BOSS Pedal Sketch: BOSS Stompboxes as Free iPhone Download

The BOSS Pedal Sketch application, a free download today for iPhone and iPod touch, probably isn’t what you think it is – but it is a novel concept in mobile apps, and a sign of some of the new ideas to be explored. If your first thought was that this is a handheld set of […]

Roland Round-up: A Mobile Juno Workstation, Realistic Piano Models, More

Roland dropped a slew of news announcements today, from new keyboards to software. There’s a new JUNO-Gi, which takes Roland’s economical synth workstation and adds multitrack recording and BOSS effects. The virtual piano lineup has all been remade in the image of the V-Piano, with more realistic sampling tech. And there’s a set of offerings […]

In Photos: Discovering Sound Making, Electronics at Culturefix NYC

Photos above: Jennifer Meagher, with additional photography by myself. Handmade Music found a new home on New York’s Lower East Side, at Culturefix, an electronics boutique cum gallery, bar, and tapas. The philosophy of this event has long been to simply open the doors, letting a community of people come together, make some noise, and […]

Soundhack Goodness, Now as Pd and Max External Objects

Soundhack, the free audio tool for the Mac developed by audio wizard Tom Erbe, was long a beloved tool for doing strange and wonderful things for sound. It was followed by Spectral Shapers, Mac and Windows plug-ins that built on some of those ideas to do more “timbral morphing” with recorded audio. That includes “timbral […]

Sounds by Richard Devine, Granulation on iOS, and Footsteps of a Wasp

Exploring granular sound on the iPad in the application Curtis. Image courtesy the developers. Named for Curtis Roads, Curtis is an iPad and iPhone/iPod touch application that implements granular sound processing – a technique, imagined early on by the composer Xenakis, which divides sound into tiny granules, allowing more liquid modification of the audio. Roads […]

Korg M1 Keyboard Workstation, Reborn on Nintendo DS

The original M1, definitely larger than a DS. Photo (CC-BY-SA) Kevin Phillips. Having made their own DS-10 instrument, Korg and DS developer AQ Interactive yesterday presented something new for the handheld Nintendo. This time, they’re revisiting one of the all-time greatest hits of digital synthesis, the Korg M1 workstation. Markus Schroeder tips us off that […]

Powerful 3D Tech, Housebroken: Unity, OpenFrameworks, Blender, Dog in Action

Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo. Right on cue, after mentioning that game engines like Unity can become powerful tools for live and interactive visuals — not just digital “games” in the conventional sense — here’s an example, via the Unity Twitter feed. SNIFF, by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George, combines the […]

Unity 3 Game Engine Approaches Mind-Blowing Upgrade

Unity, the commercial game engine, has long been a development tool of interest to those working not only in games but other live and interactive 3D visuals. In contrast to traditional tools, Unity is simply friendlier to designers and programmers alike. It’s what you’d imagine a game engine to be. After first attracting developers on […]

Hands-on Visuals, Literally: MIDI Glove + Modul8

STOPMOTION 2.0. Controlado en directo por sensores from Rubén Fernández on Vimeo. Madrid-based artist Rubén Fernández sends along his most recent project, which layers stop motion video with novel live control. The material itself is composed of stop motion footage produced with everyday materials, most notably beer and soda cans. The stop motion footage was […]

Unity Game Engine 3 Adds Real-time Audio, Mod Tracker Features

Nearing the release of Unity 3, the popular multi-platform game engine, the dev team offers thoughts on what excites them most in the upgrade. Amongst those features are some tasty introductions in sound. Real-time audio features could make Unity an appealing environment for people working on experimental 3D interfaces for sound or adding more interactive […]