Working in open source code for any platform, Brazilian artist and developer Jeraman has produced a charming project that imagines musical interfaces in dynamic, whimsically-simple sketches. Like doodled knobs, cartoons of guitar pedals, interactive devices on the touchscreen control musical activity. And because it’s open, cross-platform code, everything from a computer-powered multitouch table to an […]

Some of us move freely between the real and virtual dimensions, can make dubstep basses just by moving our spine, and shoot flames out of our hands naturally. For everyone else, there’s this. Ryan Challinor, whose day gig is as a developer working on Dance Central, apparently just couldn’t get enough Kinect hacking at his […]

The Swarmatron, made infamous by The Social Network, is just one of the crazy sonic creations we’ll be seeing this weekend. Photo credit: Joshua Sarner. This weekend in North Adams, Massachusetts at MASS MoCA, the band Wilco is gathering their very own music and arts festival, Solid Sound. It’s become a real oasis of unique […]

The latest iteration; image courtesy Roger Linn Designs. Moving beyond touching a screen as two-dimensional plane, Roger Linn’s concept music controller, the Linnstrument, adds tactile response and expression. Roger calls it “3D Note Expression,” but in lay terms, it means pushing harder on the controller makes it respond differently, as you’d expect from a physical […]

Techno-wizardry and eye candy aside, make no mistake: as artists, we engage every day the essence of truth and deception. So, while magician Marco Tempest’s hands are fleet, his magician-trained choreography slick, and his coordinated mobile screens impressive, it’s the message behind the medium that’s most poignant. To me, at least, Marco has something to […]

Techno-wizardry and eye candy aside, make no mistake: as artists, we engage every day the essence of truth and deception. So, while magician Marco Tempest’s hands are fleet, his magician-trained choreography slick, and his coordinated mobile screens impressive, it’s the message behind the medium that’s most poignant. To me, at least, Marco has something to […]

Drawing from historical lightbulbs, powered by creative code (the open source, C++ tool Cinder), “So… I was at a party last night” is a symphony in responsive electric lights. The reactive portion is relatively simple – sound analysis switches lights off and on in clusters – but the objects themselves move to the fore. The […]

Alder Soundplane prototype with blanks of reclaimed redwood and Doug Fir. Photo by Randy Jones; used by permission. On tablets, on displays, multi-touch control these days is calibrated largely as a software interface – more Starship Enterprise panel than violin. As such, it works well for production tools and exploring compositional ideas. But it falls […]

Patching together unique sounds on the classic Buchla 100 was an impetus for a new software instrument by Randy Jones – just released for Windows. Photo (CC-BY) guiltyx/roll_initiative. Software can easily enough emulate, down to each knob and patch cord, a vintage synthesizer. But can a genuinely new software synth incorporate the ideas about instrument […]

Electric guitar pioneer Les Paul is one of the all-time greats in music instrument invention, so the guy clearly deserves an animated Google Doodle of his creation that you can play. Strum chords, pluck with the mouse, and even record phrases on Google’s homepage. (See video, above.) Since Google Doodles are archived – and since […]