Entries tagged with “music production” from O'Reilly Digital Media Blog

As I threatened in my last blog entry, I purchased the set of Korg Nano controllers and I shall expound upon them now; with three months of use under my belt, my feelings have changed somewhat, and I've shifted love affairs among them several times - leading to a lasting relationship in one case, and a bad break-up in another.

Just like in previous years, those interested in making music would find lots of getting-started information at the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus and the Macworld Music Studio at Moscone. But there were also a few exhibitors who presented new products at Macworld Expo 2009 that were targeted at musicians and audiophiles. From what I saw at Moscone last week, these are my favorites.

Imagine what creative developers could do if Flash could transmit and respond gracefully to MIDI. Now an online petition is urging Adobe to do something about that.

As part of today's feature article on making movies out of still photos, Michael W. and Debra Jean Dean whipped up this funny demonstration of good and bad background music. It contains five brief examples. See if you can figure out why each helps or hurts the presentation. Debra Jean reveals the answer after each segment. I burst out laughing...

At last year's NAMM show, Korg told me it plans to take over the world with its KaossPads. These slick X-Y touchpads now control everything from effect processors to mixers. I reviewed the current flagship, the KP3 KaossPad, for Electronic Musician last year and had a blast playing its synth sounds. So I was intrigued to read on Create Digital...

When I recently reviewed Sequel, Steinberg's entry-level music production software, I was seriously impressed by the quality of the musical content that ships with it. If you wish to try out Sequel yourself, you can do so now, as Steinberg is offering a downloadable trial version of the software. For obvious reasons, the trial version offers only a limited subset...

A while back, I wrote about some slick tempo-detection software. A week later, Erica Sadun reported on a utility she was using, and complained about how long it took to analyze songs. The developer of that program just wrote to explain that compressed music files like MP3s must be expanded before they can be analyzed, and that takes time. Curious,...

"Over the course of a recording career spanning several decades, The Residents have remained a riddle of Sphinx-like proportions; cloaking their lives and music in a haze of wilful obscurity, the band's members never identified themselves by name, always appearing in public in disguise -- usually tuxedos, top hats and giant eyeball masks -- and refusing to grant media interviews."...

The last time I started a blog with a quote from music technology guru Jim Aikin, it provoked an erudite uproar, which taught me a lot. So in honor of Jim’s latest feature for O’Reilly Digital Media, I thought I’d whack that beehive once more. Jim covers the Korg MS2000B and many more voice-twisting technologies in his article “How to...

I've been listening to Moments From This Theater: Live, a wonderful album by the great Memphis/Muscle Shoals songwriters Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham. It's just the two of them, accompanying themselves on acoustic guitar and electric piano, recorded at 1998 shows in Ireland and England. They play classics including "Dark End Of The Street", "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man",...

Need a creative kick-start -- or a royalty-free soundtrack? Try some of these algorithmic music programs.

Limitations are such a great catalyst for creativity! Last December, Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music ran a wacky contest to celebrate the “leap second” leading into 2006. More than 30 people submitted one-second compositions ranging from sound effects to micro-riffs. Then Peter strung them together into an amazing time-lapse paean to the Earth’s slowing spin. Now, Chris Randall of...

Fervent Software releases a major upgrade for Rosegarden - a main component of the powerful Linux music workstation Studio To Go (the world's roundest and flattest portable studio.)

What if the top recording and music-technology magazines decided to put hundreds of their past articles online for free—and then someone made a directory? You’d get this amazing site.