work. It’s a changing of the guard at one of the world’s major musical beacons. In her tenure as a DJ for the Beeb, Hobbs famously helped fuel the explosive […]
Griid, iPad Ableton Controller, in Exclusive Photos, Looks Clean and Colorful
The developers of Griid, the Ableton Live controller on iPad created in association with Richie Hawtin, have shared photos and screen captures early with CDM to give us a look at the upcoming app. Just over a decade after its original inception, Ableton Live itself remains a ground-breaking user interface design. Love it or hate […]
iOS Arrivals: A Serious Mobile Studio for Producers, AmpliTube for Guitarists
With previews and teasers, it’s sometimes easy to miss when useful new tools actually become available to you. Two tools this week became available, each potentially high on the utility end of the spectrum. There’s no shortage of variety in iOS music creation apps, but when people really want to get down to music making, […]
Video Output on Android Devices: What's Available Now, What to Expect
Following updates to iOS, one of the key strengths Apple has right now is its rich support for video output. (See, for instance, our look at VGA output from the spring.) Video out is a standard, supported, public, documented option for developers, at least if you’re on the newest devices and OS. And that includes […]