Reactive Music of the Future: RjDj on iPad, Your Computer, Beyond

For many musical artists, the frontier of reactive, interactive music has been a long time coming. RjDj, an app which we first saw as a series of interactive musical scenes on the iPhone, is now being expanded by its developers into a mini-ecosystem of interactive music tools for creation and distribution. I don’t think it’s […]

KORG Brings ElecTribe to iPad: Preview Video

KORG Japan has been embracing mobile platforms even as other traditional music manufacturers do not. First, it was the KORG DS-10, which brought a unique interface for sequencing and synthesis to the Nintendo DS. Now, they have an iPad app, available now on the iTunes Music Store. The iELECTRIBE has a hardware interface, emulated in […]

Eye-Tracking Interfaces and More April Fools’ Creations We Could Have in Real Life

I enjoy a little April Foolery now and then – see Google.com at the moment. But I had a funny revelation about some of the April Fools’ jokes out there today: they could be real. Some even already are. For starters, consider the EyeDJ. The video is hilarious, a spot-on parody of the hype level […]

"Broken Fingaz" Graffiti Stop Motion for The Glitch Mob

Broken Fingaz -Graffiti Stop Motion from Broken Fingaz on Vimeo. The Glitch Mob, a talented team of musical artists based in LA, are readying their debut album, and along with that comes a range of collaborations with visual materials, too. I covered The Glitch Mob’s upcoming activities, complete with a free song download from the […]

More Mac OS X 10.6.3 Graphics Details Trickle Out, But Is It Any Surprise News is Lean?

Jean-Francois Roy of Apple Tweets today: Amazed I haven’t seen more reports about the new OpenGL extensions we shipped in 10.6.3. Nearly 100% of the GL 3 extensions are now in. Jean-Francois describes himself thusly: “I work at Apple on OpenGL, and I am writing Riven X, MPQKit and other bits of Mac software.” “Shipping” […]

iPad and Screen Real Estate for Music Making: bleepBox Developer on Process

After years of bitmap-based graphics and tiny knobs, making interfaces scalable could be the next challenge for music software, regardless of platform. Today, it’s the iPad; tomorrow, it could be a new generation of touch-equipped devices, or greater sensitivity to people with aging eyes and vision problems. Musicians, translating invisible sound to the metaphors of […]

Shruti-1: DIY Digital Synth with Vintage Filter, as Dev Turns from Palm to Hardware

For all the hype around mobile music creation, here’s a story with an ending in the opposite direction. Independent developer Olivier Gillet is the reason a lot of people see handheld gadgets as potential music making devices; he’s the creator of the brilliant Bhajis Loops for Palm. But, as if to prove that hardware can […]

Mac OS X 10.6.3 Promises Quartz Composer, OpenGL Fixes

This cat is … slightly camouflaged. Photo (CC) Tambako The Jaguar (but yes, this is a snow leopard). Mac OS X 10.6.3 looks like it may be a significant update for graphics performance, but good luck trying to figure out what’s changed from the vague update log. There is mention of “compatibility issues with OpenGL-based […]

Free Miro Video Converter for Windows, Mac; Miro 3.0

The folks at Miro have a handy tool for fool-proof, dummy-friendly video conversion for mobile devices. Drop nearly any file, and it converts to MP4, OGG Theora, or specific presets for devices from the TMobile G1 to the iPod – and even FLV. It’s available for Mac and Windows only, not Linux. I imagine that’s […]