Editing drum patterns in RjDj/Pd from Frank Barknecht on Vimeo. If making your own musical tools seems like a lot of work, you’re not wrong. The beauty of making your own stuff is all about making your own reusable modules that help you build musical solutions more quickly. Finding those useful modules can also help […]

Gestural Music Sequencer from Unearthed Music on Vimeo. Something as simple as remapping a single knob can give you new musical ideas. So expand that to entire gestures and live video input, and you can help push your performance in new directions and out of old habits. That’s why it’s always great to see projects […]

What do most musicians really need out of an audio interface? The answer to that question can vary wildly, but for a whole lot of people, it’s as simple as wanting to get an instrument and/or vocals in, and a basic, high-quality stereo mix out. That’s it. That’s part of why Apogee’s new compact ONE […]

The Servo Sequencer with its hypnotic-looking optical disc. Photo courtesy Gijs Gieskes. Artists Gijs Gieskes’ sequencers are almost like physical, mechanical software, an expression of musical structure in object form. As such, even as they make strange sounds, they become musical sculpture. His latest Servo Sequencer combines optical and mechanical process, as frequency circles spin […]

There’s plenty of rightful skepticism about the use of mainstream displays for multitouch in general purpose computing. And why not? As a full-time replacement for other input, multitouch probably doesn’t make sense. But for music, the equation is changing. Multitouch capabilities are showing up on commodity-priced PC computers like the multi-touch enabled HP laptop models […]

Moldover at the Maker Faire from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo. Yann Seznec aka The Amazing Rolo brings CDM his coverage of music tech at the Maker Faire in three episodes today. Our friend Matt Moldover is a mad scientist of controllers. Stock Novation and M-Audio keyboards enter, and wind up coming out as live […]

ToonLoop Remix from Society for Arts and Technology on Vimeo. Yes, you read that right: realtime stop motion. While stop motion is, by definition, associated with a painstaking process of creating animation frame by frame, a free and open source tool takes a different approach. ToonLoop provides the usual stop motion tools for creating loops, […]

The beauty of using touch for controllers is flexibility. Sure, you give up tactile feedback – but you can also quickly make your own layouts, make touch controllers an ideal complement to your existing hardware gear (the stuff with physical knobs and faders and pads). For that reason, we’re all eagerly anticipating an upcoming version […]

Richie Hawtin’s custom-built Ableton Live controller makes up part of his unique live music and visual rig as Plastikman. And, yes, I’ll bring the grassroots “do more as Plastikman” campaign to Mr. Hawtin when I see him. Side note: there’s more than a passing resemblance to certain features of the Akai APC40 here, huh? We […]