We’re planning an in-depth test of the new visual vinyl plug-in for Serato’s Scratch LIVE, VIDEO-SL, but in the meantime, one beta tester has already got his hands on it. DJ Steel puts together a pretty clear demonstration of what VIDEO-SL does and what makes it special, particularly in regards to comparing something like Virtual […]

We know what visualists like, we know want visualists want. Whatever holiday you celebrate in December, you’ll be really happy if it involves you getting cash to buy this stuff. But it’s not all a material world — much joy can be had from free inspiration, free software, and free learning — really. Some readers […]

I’ve always been fascinated with the evolution of species. Ever seen those bizarre, short-lived organisms in textbooks, the ones that look like they have twelve eyes and a hundred really tall legs and a spindly tail that serves no purpose? I feel the same way about new instruments, interfaces, and music software. Sometimes it’s the […]

Artist/producer Morgan King writes us to say a couple of electronic music outlets are evidently no more. For his part, Morgan is working on getting more music available in his own project, Accidental Music — more on that soon. (And some of you may know Morgan from projects like Clubland, or the fact that he […]

WAVES and PACE defend their anti-piracy hardware protection and respond to allegations of technical difficulties from a blog entry … and why, if this discussion really matters, we should look at it a different way. At the beginning of the month, we pointed to a blogger who posted what was essentially a rant about why […]

Noatikl, a new generative music engine, generated some interest when we looked at it earlier this week. I’ve just heard from the creator that after receiving some feedback on the pricing, they’ve chosen to launch it at a lower price point than originally announced: US$99 "for non-commercial use of a single noatikl variant for a […]

Overheard on Steve Cooley’s Twitter: "I could care less if the dj is mixing with two paper plates and a twinkie" – derek scott Sorry, controllerists. I feel like I’ve had a window into the DJing world after manning the Artificial Eyes VJ rig as drunken people came up and told us they liked the […]

Crispin writes to tell us about his site, which lists a couple hundred free VST plug-ins (most are Windows-only). You can add that to the growing list of places you can find free music software tools, as well as "reasons no one can argue computer music is too expensive" and "reasons no one has an […]

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the perfect video scratching solution. The Ms. Pinky hardware is fantastic, but the software is long in the tooth, so for anyone not wanting to create their own Max/MSP/Jitter software, it may not be the best choice. Serato, while they’ve lagged seriously in basic features (only recently adding MIDI control, for […]