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 […]

No matter how many music tech toys you have, no matter how many music tech toys you’ve ever seen, Nine Inch Nails still has more. Michael Hetrick writes to point us to his latest post over on KVR: Total Gear-Porn on new NIN site [KVR Audio Forums] It’s especially nice to see some of the […]

Music lovers, online tools are getting more useful. They can even recognize that song you can’t remember (boy, there are there some evenings of my life I’d like back), and keep you from missing your favorite artists’ gigs in your home town. Midomi lets you search for artists and songs the old-fashioned way, via text […]

Yes, I’m enjoying our new inter-post asides to create fabulous new non sequitur combination headlines. More on Windows Vista’s audio guts: MS developer Larry Osterman explains (well, sort of) the new audiodg.exe “host audio engine.” The DRM bit is nasty, but the good news is it doesn’t seem to have an adverse impact on music […]

If you’ve been looking to get into circuit bending your own musical instruments and need that extra push to make the jump, MAKE Magazine has posted both a PDF and video podcast with a basic how-to. I got to play with the resulting instrument Bre built, and it’s great fun; the Speak & Spell is […]

On our sister site for musicians, we’ve got lots of goodies this week for DIYers. Arduino fans, don’t miss a new resource site with DMX, Bluetooth, and Ethernet Arduinos. Arduinos controlling DMX lighting? Now that could make a hot visualist set (albeit with inflated setup time). On YouTube, a controllers made from pennies and popsicle […]

If you’re planning to build a creative new instrument or interface for music, and you don’t already have the open source Arduino project on your watch list, you should put it there. Chris O’Shea at Pixelsumo brings some great new goodies for Arduino lovers via the Italian project site / tutorial site / shop Tinker.it:

At the risk of stating the obvious: now is not yet a good time to upgrade to Vista. That much is generally expected with a new operating system. What’s unexpected is that it’s some of the biggest partners who aren’t ready. Microsoft’s own developer tools for Vista are still in beta. Basic hardware drivers are […]