For many, the notion of producing sound by patching spaghetti-like nests of cords in hardware is a historical curiosity. Even among those who appreciate this hardware for what it is, conventional wisdom says such instruments aren’t really modern. (Don’t even ask the various universities who gave up on using and maintaining the gear entirely, relegating […]

Atom Heart, looking in this shot a bit baffled by Iwai’s new Tenori-On. Can you create a new electronic musical instrument and make it succeed, without relying on the models of the past? That’s the ongoing challenge of instrument design, and it’s one that’s been largely ignored by the incremental revisions of most large music […]

We’re pleased at CDM to introduce a new verb: to Elton John will hereby mean to unplug from the Web in order to do creative work. No blogging, emergency emails only (heck, ignoring the emergency emails will be even more satisfying), no RSS, etc. In all seriousness, it’s a great idea. The Web will be […]

Apple’s GarageBand 08, unveiled today, focuses on addressing two major areas: for beginners, making entry into the program easier, and for experienced users, fixing some holes in previous versions. Despite its user-friendly interface and the fact that it comes free with new Apple computers, many average Mac users just didn’t dig into previous versions of […]

There’s a horrible misconception that music technology is the domain of white guys who speak either English or German. (Erm, yes, I don’t do much to counter that — shout out, my nerdy, pale guy friends.) But think again. One of the best music production sites on the Web in any language is the Spanish-language […]

All in all, we’re just another blog in the Wall. Ich bin ein Webizen. Celebrity musicians say the darndest things. We’re still reflecting on the layers of meaning in Bob Dylan’s “New records have sound all over them.” And along comes Elton John, to say: Hopefully the next movement in music will tear down the […]

Roger Bolton – Quartz Composer/Core Melt programmer, Quartonian developer and all around motion graphics whiz was kind enough to let us know he has released some free plugins for Motion and Final Cut Studio. VeeYou is a set of audio plugins that animate EQs and AUs. For those of you who VJ with Motion, these […]

So, you’re really hot patching synths in Reaktor. You’ve done some interactive music in Max/MSP. You think you’re really awesome. Fine. Go up against 5VOLTCORE and their knife-stabbing robot. They stake more than a reputation on this — they tempt fate and put their hand in the way of an evil robotic arm with a […]

Look out, PCs: you’re getting the audio engine from the Xbox 360. That’s the message from Microsoft, which abandoned the old DirectSound APIs in Windows Vista. They’ve got a new audio system called XAudio2 ready and waiting, however, and it looks good — though it also begs the question, why didn’t Microsoft ship it with […]

Most of the emphasis on working with multi-touch and alternative controllers has been on our sister site, Create Digital Music. But in a way, visuals are even more demanding of new hardware. After all, musicians have all kinds of hardware that work perfectly for performance (keyboards, knobs, drums, violins, sousaphones, kazoos, and whatnot). But new […]