Processing is an open-source coding tool, built in Java, designed specifically to be versatile for artists and friendly to non-coders. Code is elegant and simple, but can take advantage of all the potential power and performance (no, really) of Java. Java really can be fast enough to use in live performance situations, though its one […]

Daft who? In case you haven’t heard, the “it” French duo of the moment is Justice. Sure, they may not have a giant light-up pyramid on tour, but, their new album was one of the records we couldn’t stop listening to in 2007 (as opposed to Daft Punk, still riding the momentum of tunes we […]

Trent sez: “Buy all these music formats from meeeeeeeeeee!” Photo: Jenna Foxton. Artists are known to mouth off a bit about the Future of Music and Digital Distribution and whatnot, but Trent Reznor is putting his money — and not money — where his mouth is. Nine Inch Nails Menu of Ordering Options for Ghosts […]

Digital tech is fantastic — but I’m equally inspired by the real-for-real attitude that extended into the early digital age. Now that the French duo Justice have done a send up of a ridiculous number of early “motion graphics” (well, before they were really called that), I think there’s plenty of opportunity to get ideas […]

SearchBurst, which visualizes “burst” effects on Yahoo! Search, as world events impact search queries. Built in Processing by the yHaus team (Aaron Koblin specifically), with code/support from our friend and code hero Toxi, and Mike Chang. Imagine VJing with a stream of live snapshots from partygoers — or playing live data from the Web on […]

For further study of the brain, I suggest making a lime JELL-O model. Yum. As an addendum to why trying to make computer models musically creative can be so disastrous, maybe the problem is we fail to understand what creativity is. Scientists funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) have […]

Microsoft Research has done some amazing work; it doesn’t always move me to tears, but there’s some fantastic stuff that deserves real recognition. And MySong is … well, technologically impressive, if musically painful. It’s a sort of collision between AutoTune and Band-in-a-Box: it recognizes a melody as input, then harmonizes that melody. The vocal input […]

  Plugging stuff together is fun. By jurvetson. There’s a disturbing amount of free sound-making stuff out there, enough to clutter up your VST folder and make you forget where you put that multi-tap delay you wanted. It’s a beautiful thing. So, as a regular, erm, public service, I’ll be semi-regularly rounding up some of […]

We’ve seen QWERTY keyboards recycled into various music controllers, but here’s a DIY project that makes actual sounds: A home-made synthesizer based off of an old function generator and a standard qwerty board. Three wave types–sin, square, sawtooth–and HI+LO outputs. It connects to the keyboard with a stereo 1/4″ cable (TRS) so new controllers can […]

Correction: the South by Southwest Music Festival in Austin is not making a preview of all the bands playing the festival this year, so someone else has done it for them (Thanks, Wells in comments, for setting me straight). But, hey, perhaps this not-so-kosher torrent will lead you to some good music — or, best […]