A quick note – this weekend, Propellerhead is running part of its ongoing series of Producers Conferences, educational events focusing on music making with their flagship tool. It’s really about production, not just about Reason per se; looks like the previous installments have been quite nice. There are some really terrific artists in the lineup, […]

Eno had Music for Airports. It’s fitting that Monolake would do Music for Jet Lag. Robert Henke writes about this month’s free download: Since I also have been flying a lot recently, I named it after one of the most annoying side effects of modern transportation and mixed it in a way that reflects that […]

Photo (CC) Becky Stern, also of MAKE / Craft. Calling Nam Jun Paik a video art pioneer would be too narrow to describe his impact. In exploding the idea of what television and television processing could be in his art, he helped create a conceptual revolution that cleared the path for today’s ubiquitous and always-dynamic […]

Going ultra-mobile: Korg’s nanoKEY controller plus a svelte, two-and-a-half-pound netbook running Linux and energyXT. Laptops for music are nothing new. But better versions of Linux make no-hassle music production easier and more powerful – and new netbooks make it cheap and ultra-portable, too, for times when even that 15” laptop feels clunky. Netbooks aren’t for […]

Guitarist/composer/musician Christopher Willits is on faculty for the dubSpot series. Photo (CC) Buzz Andersen. dubSpot, the West Coast + East Coast music technology training center is doing an eight-city tour of the US to talk about Ableton Live 8 and the Akai APC40 controller. They’re enlisting some of my favorite people to do the workshops. […]

Photo: Sascha Pohflepp (bottom), watz (top). I’m now headed to Newark Airport to fly to Portugal for the amazing OFFF conference. Don’t be jealous, though, if you can’t make it – expect plenty of coverage for both CDMs. (My talk Saturday will actually be more music-focused than visual, though as you know, the lines are […]

Putting complex political issues into the form of art sometimes falls on its face. But art’s unique power to personalize and make big issues specific can be a powerful asset. We were already big fans of the animation work of Beeple, but the latest, hand-animated digital creation is especially poetic. It’s an essay on consumption, […]

Commercial music producer Benn Jordan (recording as The Flashbulb) stumbled upon David Attenborough’s 1984 documentary series that was, in the creator’s words, “more in touch with nature than any other.” Along with the BBC he and his crew geared up for the endeavor–and they would risk their lives and careers to do so. The result, […]

The pocketable DJ tool Pacemaker is now available here in the US at $499. That price is considerably more realistic than expected pricing earlier on, though it still fits in a funny sort of slot: it’s not quite the equivalent of pro DJ gear, which costs much more, but it’s still pricier than your run-of-the-mill […]

It’s easy to forget how deeply strangers can be connected by music in recordings and performances. Sadly, we too often take this connections for granted until we lose someone. When Telefon Tel Aviv’s Charlie Cooper passed away earlier this year, the loss sent shockwaves through the electronic music community. Because his work was influential for […]