Ments, an audiovisual collaboration between sound creators Echoic Audio and London-based motion artist Jordi Pages, almost needs no introduction. It jacks your brain deep into the oceans of some alien world. There’s no clear narrative, but perhaps this is what Pixar narrative is like if you’re from a different solar system. Jordi offers up some […]

What if software could leap off the screen, transforming into physical form? Ander’s custom controller for live performance looks like just that. An epic array of candy-colored buttons, with a dizzying arrangement of knobs atop it, it’s the opposite of what many live performances these days can be. Rather than a spectacle that distracts from […]

Perhaps it’s the sense of detachment that comes from long hours spent staring at screens, peering into pixels and abstraction. But whatever the reason, when experimenting with design and music, creators seem increasingly drawn to simple, physical interaction. Somewhere in the mysterious play between senses, between seen color and unseen sound, they look for intuitive […]

This number “64” is important to some people making music. Here, we get to explain why, if you should even be concerned, and what it’ll mean to run Live in 64-bit. Photo (CC-BY-SA) shizhao. Sung to the tune of the Beatles’ iconic “When I’m 64 [bit]…” Do you need memory? / Lotsa more memory? / […]

M-Audio honored its Midiman roots with an anniversary edition of their (quite useful) MIDI interface line. Photo courtesy Avid. So, you own M-Audio and/or AIR stuff. You want to know what this means as Avid sells those makers to a new owner, right? M-Audio and AIR (formerly Wizoo) this week end their time as subsidiaries […]

What sort of musical instruments can you make out of plastic credit cards? You might imagine results are limited. But with some clever use of mics, and brilliantly-simple application of time-tested ideas ranging from single-string monochords to music boxes, the results are eminently, wondrously sonorous. And the project benefits greatly from having some compositional intent […]

Beat Bricks – A LEGO Step Sequencer from superquadratic on Vimeo. There’s something about that feeling of snapping a LEGO brick in place, a tactile connection to childhood memory. So, while it’s perhaps neither necessary nor terribly practical, this rig that turns a LEGO board into a step sequencer is somehow irresistible. And, like any […]

M-audio, b-bye. A-kai, hell-o. Photo (CC-BY) Ludovico Sinz. Avid today announced sweeping changes in a changing market. Having gradually accumulated more businesses, the company now is selling many of them off, keeping its flagship video tool and Pro Tools audio products. Gone are the consumer/entry-level divisions – consumer-level Avid and Pinnacle on the video side […]

It’s worth adding an addendum to today’s story on Android and high-performance sound. There are promising signs for many current and future Android gadgets when it comes to music and sound. That’s fantastic, because many of us had all but written off the platform entirely. (There’s a reason you haven’t seen much mention of it […]

It’s called “Jelly Bean.” But a 4.1 version of Android might also be called, at last, a version of Android musicians will find tasty. (Those last versions were a bit more of the disgusting variety from Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans; this is a bit more Jelly Belly.) Photo (CC-BY-SA) Hermann Kaser. Android devices may, […]