My own President Obama is this week off making his pitch for why Chicago should host the Olympic Games. Correction. Oops. I need to read the news. Chicago was eliminated first. But look out – our friends at Antipop (slogan: “antipop music for a pop music”) are using a different tool in their arsenal: music. […]

It’s Friday, folks. You don’t want to think. You want to give your eyeballs a nice dip in cool, refreshing retinal stimulation. Grab a fistful of eye candy and relax on the couch. Here are just a few to get you started; feel free to add more fodder for weekend watching on comments. CDMusic was […]

If you haven’t checked CreateDigitalMusic today, there’s been quite a flurry of excitement around Novation’s newly announced $200 Launchpad controller. Check out the full details on CDMu. I’m about to go out to a gig, so don’t have time to talk about backpack VJ controller setups, Monome comparisons, OHM64 alternatives, or how nice it is […]

If you haven’t checked CreateDigitalMusic today, there’s been quite a flurry of excitement around Novation’s newly announced $200 Launchpad controller. Check out the full details on CDMu. I’m about to go out to a gig, so don’t have time to talk about backpack VJ controller setups, Monome comparisons, OHM64 alternatives, or how nice it is […]

I got to spend yesterday working with the Launchpad; see the video above which I think should help you get a sense of scale and what it looks like. (Also on YouTube) We have additional videos from other sources below. It’s only been public for less than 24 hours, but as we did with the […]

A monome-like grid controller built for Live, shipping in November for $199 – and I’ve got a first hands-on look with the hardware. The feature that makes Ableton Live Ableton Live has always been its Session View, an array of Lego-like blocks of music triggering samples and patterns. In the grand tradition of the MPC, […]

Marrying open source and commercial development, or trying to bridge analog consoles and computers – either task on its own might seem improbable. But yesterday, a newly-announced tool promised to bring together all those dimensions. Ardour is the free and open source Digital Audio Workstation software for Linux and Mac. It’s widely underrated and has […]

Introducing Sheepintology from Jeff Minter on Vimeo. You know the type – the VJs who have eighteen layers of videos, particle effects exploding everywhere. Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft is to game design as those people are to projectors. The thing is, he does it perfectly. Llamasoft’s creations can make you laugh at a particle effect. And […]

It’s Richie Hawtin Watch time! The latest: NI teases an upcoming DJ controller by sharing video of Richie playing it in a club. The surprise: it’s actually what he’s doing with Maschine that seems most interesting to me. And if you recall the Twitter DJ app that he promised in the spring, it’s here, ready […]

It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went […]