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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

You have the con: for tactile control, the patch is fully integrated with Akai’s APC40 controller for Ableton Live. Photo courtesy Darren Cowley. Ableton Live may have “Live” in the name, but just as with any musical equipment, getting it ready for a show often involves elaborate configuration to make reliable control a reality. Over […]

This is a New York City-produced set of haikus, so it’s accompanied by Brooklyn cherry blossoms. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Taís Melillo. It occurs to me that I tend to write long articles, and people don’t always read them closely. And sometimes I do indeed obscure my own ideas, so I’ll make this as clear as possible. […]