What’s the cutest conceivable musical instrument? It’d be tough to top an anthromorphic musical note, complete with eight-note flag, whose smiling face opens when it “sings.” Boing Boing Gadgets (by way of Tokyo Mango) gets the story on this latest creation of art group Maywa Denki and lead creative instigator Novmichi Tosa. The Otamatone is […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]