Arturia’s new Minibrute analog monosynth, from the virtual analog software company, seen here blazing away in the apocalyptic moments just before Hell freezes over. We’re calling it: on Thursday, January 19, the soft synth age, and synth polyphony, officially came to an end. Also, Arturia, the people who make virtual analog soft synths, are now […]

From top: “DJ,” “performance” versions of the new Casio synth, though the functionality of each is fairly close. Photos from Casio, and yes, it’s time to get better photos. What if a workstation arrangement keyboard were designed for DJs and synth rockers instead of, uh, whoever normally buys workstation arranger keyboards? Casio has taken the […]

Imagine Also Sprach Zarathustra playing here, a la 2001. And note what this keytar has – a real pitch wheel, right on the neck. One is a keytar. One is a master controller with touch faders and real MIDI and — control voltage, for working with analog gear. Seriously. The keyboard controller market may have […]

Photo (CC-BY-NC-SA) Dawn Loh. It’s been called, bluntly, “Internet censorship” by opponents. And now, US legislation that claims to curb piracy faces mounting challenges as that opposition grows, particularly as the White House warns it will block the bills. Today, even as a flood of delightful new music toys become available, it’s worth pausing to […]

Music has always moved forward when people get together to play. Groups of artists in Los Angeles’ Interface LA collective – and other California groups, like LoveTech and controllerism.com – are challenging each other to keep expanding their technique in playing electronics live. I’m pleased with CDM and some of our friends to support a […]

GraffitiMarkupLanguage.com (Trailer) from Evan Roth on Vimeo. Imagine data that stores digital, virtual graffiti tags as easily as you store text. Imagine, then, the power to record and playback tags at different scales, using everything from projection mapping to robotics. Graffiti Markup Language is in ongoing development, but it’s already accomplishing those aims. More: Graffiti […]

Scratching, captured. Photo (CC-BY-SA) karl sinfield / sindesign. Add this to the Internet of Things: imagine data recording scratching and scratch performances. Technologists Jamie Wilkinson, Michael Auger, and Kyle McDonald propose a new way of storing scratch moves as data. They’re not just working in traditional ways, either: they’re hacking turntables and optical mice and […]

I like to do six impossible things before breakfast. You? This is either the first death knell for the traditional desktop DAW, or an ill-fated attempt to squeeze a desktop DAW onto a tablet. Or, more likely, it’s somewhere in between. Auria isn’t the first multitrack production studio for a mobile platform, but without question, […]

I think I’m going to have to start teasing random projects I’m doing, like taking a picture of the corner of a dirty dish before I do the dishes, or showing a corner of my shoe before I tie them in the morning. But here’s one more teaser for you, especially since Americans today have […]

While poking around the site of that brilliant GLSL iPad app, among many wonderful goodies (see link below), I found this excellent demo of SpaceNavigator, the 3D control hardware. Got my SpaceNavigator in the mail today. It’s a 6-dof HID that works great with Blender. I threw together this test scene to get to grips […]