Native Instruments Komplete $399 Fire Sale; NI Noisepages Networking

Reaktor… you know, for kids! Oli, age 7. Photo (CC) Laura Whitehead. Normally, pricing announcements and sales press releases bore me to tears, but this is actually news – Native Instruments is selling Komplete for July only at just US$/EUR 399, instead of $1139/EUR999. That means if you were looking for Reaktor alone – about […]

Flash Augmented Reality, Made Easier: Open Source FLARManager

You’ve seen the demos. You like the idea of tracking tags in the real world to create visuals. And now you want to try augmented reality for yourself – and, incidentally, you’re a Flash developer. Reader Eric Socolofsky writes to share a framework he’s created that makes it much easier to work with the Flash-based, […]

Analog JUNO-60 and What JUNO’s Labels Should Really Say

Octopus transmute! I can’t in good conscience fail to mention the JUNO-60 video uploaded to the Roland How Do You Juno contest. The work of UTM, you have love that (a) it’s a video of the legendary JUNO-60, the original, analog JUNO, and (b) all those gorgeous flying imaginary graphics. Clarification: I should say that […]

Roland JUNO Contest Ends at Midnight; A Viral Ad for the … Alpha 2!

Getting DIY ads out of YouTube is all the rage these days, but when it comes to certain time-tested synth names, let’s just say the audience is a little different. You love the gear, you make music with the gear, you praise everything that’s brilliant and you’re unafraid of criticizing what’s not. We covered the […]

Fitting Tributes: Billie Jean, NYC Saturday, with Claude VonStroke

Claude VonStroke plays Billie Jean, NYC from Dancetracks on Vimeo. Michael Jackson fever may have already put you into overload, but 24-hour news channels aside, there’s still something powerful about the musical legacy people leave and the way it can become a shared experience. It’s something ineffable, well beyond the reach of words – but […]

Wireless, Open Interaction: MSA Remote for iPhone, iPod touch Now Available, Finally

MSA Remote + VDMX + Ableton Live from Memo Akten on Vimeo. Imagine what’s now possible with a mobile phone: anyone with a supported device can jam with other artists, walk up to an installation, connect to other creators and other software, all using supported protocols. Leaving behind the days of painstaking manual adjustment of […]

Magical, 3D-Warping Techniques Steadies Your Videos

Technology still has the power to appear like magic. And one place we may desperately need magic: straightening out our horribly shaky, handheld video shots. Software makers like Apple have already offered up some techniques for doing this – in the case of Apple’s Final Cut Studio, optical flow analysis attempts to track the image […]

Logging MPC Projects (Or Other Drum Machines) on Paper

It’s the little things that keep you happy sometimes. The Sunday Soundtrack blog has an interesting idea for tracking work on the MPC — write it down. (I have to say, I miss having paper notes as I did when I was making hard-copy patch diagrams of my Moog and Buchla modular creations in college.) […]

Designing Sound: Essential Blog Reading for Sound Designers, Plus Pixar’s Up

“UP” Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo. Miguel Isaza has created a must-read new blog for anyone interested in sound design, and much to our delight has put it on noisepages. He’s being incredibly prolific with posts, covering creative projects to get your ideas flowing, terrific overviews of leading people in the […]