Okay, I'll admit it: Even though I learned (and loved) electronic music production on patchcord synthesizers, I never got deeply into Reason, Propellerhead Software's pioneering studio-on-a-screen. There was just something about its snarled cords and infinitely tall rack of modules that looked forbidding. Then I bumped into Reason virtuoso Kurt "Peff" Kurasaki at a party and learned he was hosting...
One of my favorite blogs is Chris Randall's Analog Industries, where topics range from "Hard-Core Gear Porn Friday" to "Four Measures of Fury." Today, though, I read an entry that provoked me to sign up and post a reply. Chris had blogged about getting great coverage for his company's effect plug-ins in Future's Computer Music magazine. Readers then opined about...
We get so caught up in the exotic sound of electronic music, it’s easy to forget that visuals are important to a performance as well. At the Maker Faire last weekend, I quickly tired of watching a knob-twisting groovebox duo and even a VJ competition. But it was fun to see Rick Walker (a.k.a. Loop.pooL) snatch an endless stream of...
Over at the MacDevCenter, I just bellyached about some mysterious iMovie and QuickTime errors. Perhaps more frustrating than those temporary setbacks is figuring out what to do when computers spit up error messages such as this: Naturally, my project disk did have enough room and the proper permissions. So what’s the next step?...
Kelli Richards’s straightforward suggestion for ending the fighting between Apple and Apple Corps got me thinking about software enhancements for the iPod ecosystem. Specifically, I envisioned a tool that would create iPod Packs—enhanced enhanced podcasts—without all the overhead of GarageBand. I’m imagining something like MixMeister, a Windows program that detects the tempo of each song in a playlist and then...
My co-author Kelli Richards, who spent a decade promoting music at Apple, has an ingeniously simple suggestion for how Apple and the Beatles’ Apple Corps can resolve their ongoing dispute. What if producers and DJs designed your next iPod? Although Kelli didn’t list a Beatles iPod in her plan, I’ve long wondered why Apple stopped with the U2 model. I’d...
This is serendipitous: While searching for information on the history of GarageBand, I entered Acid/GarageBand programmer Chris Moulios’ name and found this intriguing patent application. Called “Method and Apparatus for Expanding Audio Data,” it offers a peek inside the conceptual process of warping audio: One method relies on crossfading pairs of segments of audio data while running one segment backward...
MicrosoftWatch.com reports: Microsoft is still pushing full-steam-ahead with a music-making program, code-named "Monaco," according to Microsoft partners who requested anonymity. Monaco would be very similar to Apple's GarageBand application, but would be optimized to take advantage of Windows Vista and the Aero user interface. The article doesn’t explain how Areo would benefit music; I’m guessing musicians will actually get better...
This is so cool. Back in 1995, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek article for Keyboard magazine’s 20th anniversary issue called “20 Sounds That Must Die!” In it, I listed synthesizer presets that had been way overused in pop music, and added snarky comments. James Brown vocalizations and synthetic pan flute, two of the Top 20 overused sounds of 1995. Several readers...
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...
