Since the dawn of time, musicians have crafted their own acoustic instruments. Now, “handmade” extends to electrically-powered, digital instruments, including carved-wood gestural controllers, wearable drum pads, and rescued mannequin parts. We got to enjoy another edition of Handmade Music in Brooklyn last week, getting together with our friends from XLR8R, Make Magazine, DIY marketplace Etsy.com, […]

Finnish “video- and lightdesigner” Teemu Määttänen has put together a beautifully minimalist projection mapping installation titled NOSTE. NOSTE installation from Teemu Määttänen on Vimeo. As impressive as the work itself is Teemu’s development blog and his research of “Video in Theatre”: NOSTE installation in the gallery, initial concept stills, test videos and scale model projections, […]

Australian audiovisualist and Thinker Jean Poole has spent some time with Resolume Avenue and recorded his thoughts on the subject in a handy and informative article, with words and pictures: It’s a well considered approach, and becomes intuitive fairly quickly. What especially jumps out is the audio parameters integrated in each of the above areas, […]

Move over, Nintendo DS. You may win on quantity and you certainly have some interesting apps, but when it comes to hardcore, deep apps with rich sounds and capabilities, the PSP has turned into a mobile music creation powerhouse. And if you think mobile music production is a novelty or a toy or only for […]

Forget NAMM — one of a handful of hardware I’m most excited about in 2009 is all DIY, the 8-step GorF step sequencer. (I’m hoping for follow-ups like a Forg or Grof. Kermit (Muppet) fans know what I’m talking about.) With four sequences with parameters, steps with pitch, gate, and Control Change, sequencing controls, legato […]

Assuming you haven’t already hit Ableton overload with all the news announced this week, Ableton has posted a set of videos that do a pretty nice job of demonstrating the features. I’ve assembled them into a playlist here. (Stumbled on these videos thanks to Synthtopia.) There are four videos in the playlist, covering Live 8, […]

Apple has updated the US$999, white MacBook to some of the specs of the new “unibody” models – but retaining the one thing we like about it, namely, an actual FireWire port. (The only other option has been upgrading to the Pro for significantly more cash.) Now for US$999: NVIDIA 9400M graphics (meaning this is […]

Photo: Rob DiCaterino. Apple apparently isn’t killing the white, $999, plastic MacBook at the low end of its line any time soon. They’ve even gone so far as to update the model – and that turns out to be a very good thing for visualists who want to go Mac on a budget. Previously, you […]

Living in the digitally-connected age means a constant flow of media – but also the chance to reprocess (or even hack) it. Tim Exile (aka Exile aka Tim Shaw) is an electronic music innovator and one-man DSP laboratory. He didn’t just turn on his TV to watch today’s US Presidential Inauguration – he mashed it […]

If we want real change, we may have to push some of our own buttons. Whatever part of the political spectrum, whatever part of the world community, as you come to the CDM community I do believe that we as creators are touched by larger issues. I think it doesn’t make sense to talk politics […]