There’s nothing worse than owning a shiny, new MacBook and discovering you can’t run music software you want to run. “All I want for Christmas” (or Hannukah, too, as these are just in time) “is a Universal Binary.” Good news: my inbox continues to report incoming Intel-native plug-ins and instruments. XO Wave, pictured at right, […]

This didn’t take long. Someone has already begun using the Wii controller to trigger samples and settings in Ableton Live. (Thanks, Johan Larsby — happy holidays to you, too!) One-handed, wireless DJing is born: The wiili server is back, so that Wiki is your best source for how-to information. In this case, what we’re seeing […]

Has it really been 2 months since episode 1 of Steven Watkins‘ Backspace podcast was released? Episode 2 came out on Friday. It doesn’t quite recapture the ethereal feel and technical polish of that first episode, but it’s still very impressive work for a one-man band (showreel here). Previously: Interview with Stephen Watkins. Backspace Episode […]

Has it really been 2 months since episode 1 of Steven Watkins‘ Backspace podcast was released? Episode 2 came out on Friday. It doesn’t quite recapture the ethereal feel and technical polish of that first episode, but it’s still very impressive work for a one-man band (showreel here). Previously: Interview with Stephen Watkins. Backspace Episode […]

Has it really been 2 months since episode 1 of Steven Watkins‘ Backspace podcast was released? Episode 2 came out on Friday. It doesn’t quite recapture the ethereal feel and technical polish of that first episode, but it’s still very impressive work for a one-man band (showreel here). Previously: Interview with Stephen Watkins. Backspace Episode […]

We love you, old Casio (and Yamaha, and other) keyboards, hard-edged lo-fi synth patches, and strangely alluring stiff automatic drum parts. We love you in original form, circuit-bent mods, and free VST plug-ins. And, via Jaymis, we love people who build “very low-energy musical whimsy” performances on their keyboard, like David O’Doherty: Anyone have a […]

Ready to get in the holiday mood, but feeling Scrooge-like with your money? Here are some free tunes to get your Yuletide festivities underway: The Garritan Personal Orchestra forum has become more than a place for users of this sampled orchestra library to troubleshoot and ask questions — it really is a community in its […]

Electronics and physical computing is great fun to learn as you get tangible results from your progress. It’s simple and fun to grab a kit or a bunch of components and follow on with a blog or instructable. However, as you progress to designing your own projects and circuits (or to make following other people’s […]

And we’re off to the races. Last week, I wrote up a teaser on some of the new features in Windows Vista for audio, which launched a long and heated discussion of the new OS. (Read through comments for some specifics, including how Vista compares to Mac OS X and BeOS. Hint: BeOS wins.) Now, […]

In a crowded field of VJ apps, Modul8 stands out as the app Photoshop lovers would want to use onstage. A fully extensible modular compositing system lets you combine images with per-pixel transparency — now, more attractive and better-performing than ever thanks to anti-aliasing and hardware acceleration. Live visualists get one tasty upgrade in the […]