In Toshio Iwai’s world, THX 1138 is way, way cooler. Fans of radical exploration in instrument design have watched the Tenori-On since 2001. The instrument, designed by composer / sound artist / visualist / interactive designer Toshio Iwai, is part sequencer, part sampler, but with a novel, integrated interface using a grid of buttons. And […]

EMotionDemoUploaded by AdrienMondot Adrien Mondot has posted a preview of his latest creation for OS X – eMotion. eMotion is an physically modeled, OpenGL powered particle engine enabled app that is Quartz Composer friendly, has an incredible text engine, and has Wii remote, wacom tablet, OSC and sudden motion sensor inputs to drive parameters. Watch […]

Ed.: Social networking, online sites (this being one of them), Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace … sometimes it seems like all the connections are being done online. Naturally, the Web’s real power is when you can meet all those virtual personalities you’ve gotten to know offline. Far better than getting demo CDs in the mail or listening […]

Splice’s new interface looks suspiciously like a desktop music application — and even allows real-time effects. Screen grab by our friend Marco Raaphorst; if you can read Dutch, he sounds very, very excited about this website. Okay, calling anything “Web 2.0” is about as cool as casually slipping in the word “synergy.” Generally meaningless; definitely […]

Reverb Rick writes to tell us he’s got various synthesized samples free for your use: Sample Giveaway There’s an interesting idea behind it: people can only use the sample once. Once it’s been used, it’s removed. So you run zero risk of hearing the sample in someone else’s song. This could be a fun way […]

New York City, having already banned dancing (don’t ask), now wants to ban videography in the streets without a permit and $1 million in liability insurance. Some I talked to suspected anti-terrorism paranoia. I suspect the lucrative deals the city feasts on for big-budget, commercial projects — and an utter disregard for everyone else. That […]

Apple’s GarageBand is a powerful tool for recording MIDI and audio and arranging loops. It can be puzzling to songwriters, though, because it doesn’t really understand chord changes. Sure, you can transpose MIDI loops or (more problematically) audio, but that process is a bit clunky and rarely sounds right. Many beginner-level GarageBand songs (especially by […]

For field recording, sampling, recording practices and performances, video production, and a lot of other purposes, just about everyone wants an ideal digital mobile recorder. If you haven’t been following comments, we’ve had an extended discussion by readers on the Zoom H4 mobile recorder, its upcoming smaller sibling the H2, and competitive devices like Edirol’s […]

The tireless developers behind the modern tracker Renoise announced a new beta on Tuesday. While the devs themselves are calling this a “maintenance and improvements release”, they’ve introduced enough bug fixes, new features and workflow improvements, along with multiprocessor support, that any other company would have slapped a new major version number on the top […]