Ardour running on Ubuntu Linux naysayers get mighty grumpy about all the Ubuntu hype. I can certainly imagine some Ubuntu fatigue, but Ubuntu is actually gaining some real traction in a way that previous attempts to be a “Linux for the rest of us” have not. For that reason, it’s significant that there’s an Ubuntu […]

We first heard about the Mawzer modular control surface over two years ago. In CDM time, that’s like the Bronze Age. The idea was appealing enough: assemble controller layouts by plugging in different modules in whatever combination you like, Lego-style. (See below for someone using actual Legos; that’s another story.) Building specialized music hardware from […]

Can the future of visualists really be a combination of programmers, VJs, DJs, filmmakers, animators, musicians, turntablists? Why not? In the meantime, given that menu of people and a tough market to crack, many manufacturers are betting on the DJs. Josh Randall points us to this demo video of the next version of Rane’s Serato […]

Not your father’s Motion: Have you been working out? Apple’s Motion has been bulking up with powerful new vector paint, match move, and 3D capabilities. In a world crowded with powerful visual-making tools, it’s starting to at last differentiate a unique, Motion-y way of working — one that should be easily combined with other tools […]

I spend a lot of time transcribing audio, for various reasons. When doing interviews, I usually carry around a portable recorder. That had long been a tape recorder, but lately I’ve been going digital — it tends to cause less problems. Roland’s Edirol R-1 serves perfectly, and I’ve had terrific battery life, no hassles, and […]

Moving Brands is the kind of creative house we love, one that heralds a new era of design, in which design work is responsive, interactive, dynamic, real-time — in short, live, digital motion for visualists. Processing gurus Toxi and Chris O’Shea worked on one of their most recent events, featuring sonically-generated visuals for the slick, […]

Part of why we have a music and a motion site is because there’s so much crossover between visuals and music creation, not in spite of it. A couple of recent features on the sister site, the Good Ship Create Digital Motion: Wii-controlled visuals. Wii VJ: Wii Remote vs. MacBook Pro Video/Audio Sampler. The awesomely-talented […]

Flash drives: ultra-fast. Zero noise. Absurdly awesome reliability. Now, replacing your hard drive. That’s the vision, anyway. Flash memory, once limited to very tiny chunks, is slowly creeping towards storage big enough to use for audio. You’ve already got flash storage around, most likely, because of devices like Apple’s iPod nano and iPhone. But 4GB […]

“If only Live could …” Hard-core Live users dream of more than just an extra feature widget or two. They imagine a world in which they can hack and alter the way Live itself behaves. They want the ability to develop software that works with Live at a low-level. In short, what they want is […]

In just over a year, the open source Monome hardware has become a cult hit among musicians. A grid of buttons seems deceptively simplistic; I have to admit I was skeptical at first. But the Monome has spread by word of mouth because this simple design can be elegant, because the build quality and touch […]