Another Max/MSP 5 Preview, With Some Subtle Goodies Revealed

Vlad Spears, musician, programmer and maker of the Davel.Plugs audio plugins (previously reviewed on CDM) has a write-up about the forthcoming Max/MSP 5. Andrew Benson of Cycling ’74 gave a presentation at the Bay Area Computer Music Technology Meetup and Vlad kindly drew up a report. Most of the features he describes will not be […]

Best (Unofficial) Product Slogan Ever: Minimoog Old School

If you haven’t been reading the ongoing controversy over the Minimoog Voyager Old School, here’s the best part of the comments yet. Original internal slogan for the project: “Got Balls?” I couldn’t let anyone miss that. (Hey, I think it could have worked as an ad campaign.) I’m not going to touch the debate any […]

Ridiculous Product of the Day: USB Mix Tape

Not really a whole lot I can say about this one — and I’m sure you could just fashion your own if you wanted, which I will say would be a great way for me to stop forgetting where I put my 2 gig flash drive. But this does suggest that, somewhere deep inside, people […]

Weekly Inspiration – Robot Cowboy

Daniel Wilcox is “Robot Cowboy”: “A futuristic expatriate American Space Ranger combines wearable computing, midi guitar, and live energy to wander the digi-range as a robotcowboy playing for dying astronauts. This is a lofi-guitar-compu-show with algorithmic balls from a DEVOspud, laptop-stomping idiot wearing exposed electronics.” Check out Robot Cowboys YouTube channel, specifically : Video Killed […]

ANSI Art, Raised to Gallery Status in SF

I miss ANSI art. In the character-only days of the online world (pre-Web), these text-based graphics had a strangely pop-art quality, with hard edges, digital textures, and bold colors. This is not to be confused with ASCII art, mind you — ANSI art had lots of extra graphical features. Even by the early 1990s, landing […]

Last.fm Frees Full-Length Music and Albums, and Artists Get Paid MORE

Music community Last.fm has made a big announcement today: you can now play full-length tracks and entire albums for free on the Web. Last.fm has managed to leap over restrictions on what qualifies as a “jukebox” by signing deals with labels, from indie to biggie. So far, the US, UK, and Germany are covered, but […]

Unusual Rozzbox One V2 Synth: Now Accepting Pre-Orders

Some time ago, we ran a story on a boutique German synth called the Rozzbox. Laden with knobby goodness, the Rozzbox was available only in limited quantities, and only to those fortunate enough to be in Germany (or somehow miraculously got in touch with the creator and pried one from his hands). Tweakers rejoice! The […]

Remixing Karate Kid Live: The Real Power of 3-Way MIDI Sync

Karate Kid AV Remix from momo_the_monster on Vimeo. A major highlight of the party CDM held last weekend with our friends at TRASH_AUDIO and VJKungFu.tv: a live remix of The Karate Kid. Momo the Monster mangled the video while Shane Hazelton and Stephan Vankov did music. The whole event was powered by some clever MIDI […]

Sequencing Beats with Bubble Gum (Tangible Interface War!)

Squarely in the “not seen at NAMM” category, the Bubblegum Sequencer uses differently-colored bubble gum balls, arranged in a grid of holes, to create rhythmic patterns. It’s not exactly a leap forward for music — you wind up with a pretty simple drum step sequencer — but it does look like fun. Or it would […]