Drum machines with tubes: from Wurlitzer’s classic SideMan to a new prototype, drum machines can make tubes rock even harder. What happens when adept sonic inventor Eric Barbour of Metasonix makes a drum machine out of clever circuits and vacuum tubes? Well, in the creator’s words: “It makes noise … a lot of noise.”

If you work with video at all, you’re likely already best friends with VideoLAN’s VLC Media Player, the lightweight, fool-proof Mac/Windows/Linux player that somehow manages to play any video file on any OS without intervention. So, it was big news last week as VLC hit the 1.0 milestone, a major, polished, stable release of this […]

The Linn 9000 shipped way back in 1984, but could nearly pass for a shipping product today. So, since the LinnDrum II mock-ups look nothing like the current design, let’s feast our eyes on this instead. Roger Linn, father of the modern drum machine and creator of some of its greatest models (including the MPC60 […]

Reflect by Joshua Davis – separate post on this coming, Joshua! When the iPhone was first unveiled, many of us hoped that was was effectively a palm-sized Mac could be used with some of the same freedom that a computer could, that its screen could be used for pocketable art. That transformation has unquestionably come […]

We’ve all watched and commented on bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails releasing free albums and still profiting by them. Will this model still work for new artists, though? Trent Reznor posted yesterday that the Beastie Boys’ Ill Communication reissue is “how you sell music today”. As a rebuttal to the usual “that only […]

When applications are open to clearly-expressed control, it’s easier than ever – easier than with MIDI – to navigate their interfaces and make them express what you want. Using OSC (rather inaccurately named Open “Sound” Control), interacting with live visuals is getting a lot more powerful. Case in point: thanks to hacks, we’re getting affordable […]

What if you could record directly online from a Web browser – no additional software needed? It’s not a new idea, but online music community Indaba has an interesting new Java-based tool that gets one step closer. We took a first look at the tool last month, but it’s now publicly available at indabamusic.com today. […]

Should you quit your day job and go on tour with a rock band? That’s the question answered by cellist Zoe Keating at Ignite, the 5-minute hyperpresentation series put on by O’Reilly. (At an NYC event, I gave a talk explaining why understanding basic programming concepts was as important as calculating your tip on a […]

CrudBox by Steven Litt at ITP from Core77 on Vimeo. How much performance power can you pack in a briefcase? What if you could have a magic box that did whatever you wanted? That’s the question asked, in various different ways, by the artists we’re showcasing at this month’s Handmade Music NYC, Thursday evening 7/16 […]

Vimeo announced last week that starting August 1st, they will no longer be retaining the original source files for free accounts. Since the very beginning, Vimeo has retained the original video files that you upload, and allowed you to grant people permission to download those files. We always take these original files and convert them […]