Brian Eno to Create Generative Soundtrack for Spore; Algorithmic Productivity Busting Follows

Yeah, thanks a lot, Will Wright. Now can you breed a new us that’s immune to procrastinating the rest of our lives to play your game? Just when we thought we might escape Will Wright’s upcoming PC game, Spore, and get some work done, it turns into a compositional must-have. Regine Debatty, who gets to […]

Macworld: E-MU Ships Beta Mac Drivers; Proteus for Mac Coming

E-MU was once a beloved moniker in the music gear business. Now owned by Creative Labs, they’ve made a new name for themselves with software versions of their sound modules and value-priced keyboards and interfaces — but Mac users haven’t been invited to the party. So I was surprised when I heard Mac users coming […]

Macworld: Multi-Touch Apple Music Device Still to Come?

Eleven months before Steve Jobs took the stage, hrmpf.com broke the real story of the iPhone. But could that patent reveal more? Remember patent 0060026536? It’s the multi-touch, gestural patent Apple filed that was clearly the precursor of the Apple iPhone. Here’s the curious thing: the iPhone, as demonstrated at the Macworld keynote, isn’t all […]

Macworld: Will Apple Keep its iPhone Closed? Multi-Touch Patents?

After the Macworld keynote glow wears off, the question is, will the iPhone be another closed box, shut off to brilliant third-party developers? It’s not as if we won’t have choices. Gizmodo points out the open-source OpenMoko alternative. But there’s still some hope Apple might let developers in — and even Flash would be fantastic. […]

Macworld: Axiotron ModBook Mac Tablet Hands-on

For the record, this is not my hand. If it were my hand, you’d see me tweaking Max/MSP or something. To whomever may own this hand: sorry I didn’t have you sign a release on the tablet. -PK Tablets have always held a special, niche appeal for musicians. For notation, they’re invaluable: you can prop […]

Macworld: Up Close with Belkin TuneStudio, iPod Mixer/Recorder

Take out those earbuds and start recording mixes. Or, okay, just keep dancing around with your fellow, sexy silhouettes. It was easy to go into iPod accessory overload at this year’s Macworld Expo, which ballooned back into two halls of the Moscone Center more because of iPod products than Mac products. (Some wondered if the […]

Luxeed Keyboard with Interactive Lighting: Perfect Gigging QWERTY?

Down with laptops! Jaymis and I have both taken up SFF PCs as live tools, so we can bring some serious iron to gigs with multiple video outputs. Now, the only problem: laptops have these handy QWERTY keyboards attached. SFF PCs (and Mac minis and such) mean bringing your own keyboard and display. I’ve been […]

(Updated) Technical Difficulties: Back in Black?

As you’ve probably noticed, CDM has had major outages all week. We’re working on resolving the problem. We’ve moved to a new, dedicated server, but while that will make CDM’s performance and reliability much better, in the meantime, it’s made things worse. We’re debugging some issues in the site itself and will be back up […]

Manufacturer Flakes on Mac Support, User Delivers: Behringer BCD2000 Drivers for OSX!

The BCD2000 has been somewhat of a contradiction for me since purchase. On one hand the hardware is fantastic; robust and seriously cheap. On the other hand the included software and drivers are absolutely abhorrent, PC only affairs with broken midi implementation. I’ve always hoped that Behringer would update the BCD to have similar (extensive) […]

Macworld: Becoming a Mac Visualist – Live Visual Resources

Once, digital image editing was a fringe medium. Now, almost everyone who uses a computer does basic image editing. So, I’m pleased to get to talk today at Macworld Expo about live visuals and reactive/interactive animation. I chose some relatively simple examples since time was short, just to cover the basics. I think some of […]