Deckadance Ships, with Extensive MIDI Controller, Vinyl Timecode, VST Support

Deckadance, from the makers of FL “Fruity Loops” Studio, is now shipping. No word on the Mac version in development, but Windows, at least, is shipping now. We’re excited to try it out for all the reasons we were when we first saw it, and now we have some additional details to flesh in:

Berrtil, Free Circuit-Bent Modeling Plug-in. Plug-in Smash. Sound Crush.

Bertill is an insanely glitchy distortion unit based on models of circuit-bent hardware, as a free VST for Windows and Mac (Universal Binary). Actually, whether you should really believe that or not, I’m not certain: I’m only vaguely sure of the relationship of the massive digital mangling this plug-in causes and the obscure Handycam shots […]

New Music from Bjork, Radiohead

Two of many CDMer’s biggest musical heroes have new music out. Yes, you probably know about it, and yes, we will try to cover some wild, obscure stuff or relate this to technology or something soon. But I’d feel kinda funny not mentioning this. And I personally love both acts; I’ve just started processing their […]

Live HD Video Mixing for Cheap, Now on CDMotion

On the video side: HD video is everywhere you look, but working with it live may seem like a far-off fantasy. Enter the Intensity video card. If you’ve got a supported PC or Mac with a free PCI-Express slot, you can mix HD video live for just US$249-349. Max/MSP/Jitter whiz Anton Marini tests the card […]

eMusic Defends Itself as Labels Leave; What About Online Growth, Musicians?

If you want to hear more about the eMusic saga from the company itself, they’ve started a new blog called 17 dots. (For more, see their defense to Ars Technica. Their argument remains simple: people want to pay less for music. Sales are declining; eMusic is the cure. Hypebot has some terrific coverage of the […]

As Other Music, Others Embrace Downloads, is Big, DRM-Laden Online Music Out?

New York’s Other Music is a landmark, brick-and-mortar store filled with independent and even experimental music. Now it’s getting a new lease on life online — and that’s part of a trend could change the scene for music consumers. Photo by fluzo aka Manual Bartual. Listen to the mainstream press, and the story goes something […]

Thimbletron: TradeMark’s MIDI Thimbles Make Illegal Music

Cassette-tape DJ battles are just one of TradeMark G.’s retro, regressive, subversive musical creations. He also likes to put on glasses, a white lab coat, and interactive sewing thimble gloves, in order to produce illegal, copyright-crushing musical performances. Many of the techno-gimmicks seen here on CDM are one-offs and prototypes. The Evolution Control Committee, by […]

Pacemaker: 120GB Pocket DJ MP3 Player

We’ve seen DJ parties with iPods and now handheld remote controls for DJ software. But what about building mixing features into the portable player itself? That’s the idea of the Pacemaker, a new portable player promised for Fall. Pacemaker site (Warning: auto-plays music) Tonium, the mysterious manufacturers’ site DJ features and mixing are internal to […]

Ableton Live: Are You a Dragger, or a Freak?

Whether you’re an avid Live user or wonder how it works from a performance perspective, CDM reader Fabio FZero has managed to express in simple terms a basic binary split (originally in comments): Ableton Live: Draggers vs. Set-freaks … between those who drag-and-drop on the fly in their sets, and those who configure everything in […]