iPad and iPhone owners got a nice gift recently. Over the Christmas holiday week, a whole slew of new iOS updates rolled in, perhaps caught in the holiday rush. Many of the improvements centered on Audiobus, a proprietary technology that, via a host app, allows iOS users to connect different apps for input, recording, and […]

I’ll take one DAW, to go? Cubasis isn’t the first traditional-style DAW to appear on the iPad. But it could be the most complete offering yet. I’ll be testing it later this month, but I’m already impressed that the software appears to strike some balance between the traditional working methods of a DAW and the […]

A generation of gaming has done something to our ears. It has primed listeners to appreciate the sound of digital instruments in raw form: dry and immediate, crisply-synchronized machine dance music. So, while I wouldn’t call the music of Decktonic “chip music” or “game music,” somehow it’s a modern take on each. It’s retro-futuristic, electro-techno […]

Chroma and Gris-Gris are a beautiful pairing, a performance-savvy sequencer and a “monster” monosynth. If the release of the OSC implementation we dreamed of in Reaktor wasn’t enough to make you dust off NI’s modular flagship, this will surely do the trick. It’s the work of Montreal-based Reaktor guru Peter Dines, veteran CDM contributor and […]

“Open source hardware” has generally come to mean something for hobbyists, something involving soldering irons and code. MeeBlip is about something different: it’s about making a musical instrument anyone can play, right away – with or without soldering. It’s about making music. And that’s why I’ve been glad to have CDM involved in this project: […]

Doing more with less, and embracing limitations: it’s oft-repeated advice in music making. Maybe it’s repeated so often that it ceases to mean anything; I can find no harm in making music using the massive possibilities of a packed studio of gear or the endless depth of a computer. So, instead, doing more with less […]

We’re in the final hours of the crowd funding campaign for Mouse on Mars’ handheld effects instrument, WretchUp. We’ve been really amazed at the level of support – we quickly reached our funding goal for the iOS app’s budget. But now we’re pushing in the final hours for just a bit more funding. It’ll allow […]

Sometimes it’s what’s at the margins of the event circuit that’s the most promising. Outside the known names and big-budget pieces, artists are experimenting with audiovisual expression, hacking together projects and improvising with light and sound. And in Europe and other continents, this scene is increasingly expanding beyond the cities once known as hubs – […]

Sometimes it’s what’s at the margins of the event circuit that’s the most promising. Outside the known names and big-budget pieces, artists are experimenting with audiovisual expression, hacking together projects and improvising with light and sound. And in Europe and other continents, this scene is increasingly expanding beyond the cities once known as hubs – […]

You’ll sometimes hear people complain that there are too many producers in the world. Fine. Let’s have them collaborate on finishing tracks, en masse. With that many cooks in the kitchen, though, you’ll want one master chef in charge of the result. So it’s good news that Swedish production guru Håkan Lidbo takes the helm […]