Activision’s DJ Hero is now available, with an exclusive 93-mix track list, created by a host of legendary DJs, blending hip hop, rock, pop, R&B and dance.

DJ Hero was developed by FreeStyleGames for the Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, the PLAYSTATION 3 and PlayStation 2 computer entertainment systems and the Wii system from Nintendo. The game is rated “T” (Teen – Mild Suggestive Themes, Lyrics) by the ESRB.

Video previews and more details below.

Click here to view the embedded video.

DJ Hero Educational Trailer

Click here to view the embedded video.

DJ Hero Daft Punk Trailer

According to Activision:

Featuring mixes created by DJ AM, Cut Chemist, Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jazzy Jeff, J. Period, DJ Shadow, DJ Z-Trip and more, spinning over 100 individual songs, highlighted in 93 never-before-released mixes that blend genres of music, including hip-hop, pop, rock and dance, DJ Hero delivers the most diverse and international collection of music ever assembled in a music game.

Created exclusively for DJ Hero, the turntable controller immerses fans into the DJ culture and a sea of music as they utilize and master various DJ techniques including scratching, crossfading and sampling, while leaving room for creative expression with a variety of effects and player chosen samples and scratches, transforming a face in the crowd into the life of the party.

The DJ Hero Renegade Edition includes a copy of the game, a premium Renegade turntable controller, hardshell turntable carrying case that converts to a performance-ready DJ stand, and an exclusive JAY-Z and EMINEM 2-CD pack featuring “best of” and new, unreleased material.

This demo captures the Atari 2600 synthesizer in action.

Description:

Beaterator is a portable studio that guides users through the process of constructing beats and songs with thousands of loops and sounds made by both Timbaland and Rockstar.

You can jam in Live Play mode with genre-specific templates, or jump into Song Crafter to compose original drum beats, melodies, and even record vocals.

Beaterator is rated E for Everyone by the ESRB and will also be available later this fall on the iPhone and iPod touch.

More info is available at the Rockstargames site.

This is the Daft Punk DJ Hero trailer.

Daft Punk, a featured artist in the upcoming Xbox 360 and PS3 DJ Hero, has created 11 mixes for the game, including:

• Daft Punk “Around the World” vs. Young MC “Bust A Move”
• Daft Punk “Da Funk” vs. N.A.S.A. “Strange Enough ft. Karen O, ODB and Fatlip”
• Daft Punk “Da Funk” vs. Queen “Another One Bites the Dust”
• Daft Punk “Robot Rock” vs. Hashim “Al-Naafiysh (The Soul)”–Produced and mixed by The Scratch Perverts
• Daft Punk “Robot Rock” vs. Queen “We Will Rock You”
• Daft Punk “Short Circuit” vs. Boogie Down Productions “Jack Of Spades”
• Daft Punk “Technologic” vs. Gary Numan “Cars”
• Daft Punk “Television Rules The Nation” vs. No Doubt “Hella Good”

via gamedaily

This is a demo of a Peggy 2.0 based giant LED system, which can be used to play old-school video games, or make generative music!

Details below.

via SenorBon:

We built a giant LED board, about 6.5×6.5 feet, with 900 LEDs using ping-pong balls as diffusers.

It can play Conway’s Game of Life, Pong, and Sketch mode that allows you to create a starting pattern for Life. We output board state information to a MIDI board that allows us to make music based on what is displayed. This gets interesting with Life, creating minimalist generative music.

See pictures here.

Thanks to Evil Mad Scientists for their Peggy 2.0, upon which we based the circuit for our project.

Rockstar Games and Timbaland have announced that Beaterator, a new DJ/remix game previously announced for the PSP and Playstation Network, will be coming to the iPhone and iPod touch this fall.

Beaterator features thousands of loops and sounds, made by both Timbaland and Rockstar, and is designed to make making professional-sounding music portable, accessible and fun.

Details are available at the Beaterator site.

Timbaland On Beaterator - Beaterator for the PSP and PlayStation Network features a sound-kit which includes thousands of loops and sounds produced by Rockstar and producer and entertainer Timbaland exclusively for Beaterator.

