Musicians, behind the technological curve? Not when it comes to interface design: we’ve been consistently ahead. Little wonder, as digital musicians look for ways of making digital media more expressive, with centuries of physical interface design in musical instruments to push those demands further. In other words, Microsoft is up to something, and I look […]

Is the Wii controller the new mouse? They’re starting to pop up all over the place, with all sorts of applications. As the villain in Pixar’s The Incredibles says at the end of the film, “When everyone’s super, no one is.” The related principle is, “When everyone has a gimmick, it’s not a gimmick any […]

When it comes to scratching virtual vinyl using timecode-imprinted records, Linux users aren’t left entirely in the dark. Simon Balarabe points to xwax: xwax project page Don’t expect it to be Traktor for Linux — the software supports only basic playback options — but for that purpose, it looks reasonably capable. It supports playback of […]

Hello, coming to you live from San Mateo and the Maker Faire hosted by Make Magazine. If you stopped by the CDM booth today, I hope you stick around a while. This site, for musicians, DJs, composers, and soundmakers, covers the audible side. Create Digital Motion covers VJing and live and interactive visuals (for an […]

Musical activists are opposing a Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant. What’s in it for you: free musical downloads opposing contamination by nuclear radiation. (Any pro-radiation readers will have to look elsewhere.) Nuclear reprocessing is a way of reclaiming spent nuclear fuels. Sounds great, right — recycling and whatnot? Unfortunately, there are serious risks involved. The plant, […]

That’s not special effects. Bjork has actually learned how to make her head levitate. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed by the new video for Bjork’s latest single, Earth Invaders. I loved the initial imagery: an organic, swirling background, textures mapped over Bjork’s eerily floating head, and marching figures dressed like trees […]

That’s not special effects. Bjork has actually learned how to make her head levitate. I have to admit, I was a bit disappointed by the new video for Bjork’s latest single, Earth Invaders. I loved the initial imagery: an organic, swirling background, textures mapped over Bjork’s eerily floating head, and marching figures dressed like trees […]

Photo credit: DG Jones. Leave the Marantz at home, and fire this one up in your homebrewed tape mangler. No laptops. No CD players. No turntables. The Cassette Jockey World Championships will be cassette tape only. And the rules are tough: store-bought, commercial cassette tapes only. (Dig that Paula Abdul out of your closet — […]

The Monome creators have announced they’ve almost sold out of their open-sourced, open-ended, button-filled Monome 40h hardware. The original Monome has proved to be a bit of a cult hit since it was first produced, finding a wide variety of applications for musicians and visualists. The old will make way for a new, 16 x […]

It’s ironic to me that so many users of the superb, Java-based Processing multimedia tool seem to prefer the Mac, because Mac Java support seems downright anemic. Mac users have long complained that, since Apple develops their own Java support for Mac OS X, the platform tends to lag behind Sun’s releases. That to me […]