I spent time with some digital luminaries over the weekend at X|Media|Lab Melbourne, and a criticism which came up a lot went along the lines of: “Where’s your mailing list?” “Umm, well…” “You don’t have a mailing list? How can you give your readers a weekly dose of CDM love to their inbox without a […]

If you’re hungry for some patch content, the download-rich PatchArena has you covered, with a massive library of free, user-created content: PatchArena Downloads There are particularly large sections for the all-in-one studios EnergyXT, FL Studio, and a number of others. (Correction: Intua BeatMaker for iPhone/iPod Touch is promised, as well, though I got my categories […]

The IR-909, a simple but lovely-looking Roland TR-909 drum machine clone, is now available for the iPhone. Description: IR-909 is a drum machine for the iPhone inspired by the Roland TR-909. IR-909 features a 16-step sequencer, 4 patterns and 8 different drum sounds. IR-909 includes individual pitch, attack and length controls for each sample. By […]

Ligeti – Artikulation by tonicadominante What does music look like? With new sounds and new technologies, the question is more apt than ever. Tom of Music thing points, via his Twitter feed, to this interesting post regarding Ligeti’s Artikulation: Visualizing Artikulation [Bad Assembly] Music notation takes on a different meaning in the age of computers. […]

Lo-fi Arduino Guitar Pedal from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo. CDM regular Kyle McDonald keeps cranking out wonderful projects. Following up on a tangible music sequencer powered by Skittles (taste the rainbow of fruity beats), and last week’s cheap-but-effective DIY 3D interface, he’s now put the popular DIY electronics platform Arduino to work as a lo-fi […]

Are we approaching a visualist technology singularity? This video from live visualist virtuoso Eboman might make you a believer. With live camera, live video drums, live camera as instrument, a sensorsuit body performance instrument, and custom software, this set has no shortage of live gimmicks. The beauty of it, though, is that there are so […]

Bigger. Brighter. More ridiculously huge. You know what you want, projectionists. And Quebec is the kind of place that will pull it off. Big budget for an absurdly-large but still very arty project? They’ll make it happen. So, when it came time for the 400th anniversary of Quebec, Quebec City did indeed think big, projecting […]

A hacked DS, as photographed by BAMCAT. Homebrewed game music has an uneasy relationship with the mainstream game industry. Running or developing DIY music software isn’t possible on the Nintendo DS without special hardware – hardware that’s also favored by pirates. Nintendo is now suing the makers and sellers of that hardware, because they (correctly) […]

With all the discussion of Processing, I think it’s time to do a proper survey of who out there is actually using this tool to code custom live performance. Robert Hodgin aka flight404 famously VJ’ed with a lovely Processing rig back in 2005, controlled by four glowing Griffin PowerMate knobs. But with Processing a general-purpose […]

I actually hadn’t had time to watch my tech RSS feeds yesterday when I said I “lost half an hour dreaming of my new lounge-style studio where I adjust envelope breakpoints from a giant aluminum sphere like the one in Sleeper.” But, anyway – wish granted! *Disclaimer: The following video, while demonstrating some insanely cool […]