When Adobe acquired Macromedia, a lot of people thought that’d be the end of Director. After all, Director and Flash have had increasingly overlapping capabilities for some time, and Director seemed like something people used years ago. Think again: talk to people doing interactive design, and Director — for better or worse — lives on. […]

You’re an incurable font geek and you love sound. Can’t choose? Combine them. The MeekFM synth is both a visual synthesizer for typography, and a synthesizer — it actually sonifies the letterforms you generate. This is synesthesia on such a high geeky level that my mind is blown wrapping my head around it. But I […]

Photo: Gary Kibler for CDM. At long last, the Yamaha Tenori-On, the unusual sampling/sequencing instrument bestrewn in light-up buttons, is getting its worldwide release. And it’s going to be an amazing party. Launch cities: Frankfurt and Berlin, Germany Paris, France Montreal, Quebec New York, NY San Francisco, CA (most appropriately) Tokyo, Japan The tour kicks […]

So, you’ve got a mixer, which is a box covered in faders and knobs that processes audio signal. And you’ve got a MIDI control surface, which is often a box covered in faders and knobs that looks a mixer, but doesn’t process audio signal. Why not combine them into one device? That’s the approach taken […]

Hayden Bursk, aka CDMer ohtravioso, has built a brilliant free game-slash-step sequencer for Windows, downloadable free. The ghosts represent music tracks moving across a grid; drag and drop bubbles representing sprites in one of four different views for different samples and simultaneous tracks (4 ghosts each = 4 tracks x 4 screens = 16 tracks). […]

I’m teaching a class in NYC next month on Processing at Harvestworks, the elegant, musician-friendly coding language: Processing Class in New York, Online: Art From Code, For Non-Coders [Create Digital Motion] It’s on CDMotion rather than CDMusic for a simple reason — Processing is especially well-suited to visuals, 2D and 3D. But there is audio […]

Above: The future of iTunes? By dave_mcmt. By now, you’ve likely heard that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has taken the #2 spot in music sales — all music sales — right behind retailer giant Wal-Mart. This tends to lead to one of two somewhat gloating reactions from Apple advocates. One is a sort of “rah, […]

I used to be resistant to the idea of coding. It wasn’t just fear that I couldn’t do it, though that was part of it; it was also the sense that I wouldn’t be able to get to the actual art and music making if I got too involved in programming. And, actually, that bit […]

Proprietary systems like FreeHand’s awkwardly-named MusicPad Pro Plus (Pro Plus, eh?) have offered digital manuscript paper for some time. But the idea there is you buy dedicated hardware; the MusicPad Pro Plus is US$899. With tablet PCs starting at about the same price, and the convenience of having your mobile computer also be your music […]