Fourteen minutes into last week's Digital Media Insider podcast, "Secrets of the Demo Gods," I asked longtime reviewer Mark Nelson if any recent music-making gear had surprised him. Mark started praising the M-Audio Black Box, a digital guitar effect co-designed by Roger Linn, the drum-machine pioneer (and a fine guitarist himself). "It was just...inspiring. Amazing stuff would happen," Mark enthused....

In The King of Elfland's Daughter, Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18th Lord Dunsany, wrote about magic beyond the fields we know. You step out into the ordinary, everyday fields that you see all the time. Maybe these fields are right next door to your house in suburbia. Willy, nilly you may be swept into a magical realm where nothing...

In several discussions and talks with multimedia audio specialists, game composers, music technologists and the like… one of the startling conclusions that many have come to is that “game audio” is over. (!) Not to say that it no longer exists, or that all there is to listen to has been written; the general consensus was that we cannot...

Seasoned recording engineers often audition their mixes in mono to check for phasing problems that might occur on the mono speakers in TVs and PA systems. Collapsing a stereo signal to mono also gives you another perspective on how well sounds are blending. But because I run audio straight out of my computer into powered speakers or headphones, I've never...

Social Networking is exploding -- that much is clear. But did you know that sites such as Facebook, Friendster, and MySpace are more than online watering holes where kids gather and socialize? They're creating social change in tandem. Facebook recent launched a "Causes" application tab, allowing members to participate in what the creators have dubbed "equal opportunity activism". Over 35,000...

Two weeks ago, Apple introduced iLife '08, the latest version of their multimedia software bundle - and that means a new version of the impressive GarageBand audio software. Of course, impressive is a strong term, but I would definitely apply it to a piece of software that gives you powerful and easy-to-use recording, mixing, and editing tools as one fifth...

It's the summer of 2007 and it's a bit daunting to pick a point in time to think back on. Where to begin a recap of my exposure to what had been referred to as multimedia? In particular, how did I get here from my original intent of being an electronic music composer? From the start, all things electronic were...

The second leg of our on AIR Bus tour is a week in and we've had some great events. We took a weekend detour on Saturday to visit a user group in Raleigh, NC which turned out really well. It was more intimate than our other events but it had a great vibe. On the east coast our legs have...

Recently I needed to develop a storyboard in a hurry for a TV commercial. Problem: I can't draw. Solution: FrameForge 3D Studio 2, a pre-visualization tool popular with film & TV directors. Unexpected extra: Flow! I loved working with this tool. I found that it was so intuitively designed that I was able to learn the basics in an hour...

The Variax is an elegant, functional guitar, whose look is lent a great dignity by its lack of pickups. To play in my wife's Nerd Band, the Captains of the Chess Team, I took a perfectly good, new Variax and taped a pickup to it. I also run three wires (Well, four if you count the one I added last...