Legos, the ultimate prototyping material. Many of us have wished we could have music controllers that could be assembled and customized with the ease of Legos; the Lego-like Mawzer modular controller system got our hopes up but still doesn’t seem to have evolved into a product you can actually buy. Of course, why build something […]

Sometimes it’s really hard to be rational and dispassionate about high-end audio gear. Some of it is just ridiculously pretty. And every time the AES show rolls around, you can be sure your right brain’s neurons are going to get all hot and bothered about Blue and Red Microphones and their lovely, vintage-style designs.

If you haven’t been paying much attention to the leading open source DAW, Ardour, now might be a good time to start. Not only is this software fully open source and freely available for Mac OS X and Linux, but as it nears a major upgrade, it’s getting some significant feature support — and the […]

My friend Francis Preve, tech author and electronica producer / remix artist, has a new title out on Backbeat Books assembling a broad range of production tips, tutorials, and anecdotes from artists. (He’s pictured here, though that’s not actually his pool.) You may know Fran’s writing from Keyboard; for The Remixer’s Bible, he’s assembled Keyboard’s […]

DJ Monday continues … CDM reader Corporation shares a number of tips, resources, and reviews of the new M-Audio DJ solution, involving the Conectiv hardware and Torq software. The basic downsides: bad documentation, and hardware that may not work for everyone. But on the upside, M-Audio has a solution that, at a fraction of the […]

For DJs like Manuela Krause, it’s the Traktor software, not the Stanton hardware, that makes digital DJing a draw. Now NI just has to figure out what hardware will be ideal for this market … perhaps a laptop-based cupholder for our cocktails? (I’d buy that, NI.) Native Instruments, maker of the leading Traktor DJ software […]

Correction: I incorrectly stated that Euphonix themselves collaborated with UA; instead it is Euphonix co-founders and veterans of the company Scott and Rob Silfvast. I apologize for the error. In a way, this is even better; they represent some of the individual design vision behind Euphonix. See Scott Silfvast’s ideas at the end. This weekend […]

For more on the Roland workstation line I’ve been talking about this week, check out the video clips at Keyboard’s recently-launched video site: Keyboard Magazine TV No direct links from the site, so you just click through to Hot Gear @ NAMM. You won’t see the E-80 workstation I was ranting about; instead, there’s the […]

Finally, the wait is over. As technology companies battle for the living room, Roland has built the ultimate convergence device. The VIMA concept keyboard addresses the need of the average home consumer to play organ and keyboard sounds, manage digital photos and videos, and perform karaoke using a single, integrated product. The days of having […]