There are pioneers and artists — and then there are people whose impact is great enough that they become inseparable with the history of a medium. Bebe Barron, along with husband Louis Barron, was far enough ahead of her time that her ideas remain futuristic today. The Barrons didn’t just produce the first full-length electronic […]

With talk of instruments like the Tenori-On, and looking to the future of tangible interfaces for music, it’s worth exploring past designs, as well. Take Don Buchla’s Music Easel — concocting sounds with this rare 70s instrument was a matter of plugging, touching, and patching. Digital sounds and music sequencers do plenty this can’t, but […]

Updated: Let me sum this up. Ableton may or may not have a vocoder in the works (signs actually do point to yes on that). The best part of this story is the remixed “no one needs a vocoder” video, which encapsulates electronic music’s current love/hate/cliche relationship with the thing. And other than that, there’s […]

Hidden as an extra, Mario Paint Composer was one of the first software creations to meld music creation with game. It’s been a novelty favorite among 8-bit fans — not really a serious tool, but a curiosity nonetheless. But that requires a copy of Mario Paint. Now you can get the Mario-infected goodness on your […]

Via our forums, April 22 is the magic release date for Max 5: Max 5 release date [Create Digital Noise] And if you’re lucky enough to be near Bellingham, Washington this week, you’ve got pretty good odds on winning the upgrade, plus a 100% chance of checking out some cool stuff. Atomic Afro, CDM regular […]

We asked earlier this month if you’d be using Flickr for videos? Here’s one answer — and in this case, it seems perfectly-suited to the medium. Accent Creative used a short video spot — tweaked to Flickr’s microformat length constraints — as a way of promoting an upcoming event. That works nicely, as lots of […]

No matter how committed you are to some of the alternatives, Google’s YouTube will remain part of your online life. So we continue our look at how to make it more livable. Readers wrote in with some tips and impressions of YouTube’s new "higher-quality video" mode: Make Your YouTube More Livable: I Have a Fast […]

Digital turntablism is nothing new. But Ammobox, debuted at the first-ever CDM Futuristic Music Design Challenge, is unique in a number of ways. What creator Nathan Ramella has done differently: 1. He’s demystified digital vinyl timecode. With no previous DSP programming experience, Nathan created his own custom tool for reading vinyl timecode — and explains […]

Shining, happy people bending toys. Photo by Beatrix*Jar — see our interview. Despite the name, the Bent Festival this year promises to be about not only circuit bending, but DIY sound in general. (Circuit shaping? Circuit straightening? General circuitration?) Our friend and CDM regular Mike Una has put together fantastic art installations for Minneapolis. Workshops […]

Dateline: Brooklyn. Yeah, you’ve heard all sorts of stories about hard drive failure rates and why you should back up. But here’s a new one: someone might steal your hard drive, while it’s plugged into your laptop, in the middle of a set, as happened to Matthew Dear earlier this month.. Given that hard drives […]