Walk into a club, and it seems far too often you’ll find a DJ operating Serato or Traktor with their laptop touchpad. At best, you might get a digital vinyl system that’s mostly spinning around and looking pretty. (Some people do amazing things with scratching; some love the feel of cueing on vinyl. Some don’t […]

Photo of Steve Jobs portrait (CC-BY) Adobe of Chaos / Organ Museum. Steve Jobs’ abrupt resignation from Apple is of course plastered all over the news and social network feeds, so let’s consider instead the legacy Jobs has left over the decades for creative technology. The highlights for artists and musicians begin far before the […]

Synthesists Tara Busch dares you to remix her album. Photo courtesy the artist. It barely seems as though it’s been that long, but synthesis pioneer Robert Moog died six years ago this week. That has brought a whole new wave of remembrances, including a great new EP you can remix. And if you still don’t […]

The tablet – or at least the iPad – is beginning to look like a terrific accessory for lovers of MIDI and hardware. With its compact form factor, it coexists nicely with your MIDI gear and lets you focus on sequencing, perhaps moving to the traditional computer to finish up your track, mixing, and the […]

Something crazy going on here. Install image from Drasko V. Drasko Vucevic, Toronto- and Santa Monica (California)-based sound designer and artist/composer, is apparently not only interested in playing alone. His upcoming interactive installation at Toronto’s Royal Music Conservatory will have an audience jamming along live via Twitter. And the artistry is crowd-sourced, too – with […]

Behind records, dj sniff hides a no-display computer-based rig running his own software, extending the possibilities of what turntablism can be. Photo by Tanya Traboulsi. dj sniff, aka Takuro Mizuta Lippit, has been a leading figure in experimental turntablism and experimental music in general. Following studies in New York and Tokyo, he’s been a key […]

CoGe is an upstart VJ app on the Mac, built on the foundations of Quartz Composer as a standalone VJ app. It’s been winning over some converts already – as indicated in our recent survey. But here’s the big release: version 1.0, a ground-up rewrite, which in turn debuts the app as a commercial tool. […]

Generative physics animations in Illustrator most certainly fall into the “because it’s there” / “for no very good reason other than it’s possible” category. But the results are hilariously awesome. See above, Adobe fans. The tool behind this is very cool, too. Processing lovers who don’t already know the insanely great toxiclibs library – and […]

Now, aside from making fake volcano simulations, you can actually get some recording done with this stuff. Science! Photo (CC-BY-ND) Rodrigo Huerta. Need a new mic to play with? Maybe you should raid your kitchen pantry. London-based musician Leafcutter John writes us to share a detailed tutorial on cooking up new mics from common household […]

God Bless Russian engineering. As of this summer, it’s the only ticket to and from our space station, via a capsule that Just Works. It gaves us the very first electronic instrument (thanks, Professor Theremin). And it gives us an insane music tracker slash production tool slash soft synth selection slash modular hosting environment that […]