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 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 […]

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 […]

At your desk, you want another few moments with FL Studio or Live or Pd or Pro Tools or (your app here). Then, you kick back on the couch or on the bus to play with … more music software. Yep, you’re one of us. Here’s the latest from the world of Nintendo DS music […]

It’s not animal-friendly, constructed of black leather and snakeskin, but it is fashion-forward. It’s Rucyl Mills’ over-the-shoulder, wearable MIDI controller, complete with pads, knobs and faders (looking mysteriously like they were liberated from an M-Audio Trigger Finger). Rucyl describes her creation: I built the elektro-07 so I could control the sonic and visual parameters of […]

If you haven’t seen it yet, Jamie and Adam did what may be the greatest illustration of a computing concept onstage ever, using an 1100-barrel paintball gun: Updated: We’ve seen the basic idea before — one of the Max/MSP + Atmel-powered Printball notes his own, similar project, as featured on Pixelsumo way back in 2005. […]

What could a pocket-sized computer be? It could be a new kind of album extra (yawn), a new kind of generative musical format that samples and responds to the world around it (whoo). It could be a more effective controller (fun), or an Indian drone (really). The Apple iPod touch / iPhone, as always, brings […]

I’ve been following Ruin & Wesen’s development as they’ve been hard at work on new, petite MIDI controllers, promising to be the first of a line of DIY-friendly controllers. “Open source hardware” has been getting a lot of play as a concept, but the idea here is really built around the product: their stated claims […]

Clockwise from left: a proposed design for the MTmini project, which you can get your hands on on the cheap; the open-source multi-touch TouchKit project, developed by resident researchers at Eyebeam and open to developers; a new entry, the lovely (but apparently not yet available) MultiTouch Cell promises to be a plug-and-play product. Multi-touch for […]