Make Your iPhone into a Drum Pad

Way back at the Apple iPhone introduction, I said I thought people would want to use the phone as a musical instrument. Well, here you go: meet BeatPhone, a clever code hack from a chilled-out Spanish mobile musician. Feature set: 9 one-shot pads 6 loop-pads Samples in “any” format : WAV, AIFF, … Output at […]

AES: A Season of Mobile Recorders, a Sweet New Sony, Says Mobilista Brad

Surprise! It’s a high-end Sony mobile recorder you could actually afford. The pretty new PCM-D50 lists at US$600, not four figures. If it sounds as good as its sibling, we could see some other mobile recorders on eBay. The search for the perfect field recorder continues: Brad Linder is a blogger, freelance journalist, and producer […]

Dare you accept the Circuit-Bending Challenge?!?

So I was having a little chat with the Circuit Master over at www.getlofi.com about how and why we both got into circuit bending. The number one reason, for me at least: tons of bend-able toys and devices can be found very cheaply at secondhand and thrift stores. Which brings us to this: The premise […]

Mobile Gaming Linux MIDI Means Synced Visuals and Trackers and Goodies

Via Create Digital Music, what’s great for chiptune fans and mobile gaming musicians is also good for VJs and visualists. (Thanks, MIDI!) Marc, Arkaos dev and homebrew game maestro alike, has posted video results of successful MIDI output on the Linux-based GP2X handheld game system, running Little GP Tracker, a MIDI tracker app: He points […]

MIDI Meets Mobile Linux Gaming: GP2X Portable Does MIDI Out

Marc writes with some great news for musically-inclined portable gaming fans — and visualists, too: Intially, after a while of finding out where the trouble was we nailed midi for littlegptracker running on GP2x. Here’s a little vid for it. Of course, another application would be also to use the 2x as sequencer to drive […]

New Donationware Radiohead Album Now Available for Download

As you’ve probably heard, Radiohead’s new album In Rainbows is available via a unique purchasing scheme: Online-only sales, direct from the artists. International: charged in GBP, but you can buy from anywhere in the world and the store will convert currency via credit card. (This detail is usually left out of the discussions; one problem […]

Meet the Anti-Piracy Vigilantes

How do you get new customers? How about filing lawsuits and taking a break-your-legs-style approach to busting recording studios via covert operatives? Yes, it’s Banpiracy.com, a new private business dedicated to threatening studios unless they “go legit.” Their efforts got started as part of Waves controversial sting operations in European studios. Now they’re coming for […]

Phil Dodds, The Synthesist You’d Want to Make First Contact, Dies

There are synthesists, and then there are people like Phil Dodds. He’s perhaps best-known as the man who wrangled the (real) ARP 2500 synthesizer in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind so that it could perform an elaborate jam session for (fictional) aliens. But he left an extensive legacy of achievements that helped […]

Video: Kraftwerk Computer World Gets Scandinavified, Modernised

What if Kraftwerk’s classic “Computer World” were made today? And, erm, what if Kraftwerk were actually Swedish? For all of you who dare to dream, our friend Audio Objekt has created a re-created version. (Warning: video contains occasional scandalous nude images as social critique, so it could be very briefly not safe for work.) Sing […]

Ridiculously Expensive Video Projector: The Rundco MBX-1 DLP

I’ll raise your Anjou Speaker Cables ($7250 for 12 foot of cable) with the Rundco MBX-1 3 Chip DLP Projector. The amazing specs are as follows: Variable Light Output up to 5000 ANSI Lumens 3-Chip DLPTM System with New, Dark Metal Process Technology 1280 x 1024 Resolution Contrast Ratio: 1100:1 Image Sizes up to 500″ […]