Jan Schacher at Sonic Circuits. Is the object to his left the best form factor for the situation – or not? (CC) IntangibleArts / Hawkins. The sight has become ubiquitous: if you’re hearing an electronic live act or computer DJ, there will be a laptop hovering nearby. The glowing logo of one fruit-themed computer brand […]

Shoes are the new turnables. Or at least that’s the conclusion you might reach after watching a new Japanese campaign for Nike’s Free Run+ running shoes. Apparently wishing to tout the bendable qualities of its new footwear, Nike enlisted sound artists to transform its product into a musical instrument. The shoes get plugged in, switched […]

As you probably know, Apple refreshed their MacBook Pro line, upgrading the 13″, 15″, and 17″ models to new NVIDIA GPUs and the 15″ and 17″ units to Core i5 and i7 CPUs. It’s a nice refresh for Mac fans, though a relatively modest one. Anyone hoping for a big leap in multi-core processing or […]

LiveControl for the iPad/iPod from ST8 on Vimeo. It’s fun watching projects progress. Since we covered control of Ableton Live with the iPad – noting a few of the early wrinkles in the setup – we’ve gotten new reports as people work out more efficient systems. And incidentally, if you don’t own an iPad, or […]

Surprise! Plug-in developer Ohm Force, known for their plug-ins (like effects Ohm Boys and Frohmage), today tease an upcoming collaborative host. It looks like the sort of thing Apple could have done, but hasn’t. There’s a GarageBand-style MIDI and audio editing pane, plus semi-modular routing of plug-ins on a pretty, graphical surface that resembles the […]

For years, in music technology and computing, we’ve relied on an idea so ubiquitous, we take it for granted. That notion is that you can use things together, and they work. At its soul, MIDI gives us the power to assemble different sounds, to record ideas. It means the investment you make in one device, […]

Could busking – street music performance – be a tool for social change? It’s an idea I’ve heard artists mull before. Here’s one opportunity to do just that next month, in April, in support of building badly-needed school facilities in southern Zambia. And yes, digital musicians can participate, thanks to terrific, affordable, battery-powered amplification. I […]

Record giant Universal Music Group is cutting prices on the CD, as analysts clamor for still-lower prices. But as for actual records – the kind made of vinyl – odder and odder innovations flourish. If the CD is dying, the vinyl record is an undead, sexually-alluring vampire. Two recent releases not only treat the record […]

“Press play” … “button-mashing” … the very criticism of digital music is often directed at the button or switch, even as the cult hit monome spreads arrays of buttons like a virus. Well, we’re still interested in what you can do with a button, so to fully focus you, we’re only giving you one button […]

I’ve been reasonably quiet of late, and for that I apologize. I hope, though, that when you hear the reason, you’ll find it in the cold technological cores of your beings to forgive me. My government has seen fit to create an enormously amazing resource and incubator for technological artists. It’s called The Edge, and […]