In case you’ve missed it, the project opens like this: “Bleep’s Guide to Electronic Music starts on 25th March, 1857 – the day Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville receives French patent #17,897/31,470 for the phonautograph.” The Facebook Timeline may seem just a tool for naval-gazing or privacy violation. But then, suddenly, you’re dialing back to the […]

Live performance DAW Bitwig Studio is now moving forward with their beta, and a video demo this time provides a clearer look at what the software actually does. Ableton Live users, just be prepared for more of a sense of deja vu all over again: “Bitwig Studio has two views: the Arranger View, and the […]

Realizing the materiality of Earth and the Moon in new forms, artist Craig Dorety is rendering natural forms in light and engravings. For the Moon, he turns to carving techniques to mirror new data about the lunar surface – and, thanks to an SF Awesome Grant, he’s got some spare change to upgrade his CNC […]

Here’s an iOS app antidote to those desktop plug-ins that do everything, to elaborate virtual synths with eighteen separate modulation envelopes. It’s an app that just … makes clap sounds. And it brings your iPhone or iPad boldly into the 1980s. The handclap sound you hear in so much electronic music, particularly that originating from […]

The Drum Machine. Warning: may materialize on unfriendly alien planets, or just in UK rock quarries. Musical tradition is, by definition, often “multi-player.” From people playing in bands and strin quartets to families getting together to sing, live performance is often shared. But while you can drop a computer player into an ensemble, the computer […]

Kaizen is the Japanese technique of continuous improvement, and that’s what we’re trying to live by daily on CDM, especially this summer, in ways you should start to notice soon. One thing readers have requested for some time is a mailing list. Now, these things are typically promotional tools I myself despise, which could explain […]

Resolume 4.1 New Features from Resolume on Vimeo. Mapping is more than just “that thing you do with a big pile of boxes or the facade of a building as a gimmick.” It’s increasingly expected that you’re ready, as a live visualist, to produce output in shapes other than just the rectangle. It might be […]

We hear a lot about the “wisdom of crowds.” Now, here’s the voice of the crowd. Photo (CC-BY) James Cridland. Every choir is, in a sense, crowd-sourced. In this case, a set of choir samples were composed from “choir members” from around the globe who never met each other. In Soniccouture’s new Chrowdchoir instrument, over […]

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 […]