Sniff from karolina sobecka on Vimeo. Right on cue, after mentioning that game engines like Unity can become powerful tools for live and interactive visuals — not just digital “games” in the conventional sense — here’s an example, via the Unity Twitter feed. SNIFF, by Karolina Sobecka with software development by Jim George, combines the […]

2010, meet 1984. For all the wonderfully-futuristic qualities of the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, electronic musicians have reason to scoff now and then: sometimes you want to be able to plug into good, old-fashioned, physical MIDI hardware. Line 6’s MIDI Mobilizer is a nifty little gadget that provides MIDI input and output via the […]

And there were three – three major production apps now have OSC control. Once considered the domain of “DIY” apps or developers, OpenSoundControl is beginning to look like a viable option for open, standardized controls of music apps. Open-source Mac/Linux DAW Ardour has fully-documented OSC support as we saw in the spring, and this week […]

Renoise, the tracker-style music production host, has gotten a massive injection of customizability, scriptability, and hackability. If all you want to do is plug in some controller hardware and have more tangible control of music making, that scriptability can be nicely hidden away. But if you are ready to hack on your music app, this […]

Metope – Rebird, Unofficial Music Video from moka on Vimeo. moka (Matthias Dörfelt), a German-based artist and communications student, sends along this lovely unofficial music video for Metope’s “Rebird.” A series of sound-reactive shapes begin in minimal form, then degrade and traverse a landscape of geometries and texture, in custom software built in the open-source, […]

Developers for iPhone, iPod touch, and now the iPad have long complained about lack of access to the iTunes library, the file store and metadata for uploaded files. While version 3.0 of the OS provided limited playback capabilities (play/pause/stop), it was a far cry from what you’d need to build a DJ or other music […]

Photo (CC-BY) Bruce Turner. The explosion of interest in filtering out sounds of the vuvuzela has spawned some interesting discussions. Most amusing to me is the notion of some sort of anti-vuvuzela bias. The simple matter of the fact is, recorded (and broadcast) sound are not the same as the sound you hear when you’re […]

SenseWall (preliminary) from Tiago Serra on Vimeo. Multi-touch walls have been a closely-guarded novelty, but they’re evolving into something else: a real, usable platform that focuses on content and not just gimmicks. In the process, a hard-working community is building richer, standards-based, cross-platform, free and open source tools. The result: faster iteration, broader access of […]

What happened to the Internet standards advocates who got everything they ever wanted? They lived happily ever afte— now, wait a minute. Microsoft, Apple – you guys better not play the Grinch on this one, ‘kay? Photo (CC-BY) love♡janine. Shifts in standards usually take place at a glacial pace. This one may have just happened […]

The limited edition version of the album is actually an object you might care about. So, yes, as the digital album evolves from strange plastic jewel cases into ephemeral download form, it’s evolving the other way, too. If anyone had listened to the predictions, albums would be irrelevant by now. Instead, finding a way to […]