CDM Call for Projects: Summer Events in NYC

The door opens on a recent Handmade Music Night at Etsy Labs. Now here’s our open call to you. Photo: Jeremy Chae. (See his whole set of this event.) If you’re on the East Coast of the USA and want to share some of your musical (and visual) projects with us, we have a number […]

Call for Visualists: NYC!

We’re looking for a few good visualists and unusual visual projects (DIY/custom hardware, software, hacks, interactive art, whatever) for a number of events happening with CDM in NYC (and hopefully, soon, the world)! If you’re in the NYC area, be sure to check out the call, and if you’ve got projects, submit now — spots […]

More iPhone: A TR-909 Clone, and Dreaming of Ableton

Here’s another addition to our iPhone / iPod touch round-up: the author of the beautiful, minimal iPhoneSynth has created a drum machine inspired by Roland’s classic TR-909. Basic features, but it could be fun to hash out a drum pattern for your next tune on the subway: IR-909 is a drum machine for the iPhone […]

Interface as Performance Medium: Glitchy, Insane KDaG_nato+0.55

Cycling 74’s Max/MSP/Jitter forum is a not just a resource for Max/MSP nerds doing Max/MSP nerditry, but an archive of new media art, ideas, algorithms, discussions and general mayhem. One gem caught my eye during a recent discussion: a YouTube video performance using nato+0.55. What is nato+0.55, you ask? Nato is one of the first, […]

Sufjan Stevens’ Visualist: A Conversation About Live Visuals for Music

UFO, Black Hawk War from CandyStations on Vimeo. Jaymis Loveday sits down with Deborah Johnson for Create Digital Motion in a conversation about live visuals for music. Deborah (right), aka CandyStation, is touring with Sufjan Stevens, another of our favorite musicians. (If I could come up with more excuses to bring him into a "digital […]

Scopebox 2.0 Adds HDV, Multi-Camera Support

It’s been a while since we looked at tethered video capturing options. The first version of ScopeBox didn’t have HDV support, so I let it slip by. However the recently released ScopeBox 2 has included both HDV and multi-camera options. Exciting! I’ll be taking it for a spin in the coming weeks, but thought I’d […]

PreSonus Goes to Open Beta for Drivers

Speaking of drivers, PreSonus announced today that they’re allowing users to register for open beta drivers. They’re hardly the first to do this — M-Audio has done the same historically, even if I’m not thrilled with their pace at the moment. But this raises an interesting question: could opening a beta help improve driver quality […]

Digidesign and M-Audio Drivers Fail to Keep Pace with Vista, Leopard, and XP SP3

There aren’t many positive ways to spin this: if you’re a user of Digidesign and M-Audio products and looking to use current operating systems, very often you’re out of luck. In some cases, this isn’t so surprising — given issues with Leopard, I actually suggest running Mac OS X Tiger if you can until some […]

Flash 10 Beta is Here: Quasi-3D, Better Performance, Pixel Effects, Drawing Good for Visualists

Flash Player 10 beta is here, and it sports some impressive new visual tricks — further illustrations of what I mean when I say the "rich" part of rich media is so important, whatever the JavaScript coders may tell you: 3D "effects" and API: this isn’t true 3D, as you can get with direct OpenGL […]

Beatesthesia: Free, New Processing-Based Music Visualizer/VJ Tool

Beatesthesia Custom Visulizer from olly gore on Vimeo. Beatesthesia is a new open-source, cross-platform VJing/music visualizer application programmed in Processing. It sports some interesting design decisions, including an audio-reactive user interface. Its an interesting idea, and is certainly pretty and definitely novel. At first glance, I didn’t like the blinking UI; it struck me as […]