Sometimes, all you need is one really good reverb with editable parameters. TC Electronic has done some really lovely reverb work, and they’re currently giving away one of their plug-ins, for three days only. Registration is required, if you’re opposed to such things, but beyond that, there are no strings attached. (Yes, there’s a mailing […]

Ableton-er-size! It keeps you healthy. Photo (CC) Riley Nagler as Live and the APC40 play Halloween. Not all users upgrade to the same version at the same time – least of all when it’s a paid upgrade. So, it’s welcome to see that a number of improvements and fixes are making it to the previous […]

Ah, clothes. You’re so warm, so good at preventing us from being naked and sunburnt. But you know what the passionate visualist really wants from clothes: we want a display. The GalaxyDress is the latest creation of the fashionista-scientists of CuteCircuit, the smart-wearable design collective founded by Ivrea-trained designers Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz. The […]

The Tenori-On, the grid-based musical instrument with whimsical sequenced lights created by Toshio Iwai, has been gradually becoming more affordable. The original model, complete with its rounded metal case, has already been cut to US$999 here in North America. Now, Yamaha announces that it is making an “Orange” version which also slices costs. A plastic […]

In LA’s DubSpot Live 8 Sessions, I shared a panel with Daedalus, talking about design, live playing, the monome, and how limiting tools for performance can be powerful. Austin gets its own cast of presenters this weekend. Sadly, I can’t be in all places at once. If I could, I’d be in Austin – twice […]

From the suggestion box at CDM, we’re taking a look at DIY party-rocking sound system technology from the birth of Hip-Hop. Ed.: Resident DIY expert and editor-at-large Michael Una returns – and the man has been known to do strange things with speakers himself. Say you’re an up-and-coming crew with a turntable and some mics. […]

Finally, “mixing” doesn’t have to be synonymous with “S-Video/composite”: DVI-grade mixing at affordable-by-human prices is coming. We were already thrilled by Toby *Spark’s effort to lead a community-driven DVI hardware mixer effort. But tantalizing as the teaser was, it led to still more questions. Toby has followed up with an extensive Q&A on his site. […]

A new, free software release for Novation’s Launchpad could make your device a lot more usable – and it shows how useful OSC can be for hardware, even if that isn’t OSC hardware. (Now, imagine what OSC-native hardware can do.) There are plenty of misunderstandings about OSC and the monome out there. Among them, there’s […]

Sync or swim, indeed. Synchronized swimming performance in Brighton, which itself had to sync with live music and cinema – check out the details, as they’re perfect metaphorically for this story. Photo: Greg Neate. Laptop musicians are feeling out of sync — literally. But we can work together to help the situation. Computer music making […]

On the weekend we saw plenty of love expressed for windows-only patching tool (or “Multipurpose Toolkit”) VVVV [tag on CDMo]. Another recent VVVV piece which has impressed me is Internal Thinking, from Vadim Smakhtin. Sune spoke about how audio-linked visuals can be “jumpy”, which is often the case. But Internal Thinking shows that random, fast-moving, […]