This week in synths with Matrixsynth, the obsessively-prolific synth lovers’ blog: a master modular synth builder on how modulars could be more affordable, a blog time capsule full of out-of-print music, and a “Welsh Minimoog” model E. Here’s Matrix: Grant Richter of Wiard on Cutting the Cost of Modulars A Modular Renaissance The following is […]

antivj have cooked up a fantastic Wii-to-MIDI tutorial — and a very pretty feature image to go with it! (Nice!) Much of the focus for the Wii controller has been on the music and VJ side, but they’re equally compelling as live visual controllers. Our friends at the uber-hip French visualist blog antivj have translated […]

Making movies is, economically, a matter of scale: time, manpower, money. In the early days of cinema, movies were compressed into tiny lengths, often without cuts. Now, “microfilms” are exploding again. You could look for deeper cultural meaning to short-form production, but for those of us with limited resources, shorter lengths can mean more elegant […]

Making movies is, economically, a matter of scale: time, manpower, money. In the early days of cinema, movies were compressed into tiny lengths, often without cuts. Now, “microfilms” are exploding again. You could look for deeper cultural meaning to short-form production, but for those of us with limited resources, shorter lengths can mean more elegant […]

A Copyright Royalty Board decision last week chose to adopt a strict new fee structure proposed by a collection body of the RIAA for all web streams, far out of proportion to the fees paid by other media (broadcast, satellite radio) and previous paid by radio streams. Will the higher fees benefit musicians? Not if […]

Attention, boys and girls: fans of DIY hardware, physical computing, circuit bending, hacked gear and gaming machines, custom code and patching, independent hardware makers, mad scientists, and even the casual fan of the above who want to check out some cool projects — if you’re anywhere near the NYC area, we want you next week. […]

We’ve already seen the Nintendo DS used as a wireless WiFi MIDI controller. But if you’re longing for some good, old-fashioned, hard MIDI connections to your DS, too, you’re now in luck. Natrium42, the creator of homebrew-launcher classic PassMe, has built a multi-purpose serial device for the DS called DSerial. Via his schematics, you can […]

Interested in using webcams to translate on-screen motion to MIDI? Want x, y, and z 3D tracking? Ben Tan writes to let us know about his in-development software project called Peripheral MIDI Controller (pmidic) which does just that. The current build is still a work in progress, but has added enough stability and features that […]

Public betas just continue to grow in popularity — and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been participating in Adobe public betas for Flash, Lightroom, and Soundbooth, and in each case the developers have gotten the opportunity to respond to user feedback while I’ve gotten the chance to work tools more gradually into a workflow. Vista’s […]