Intimate Control: Multi-Touch, New Models, and What 2009 is Really About

Multitouch Prototype 2 from Randy Jones on Vimeo. 2008 has been an amazing year for music technology. But I can’t bring myself to look back on it on this New Year’s Eve: not when there’s so much to look forward to in 2009. Case in point? An extraordinary, innovative new controller that in a matter […]

Call for Works, Mark Your Calendar: Handmade Music, 1/15 in Brooklyn, Beyond

  It’s the next New York’s DIY music tech party, presented by CDM with Etsy.com, Make, and XLR8R.com, and now sponsored by Pabst Blue Ribbon! Handmade Music is now a monthly affair at the wonderful 3rd Ward in Brooklyn, and increasingly, I want to work on adding an online, virtual component for the rest of […]

Free Video Converter for Windows, with Batch Processing, Splits, More

Doing live visuals and other projects means sometimes endless conversion and editing tasks, but many of the dedicated tools for the job are just too much. I’ve been playing around with Video Converter from Extensoft, which is about perfect I think in terms of what you most often need to do. It’s an ideal companion […]

MidiDuino Preview: Polyrhythmic Drum Machines and Arduino-Friendly MIDI Libraries

Sophisticated drumming is here. Practice your polyrhythmic ideas, folks. Image: Julián Rodriguez Orihuela. DIY lovers and drum machine nuts alike should be very excited by what our friend Wesen has been up to lately. Working on his projects MidiCommand and MonoJoystick, two hackable boutique music hardware gadgets for MIDI control and joystick manipulation of MachineDrum, […]

All Christmas Music, Boiled Down to Sixteen Droning Singles

  Move over, Manchester Boys Choir. A computer can allow you to hear the digitally-reduced essence of all of these songs at once. Album image from Jacob Whittaker, who also offers some videos. It’s an old piece (Christmas 2004), but if you find your ears are ringing with retailers playing Christmas tracks on endless loop […]

Christmas Lights, Controlled by Processing

You’ve likely seen impressive sequenced Christmas lights in videos before. Very often, though, these setups use proprietary systems. Here, Processing makes it quick and easy to code lighting effects in a friendly, open-source environment. And, naturally, if you think you might want to do something like this and don’t want to wait for Christmas 2009, […]

“Shine on Me”: One Hilarious Music Video, Every Possible Fantasy Special Effects Cliché

We are truly entering a glorious era of visual effects, one in which you won’t have to wait for epic, budget-blowing fantasy box office train wrecks (ah, Willow) just to see eye candy onscreen. Now you just need to wait for someone to blow a massive budget on a music video. Want proof? How about […]

Spacedog Sleigh Ride: Robotic Bell Rig Chimes in the Holidays with Prokofiev

We’re in the middle of a snowstorm of holidays (most definitely plural), and, for many of you, possibly also a snowstorm of snow. So, gather by the fire with your robotic DIY carillon and bask in the warm glow of gorgeous, chimey Prokofiev. What? Haven’t got a DIY bell-playing construction of your own? It’s not […]

Numerology 2.0: Modular Sequencing Environment on the Mac, Now Even Cooler

Sequencing – the collection of techniques that actually assemble events in our music – seems to get far less attention than it deserves. After all, there are fairly accepted ways of synthesizing sound, but as many ways of thinking about musical events as there are ways of thinking about composition. Among the big DAWs, you’ll […]

DIY Step Sequencer, Coming Soon as a Kit?

Here’s something I’d very much like to see: a hackable, kit step sequencer. nostromo tips us off to a blog item on his site on the project. The creation of Monowave maker Paul Maddox, the 8-step sequencer is based on an Atmel Mega16 micro chip. The whole thing is looking very compact, which could make […]