We routinely talk about how the interface paradigm of a computer — screen, QWERTY, trackpad – isn’t optimal for music. But how many of you have, in a pinch, done a live laptop set with just your computer, and found some way to make it work? The Stanford University Laptop Orchestra, set to play this […]

A really striking piece in NPR today, via Gina Blaber’s Twitter (thanks, Tim O’Reilly): Humans Turning Up Volume In Oceans [NPR “Science Out of the Box”] A new report shows the way in which sound travels through the ocean has been impacted by global warming. A growing community of artists are working in media like […]

g-speak overview 1828121108 from john underkoffler on Vimeo. If Minority Report has become the benchmark by which gestural interaction is judged, that was always intentional. The film’s production team wanted to work with the people actually developing science fiction-like technology. And it’s sci-fi like technology. So, let’s not talk about how cool-looking the clip is […]

Quartz Composer/VDMX tutorial no 1: The bouncing ball from goto10 on Vimeo. Trying to learn Apple’s free visual patching tool Quartz Composer, useful for making your own filters and simple generative effects? Or perhaps you’re learning VDMX, the brilliant, semi-modular Mac-friendly visual tool – which also happens to host Quartz Composer compositions as effects or […]

Ilias Bergstrom has created a tool for mixing Processing sketches live in performance. (Thanks, Bart!) The resulting tool lets you cross-fade between sketches and easily host a series of sketches in a gig. The process is pretty straightforward: 1. Use the included Foetus library with your sketch to prepare it for use (your sketch needs […]

ExpressCard slots on new Mac and PC notebooks look tantalizing, but buyer beware: adding FireWire audio can be perilous. Multichannel FireWire interfaces work beautifully with the proper drivers and controller, but get some element of that equation wrong, and you may find your high-end interface is rendered unusable (think glitches and dropouts). The chipset in […]

A LiveBook on the test bench at Rain Headquarters, photographed for CDM. One of the things that attracts me to computers: choice. So it’s worth noting that you do have choices when looking to laptops, PCs included. (This sounds like those lame “We know you have a choice in your travel plans” announcements you get […]

Better support for music and audio is still evolving (as well as lots of stability and compatibility improvements), but I have faith open-source coding tool Processing [site | on cdmu | on cdmo ] could yield wonderful new visual interfaces for music. Daniel Piker has the latest addition, inspired by a recent post here: FizzyNumberMusicMaker […]

Sound designer, technologist, and remix artist Francis Preve sends us some gifts of techno and technology to celebrate his first solo release. For your brain, we’ve compiled the tutorials he’s been working on for Beatportal, which together provide a really great look at some basic music production skills. For your ears, we have his new […]

Hello, harp feedback! I love my job. I get to watch as Peter Dines, contributor on our Kore/Komplete site for NI, constantly cooks up brilliant ideas for sound design. His latest screencast plumbs the depths of Native Instruments’ Massive synth, which he uses in conjunction with Kore. We’ve already seen Peter make song arrangements out […]