$26,000 at the time, the Fairlight CMI was the commercial product that really launched the notion of computer as musical instrument to the general populous – along with various electronic cliches in its wildly-popular preset bank. Our friend James at Retro Thing alerts us to the fact that none other than Fairlight co-founder and co-designer […]

While Moog is a household name, the UK’s Electronic Music Studio is a kind of "forgotten chapter" of electronic music history, as the documentary above suggests. EMS is significant not just for technological innovation, but musical experimentation — not to mention their cheeky British sense of humor and topless nude women crawling toward synths in […]

The UK electronic music scene lost its pioneer Tristram Cary this week, so it’s the perfect time to look back again at the marvels of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. Low-budget but long-running Doctor Who is unlikely to be remembered for breaking new ground in, say, fancy props, sets, or visual effects (though they did plenty […]

This brief video, uploaded to YouTube by Fairlight co-founder and designer Peter Vogel himself, gives a brief history of the development of Fairlight’s legendary video hardware, the CVI. The CVI was a theoretical (in name, at least) visual counterpart to the ground-breaking CMI digital sampler instrument. And, like the CMI, the CVI had a major […]

It’s been a rough week for electronic music — having lost Bebe Barron, we’ve now lost one of the other great early pioneers of electronic music, South Australian Tristram Cary. Tristram is credited by some as the father of tape music, originating tape music techniques in World War II. He’s notorious to the general public […]

There’s a simply insane amount of electrified music happening here in the US this week: Bent Festival NY: Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights are concerts at the Bent Festival in NY, not only of circuit bending but other DIY sound, as well. Stop by Saturday during the day for a day full of workshops. (also […]

Bart from Resolume has posted some details of the release of FreeFrame 1.5, including OpenGL-based FreeFrameGL: FreeFrame 1.5 Release Here’s why it makes us smiling, happy visualists: Open and wide: It’s open, and supported by multiple hosts (the creators of VJamm, Resolume, and Salvation all contributed to the 1.5 team) GPU, go! It gives you […]

Cycling ’74 have updated Max 5’s pricing and streamlined a bit in the new release. (That means Max for MIDI and basic data crunching, MSP for audio, synthesis, and signal processing, and Jitter for video, 3D, and advanced data processing.) Since this impacts a number of our readers, it’s worth going over this. Updated: The […]

How do you make a computer-animated sequence of 3D wireframe visuals of fancy, Empire-built battle stations — in 1977? Very, very slowly. Our friend James at Retro Thing, aside from being a electronic-sonic inventor, is a fan of vintage visuals and was already teaching the history of computer animation in the mid 80s. (Hint: prepping […]

How do you make a computer-animated sequence of 3D wireframe visuals of fancy, Empire-built battle stations — in 1977? Very, very slowly. Our friend James at Retro Thing, aside from being a electronic-sonic inventor, is a fan of vintage visuals and was already teaching the history of computer animation in the mid 80s. (Hint: prepping […]