Much as I’m an advocate for live visualists becoming like musicians with eye candy, the needs of the VJ just aren’t quite identical to those of someone doing music, even DJing. But here’s the upside: I think people doing live visuals have even more reason to be excited about control possibilities with devices like the […]

Last year dj rndm and Robotkid gave us a review of Serato’s Video-SL plugin for Serato Scratch Live. Recently I was able to collaborate with Sampology, a local turntablist, for the last Game On night of 2008. Sam used Video-SL to put together a gaming-themed AV set, and I added a selection of security cameras […]

The GCE-2 by Mouse & the Billionaire is just one creation at this month’s Handmade Music, many from createdigitalmusic.com readers. What’s new in the world of music technological creations? It’s stunning how much people are creating in their private workshops and bedrooms. I’m pleased to have the chance to share it virtually here, and Thursday […]

Kevin Kelly recently posted about digital continuity on The Technium. He references David Pogue’s experience of having problems reading DVDs which were only 4 years old. No problem, I thought: I’ve got all of the original iMovie projects backed up on DVD, in clear cases, neatly arrayed in a drawer next to my desk. (My […]

Ever feel music creation apps are too similar? Imagine an alternative universe in which music making software evolved along different lines. In this universe, the “tracker” isn’t some arcane novelty, but the detailed, bottom-up music editing approach that becomes the basis of music construction tools for any genre. Now imagine a breakthrough software release in […]

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed never to make anything as cool as 17th Century keyboard makers. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announces (via its Twitter feed, no less) that it has gotten its Musical Instruments collection online. Over 800 inspiring objects of all kinds are available with photos, maker information, […]

Electro-Harmonix has made a quick-and-dirty vocal effects box. Usable parameters, good fun, and $200 – sure, it may not be the highest-fidelity vocal box ever, but what’s not to love? Our friend Collin Cunningham at MAKE gets the jump on this one. It’s got some surprisingly unique features: 256-band vocoder “designed by the same EMS […]

Okay, so you’ve seen the painful demo video for Microsoft Research’s Songsmith software – it was intended to me tongue-in-cheek, I think, but the self-parody didn’t quite work. But the idea of auto-accompaniment software that interprets your recorded singing remains impressive. And I’ve gotten some tips that it is possible to make Songsmith sound good. […]

N0stromo tells us he is planning to port his “Piggy” LittleGPTracker (lgpt), the tracker currently on the Linux GamePark platform, to the Sony PSP. LGPT has the interface of littlesounddj, as known on the Game Boy, and can even drive MIDI (meaning this could be a great time to figure out MIDI output on the […]

pauk on pages from Pauk on Vimeo. Part of what sets apart the open source monome controller instrument (cdm tag | site) is that, despite its minimalist grid of pads, it really behaves like an extension of software. That grid can be thought of as touch-ready pixels. Using Pages, an app developed by phortran that […]