One Big Game is a charity assembled by game developers to raise money for children’s organizations. Musical games look to figure prominently in the series. Design legend Masaya Matsuura (PaRappa the Rapper, Vib-Ribbon), father of rhythm games and without whom there likely would be no Rock Band or Guitar Hero, has signed. And the first title out, from Zoë Mode, is musical in nature, too, in a game called “Chime.”

Chime is an elegantly-designed game and a lovely way to unwind, particularly with Philip Glass’ gorgeous “Brazil” in the track list. (”Brazil” has Glass’ usual musical furniture, but the cut, taken from the Aguas da Amazonia album, is executed by the extraordinary Uakti ensemble and takes on a new set of timbres.) One relevance to Create Digital Music – it’s not a bad way to take a break after a production and/or programming stint. The game is 500 Microsoft Points for Xbox Live, the lion’s share of which goes to children’s charities.

Fun as it is, Chime also reveals some of the limitations of musical gameplay; whether or not that’s a fault is really up to the user/gamer. The gameplay is almost a direct homage to Lumines, Tetsuya Mizuguchi’s puzzle game. As with Lumines, you place interlocking blocks into patterns, with the basic mechanics derived from Tetris. Chime is actually slightly simpler; there’s no color matching involved, only the creation of matching “quads” – areas of the grid 3×3. The more of the space you manage to fill up, the higher your score, which is oddly satisfying. (Sure, other animals have survival instincts and stuff like that imprinted in our brain; humans seem to be basically obsessive-compulsive as a species. Great.)

How is this a “music game” and not just a variant of Tetris? Well, again borrowing (liberally) from Lumines, Chime has a playback “wiper” that scrolls across the screen from left to right. In fact, it’s not so much that Chimes or Lumines are music games as it is that digital musical interfaces in general tend to use left-to-right, linear, step-sequencing grids. The tracks are all pre-composed, whether Glass or Moby, so the blocks themselves just add little musical “flairs,” kept in time to the music.

I have no doubt that Cosmogramma, the album Flying Lotus describes as a “space opera,” will be one of the albums of 2010. Actually, I don’t even care if anyone agrees, because I know I’ll thoroughly enjoy it. The only bad news is that you’ll have to wait until May to get the release, coming out on Warp Records.

I happened to hang out with Flying Lotus the day he wrapped the record up (after I nearly succumbed to the horrors of LA traffic), so I got to hear the rough-cut. Taking off any music critic hat or anything along those lines, I just fell in love with it; my jaw was dropped. (Thanks, Steve – I wasn’t just pretending or trying to be nice!) I wanted to take it with me and keep listening all night, so yes, I look forward to even a watermarked advance, let alone my proper, DRM-free CD final. It’s incredibly lush, indeed operatic in its collisions of textures, and filled with guest work by the likes of Ravi Coltrane, Thundercat, Erykah Badu, and Laura Darlington. (You may know Laura’s husband, Daedalus; Laura has done a number of collaborations with him and with FlyLo in the past.) The cut with Thom Yorke on guest vocals was immediately a favorite of mine, and the combination of work by harpist Rebekah Raff and string arranger Miguel Atwood-Ferguson (of Outkast) make for an exquisitely beautiful journey. It absolutely fits his musical personality, but it also sounds very different from his previous work.

The results have a richness, a depth to them I think many will find irresistible. Like a great bandleader, Flying Lotus has pulled the best out of his collaborators into his musical world.

What can you do with a button? What circuits can you bend? What software and hardware can you construct? Want to meet up with myself and fellow makers from the DIY music and visualist communities? I’m touring and looking for new works, we have one call for one-button objects that (if you can ship it) can come from anywhere in the world, plus upcoming events in New York, San Francisco, and — this month, Amsterdam at the planetary music tech hub that is STEIM.

STEIM + Handmade Music Amsterdam (Netherlands, February)

Handmade Music is beginning in Amsterdam. To kick things off, I’ll be visiting the legendary STEIM research center. The event will be open to anyone with inventions and self-built hardware and software you’d like to share. We’ll plug in and make a raucous noise. I’m really quite looking forward to meeting folks from this area.

When: Wednesday, February 17, 8p – ?
Where: Utrechtsedwarsstraat 134, Amsterdam
Cost: FREE
STEIM Hotspot Lab Event Page

I’ll also do a short presentation of some work TBD; more on this next week.

If you’re attending and want to share what you’re bringing in advance or make sure you see me, use the CDM contact form.

“Okay,” you say to the Web geeks, “I’ve had enough. I don’t want another little app that looks at my iTunes collection and tells me that if I like Lady Gaga, I probably also like Madonna. I want to listen in new ways and, most importantly, make music. What have you got, Web 2.0… 3.0… whatever we’re on now, that I can actually use. I want some of the deliciousness of the future, now.”

“Oh, and another thing – can I patch this Android phone of mine in absurd ways?”

Wish granted.

The latest Music Hackday in Stockholm was filled with the usual simple, first-draft hacks – as it should be; the whole idea is to do something quickly and start something real. But among them were some really strong ideas about how connecting music makers to the Web could do intelligent, new things.

Here are some of the best. Themes emerging:

There is a “there” there. Use proximity, and make location start to help people share musical tastes (and, by the same token, music making).

Put music creation in the browser – without Flash. New JavaScript-based tools can do live synthesis. There’s even a Nanoloop-style sequencer, built entirely with JavaScript and HTML. While these won’t be replacing dedicated music software any time soon, they can have the inverse effect, which is bringing musical creativity to more online apps. (Trust me, it’s more fun than most of what’s on Facebook.)

Make musicians’ online lives easier. Thanks to open APIs, all your gig info, tour info, and music uploads can finally come together.

Get physical. Hacks involving everything from big robotic visualizers to physical radio controls connect open hardware platforms like Arduino and Android.

(And yes, there were a lot of new Android apps, early proof that open mobile development could make a splash.)

Here’s a look at some of the coolest individual projects:

AlbexOne
Data as connected, kinetic sculpture

It’s one thing to talk to a Web API and put the results on the screen. It’s quite another to turn that feedback into a massive, mechanical sculpture.

Wherever you live, you can enjoy the DIY and open hardware inventions coming out of Texas. Or, as the famous song goes: “That’s right, you’re not from Texas / Texas wants you anyway.”

Austin, Texas may be associated with the strum of guitars. But it’s also populated by some of our favorite electronic music hardware inventors on the planet, led by the likes of Bleep Labs, 4ms, Eric Archer, and more. They’ve taken the idea of a “Handmade Music” and come up with the best formula for building a community around DIY hardware I’ve seen yet:

1. Get beginners – even if they’ve never soldered before – making noises with a beginning kit workshop.
2. Do an advanced workshop that pushes the envelope with new hardware.
3. Turn that noise into a performance/party: i.e., “After all the kits were built, we plugged in to the PA and partied until the amp overheated.”
4. Provide your specs and software freely.
5. Make a kit available for people to buy.

Notice that it’s possible to make “free hardware” (open sourcing part or all of the code, publishing specs and circuits) and still sell a product. And it’s possible to act locally (workshops in Austin), and sell globally (sharing documentation online, and shipping kits everywhere else).

And notice that it’s possible to make events beginner-friendly. In fact, this isn’t just to teach experienced musicians how to solder. I find that many people who are too shy to make music via traditional means find there’s a freedom to a glitchy, blippy electronic thing that makes noise. After all, through the ages music was never intended to be exclusively the domain of professional specialists.

Here’s the latest on their activities – and a chance to meet the hardware that has come out of their series.

For more, stay glued to handmademusic@noisepages.

First, let’s meet the devices: