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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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) […]

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 […]

Breaking! Native Instruments will be using USB! Got that? Metal DJ hardware goodness also presumably on its way. Music makers think that if they leak some teaser photos of upcoming devices, we’ll write it up. They’re right. Native Instruments has released to CDM a small image of what appears to be an upcoming Traktor hardware […]

I’m here in San Francisco all week at Macworld, a hub not only for the Mac platform but the visualist/VJ scene as well. I’ll be reporting all week (and next, as I catch up) for both CDMotion and CDMusic. This is a huge chance to learn about Flash (Flashforward is hosting a special Macworld edition), […]

How much does circuit bender Gijs Gieskes love circuit boards? Enough to make them into puppets. A little paint, lots and lots of colored lights, and the ability to receive clock signal (MIDI sync) from LSDj, the homebrew music app for Game Boys, and you have a geeky, wonderful animated character who can flash along […]

Ableton has announced it’s opening a new office and handling its own US distribution. Ordinarily, this kind of news would be pretty boring, but this particular announcement is important for several reasons: 1. It means Ableton is going to have a bigger presence in New York, home city of Create Digital Music (just 15 minutes […]