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 […]

The wireless, Bluetooth-based Wii controller is fast becoming the music control hardware of choice. The latest addition: Yann Seznec’s Wii Loop Machine, a free, Wii-controller looper for Macs. The software is built in Max/MSP using my current favorite way to interface with the Wii controllers, the free aka.wiiremote external for Max. Load in any samples […]

Cockos’ REAPER, the lightweight audio and MIDI multitrack editor from the creator of Winamp, is coming to (Intel/PPC) Mac, too. There’s a full discussion of the update on the REAPER forum. It’s an “alpha” build, but comes as a surprise: REAPER may have a lot more appeal as the “standard” lightweight host as a cross-platform […]

Want to roll your own effects and synths? SonicBirth is a tool for constructing VST and AU plug-in instruments and sound processors, via a graphical patching interface. It’s a bit like a friendlier, Mac-compatible SoundEdit. And now, it’s completely free and open-source. Even ignoring its open-source nature, there are a few elements of SonicBirth that […]