The centuries-old piano keeps fighting back every time someone tries to improve it. Case in point: polyphonic aftertouch. The cause for something new was straightforward enough. On a normal piano, you lose expressive possibilities once you play a note. Because of the necessity of the way hammers work, your fingers are left holding down keys […]

If computers are compact and $25, we’re talking a very different world of music hardware. Armed with the popular Raspberry Pi, Servando Barreiro has made an incredibly-affordable, ultimately-customizable rig with free software and the open source community. Oh, and he’s made the KORG monotron polyphonic – after a fashion. See video at top for some […]

Oregon-born engineer, inventor, and thinker Douglas Engelbart has died. He’ll be listed in many outlets as, mundanely, the inventor of the computer mouse. Certainly, the demo of that technology in 1968 had a profound impact. But what’s stunning is that even at that demo, the mouse wasn’t the most impressive thing Engelbart showed. At the […]

Professor Kliq – Wire and Flashing Lights from Patator on Vimeo. It’s digital stop motion – wire, flashing lights, and paper are animated in a crazy-catchy groove in this latest animation from Paris-based director (and CDM reader) Victor Haegelin. Working with music by Chicago electro artist Professor Kliq (Mike Else), the track name is also, […]

The lust for new sounds can take many forms. It leads some to reduce, forcing themselves to stick to minimal choices to channel their creativity. It leads some to reuse and recycle, repurposing old gear. But it leads some into a quest for arcane racks of gear, spaghetti tangles of wires and flashing screens alike, […]

Aw, kawaii! Wait… sorry, poor choice of words. Aw, how… uh… Korg! Yes, in case they hadn’t given us enough reason for adoration lately, the folks at Korg are now giving away cute little USB stick versions of the microKORG if you purchase a microKORG or microKORG XL+. And if that’s not quite your budget, […]

pingtime from videogram on Vimeo. The tables have turned. Forty years after Pong aped table tennis on Atari, we’re watching computers transforming the original game. The table tennis in Pingtime vibrates and warps with sound and projection in an “augmented” experience of the game. The project is immortalized by Bucharest’s Videogram – but we see […]

The “live” in Ableton Live suggests making musical decisions in real time – not slowly with painstaking editing, stopping and editing and drawing, but as you listen and work. But while the onscreen interface is built around the mouse, and the precision of the mouse, focusing on those settings in performance, DJing, or studio work […]

London’s Georgina Brett is part of a generation of solo artists who use layered loops to build trascendental, rotating textures from repetition. Hardware loopers and effects pedals remain the preferred tool here for Brett as for many such artists. But Brett’s work is worth a particular mention for its ghostly, ethereal quality and thoughtful, delicate […]

Switch off that negative talk: vibrations between musical scenes continue to resonate and grow. Here we have two artists, each somehow evergreen and still blossoming, making the link from past to future feel secure. And speaking of good vibrations, I can think of no better way to get the summer vibes going this weekend than […]