Among the highlights of the product releases last week, Roland has a new virtual analog synth (the SH-01) and shoulder keyboard (AX-09) that look friendly and relatively affordable (especially once you account for street price, not list). They have that convergence of certain selling points that I think will make them popular – maybe not […]

Photo (CC-BY) Eoin Gardiner. With talk of tablets, experimentation with interfaces, new developments in low-cost and low-power processing, and ongoing challenges with access in different parts of the world, in 2010, it seems everyone is asking fundamental questions about what digital platforms and computing platforms should be. There are few contexts to better explore that […]

SunVox, the quirky and cool modular music creation software, already runs on a ton of platforms. Starting now, most of those platforms can run the tool for free. (The one exception: iPhone/iPad.) That means you get a rich music creation environment that can run on everything from an ancient PDA to a desktop computer, complete […]

Augmented Sculpture by GROSSE8 & LICHTFRONT / Passagen 2010 from Lichtfront on Vimeo. Part of the beauty of projection is its ability to mix light and sculpture, so it’s with great pleasure that I come across this fantastic, organic and origami-like work by Cologne-based Grosse8/Lichtfront. The big accomplishment of this work, evident only as you […]

FINE COLLECTION OF CURIOUS SOUND OBJECTS from Georg Reil on Vimeo. Commentary would spoil the video above, but to me it’s a reminder of the power of theater in all we do with technology and musical objects. The arrangement includes six exceptional exhibits from the world of sounds and acoustics. At first sight looking trivial, […]

It’s a simple effect, but a reminder that extending onto multiple screens — any multiple screens, really — can be a good time. Jeff Soto/iamnotrobot sends along his friends Love and Logic and Chris Perino (Drive By) covering Lady Gaga. Each of the four iPhones is one take, no cuts, and the four are synced […]

Ready for some blue-sky, 35,000-foot-altitude thinking? Photo (CC-BY-ND Andres Rueda. Want a flying car? Dream of the flying car. Build the flying car. A competition I’m hosting with Digitópia, the musical-technological community of Porto, Portugal, extends to readers worldwide a challenge to dream up the digital musical instrument/interface/creation you want. Got something practical you wish […]

The Octatrack is an ambitious piece of hardware, combining multitrack sampling and playback with real-time audio warping. We didn’t get a good look at it earlier this week, but the folks at Gear4Music went back to get a more complete walkthrough with Elektron’s Jon. It’s followed by a proper live set – and it sounds […]

Let’s get this out of the way right at the beginning: dedicated audio editors are important. For sound design, for tweaking audio assets, and for just getting close to your sounds, editing waveforms in a DAW often doesn’t cut it. That’s made a lot of Mac users unhappy, because it’s one of the few areas […]