The First Commercial MOOG You are looking at the Moog Synthesizer, Stearns 2035. It currently resides as part of the Stearns Collection at the University of Michigan. According to the university it was the first commercially produced MOOG Synthesizer. “This particular instrument has the distinction of being the first commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was […]

Ronald Stewart, creator of the mobile, Linux-powered Trinity DAW device, writes to tell us the prototype had its first public appearance at the recent Linux Audio Conference: We ran the device for 7 hours (3.5 hours battery/3.5 hours on wall power supply) with zero hangs and everything worked under various multiple applications running. USB device […]

Thanks to everyone who came last night to Etsy Labs for the Musicmakers shindig. We had a fantastic convergence of people, from various spheres: CDM and musical people, craft-y people, MAKE mag people, blogosphere people, and locals and even foreigners (visitors from Montreal to Mexico!) If you snapped some shots, do post to CDM’s flickr […]

Dansdata has a review of the Flexiglow Light Speed illuminated keyboard. I’ve switched from my trusty but ageing Thinkpad (with handy LED light in the lid) to a Small Form Factor PC for gigs, so I’m in the market for something with a little lighting. [tags]keyboards, hardware, reviews, performance, leds[/tags]

Imagine a mixer interface applied to a real instrument, and you’ve got the Vestax Faderboard, a “keyboard-like sampling / modular instrument that operates exclusively on faders.” shing02 (Shingo Annen), the designer of the Faderboard, writes in to talk about his creation and let us know videos of this unusual instrument are now available on YouTube. […]

See what makes people say “WOW!” faster — showing them the Vista interface (yawn), or showing them some of the zany ensembles in Reaktor 5 (wow). Yeah, thought so. Native Instruments today made a statement on compatibility and performance under Windows Vista for their full product line. They’ve been doing what sounds like some fairly […]

New Yorkians, hope to see you tonight (Thursday) at the first Musicmakers @ Etsy meetup, hosted by Create Digital Music and MAKE Magazine at Etsy Labs. 7 pm – whenever. Informal, so bring any in-progress projects or just show up and drink Coke and gawk at other people. Directions. (It’s easy, right downtown, not off […]

Peter’s fantastic, historic and educational vintage tape looping and Dr Who posts made me think of the BBC and theremins (yes, I’m fully aware that there were no theremins used for the Dr Who theme, but the myth is too strong), and the person who best combines the BBC and theremins: Bill Bailey. If you’re […]

Onyx, the lovely open and extensible Flash-based live visualist tool, now runs on Mac as well as Windows. (Next stop, since it’s built in Flash: Linux.) And the latest build has some great new features: Snap to tempo, tempo-synced filters Build your own TempoFilters Mutable bitmap filters “Mix files” for saving multiple layers and filters […]