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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

Speaking in Hamburg to a terrific group of assembled locals from a variety of design backgrounds. And yes, this is the other part of my life behind me. I just seem to generally skip the years 1700-1985. Go figure. The history of music and the history of music notation are closely intertwined. Now, digital languages […]

Audition, a favorite, previously Windows-only wave editor from Adobe, is coming to the Mac this winter. Adobe is touting native surround support, multi-channel effects, and performance optimizations; you can check out how the new tool looks at Adobe Labs. The public beta is due this winter. Interestingly, Adobe is pushing the video side of this […]

Out today in the US is the new release from The Chemical Brothers, ‘Further.’ From what I’ve heard so far, expect a full-bodied, raucous record of sounds, neither particularly retro nor modern. I’m withholding judgment on how successful the direction is until I spend some quality time with it. I find it interesting that the […]

Unsound NYC, Alexander Kaline and Joshue Ott from superdraw on Vimeo. Audiovisual experiences promise to be richer than ever, but conveying them to new audiences matters, too. Very often, the Internet reduces documentation to small bits and pieces or low-fidelity, grainy live video that’s hard to follow. That’s why it’s a treat to have a […]

velosynth release#001 from velosynth on Vimeo. Bicycle transport is cheap, environmentally sound, and quiet – a little too quiet. Since bikes don’t make noise, it can be difficult to hear them coming. And since a bicyclist should be focused on the road, any visual feedback to the bicyclist is potentially distracting. What’s the solution? How […]

How much can you do with a suitcase full of soundmakers? Quite a lot, as it happens. The 20th Century gave sound two great achievements. One was the successful modeling of filtering in digital software form. The other was the production of the electronic filter, first in quartz crystal form. Today, all of those advancements […]

Photo (CC-BY) Anton Fomkin. No endorsement intended. (I like Energizer, too.) If the last decades in technology were about speed, this decade promises to be about power. I don’t mean horsepower: I mean power as in electricity. From concerns environmental to practical, power is now a real variable. After years of misreading Moore’s Law to […]