David Byrne is, of course, a legendary name. But part of what I love about music is, for all the hero worship that sometimes accompanies music writing and fandom, there’s always something to learn from musicians whose work you enjoy – whether famous or obscure. David Byrne has been singularly open in talking about his […]

Mark of the octopus. The mystery continues. Photo (CC-BY-ND) Allen Elliotte. With Germany’s Messe trade show just a week away, buzz is pretty well focused on Swedish boutique machine maker Elektron, that beloved manufacturer of the Machinedrum. They’re about to launch something, and it’s a product with “octa” in the name, but that’s about all […]

Clavilux 2000 – Interactive instrument for generative music visualization from Jonas Heuer on Vimeo. Think of playing musical notes for a moment, or close your eyes while fingering a piano keyboard. Odds are, some visual – however abstract – pops into your mind. Visualizing musical notes is second nature in the digital realm, once a […]

52 Reason and Record Tips Week 4 – Unlocking the Secrets of CV and Gate. from James Bernard on Vimeo. Reason and Record may lack plug-in support, but what they do have – open-ended patching between the available modules, in the tradition of analog synthesizers – opens up plenty of creative possibilities. The only sad […]

An information-dense twitter tip from Bigfug has notified us of some great news for those who love FreeFrameGL’s high performance mojo, but are sad about all their great FreeFrame Classic (yes, I just made that nomenclature up) effects gathering digital dust. fugWrapperGL is a plugin which allows you to use FreeFrame 1.0 plugins in FreeFrameGL […]

4fourths – Game Trailer from Mikengreg on Vimeo. It’s been a long time coming, but there’s real hope that convergence of lovers of independent, creative game design with audiovisualist aficionados could bring us to a new, game-inspired visual age. Of course, a good way to start would be for some game designers to start to […]

Marvim Gainsbug: the Twitter based Song Composer from jeraman on Vimeo. It should come as no surprise, but Twitter can compose existential nihilistic poetry. Just ask the creepy, detached voice of Marvim Gainsbug. The robotic, generative songwriter will produce a “song” from Tweet keywords of your choice. And be prepared for some finger snaps at […]

Didgeridoo from bar|none on Vimeo. You can’t quite dance to it, but bar|none has a beautifully-shot video of a strange, invented instrument constructed with some of the technologies we saw last week. As noted then, new support for OSC in the powerful Kyma sound system means the ability to control imagined instruments in more sophisticated, […]

Boards Interactive Magazine – Walkthrough from Theo Watson on Vimeo. Augmented reality has inspired plenty of experiments, magazines included – some successful, some failing to get far beyond the gimmick. What’s nice about this work is that it introduces the concept of motion to the typically-static pages of print, and inspires readers to imagine a […]

Every so often, I’m reminded of a simple fact: the greatest machine on the planet remains the human machine. So, yes, it may seem strange to one of the uninitiated to imagine strapping an iPhone to your wrist. And yes, musicianship in the digital age is partly about triggering, not just playing (though Onyx can […]