For Singers, Effects and Looping All in One Box

Singers often get left out, at least when compared to the toys heaped on guitarists and keyboardists. But vocalists looking to add effects and loop their vocalizations can now do so in one box, all attachable to a mic stand. TC-Helicon has an intriguing-looking gadget they’ve unveiled for vocalists, just in time for the summer […]

YouTube Adds Online Video Editing As You Upload; Great for Quick Demo Reels

Upload, edit – the two are back together again on YouTube. Google Operating System was sharp enough to notice the change. (Thanks, Lifehacker) Aside from the player interface, the whole interface makes use of HTML5, though it’s not as sophisticated as a former Flash-based “remix” tool that YouTube offered, then discontinued. (That seems to be […]

Guide to Vuvuzela Fever: Suddenly, Everyone Cares About Notch Filtering

Vuvuzela Orchestra Demo from Pedro Espi-Sanchis on Vimeo. It’s an extraordinary sporting event, one in which the spirits of the many nations of the planet come together, driven by a passion for one thing. No, not football. Notch filtering, apparently. It’s not very often geeky audio matters cross onto the mainstream radar, but such has […]

Virtual Reality: Guitar Notation, Amps, and Effects Appear on Apple Mobiles

Competing solutions from IK Multimedia and Peavey extend the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad with custom hardware for connecting a guitar. Here, the AmpKit LiNK, by Peavey and Agile Partners. All images courtesy the vendors. Ah, amplifiers and stompboxes. We hardly knew ye. Once exclusively the stuff of tubes, wires, cabinets, aluminum, and electronics, guitar […]

Official Processing Wiki Goes Live, Full of Wisdom and Knowledge; How Best to Learn?

Demo on using Processing with Ruby, by Jason Cale. Photo (CC-BY-SA) valakirka. The Processing Wiki has just launched on the official Processing site: http://wiki.processing.org/w/Main_Page Via Casey Reas’ blog (which has more notes on the wiki) It’s a great place to start looking for information, particularly when it comes to FAQs, troubleshooting, and getting started developing. […]

Brains, Computers, Focus: How Do You Stay Productively Creative?

The original pomodoro. Photo (CC-BY-SA) borgmarc. For an artist, being productive and being happy are often closely intertwined. Whether you’re polishing off an album, practicing your instrument, patching or coding a new musical tool, or managing your career, music requires immense levels of focus and discipline. Then there’s the matter of the stuff that tends […]

Filter The Vuvuzela Horn Out of the World Cup; Learn JACK Routing on Linux

Yep. That sound. Now, if you happen to like the vuvuzela, if you’re feeling the South African Gees (spirit), maybe you can follow these instructions to make the horns even louder. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Axel Bührmann. Are you a World Cup fan annoyed by the constant sound of the South African vuvuzela horn? Wish you could […]

The Evocative, Minimal Visual Worlds of Tina Frank

vergence (short version) from Tina Frank on Vimeo. Vienna-based artist Tina Frank is a veteran of audiovisual design, moonlighting as both visualist and designer for media from the Web to music packaging. Beginning work in the 90s, she demonstrated deftly how spanning traditional design work and visualizing music in clubs could establish a designer on […]

Monday Listening: Exquisitely-Crafted Ambient Album Kuss, Free EP on FLAC

Submerge by FeedbackLoop Label The Internet is supposedly about quantity over quality – endless releases of every sound a computer can spit out, limitless choice and access, albums as prolific and disposable as Twitter updates. Of course, whether it actually is that or not is, as always, up to the creators. Netlabel Feedback Loop, based […]

Hundreds of Free Musical Tools Now Free to Add to Usine

Usine is an overlooked gem in music making, a PC-based modular environment and live performance tool that runs as a host or VST plug-in. Pick the modules you need from a set of powerful building blocks, and build a custom musical rig, complete with multi-touch control on new Windows devices. It sounds like something you […]