Beaterator will be arriving on shelves on September 29th, 2009 in North America and on October 2nd, 2009 in Europe.

Hemisphere Games has released Osmos – a new game for Windows XP or Vista that features “elegant, physics-based gameplay, dreamlike visuals, and a minimalist, electronic soundtrack.”

Check out the preview above. Get your copy from Steam or Direct2Drive.

And then tell me why the **** this isn’t available for the Mac!

About Osmos

Your objective is to grow by absorbing other motes. Propel yourself by ejecting matter behind you. But be wise: ejecting matter also shrinks you. Relax – good things come to those who wait.

Key features:

• Independent Games Festival finalist in three categories: Seumas McNally Grand Prize, Excellence in Design and Technical Excellence
• Progress from serenely ambient levels into varied and more challenging worlds. (47 levels, plus bonus content)
• Confront attractors, repulsors and intelligent motes with similar abilities and goals as you
• Selected as one of the 2009 PAX 10
• Procedural content: play random versions of any level
• Sublime electronic soundtrack by Loscil, Gas/High Skies, Julien Neto, Biosphere, and more
• Dynamic time-warping: slow down the flow of time to outmaneuver agile opponents; speed it up to raise the challenge

Rockstar games has released this trailer for Beaterator, which will be made available for the PSP and through the PlayStation Network on September 29th, 2009:

Beaterator for PSP system and PlayStation Network puts a world-class mixer at your fingertips – enabling easy, powerful and innovative creation.

Featuring original music and a sound-kit which includes thousands of loops and sounds produced by Rockstar and multi-platinum producer and entertainer Timbaland exclusively for Beaterator.

Beaterator will be arriving on shelves on September 29th, 2009 in North America and on October 2nd, 2009 in Europe.

Nice to see gaming taking on electronic music.

via CrateKings

Denj Sano’s keynote speech introducing the new product KORG DS-10 Plus.

via aqi

This is the official demo video for Scratch Deck, Numark’s new DJ-style controller for Scratch: The Ultimate DJ.

The video lays it on very thick, but it looks like fun and it can’t be long before this thing becomes a popular bend.

Scratch uses a turntable controller to let players follow along to a Guitar Hero-style rhythm game while simulating common DJ techniques, such as scratching.

via NumarkVideo

The Pixelh8 Music Tech Master Stroke DS is a real time synthesizer for the Nintendo DS system.

Description:

The new system allows for keyboard style play by pressing “X” to bring up the 2 Octave Xylophone or classic Music Tech mode by using the directional pad to control the sounds in the same way as the Music Tech Game Boy and Pro Performer Game Boy Advance.

Loads of new combinations are possible as you can now combine interval settings with time based effects as well as using the noise channel instead of tone and the easy change between menus allow for quick change during performance.

All sounds are produced via the on board sound chip and no samples or sample manipulation is used, this is a real time chip tune synth for the DS.

Pixelh8 plans to release Music Tech Master Stroked DS for free and a iPhone and Android versions are planned.

This DJ Hero trailer warns that it may contain content inappropriate for children.

Would that be…..the music?

via Crate Kings

OT: This is the trailer video for High Strangeness, a 12 bit action / adventure video game for the PC about:

crystal skulls
shadow people
flashlight wielding teenagers
string theory
chaos theory
multiverses
dimensional physics
and a talking cat

Note the soundtrack on this – it’s reminiscent of some of Vangelis’ early work, such as Nucleogenesis, from Albedo 0.39.

Microsia – Colors is a demo of Microsia, an application somewhere between a computer game and an instrument:

microsia lets you dive into a plant cell to explore the sound of the microcosm. Within the cell there are a multiplicity of cell particles which you can manipulate to generate music and visual effects. The particles’ interplay creates new audio-visual compositions again and again.

System Requirements: Windows XP/Vista, 1.8GHz CPU, 512 MB RAM (1GB for Vista users), 64 MB Graphics Card, DirectX-compatible sound card

If you’ve used Microsia, leave a comment with your thoughts.

via salzmanufaktur

Remember ToneMatrix – Andre Michelle’s addictive-like-crack Flash audio sequencer?

