It takes a dedicated turntablist to use a deck as a melodic instrument. It makes Theremins, violins, and bassoons easy to play. Kypski shares the Beatles’ Michelle in scratch form: Yep, I’m sticking to keyboards and Theremins. This does make me wonder, though, about fun ways of playing things involving giant mechanical wheels, though, which […]

Linux is looking better and better as a fully open-source, multimedia-optimized operating system for visualists. Adobe has announced the availability of Flash Player for Linux. The bad news is, it’s x86 only, and as expected, there may be some issues. But the good news is, it’s here, and early reports indicate it works. Even as […]

One open source DVD with an operating system and all the free tools you need for creative work, ready to run on any PC or Mac — it’s an interesting vision. That’s the idea behind Ubuntu Studio. Details are sketchy on development so far, but the basic idea is bundling together the tools you need […]

While we’re talking DRM, bless those progressive Vikings. Norway’s Consumer Ombudsman (whom I imagine wears a long, ornate robe and a thick beard — or something archaic and cool, since us Americans don’t get any ombudspeople, just a lot of corporate lobbyists) has pronounced iTunes/iPod FairPlay DRM illegal. Apple DRM is illegal in Norway, says […]

Good things about Microsoft: they’re the rich kid next door who can book Jefferson Starship for their Vista launch tour. Good news for PC users: DRM probably isn’t going to keep you from getting a shiny new OS after all. Whether you choose Mac OS X, Linux, Windows XP, or Windows Vista — or some […]

Moose has taken a fantastic gallery of images from NAMM, found at MIDIZoo.com, and clearly is attracted to a lot of the same stuff as Team CDM. Now, here’s a tantalizing banner for fans of analog synths and early MPCs. If you had to pick a dream team to build an analog/digital hybrid drum machine, […]

The new Vestax VCI-100 is “a highly professional MIDI controller” that was on display at the NAMM show. While many of us delight in exposing highly cheesy marketing verbiage, I do have to say that in the process of trying to nudge it to get a better photo, I discovered that the VCI-100 is much […]

Tim Clark writes to point out the Magical 8bit Plugin from the awesome Japanese game console virtuosos YMCK is now Intel Mac-ready: YMCK Plug-in Download Page What wonders does YMCK offer? 5 waveforms (square, pulse (2 kinds), pseudo-triangle, low-resolution noise) ADSR envelope assignment for volume Supports pitch bending, bend range variable Frequency sweep function Sure, […]

I spend most of my performance time with electronic musicians, and suppose most CDMo readers would be in a similar situation. I don’t think it’s necessarily that live electronica requires a VJ to be visually stimulating (Ponyloaf prove this gig after gig), but those whose music making time is centred around synths, samplers and laptops […]

Josh Jancourtz took some great photos for us from the floor of the Anaheim Convention Center at the NAMM show, because you can never see drool-inspiring gear from too many angles. We’ll be catching up with new NAMM announcements all week and will do our full CDM wrap-up in the next few days, but in […]