Chris Breen at Macworld does exceptional, tough reviews of consumer sound software. He’s tackled GarageBand ’09 in depth in a review published this week at Macworld.com. If you’re a beginning user, this review is for you – and if not, Chris will help you understand what that perspective is like for countless typical Mac users: […]

We’ve got further compelling evidence Apple doesn’t really own multi-touch and multi-touch gestures — and that other devices and interfaces will press forward (which is a good thing for everyone). Lest you think I’m straying too far from creating digital music, by the way, I think this means lots of new music apps – as […]

Ed.: Scott Pagano is one of a handful of people you could call visualist superstars. He’s become a headline staple with some key electronica events and artists. But that’s not why I’m excited to see him here – I’m thrilled that he geeks out on some of the same stuff that makes me hot and […]

Processing OpenGL Tutorial Video #2- Bubbles! from Andy Best on Vimeo. Interested in performing high-performance, high-quality video processing, computer vision, motion tracking, and analysis? And want to do it in the friendly Processing coding environment – an ideal place to start, even for non-programmers? First, you’ll want to read Andy Best’s introduction to OpenCV posted […]

The iPhone launch, two short years ago. Photo David Pham. Apple’s iPhone should be a herald of a new age in interface design. But now, with speculation that Apple and Palm could get into a patent battle, and murky concerns about patents in multi-touch interface design in general, it’s unclear how much intellectual property legal […]

Touch Mix is a simple music app for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets you play, mix, and remix ten exclusive tracks by producer deadmau5. Now, of course, you’re unlikely to grab this in order to DJ nothing but deadmau5. (The all-deadmau5, all-the-time approach?) But the app demonstrates that iPhone-only artist releases can be […]

DyNAmic sequencer from Lo-Fi Massahkah on Vimeo. Ready for some musical genetic engineering? Much of the sound of electronic music today grows out of the use – and abuse – of specific designs. The electronica beats bred in discos and techno, Detroit and Berlin have a direct lineage to analog step sequencers and the rigid […]

I’ve been talking to folks about sonifying or music-i-fying data a lot lately; I even created a soothing, gamelan-like melody from my Gmail spam folder at South by Southwest last spring. But this particular example is, well … special. I hesitate to share this, because a) YouTube numbers suggest you may have seen it already […]

Twitter has been (rightfully, in many cases) maligned as a distraction, but at times the “microblog” can keep us connected in smaller bits of time, not larger. People read while something is rendering, when they feel a bit lonely or distracted to begin with (a bit like taking work to a virtual coffee shop), while […]

Examples of OpenCV routines from the Processing library documentation. Of course, it’s up to you to build on these techniques and make art. It’s a relatively easy thing for computers to “see” video, but “computer vision” goes a step further, applying a wide range of techniques by which computers can begin to understand and process […]