Squarepusher plays Rome in April of last year. Photo (CC-BY-ND) funkoolow. To take us into the weekend, here are some favorite online music releases this week to download, stream, and enjoy. Be sure to click over to the site if you’re on RSS for the included players if they’re not appearing.

Japanese fusion “underground music unit” Human Boot Project have a clever take on the music video, one that – well, let’s face it, probably appeals only to music production nerds like us. Using the free/open source software Gawker (Mac-only screen capture, not to be confused with thegossip blog), they take an extended timelapse of their […]

Sneaks are a good thing. Photo (CC-BY) Pink Sherbet Photography / D. Sharon Pruitt. Let’s start with what’s really important: Chris McCormick’s squeakyshoecore tunes may well make you tap your All Stars and smile. The words “algorithmically-generated acid” and mention of the multimedia patching environment Pd might not suggest feel-goody, cheery, geeky-sounding electronic grooves, but […]

Is it time to get a round tuit? Photo (CC-BY-ND) Denise Mattox. For this book review, we welcome guest writer Andy Farnell, who himself has a terrific book on interactive sound design and free modular patching environment Pure Data, entitled Designing Sound. It began as a review of a book on using free software – […]

Mixing, transport, and other shortcuts now appear on Apple mobiles with the newest version of MOTU’s Digital Performer (DP) DAW on Mac. Photos courtesy MOTU. First-party touch control is gradually coming to big-name DAWs. There are plenty of third-party applications that allow control of music software, but until now, we’ve only seen Cubase iC from […]

Image courtesy Abstract Data. Rockstar sparkle not included. Operating small runs out of his basement, Justin Owen is on a mission to bring his idiosyncratic, all-analog sounds to musicians in affordable, portable form. “Affordable” and “portable” often aren’t associated with analog, though even players as big as KORG have gotten in on the game recently, […]

A little stretch of desk, a couple of monitors, and a copy of the free and open source DAW Ardour running on Linux, (CC-BY) wstryder / Lauri Rantala. (Note: this is presumably Lauri’s studio, and is certainly not mine, seeing as I can’t play the guitar, and thus recording the results of me playing a […]

It may not look like it yet, but do some simple assembly, add included buttons and your own LEDs, put this into a housing, and you’ll have the cult hit monome grid controller for your music making pleasure. Open hardware means the ability to create exactly what you want. But it doesn’t have to intimidate […]

MAD MMX – Opening Title Sequence from Physalia Studio on Vimeo. 3D scanning and visual effects, the likes of which were popularized in Radiohead’s House of Cards video and open source code, are now more readily available to the masses than ever. Thank Kyle McDonald’s excellent DIY 3D scanning software, built in Processing. Resources, if […]

For some time, I’ve been a champion of Livid Instruments’ controller hardware, because I like the principles behind it. The devices are handmade in Texas using sustainable woods and environmentally-friendly stains, are standards-compliant with open specifications, open source software, and driverless class-compliant operation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and lend themselves to programmability and customization. […]