Amplifying violins — and processing them with bizarre Max/MSP patches using mics and pickups and gyroscope bows — is no longer a major challenge. But it wasn’t always so. Early recordings of violins faced the challenge of the fragile sound of the instrument. Builders like John Matthias Augustus Stroh devised a primitive but effective solution: […]

The original design of the violin is a classic, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to improve upon it with modern tech. While it looks mostly like an ordinary bow, the Hyperbow is designed to electronically measure gestures and calculate force, speed, and bow-bridge distance, thanks to accelerometers, gyroscopes, and force sensors. The bow, […]

We hear lots of discussion of how to make better digital instruments. But to fully understand instrument design, it’s often best to look at instruments from around the world that have evolved over centuries. (Hey, these synthesizers and such, by comparison, are mere infants.) Here’s a fantastically virtuostic performance from 11 year-old Sirena Huang, via […]

I pulled Digg from my RSS reader soon after they opened up more categories a month or so ago. That site was killed by Popular Website: Retard Influx Syndrome faster than anything I’ve ever seen. So I wasn’t up to date enough to check out the 20 million “private” search queries AOL published before it […]

We don’t have to wait for press releases around here; an enthusiastic Apogee employee (not from the sales and marketing end, he says) writes in to brag about Apogee’s support for the new Apple Mac Pro. Not only are drivers available today for using the Apogee Symphony PCI-Express audio card, but Apogee says the combination […]

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s Apple Mac Pro announcement, Digidesign has announced today they expect to release an Intel Mac-compatible version of Pro Tools HD 7.2 in September. Pro Tools LE and M-Powered are already available as Universal binaries for use with Intel Macs. The HD version lagged behind the lower-end releases because it […]

I’ve been enjoying Mike Patton’s semi-recent collaborative group Peeping Tom. From previous project Fantômas comes Blissful This high-contrast vector style is perfect for VJing, used as a mask with an Add or Lighten blend mode. Via Ticklebooth contributor DeK‘s short and tasty No Fat Clips