In a Hollywood overrun with remakes, a new Tron has quite a daunting challenge. The original film may be a cult hit for its 80s arcade cool, but it also was a seminal moment in the evolution of computer animation, at the nexus of obsessive-compulsive optical effects that came before and digital effects that came […]

Capturing the screen as a DV signal over Firewire from Udart (Vibeke Bertelsen) on Vimeo. Udart aka Vibeke Bertelsen writes with a nice hack for video on the Mac: using the ability of FireWire to stream DV, she routes video output of one computer into another. That could make for nice multi-computer processing capabilities. The […]

Ed. For this guest review, we welcome artist and musician christian.ryan. What started as a simple review of the Mimo UM-710 7″ USB LCD monitor becomes a reflection on deeper issues of how the design of objects can impact workflow. By the end of his usage journal, I come away with a sense that user […]

Photo (CC) Jay Vidheecharoen. The KORG nanoSERIES has a rabid following among many Ableton Live users, and with good reason. The nanoPAD and nanoKONTROL street for about US$60, provide basic knobs + faders + transport (KONTROL) and pads and X/Y control (PAD), plus a fully-featured, cross-platform editor, but still fit in a backpack. They’re small […]

A handsome shot of the Korg nanoSERIES pad and controller makes them look pricier than they are. Photo (CC) Jay Vidheecharoen. When software has “Live” as its name, you know control will be everything. So it’s great that many control surfaces will behave intelligently out of the box with Ableton Live, including devices like the […]

Still evaluating Live 8 – or want to learn more about how to use it? You can now read my review of Ableton Live 8 free on Keyboard Magazine’s site: Ableton Live 8 Review [Keyboard Magazine] See also (via comments) Nick Rothwell’s review for Sound on Sound June [subscription or US$1.49 fee required] Keyboard doesn’t […]

Photo (CC) s8, as seen on the CDM Flickr Pool. As I’m going through all the responses for the Propellerhead Record beta, I couldn’t help but notice this image, taken in Lima, Peru this month. Sure, you can claim that Propellerhead’s software looks too much like analog gear, that racking up lots of instruments and […]

One of the great creative forces of our time died Sunday, choreographer Merce Cunningham. It would be almost disingenuous to call him one of the leading artistic revolutionaries of the 20th Century, if for no other reason than he remained choreographing past his recent 90th birthday and continued to the end a profound influence on […]

Given the passion of the debate, it’s easy to forget that Propellerheads’ Record has been firing up discussion from many people who haven’t actually seen it. Record is to audio recording, mixing, and mastering what Reason is to synthesized sound, and for Reason lovers, it finally delivers that holy grail – multiple racks. Record is […]

Merce Cunningham has died at 90, having continued to work on innovative new choreography and digital choreography as recently as this year. His age makes that loss no less difficult artistically, and many of us are deeply indebted to his singular sense of time, as I discuss alongside electronic music connections on CDMusic. But he […]