Tommy responds to our call for screen grabs of software with this fascinating Jitter patch: He writes: used lloopp and jitter runtime to make this instrument that uses a firewire camera as a source for effecting sound generators. i like this shot because of the video feedback. What’s lloopp? Glad you asked. It’s a live […]

Visual programming or “patching”, producing custom software by connecting on-screen objects with patch cords, until recently had only niche appeal. The domain largely of academic computer musicians, patching was scoffed at by computer science departments and unknown to everyone else. Lately, though, something very strange has been happening: this technique, popularized by experimental music synthesists, […]

A box covered with buttons and lights can be much more. Such it is with the Monome, the open source controller for music and multimedia. Beloved for its simplicity, the Monome continues to earn fans. The original 40h is gone, but as we’ve seen here, a new line of models is coming to satisfy your […]

Nice work if you can get it: visualist Toby / tobyz, aka *spark, had one heck of a live visual rig for the Geneva Motor Show’s Ford booth. One ongoing challenge for live VJs is making it clear what they’re doing. Solution: “VJ Crew” t-shirts, lovely women (can’t hurt), and, of course, giant touchscreens for […]

Ardour, the free and open source DAW for Mac and Linux, has already won some fans by providing robust audio multitrack features in free software, along with some unique innovations (like robust support for inter-app JACK audio routing). But one major complaint has been a lack of serious MIDI tools. MIDI functionality is baked in, […]

Look out, PCs: you’re getting the audio engine from the Xbox 360. That’s the message from Microsoft, which abandoned the old DirectSound APIs in Windows Vista. They’ve got a new audio system called XAudio2 ready and waiting, however, and it looks good — though it also begs the question, why didn’t Microsoft ship it with […]

For mobile work, your choices have traditionally come down to one of two choices: either lug your laptop and audio interface, or get dedicated recording hardware with far fewer capabilities. We’ve been following the evolution of the Linux-powered Trinity mobile recorder for over a year now because we’re interested in what could happen between those […]

The day the iPhone was announced at Macworld, some of us immediately wanted to use it as a simple multi-touch controller for music. It’s no substitute for a dedicated, large, expressive multi-touch controller like the JazzMutant Lemur. But it’s also far less expensive, useful as a phone/Internet device/media player, and could easily be a simple, […]

It’s the music of the spheres. Or at least, the music of the various, floating geometric shapes, bouncing around a virtual galaxy with gravity simulation. Kepler’s Orrery is a (newly) open-sourced generative music maker, based on a gravity simulation algorithm. As bodies collide, they make sound; it’s a bit like what would happen if you […]