Generative Visuals, Installation Light Up Minitek in NYC This Weekend

This weekend, three things that are supposed to be dead in New York — Midtown, Coney Island, and electronic music — converge in a massive festival that proves otherwise, as seen on Create Digital Music. For the night “innovation stage,” 360 degrees of generative visuals and visualist installation complement the impressive music lineup. And that […]

Open Source OSC iPhone App Coming; Chicken and Egg Argument Dead

In case you missed it on Create Digital Motion, we’re now beta testing a version of open source OSC controller software for the iPhone and iPod touch 2.x firmware. (For something along the same lines, see also OSCemote.) It’s well worth reading that story, as mrmr’s creator Eric Redlinger talks eloquently about what this is […]

Flickr Finds: Free and Cheap Mac, Windows Music Setups and Other Inspiration

Jumahat Leman’s old PC laptop hosts a delicious menu of free VSTs. Photo via Flickr; used with permission. An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of […]

Mrmr iPhone 2.x Firmware Beta, and the Self-Configuring Touch Controller

Mrmr is a wonderful tool for turning your Apple mobile device into a multi-touch controller for performance and controlling visuals and music. It allows custom control layouts, it’s beautifully geared to things you can do with your fingertips, and it’s fully open source. As is often the case on this site, we have two messages. […]

How-to Videos: Digital Wall Harp, Pipe Organ Chair

MyHome 2.0 is a promotional site for Verizon FIOS that’s enlisted some very talented DIYers. They’ve got a couple of pretty impressive interactive music projects — this is not the sort of stuff most people would take on. The Pipe Organ Chair isn’t a digital project per se, but we all love sound here, and […]

flight404’s Magnetosphere the New Visualizer in iTunes 8?

Nova (audio by Helios) from flight404 on Vimeo. The rumor mill’s conventional wisdom is that iTunes 8 will be part of Apple’s music-themed press event next week. That’s a safe bet — iTunes 7 is clearly due for an update. But Allan White has some interesting speculation with which I’m inclined to agree. There’s an […]

Indie Bands: Taco Bell Wants to Feed You Burritos, Promote You on Hot Sauce

Photo: Morgan Tepsic. Does that mean South Korea has Taco Bells? I usually try to steer clear of the marketing crud, but this is too bizarre to pass up. Taco Bell, anxious to jump on this whole “indie music” bandwagon, is using the only currency it has: combinations of refried beans, cheese, rehydrated ground meat, […]

MixEmergency: Mac Visualization App Adds Video, Quartz Compositions to Serato

MixEmergency is a new attempt to expand the DJ techniques into the visual realm in a single, integrated environment. And once again, Serato is the backdrop. We saw Serato’s own Scratch-Live, which provides digital vinyl control in Serato, when dj rndm gave us a detailed hands-on earlier this year. The VIDEO-SL focused on vinyl control […]

Album Art and Design, Alive and Well in the Digital Age

Today’s reflections on the importance of album art: 1. Album art can be beautiful, whatever the recording medium. It can reflect great design, and extend the expression of the album itself (well, and it helps if the album is great). Justin and Colin have created the site Hardformat to celebrate design on everything from tapes […]