There’s nothing like the occasional reminder that commercial effects pros get to do stuff we can’t. Today’s example: a real-life Katamari Damacy, starting with a single person (ouch) and rolling through a city, courtesy the Travelers Insurance group. The results are stunningly realistic, particularly at the beginning: there’s a sense of real physicality to it, […]

The Core 2 Duo MacBook Pros are here, and even if you’re a Windows user, these machines deserve a look. See Create Digital Music for the full once-over, but here’s my short list for why the MacBook Pro has appeal for the VJ/visualist/live visuals person, particularly for the intensive requirements of running live visuals in […]

Apple has announced an update for its MacBook Pro line that makes it up to 39% faster than the previous MacBook and seven trillion times faster than our sorry PowerBook G4s. Wait — scratch that last line. I think they said “seven.” But having tested the first MacBook Pro, suffice to say that the Pro […]

I started using Live with version 1, and since that version, Live users have longed for an easy way to customize the color scheme in Ableton Live. It’s a no-brainer: two-dimensional interface, high-contrast UI elements, basic graphics — why not be able to choose the color scheme you want? Ableton’s own themes let you abandon […]

Bless K-mart and their $2.50 contact sheets of faux woodgrain. They can turn your average, ordinary plastic M-Audio USB MIDI keyboard into a retro-styled custom job that just screams, erm, class. Melbourne-and-London-based CDM forum reader soloandata did just that. (Talk about bi-coastal — they have K-marts there?) Kudos: it takes a steady hand to line […]

Regular readers of this site and Make Magazine know I’m a big fan of Limor Fried’s MIDIsense, a physical computing (aka real world aka sensor input) MIDI board. Sensor data goes in, MIDI goes out, and thanks to standard MIDI DIN connectors, you can plug it into any computer MIDI interface or music hardware and […]

The problem with truly virtual synths? No sound. Second Life is one of those things I might try out one of these days, except that I’m quite busy with my first, second, third, and fourth lives at the moment. I’m surprised that while Tom at Music thing catches on to music gear sales in the […]

Sony PSP users: turned off by new-fangled graphical drum machines and wireless Ableton Live controllers? Want to kick it oldskool with a tracker? Check out PSPSeq, which has now matured to version 1.0 (from 0.2). Here’s what’s new: editable parameters on instruments customizable instrument groupings multiple loops/song sequence tap tempo multiple audio presets, new generators/fx […]

Running around with a camera and shooting from the hip is great fun, and a great way to get source material for visuals, but if you’re shooting to a script and are paying for gear, studio, talent, crew or police roadblocks then you need to make your shots count. DV Rack has recently hit version 2.0 […]

After months of closed beta testing, Bome’s Midi Translator Pro (Windows only) has finally been released for public consumption. Midi Translator is a powerful addition to your midi kit, allowing you to translate midi messages into different midi messages, qwerty key presses (control non-music apps with midi controllers), or to stop them completely. The latest versions […]