Kevin Kelly recently posted about digital continuity on The Technium. He references David Pogue’s experience of having problems reading DVDs which were only 4 years old. No problem, I thought: I’ve got all of the original iMovie projects backed up on DVD, in clear cases, neatly arrayed in a drawer next to my desk. (My […]

Ever feel music creation apps are too similar? Imagine an alternative universe in which music making software evolved along different lines. In this universe, the “tracker” isn’t some arcane novelty, but the detailed, bottom-up music editing approach that becomes the basis of music construction tools for any genre. Now imagine a breakthrough software release in […]

Those who fail to learn from history are doomed never to make anything as cool as 17th Century keyboard makers. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art announces (via its Twitter feed, no less) that it has gotten its Musical Instruments collection online. Over 800 inspiring objects of all kinds are available with photos, maker information, […]

Okay, so you’ve seen the painful demo video for Microsoft Research’s Songsmith software – it was intended to me tongue-in-cheek, I think, but the self-parody didn’t quite work. But the idea of auto-accompaniment software that interprets your recorded singing remains impressive. And I’ve gotten some tips that it is possible to make Songsmith sound good. […]

pauk on pages from Pauk on Vimeo. Part of what sets apart the open source monome controller instrument (cdm tag | site) is that, despite its minimalist grid of pads, it really behaves like an extension of software. That grid can be thought of as touch-ready pixels. Using Pages, an app developed by phortran that […]

It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with slow motion video, and you people aren’t doing a very good job of hiding your interest either – “high speed camera price” was our #5 search term for the last month. The article that search result points to is from August 2006, and back then a camera shooting […]

In a surprise announcement (well, surprising me, at least), the experimental MySong shown by Microsoft Research earlier this year will be available for sale. US$29.95 will buy you a downloadable auto-accompaniment tool. Windows-only, but it sounds as though a Mac release is in store (seriously). It’s a bit like Band-in-a-Box for singers: sing in a […]

I’m going to make this a minimalist post because I’ve said what I’ll say about Kodu, the one really cool part of Microsoft’s keynote yesterday, on Create Digital Motion. (Am I the only person who wishes Sparrow had just done the whole keynote?) But have a look at the shot above. One of the complaints […]

It’s official: Music Thing, the benchmark music tech blog, is no more – at least for now. Post volume had dropped off of late, so it’s not a complete surprise. And Music Thing’s voice, Tom Whitwell, has gone on to shake up the online world in other ways: running the online output of The Times […]

Here’s a novel concept: Provide video tutorials that teach you how to play an instrument and walk you specifically through the technique of a song Make them available as downloads Charge US$4.99 each Get the artists (and producers) involved in the original song Let people hear the original track Break down the song piece by […]