Yum. SuperCollider. Photo: CERN, via Flickr: Image Editor Free and open source software is nothing on its own. Like any technology, it’s the users and the community around it that make it meaningful. Musical practice grows out of culture and community; so does music technology. I’ve heard lots of people buzzing about Expo74, the Max/MSP/Jitter […]

Max/MSP: it does a body good! Photo (CC Yao Chung-Han / worKingLab) If you haven’t been following Max 5 updates, the folks at Cycling ’74 have been aggressively bug squashing. The changelog for 5.0.6 alone is exhaustive. (Via @rekkerd on Twitter, of rekkerd.org.) Updated: Also new in Max 5, it’s now possible as of 5.0.6 […]

Life is short. You find yourself having to absorb the work techniques of a lot of different software. And some of those divisions — between vector and pixels, 3D and 2D, motion and stills — look increasingly old-fashioned. Since the early 90s, we’ve seen a succession of software try to bridge those gaps. But for […]

Open and DIY doesn’t have to mean you don’t get a finished product. It just means the product can continue to change once you’ve got it – which is the beauty of three new tools coming to the music tech world. Photo: Bug Labs. You buy a box. You unwrap the box. You plug it […]

As your options multiply, I think there are few excuses in 2009 not to develop using portable, free and open source, multi-platform, mobile-ready platforms — period. We talk a lot about the Java side of the pond, or even C/C++, but the other reality is you have options for just about any job using just […]

DIY 3D Scanner from Kyle McDonald on Vimeo. Kyle McDonald sends us a hacked-together 3D scanner. I love that it’s slightly inaccurate in aesthetically-pleasing ways, I love that it’s something you can put together using stuff you already have at the ready, and I love that it’s powered by Processing. The applications could range from […]

The iPhone launch, two short years ago. Photo David Pham. Apple’s iPhone should be a herald of a new age in interface design. But now, with speculation that Apple and Palm could get into a patent battle, and murky concerns about patents in multi-touch interface design in general, it’s unclear how much intellectual property legal […]

Forget NAMM — one of a handful of hardware I’m most excited about in 2009 is all DIY, the 8-step GorF step sequencer. (I’m hoping for follow-ups like a Forg or Grof. Kermit (Muppet) fans know what I’m talking about.) With four sequences with parameters, steps with pitch, gate, and Control Change, sequencing controls, legato […]

If we want real change, we may have to push some of our own buttons. Whatever part of the political spectrum, whatever part of the world community, as you come to the CDM community I do believe that we as creators are touched by larger issues. I think it doesn’t make sense to talk politics […]