I still love the idea of soft circuits: electronics packaged in soft form factors instead of hard. It’s a big challenge — for one, you need some soft fabrication skills along with electronics skills, and then you have to contend with keeping your electronics happy in a soft (warm) place, which is the opposite of what they tend to like. But when you make a huggable calculator synth, it’s all worth it.

Our friends Brian Crabtree and Kelli Cain of Monome fame write to let us know they’ve got spots in their felt circuits class at the awesome Machine Project in LA. Brian sez: "this year we’re making small contact mic amplifiers with a bent freakout capacitive touch point. it’ll be great fun." (East coasters, we’ll have to have them do the same over here, huh?) If you’re in LA and have the time, have a good time and take some project photos!

Felt + Circuits Workshop

Previously:

Felt + Circuits, for Sound and Enjoyment, From Happy Sheep

For more plush circuits, here’s a show in Nova Scotia featuring stiched sonic works, including a radio — but it looks like they don’t work. Functional electronics, even better, I say.

And for fans of the Monome, head over to Create Digital Motion today:

Monome as Visual Controller

While we’re having a Nintendo DS-laden week, I thought I might mention that I got tipped off (thanks, Laurence) that the popular, multi-platform tracker Chibitracker has made its way to the DS. Consider this a rumor posted in the hopes of prodding the developer to release the ROM file.

That said, readers, what’s your favorite tracker of choice — particularly when it comes to a “tracker to go” on your mobile device? (If I could get one running on Java, I could set up a Blackberry tracker — surely that friendly QWERTY keyboard could come in handy.)

If you’re planning on competing at the NASA Ames Research Center Saturday, don’t wait another moment to fill out your entry on yuricdm.com. I’m finalizing the lineup and details today. I’ll accept any entry up until midnight tonight Monday, New York City time, but if you can avoid waiting until then, please do drop me a line so I can start organizing.

1. Send me an email.

2. Fill out the Google Docs form. (Save your entries, just in case something goes wrong.)

International / non-CA entries for the showcase (no prizes, but fame), feel free to send me those any time this week — we’re only concerned about the folks who will be competing in person at Yuri’s Night Bay Area Saturday at 2:30pm. More details soon!

RSS readers can be terrific; I use FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, both of which recently became free. (Yeah, after I bought them.) But sometimes it’s just too much to wade through RSS, especially after you get back from vacation. Alltop, a site headline aggregator, recently added CDM to its music page, and I’ve started using it as a quick way of glancing over topics like “Music” without cluttering my RSS reader more. Oh, yeah, and it’s nice to see CDM next to KEXP. Alltop is the product of Guy Kawasaki; he’s been a hero of mine since he introduced evangelism to Apple (you know where that led), and he’s still doing great stuff with business and marketing. So, thanks, Guy!

That brings me to my question, though: what’s your preferred method for keeping up with blogs and forums and mailing lists without eating up all your time for music making? (We do see CDM readers on different platforms, including someone who just spent 12 minutes reading on BeOS. Also featured: Wii, PSP, Atari, UNIX, Symbian smartphone…)

Anything we could do to help you keep up with feeds more easily — not only ours, but other sites, as well?

We’re still accepting entrants to the Futuristic Music Design Challenge at Yuri’s Night Bay Area. It’s a chance to showcase your personal musical hardware and/or software creation in a live performance competition. You’ll definitely take home some swag and get a free pass to the event. If you’ve got what it takes, you’ll come home with a new Yamaha Tenori-On from CDM.

1. Check out the competition details and rules.

2. Fill out an entry form on Google Docs. (Save your responses, just in case something goes wrong.)

3. Drop us a line to let us know you filled out the entry form.

We likely won’t be able to take everyone, so we’ll notify you if you’ve been accepted. Deadline is officially Monday April 7, but the sooner we get entries, the better, so don’t wait.

While we can’t offer any physical prizes, we’re also interested in people who can’t make it, but have work you’d show if you could. So if you’ve got some amazing, futuristic music design — as always on this site — we’d love to see it. If it’s in any way related to ecology and the environment, the planet, space, or space exploration, be sure to launch it to our email box now.