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 […]

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 […]

  Look out: Behringer, already a notorious rip-off artist, is taking the “first step in [the] company’s reinvention of online presence.” I shudder to think what the coming steps will look like. But yes, the new site looks a wee bit familiar. It actually gets worse as you dig into the layout. In fairness, for […]

Plastikman in Second Life. Now, could Plastikman get a second life? Survey says yes. Photo: (CC) Torley. Richie Hawtin has been the subject of adulation and sometimes seemingly-random scorn by readers of this site — blame the passions of the Internet. But amidst that noise has been a clear signal: bring back Plastikman. Richie is […]