Tired of conventional instrumentation? How about toy robots named Freddy and Teddy, a violin with a bow made out of cassette tape, and a synthesizer assembled from a 1960s electric guessing game? We have a special guest performance for the next Handmade Music party, organized by CDM in New York with Etsy.com and Make Magazine. […]

Alex le Lievre has built what looks like an insane custom controller for Pro Tools LE using an iPhone. He seems to have mimicked the look and feel of Pro Tools so successfully that some called the results a fake. There’s incredibly detailed feedback on track status, including live audio signal feeds and transport controls. […]

Bill Pendry wanted to use his PlayStation 3 Rock Band controllers with GarageBand on the Mac, so he’s posted step-by-step instructions to do just that. The secret formula: a wonderful utility that helps you use HID-compatible game controllers on the Mac, sans drivers. GamePad Companion (US$15 shareware) Of course, the nice thing here is that […]

Premiere Pro and Soundbooth both appear to function on Leopard, but Adobe has nonetheless squashed some bugs in updates for each program. Links to each over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog. Keep those compatibility reports coming. We’ve heard some general frustrations with Leopard (as can happen with any OS update), and ongoing specific issues with […]

The folks over at CHDK have been implementing custom firmware for the Canon Digic II and Digic III PowerShot cameras for some time – allowing for some awesome features for these small cameras. Previous added abilities such as shooting raw mode, USB tethered triggering, in camera motion detection and increased video recording options (compression options […]

Weekend Inspiration returns! First up, while casually browsing the tubes this week (rather than, yanno, doing work) I stumbled upon this little Youtube video – Psyk by Plastikman – Video by Ali Demirel Magnetmus: Which reminded me how nice it can be to Keep It Simple Stupid. Sometimes finding and exploring little things can be […]

The composer at Queens Hall, Edinburgh, recently. Photo: phnk, via Flickr. A massive pioneer in thought about composition and electronic music in particular, an inspiration to rock and pop figures as well as academics, and sometimes a lightning rod for controversy, Karlheinz Stockhausen died this week. (Thank you to everyone who wrote in to let […]

Cineform last week announced a concept video recorder which may (ok, lets be honest, WILL) prove to be incredibly useful to the VJ market. The Cineform Direct to Disk recorder looks mightily impressive – with HDMI input and passthrough, audio input, and an incredibly small for factor (think Mac Mini but 1/3 the height), it […]

We’re here on the road looking to capture and edit HDV on the go. I pop in my Final Cut Studio install disc to try out on my loaner MacBook Pro, and — huh? It skips installation of Final Cut Pro no matter what I do? Turns out the culprit is installing Logic Studio, then […]