It’s something we take for granted: listen to a track, and it starts at the beginning and goes to the end in a fixed length of time. Wonderful things can be done with music that way, and it’s the traditional model of composition and recording. But the equally old, if not older, tradition of improvisation […]

A new generation of mobile devices is changing the way we hear music. Now we can say that, and not just be speculating are talking theory. The apps are here. Brian Eno had released a generative music album as computer software in the 90s. But this week, that idea hit a bigger audience when we […]

Out of sync: iTunes integration was a selling point early on. But at what point is Apple’s own innovation upstaged by their desire to control distribution through the iTunes channel? . Last week, Apple rejected a podcast management app because, to paraphrase Apple’s own policy, they want iTunes handling all podcasts for you and not […]

Today Neuros announced the availability of developer kits for their new HD recorder, the OSD 2.0, which can record 720p video via HDMI and component input. At 10″ x 10″ x 2″ and $250/each, this box looks to be a promising candidate for a cheap, portable recorder that you could carry to every gig, something […]

Let’s be clear about one thing: building your own Monome from a kit isn’t actually necessarily for everyone. DIY is a wonderful thing, but you want to make sure you don’t bite off more than you can chew — always start simple and grow from there. You can buy a premade Monome, the sustainably-produced, open-source, […]

Times are tough, and folks are turning out those pockets for free… wear. Photo: Bert Heymans. There’s a strange debate going on over the free software (as in freeware, not necessarily open source) issue of Computer Music magazine. After seeing the magazine’s top 10 reasons to use free software, commercial developer IK Multimedia got surprisingly […]

Using video in Processing is, sadly, really painful. You can do absolutely wonderful things once it’s working — pixel-by-pixel manipulations that are hard to do elsewhere, and easily-coded OpenGL manipulations that should help generate powerful eye candy. But the list of issues runs something like this: Windows doesn’t support capture without the addition of the […]

Monome Life, indeed. What makes the Monome so wonderful is not so much that the hardware and software itself are open source — nice as that may be — but that they have become a platform for experimentation and personalization. Max/MSP, now freshly injected with life following its version-5 release, has a similar ethos. Here […]

Mrmr is a wonderful tool for turning your Apple mobile device into a multi-touch controller for performance and controlling visuals and music. It allows custom control layouts, it’s beautifully geared to things you can do with your fingertips, and it’s fully open source. As is often the case on this site, we have two messages. […]