The Cupertino-Mushroom Kingdom gap has been closed: you can now mix and match DS and iPhone/iPod touch for wireless control of music and visuals. DSMI, the homebrew library that has enabled wireless and serial MIDI connections from the Nintendo DS, has come to iPod touch and iPhone. That means anyon...

Open and DIY doesn’t have to mean you don’t get a finished product. It just means the product can continue to change once you’ve got it - which is the beauty of three new tools coming to the music tech world. Photo: Bug Labs. You buy a box. You unwrap the box. You plug it in. You r...

  Automap 3 was announced at Winter NAMM 2009 and is now available. As of this release there are now 2 versions, free and pay. I’ve pasted details in from the Automap 3 Product page below. For me the Pro version seems the most compelling as it includes key stroke assignments and fully Auto-mappab...

Akai was one of the music manufacturers that stole the show at this year’s NAMM trade conference. The simple reason: the APC is a rare combination of a whole mess of colored buttons with a whole bunch of faders and knobs. Now, the APC’s big selling point is its out-of-box experience with...

Jay Smith of Livid Instruments may be in the business of making controller hardware himself, but that doesn’t stop him from appreciate the knob-laden goodness of the NAMM show floor. Jay’s own gear reveals a not-so-secret love of knobs and buttons and faders, and if you’re into tha...

You've heard the old saw "fake it 'til you make it," right? This is an instrument that takes those words to heart. ripe by the entrancing Musical employment project, FielDrum sees a pretty measure percussion instrument fitted with a series of electromagnets. Placed beneath the drum head, the magnets...

You've heard the old saw "fake it 'til you make it," right? This is an instrument that takes those words to heart. Developed by the Magnetic Musical Training project, FielDrum sees a pretty standard percussion instrument fitted with a series of electromagnets. Placed beneath the drum head, the magne...

Out of all the controllers announced in the 2009 Winter NAMM, the Akai APC40 is the one I’m most excited about. What is the AKAI APC40? It’s a dedicated controller just for Live and is intended to offer real-time control of Live’s session view. It features 109 buttons, 16 endless encoders with...

Score one for “old school� on the Theremin – minus one for “old school� on the Minimoog keyboard. There’s plenty of debate about whether or not you can justify splurging on the extra cash for the Moog name on synths and effects – no one questions Moog’s quality, but there is other gr...

[Matt] was looking into some software that allows him to use his audio card as a means to control analog audio devices. After seeing how it worked, he got an idea to try to do the opposite.  He is sending a signal into his audio input, and piping it to a pice of MIDI software. The input he has chos...