Summer NAMM: New Gear in Videos, Photos, for Guitarists, DJs, Vocalists, Producers

Effect pedals on CDM? Heck, yes. Electro-Harmonix may have just stolen the show in Nashville with the Freeze pedal alone. Continuing our coverage with Nashville locals and musicians Tony and Jeremy, we have some hands-on videos, images, and impressions of the gear on offer. Don’t miss yesterday’s story on how the trade show helps Nashville […]

ASCAP Attacks Creative Commons, Advocacy Groups as Anti-Copyright, Anti-Artist

Vintage image (CC-BY-SA) Ioan Sameli, as licensed by us pinko commies at CDM. An ASCAP legislative fundraising letter revealed last week that the American performing rights organization is invoking fears of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Public Knowledge, and Creative Commons in order to raise money. ASCAP appears to be repeating, now in the more heated […]

For the Music Manufacturers, a Subdued Trade Show; For Nashville, Badly-Needed Relief

Nashville locals Jeremy Dickens (logickal) and Tony Youngblood were on-site this month for CDM to cover the Nashville’s NAMM show, the summer installment of the major music manufacturer trade show. The Summer 2010 edition of the North American Music Merchants trade show (Summer NAMM to most of us) has come and gone. For three days […]

Video Game Artist Mark Essen, Drawing on Retro, Minimal Game Visuals

Paraphrasing Mark Essen in the interview above: “it’s not nostalgia. I just like it.” Video game aesthetics have become a kind of naive, outside art for the digital age. Little wonder: the explosion of consumer digital products in the 80s left the children of that decade and decades after with piles of media. Someone was […]

Tupperware Music, Guitar Robots, Polyphonic Makerbot – Handmade Music LA Tonight

dromama from Altitude Sickness on Vimeo. Wherever you are in the world, here’s some geeky inspiration to kick off this summer weekend. And if you’re in the Los Angeles area, you should absolutely, positively be on Venice Boulevard tonight at 8pm at hacker venue CRASH Space for Handmade Music, gone LA. In the lineup: circuit […]

DJ Sasha's Live Visuals, Full of LEDs

The shift may be gradual, but big-name musical acts are beginning to be more mindful about the involvement of visualists, closer in their collaboration, and quicker to credit the visual artists. And well they should: adding powerful visuals to a set and promoting the visual artists involved is now a terrific way to promote the […]

Hands On Eigenharp: Exploring an Innovative New Digital Instrument

eigenzone.org : Eigenharp Alpha Unboxing from Geert Bevin on Vimeo. Eigenharp Alpha Experiment 20100624 from Geert Bevin on Vimeo. A genuinely new instrument isn’t something you can expect to simply pick up and judge. Part of what makes music so addictive, so satisfying, is the amount of time and energy we put in. One would […]

Free Stuff for Ableton Live: FM Drum Machine in M4L, Minus Artists’ Live Sets

The design of tools incorporates aesthetic ideas and values from the creator. With freer access to those tools, and easier creation of custom tools, the line between a music release and a tool release blurs. The difference: you can take someone else’s tool, and warp it to your own purposes. And so it is that […]

Mobile Video Out Everywhere: iPhone 4, HTC Evo, and Droid X

All hail HDMI! Photo (CC-BY-ND) Sam Catchesides. We’ve been waiting for this a long time: handheld visualism is finally here. Whereas once digital VJing and live visuals were the exclusive domain of laptops with video out, today various pocket-able devices come with video out. In fact, it appears we’re close to getting live visuals as […]

Auvi, Amazing Set of Video Processing Objects for Max-Jitter, Now Free

There are many tools for visual patching, but the real gems come along only so often. One of those sets of gems was the Auvi objects for Max/MSP/Jitter, developed in the early years of the last decade. The objects were assumed to be abandonware, until just this week, they resurfaced – entirely free to download. […]