Apple recently announced the new iPhone SDK (software development kit) for third party application developers. Of course third party applications have been available for jailbroken iPhones for some time now among which were some virtual instruments. The Japanese band Denki Groove used only those virtual instruments on their iPhones en iPods Touch to create their own version of Smoky Bubbles as the video below shows. For a link to the software the band uses see the GeekAlert (...)  read more

If you buy a keyboard at a music supply you expect to power it up and get some sounds out of it. That won't happen with the Evolution (or M-Audio) MK-449C because it's a so called MIDI controller. All it does is send the status of each key, fader, knob and button through a basic digital protocol that was developed in the early 80's. As lame as that may sound, it does put you in control of thousands of synthesizers. Traditionally MIDI connects through a special MIDI connector, (...)  read more

In an earlier post we showed the magic of MIDI and how a simple protocol can control dozens of synthesizers. Now GadgetVenue shows us some YouTube videos of MIDI controller pants. Certain parts of the pants are equipped with touch sensors that work kind of the same way as the keys on a MIDI keyboard. This way you can control a synthesizer and in this case a drum computer is the perfect synthesizer for the job. Below is an example of the drum pants in action. If you still have some old MIDI equipment (...)  read more