It’s been added to AudioTool, the browser-based virtual studio:

We have release a small update of the AudioTool and included André’s ToneMatrix. Some features that have been implemented in the last weeks are online as well. Removing an effect for instance will not destroy the cables. The desktop scales now without interrupting the audio output and various other performance tweaks have been made.

Here’s an example of what this glossy bit of Flash yumminess can do:

Kiss an hour of your life goodbye, right about now. Here’s the link.

Smule has announced that Leaf Trombone World Stage, an iPhone app described as the first massively multi-player musical game for the iPhone and iPod touch, is now available (iTunes App Store link).

Leaf Trombone builds on Smule’s work with Ocarina, creating virtual instruments that are interesting by themselves – but more interesting as part of music social networks. Leaf Trombone also throws in a dash of American Idol competitiveness.

If you try out Leaf Trombone, leave a comment with your thoughts!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Description:

Smule, the company behind Ocarina and Sonic Lighter, presented a sneak peek of the Leaf Trombone World Stage at Apple’s iPhone 3.0 event last month. As the name suggests, anyone can perform a tune on the Leaf Trombone before a global audience. A player can also request a panel of self-appointed judges, randomly selected from anywhere in the world, providing an instant critique of the performance, using a combination of emoticons and text. Judges can reward a performance or veto it mid-note.

The World Stage will separate the Music Gods from the Wannabes. “People can play at home, alone, as badly as they want. It’s like singing in the shower. Where’s the challenge? The thrill?” asks Smule CTO and co-founder Dr. Ge Wang. “We are inviting people to abandon their egos and put it all out there, before a global audience and a potentially merciless tribunal.”

Inspired by traditional Chinese leaf instruments, Smule’s Leaf Trombone is ideally suited to both the iPhone and iPod touch platform. Users move the slide up and down to change pitch, and, with iPhones, blow into the microphone to create sound. Leaf Trombone ships with a group of songs already loaded, so users can immediately begin learning how to play the instrument. A music box provides accompaniment, and floating leaves show beginners where to place the slide to achieve the correct note. Once users have mastered a song, they’re ready to perform on the World Stage.

“Leaf Trombone was developed to unleash people’s creativity and their inner rock star.” said Wang. “Now, with the Leaf Trombone, anyone can perform on the World Stage.”

Here are the rules:

1. Go to Wikipedia and hit “random” and the first article you get is the name of your band.
2. Go to “Random Quotations”. The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page will be the title of your new album.
3. Go to Flickr and click on “Explore the Last Seven Days”. The third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

They’ve got a library of album covers with the post, and they are actually on a par with a lot of actual releases.

If you give it a try, leave a comment with what you came up with!

I gave it a try, and came up with the album “brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems”, by Revolution.

Here’s the album cover:

Image: sarah22333

Note: If you actually treat this as more than a game, make sure to look for Creative Commons licensed images!

Radiohead – Paranoid Android on Mario Paint Composer w/lyrics.

So you can sing along to the 8-bit glory of Radiohead.

via adolfobaez:

Radiohead is one of my favorite bands and this is their best song IMO,

This song is from the album Ok Computer, it´s considered by many one of the best rock albums of all time.

This is the most difficult song I´ve made using Mario Paint Composer but because of the hype that I´ll see Radiohead live on March I decided to make it.

I slightly modified some chords in the middle part to make them sound better with the original MPC soundfont and I left out 15 seconds of the end because that part just didn´t sound right with the MPC instruments, oh and I also made the song a little bit faster, more like when they play it live.

The Meggy Jr RGB from Evil Mad Science running MeggySeq, driving a Wave Shield from Lady Ada.

MeggySeq is a pattern-based drum machine sequencer. It has 8 patterns of 16 steps each and each step can play one of 8 samples (the colors are hard to tell apart on the video).

MeggySeq is currently in development.

Next steps: Saving patterns to the eeprom, sending MIDI (currently it just sends single characters over serial to the WaveShield) and possibly syncing to external clock sources. Or, you know, changing the tempo at all.