ArKaos Rebuilds VJ Software From Ground Up: GrandVJ

It’s no secret: the once wildly-popular ArKaos VJ software has been looking a bit long in the tooth lately. And upgrades only get you so far: sometimes, as software matures in its life cycle, you have to redo the foundations. That’s what ArKaos has been working on, and the results, renamed GrandVJ, are due out […]

Digital Tools Interviews Paris Graphics on Homebrewed Mobile Game VJ Tools

The nicely-growing Digital Tools blog has an excellent interview with visualist Paris Treantafeles, who works with lo-fi 8-bit-style visuals using tools he’s built for GBA and the Linux-powered Gamepark. Interestingly, while a lot of people will dismiss the 8-bit movement as “nostalgic” — implying it’s just 20-somethings pining for their Mario-playing childhoods — Paris’ inspiration […]

Korg’s DS-10 Nintendo DS Instrument is Getting International Release

Good news: the Korg DS-10, a Nintendo DS musical instrument (synth + drum machine + sequencer) based on Korg’s MS-10, is not going to be limited to Japan, despite what the publisher’s website says. From the DS-10 blog: Hi there! my name is Tomi from AQI Inc.and I’ll be in charge of this product for […]

Pacemaker.net: Mobile DJ Gear + Mix Editor + Web Community

Everyone and their dog seems to be trying to get into the social Web, but Tonium, the folks who built the pricey but slick-looking Pacemaker mobile DJ player, have an interesting take. They’re combining mobile hardware, mixing and media management and software, and social site in one integrated service. It’s a bit like iTunes, Beatport, […]

Irish Jigs on Nintendo DS: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

St. Patrick’s Day always warms my half-Irish heart. The YouTubers are celebrating by watching user PJ TinWhistler doing his best to bang out Irish Jigs on his Nintendo DS. Give him a few moments to warm up, and it’s actually relatively impressive. (As it happens, the DS gamepad isn’t exactly the most ergonomic musical interface, […]

Weather Report: Multi-Touch + Surface Temperature = Music on Earth

For an increasing number of artists, data is becoming the raw material for creative work. Most of this has focused on visual media, but in the digital space, you can just as easily use sound. Sometimes the results are aesthetic only; sometimes they tell you something about the numbers being sonified. But either way, sound […]

Preset Pack: It’s a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod, Modular Moog World

I usually don’t pick up presets and sound libraries on CDM, but this one deserves an exception. Musicrow has built a preset pack for Arturia’s Moog Modular V. That’s the software emulation of the truly modular Moogs — the ones with patch cords — so this gives you what you don’t get out of the […]

One-Fader Control Surfaces: A Cubase-Only Entry, vs. Everything Else

This is the new Steinberg control surface. (See the hands-on video at SonicState.) It’s built to integrate out of the box with Cubase 4, which if you’re a Cubase 4 user should be good. You or I might give it a name like “CubaseControl” or something, but Steinberg has seen fit to call it the […]

Weekend Inspiration: Coke Bottle as Tribal Percussion, and the Future of Adaptive Music

Troels Folmann is one of our favorite composers at CDM. The fact that he’s a game composer both incidental and essential — it’s not that he’s scoring a Tomb Raider title that matters, it’s that game composition requires a new, fluid way of thinking about form, and Dr. Folmann (he did a dissertation topic on […]