Wherever you live, you can enjoy the DIY and open hardware inventions coming out of Texas. Or, as the famous song goes: “That’s right, you’re not from Texas / Texas wants you anyway.” Austin, Texas may be associated with the strum of guitars. But it’s also populated by some of our favorite electronic music hardware […]

What if a competition didn’t just encourage entrants to try to make a better product? What if it encouraged friendly rivalry between makers to produce entries that were also shared across the community? That’s the idea behind Digitópia’s upcoming series of competitions, now entering its third year. Digitópia itself is based in Porto, Portugal, at […]

From a previous hackday at InterAccess; photo (CC-BY) Rob Cruickshank. Handmade Music is spreading. Toronto’s InterAccess has been a hub of terrific DIY activity in sound and other fields, otherwise known as a General Gravity Well of Awesomeness, and they’re now doing their own Handmade Music, kicking off this month. Full call below, but as […]

Push the button: Kokoromi’s Gamma game challenge, which we saw earlier this week, challenges game designers to build an entire gameplay mechanic around a single button. What can be done with a single hardware object – a self-contained, one-button invention? We’re looking for creations that answer that question, inspired by games (and encompassing hardware games […]

Photo (CC-BY) Liz Bustamante. Ed.: Make no mistake about it: digital sound tech, from mixing to processing, has evolved to a fidelity on par with its analog predecessors and opening possibilities well beyond what they offered. But the making of that evolution wasn’t easy, and it was more than a technical challenge. You can thank […]

Image Courtesy of Apple. I’ve already expressed my personal disappointment (though not surprise) with Apple’s direction on the iPad, on Create Digital Music. Having gotten that out of my system, however, you can expect remaining iPad coverage on CDM to stick to the facts – and, as always, to track the way people use technology. […]

Would you use this object if it came with restrictions? Photo — of a hacked Moleskin, ironically — (CC-BY-SA) Alexandre Dulaunoy. Apple’s iPad is here. It starts at $499. It’s a gorgeous, brilliantly-designed device that has the benefits of Apple’s cleverly-engineered, best-in-class developer tools for mobile. A lot are likely to sell. And unfortunately, to […]

araabMUZIK Live MPC Set Part 1 from Death by Electric Shock on Vimeo. I have exactly zero interest in entertaining the tired hardware versus software argument that surfaced, inevitably, with the discussion of the upcoming Beat Thang drum machine. But behind that question is a very relevant question: why do people love drum machines? Why […]

Eat your heart out, Ableton/Serato The Bridge. Native Instruments’ Traktor runs four decks at once without breaking a sweat, and there are various ways of incorporating sampling, scratching, and vinyl in a live rig that are pretty easy to set up. But lately we’ve seen some unusual options to build more elaborate setups. Rane even […]