PhilipBloom.net has an extensive shootout between “three of the most popular ‘affordable’ 35mm Depth of Field adaptors”. What I wanted to do with this shootout is give people information that I was not able to get when I wanted to buy an adaptor. There are many people with these adaptors, but very few people have […]

Jonas of General Specialist seems to have been on a little holiday, but he’s back with two rapid-fire tips for those mixing “real” 3D into their After Effects: MAX2AE Despite its name, the new version 2.0 of MAX2AE actually goes both ways, letting you start your designs in After Effects and at a later stage […]

In November, Bill Van Loo showed off his custom-painted Apple QWERTY keyboard for controlling Ableton Live. He’s been painting again, and has now completed his live Live rig with a beautifully-painted Peavy MIDI fader unit. Peavey PC1600x MIDI controller re-paint [Flickr set] Detailed, step-by-step instructions and an explanation of how this all fits into a […]

`Em are ducks! Surprise! The one application with which I’ve had the most success on my Vista turns out to be Max/MSP/Jitter, the niche, Mac-first multimedia application built by a small handful of developers. Without so much as a single update, Jitter is running perfectly on Vista, running on an NVIDIA GeForce Go 7600 card […]

Manufacturers have attempted to make USB connections for audio and MIDI more transparent before. We’ve seen mics with USB cords instead of XLR, and USB cables with little humps in the middle with built-in circuitry for MIDI connections. But new cables announced this week by Chinese manufacturer CME go further: a USB/MIDI cable that’s as […]

Most musicians will be waiting some time before running Vista, so if you can’t upgrade to a new OS, upgrade the OS you’ve got. Our friend Brad, aka Internet indie singer-songwriter star Brad Sucks, is getting into laptop performance and wants some tips for tuning Windows XP. He writes: I’d be interested in asking your […]

Preparation for the tour is winding up, and it’s looking like – not satisfied with my current workload to have visuals ready – I will be working on the general stage lighting utilizing projectors rather than traditional lighting rigs. The software side is looking like a Jitter job, but I haven’t been keeping up with […]

eBoy’s brilliant, pixel art and character design is a real gem if you haven’t seen it. Translating that isometric 3D world into animation, though, is no mean trick. That’s why this latest animation is so stunning: Great tip: be German. (That works for electronic music, too, you know.) Via Ektopia and uber-hip Urban Retro Lifestyle. […]

eBoy’s brilliant, pixel art and character design is a real gem if you haven’t seen it. Translating that isometric 3D world into animation, though, is no mean trick. That’s why this latest animation is so stunning: Great tip: be German. (That works for electronic music, too, you know.) Via Ektopia and uber-hip Urban Retro Lifestyle. […]

Vista for visualists is a problematic proposition. Typically, musicians have the toughest upgrade curve with any OS, but there’s a major incentive for musicians with Vista, as reported on CDM: the promise of significantly improved audio performance and stability. Right now, there isn’t enough software or hardware support for most musicians, though I expect that […]