I expect I’ll be somewhere over the Pacific Ocean on my way to Australia when it happens, but now that Ableton has closed its beta list and sent out a release candidate, you can expect an official Ableton Live 7 release really soon now. (I can share that, as the forums and beta list said […]

Emergency Broadcast Network have released their ground-breaking audiovisual album Telecommunications Breakdown online for the first time. As Jonny says on the AV blog at videomix.es: The release was original mainly CD Audio only at the time as general release formats didn’t allow for an AV album. All the visuals were made at the same time, […]

Photo: Ende, for AdBusters. Universal CEO Doug Morris makes an easy target for the blogosphere. This is the old-school record industry executive who called iPod owners thieves and wanted broad legal enforcement against piracy — enforcement that, in the end, seems to pale in comparison to the revenue generated by actually offering online sales. So, […]

Musicians have thousands of years of history when it comes to interfaces and instruments, but visuals are relatively new. Little wonder, then, that visualists are eager to try new interfaces to help make visuals akin to performance instruments. Or, in less lofty terms, let’s get Wii remote wagging in the club tonight. Over on createdigitalmusic.com, […]

CDM World Tour: catch up with Mike and Liz in Chicago, and Peter and Jaymis in Perth and Brisbane (Australia)! Dorkbot Chicago Any CDM-ers in the Chicagoland area are most warmly invited to this months Dorkbot at Deadtech, 3321 W. Fullerton Ave., on Wednesday at 8pm for food, drink, and brain-swelling information regarding micro-sampling and […]

Guitar Hero makes you feel too much like you’re in a Japanese video game arcade? (Heck, they have taiko drums and stuff.) Rather use it as a way of reinventing how you play the guitar — aside from, of course, spending thousands on a robot guitar from Gibson or experimenting with new tuning systems? Here’s […]

Bless Nintendo for making the Wii controller: inexpensive, lots of internal sensor data (motion sensing, tilt sensing, buttons), elegant design, and standard Bluetooth support allowing it to be used with Mac, Windows, and Linux. Now there’s free and open source software for making the most of your Wiimote as a musical instrument. First up: Wiinstrument, […]

Hardware MIDI control, full-blown synthesizer, all from a Game Boy Color. Christmas lights not included. Want that vintage-y goodness of a real Game Boy’s sound, but want new-fangled color and MIDI? Pushpin is for you. First introduced seven years ago, it’s finally been released. Brian Whitman writes: Hi, thought you’d like to know that Noah […]

There’s been various speculation about whether the advent of the video game Rock Band will inspire real-world musicians. It certainly isn’t just a Simon-style button masher. Queue up Rush, crank up the difficulty level, grab real drum sticks, and you’d better actually have a sense of timing. But maybe the real message of Rock Band’s […]