Next Projection Frontier, Going 3D? Head Tracking, Stereoscopy

3D lovers will always have a special place in their hearts for the red and blue. Photo (CC) Zach Manchester. It’s time to enter a new dimension …the third dimension. With 3D engines easily able to handle multiple cameras, inexpensive systems for head tracking, and the growing ubiquity of not only red/blue stereoscopic glasses but […]

FL Studio 9 Arrives: Better Performance, More Toys, More Editing

Click through for FL’s infamous Giant Screenshot of FL 9. See, it’ll look perfect on your 40″ flat screen. Update: Despite discussion in comments, Image-Line assures us this is an image of FL9. We’ll have more shots once we try out the software, of course! “Fruity Loops” has long proven that not all music making […]

Pro Tools Bundles: $99-129, Hardware for Vocals, Recording, Keys

For people looking to get into music recording and production on a computer, for the first time, there’s a bundle that says “Pro Tools” on the box that costs correction: as little as just $99. It really is Pro Tools software; it’s certainly streamlined (some basic track limits, no multitrack recording), but still with a […]

Pro Tools Essentials and the Big Picture

A young, aspiring musician walks into a consumer electronics store. (Let’s call it Big Buy, and imagine people wearing… red polo shirts.) They wander into the game aisle and muse at the latest music games in the video game section – $60-100 in price. But there’s an endcap with something else: a box of Pro […]

Short Lapse, Time Remap: Ecological Apple and Simple Ideas

Simple, original ideas are wonderful. The vast majority of videos that “go viral” are based around a single, simple idea. The idea may be “anesthetized kids are funny”, or it may be “time-remapping a rotting apple makes it look magical:” Ecological apple (experimental short) from Andreas Soderberg on Vimeo. It´s a regular timelapse that i […]

Paper, Drawing as Musical Controller: A Round-Up

Imagine drawing an interface on paper, then being able to use it as a musical interface. Or, heck, don’t imagine it – do it. Unfortunately, the kinds of intelligence necessary to make the music video in yesterday’s post just aren’t practical yet. (That is, you could draw a picture of a keyboard, and even use […]

Learning Processing, Simplicity, and Design: Keep it Stupid, Stupid

To me, Processing is more than a tool. Through all of its contributors, and back to its predecessor, Design by Numbers, there’s an underlying aesthetic of simplicity in the tool, the language, and the work you can create. This thinking transcends any one tool, and gets to the heart of how to approach design problems […]

Imaginary Instruments: Marker and Paper as Controller

Note Pad from Charlie North on Vimeo. This charming music video from Charlie North imagines creating your own simple music controllers with a piece of paper and a marker. (There’s some similarity to M-Audio pieces there, too.) Of course, that raises another question: could this actually be done? Computer vision isn’t quite intelligent enough to […]

On Behringer’s Track Record, “Value,” and “Copies”

Photo (CC) sleepydisco aka David Wood. In pointing out Behringer’s clone of Apple’s homepage, I may have left some things unclear. I was honestly surprised to find a number of people rushing to Behringer’s defense. I wasn’t trying to score cheap and easy points against the brand, but while venting frustration, I may have underestimated […]

Processing 1.0.7 Has Fixes for Snow Leopard, More

1.0.7 is a must-download on any platform because of key fixes to auto-format, highlighting, exception reporting, and PVector. (See revisions.) But if you’re an early adopter of Snow Leopard, this offers fixes for that, as well: Tweaks for Mac OS X Snow Leopard, to force it to run in 32-bit mode. This should bring back […]