For computer musicians, performing live can be somewhat problematic. Despite the fact that it is entirely possible to craft an electronic set ‘on the fly’ with a laptop, there is no real visual feedback for the audience to respond to. I call this ‘email checking syndrome’, because from the crowd’s point of view you might as well just press play on a premixed set and sit there reading the latest gossip from your friends…

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The conventional musical keyboard layout has been in use since 1361, so perhaps it’s time we embraced a new design for the digital age. A series of ’sonome’ keyboards based on the harmonic table aims to take performance in another direction…

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After a long weekend of festival absorption, I think I’ll take the easy blog option today and just post a few photos from the Electric Picnic. For those of you not familiar with it, this is a music and arts festival in the Irish midlands, where this year the odds were defied and the rain held off until the very last minute…

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When it comes to music, can the general public tell the difference between an average hack and true world-class talent? The proliferation of reality TV singing contests would imply they cannot; but of course that is more about celebrity than either talent or music. Last year, however, The Washington Post conducted an interesting experiment - they placed the world’s greatest violinist in a metro station playing a $3.5 million violin to see if anyone would notice…

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Tom Waits has released a ‘press conference’ video announcing the dates for his forthcoming tour of America. As well as outlining the rationale behind his choice of venues, he also confirmed that he would be coming to Europe, including two gigs in Dublin…

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Guitar modder Ben Lowry had an old laptop lying around, so he decided to take the obvious route and embed it into the body of an electric guitar. He then hooked the machine into a visualisation program which produces some nifty psychedelia as he strums his hi-tech axe, which he calls the LCDetar…

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Douglas Edric Stanley is professor of digital arts at Aix-en-Provence school of art, and he has created a music sequencer controller that’s based on the infamous Rubik Cube…

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The Handmade Music exhibition took place last night at Etsy Labs in New York, and featured Ranjit Bhatnagar’s innovative heat-sensitive MIDI ironing board controller, amongst many other odd things. He devised a way to allow MIDI signals to be triggered by temperature, and the gradual cooling of different areas of the board creates unusual trailing effects…

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Most DJs are very familiar with the idea of pitch control, and DAW experts probably associate the phrase with timestretching, tempo modification and sample slicing. However, when you’re slinging vinyl, pitch control is an essential part of beat matching, due to the very real physical relationship between rotation speed/BPM and playback pitch…

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Yes indeed folks, the robots have already learned to play guitar and dance, and now they’re ready to sing as well. At this rate, the whole DRM-to-protect-the-artists kerfluffle will soon be a moot point, as we can just get a bunch of mechanoids up on stage to entertain us…

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