The Akai APC40, the result of a collaboration between Akai and Ableton, has made its way into the wild. Here’s the first hands-on video – I have to say, I love the green lights. Who would have thought that Matrixsynth green would be the shade this year? You can thank AudioMIDI.com for getting the loaner […]

Propellerhead’s upcoming Record has attracted a lot of attention and discussion, but some of the forum chatter has centered on the new authorization scheme. Record will in fact use a hardware dongle as a key. Propellerhead obviously anticipated a response, as on their own site, they concede: “Wait – a USB device? You mean… a […]

Interface 27 from CyberPatrolUnit on Vimeo. There has been a long tradition in live visuals and motion graphics, inherited from many other media, of maintaining a “secret sauce,” or the guarded formula of eleven herbs and spices. Ironically, for all you hear today “DIY” and “open source” in the same sentence, a lot of the […]

Interface 27 from CyberPatrolUnit on Vimeo. There has been a long tradition in live visuals and motion graphics, inherited from many other media, of maintaining a “secret sauce,” or the guarded formula of eleven herbs and spices. Ironically, for all you hear today “DIY” and “open source” in the same sentence, a lot of the […]

The Roland JUNO-G has attracted some interest from CDM readers since I mentioned Roland’s YouTube contest and talked a bit about the JUNO line’s history. (See previous story.) One of you by the name of “made” even asked comments addressed “Dear Roland.” I had to admit I was curious about those answers, so Roland responded. […]

The ReMOTE SL Mk II series is on its way, an improved version of a controller keyboard of which we’ve been big fans at CDM. In an ideal world, there would be a truly standardized specification for control of music production software – and I still dream of mainstream OpenSoundControl support as a way to […]

Eno had Music for Airports. It’s fitting that Monolake would do Music for Jet Lag. Robert Henke writes about this month’s free download: Since I also have been flying a lot recently, I named it after one of the most annoying side effects of modern transportation and mixed it in a way that reflects that […]

Going ultra-mobile: Korg’s nanoKEY controller plus a svelte, two-and-a-half-pound netbook running Linux and energyXT. Laptops for music are nothing new. But better versions of Linux make no-hassle music production easier and more powerful – and new netbooks make it cheap and ultra-portable, too, for times when even that 15” laptop feels clunky. Netbooks aren’t for […]

Guitarist/composer/musician Christopher Willits is on faculty for the dubSpot series. Photo (CC) Buzz Andersen. dubSpot, the West Coast + East Coast music technology training center is doing an eight-city tour of the US to talk about Ableton Live 8 and the Akai APC40 controller. They’re enlisting some of my favorite people to do the workshops. […]