Macworld Conference & Expo in Boston (July 11-14) is looking like it’ll be a big event for Mac musicians. Here’s the lineup:

Three workshops by yours truly: free on the showfloor, an all-inclusive Mac music intro, plus user conference workshops on live performance / DJing and graduating from GarageBand to Logic

Users conference track on music, and free on the showfloor presentations like how to record your band

Macworld Berklee Music Festival will feature various Berklee-related music events, with the band Birdsongs of the Mezosoic, a return of Berklee’s dream studio (well, Digidesign gear isn’t usually in MY dreams, but hey), and iPod-able free downloads of music artists.

Calling all Bostonites and/or those going to Macworld: (even if you use a PC — hey, ESPECIALLY if you use a PC; this is the home city of Cakewalk) Drop me a line if you’re interested in a CDM Boston party, where we can gather some wild interactive music tech and gadgets, play some digital jams, meet & greet. I’m looking for a venue, probably for Thursday night. If you’re interested in helping plan / play, let me know. And if you’re just interested in coming, let me know, too.

What price wireless? Sadly, EUR800.

Building custom interfaces with sensors and custom controllers should bring maximum flexibility and freedom — but then come all those nasty wires you’re tethered to. The WiSe Box has the specs interactive artists have dreamed of for years: totally wireless, works via Wi-Fi, ultra-light, ultra-portable, powered by batteries, runs via OSC. Then there’s the price: EUR800. At least it’s within range of some grant writing — get on it.

As a proof of concept, of course, it’s brilliant, and if people start to bite these kinds of devices could be mass-produced. Leave the 5-pin DIN tethered MIDI world behind for an ultra-fast, wireless-networked OSC future . . . sounds pretty appealing, eh? Via our mate Chris at Pixelsumo.

With the Moog movie DVD out (review this week), Moog soundtrack (review this week), Moogfest tonight here in NYC (see you there), Theremin festival later this summer, Moog books, Moog t-shirts, Moog action figures . . . it’s only right that this week be declared Moog week (rhymes with brogue or vogue, NOT the sound cows make). For those of you who haven’t been keeping up on Bob Moog’s synthesis lifetime acheivement, here’s a quick timeline:

Born 1934, New York City; piano lessons in childhood

Age 20: makes first Theremin; quickly becomes successful Theremin manufacturer.

1950s: Apprentice of inventor and composer Raymond Scott, whose basement modular synth setup will later inspire Moog’s designs

October 1964: Moog Modular is unveiled at the Audio Engineering Society (AES) convention.

Summer 1965: Bob becomes Dr. Moog, with a PhD in Engineering Physics from Cornell — much-delayed by his synthesis work.

1968: Switched on Bach by Wendy Carlos becomes the best-selling Classical album to date, proving that voltage-controlled Bach was . . . um . . . destined to be a major pop hit.

1970: Moog officially becomes a performance instrument with the creation of the Minimoog keyboard, and a decade of synth sounds follows.

1978: Big Briar is founded in the mountains of North Carolina. (Big Briar would become what is now Moog Music. The original R.A. Moog company was sold; Big Briar was renamed in 2002 when the rights were restored.)

1989: Moog finally meets the man who started it all, Leon Theremin.

1991: Moog returns to professional-grade theremin manufacturing with the Series 91 (Etherwave will follow in 1995).

1998: Voltage-controlled effects are back with the introduction of the Moogerfooger effects line.

2002: With the return of the Moog name comes the first Minimoog in years, the next-generation Minimoog Voyager. Unlike Star Trek Voyager, this one is actually better than the original.

And, of course, the rest is history: at the 51-year mark, Moog is still going strong. The brand, the gear, and the inventor are all at nothing short of pop idol status. Me? I can’t wait to go hear some top Moog players tonight on 42nd Street.

You’ve got them for cell phones, so why not DJ mixers, too? Skratchworx gets the scoop on a new set of custom faceplates created by one of their readers for the tres plain-jane Rane 56. They’re scratch-resistant — that’s the kind of scratches that mar your custom faceplate, not the thing you do to records. Buying a custom faceplate for your Rane: $30. Making it look like you can see the Rane’s internal guts: priceless.

Cycling ‘74 offered a glimpse into digital music’s future last night at the San Francisco Apple Store, with one of the first public appearances of the JazzMutant Lemur programmable touchscreen controller working in concert with its software editor. Unlike conventional touchscreen tablets, the Lemur can support multiple simultaneous finger taps, making it, at least theoretically, possible to even play piano on the thing.

Product Specialist Gregory Taylor showed how easy it is to create customized control surfaces merely by dragging intelligent user interface objects onto a layout of the Lemur’s screen. The software ships with some 16 of these widgets, including the expected sliders and knobs, along with more experimental ones like bouncing balls that react to friction.

Once the interface is constructed, it can be downloaded in seconds to the Lemur over an Ethernet connection using Open Sound Control. The Lemur can communicate in both directions with the computer it is connected to and used to control anything in Max/MSP or Jitter that you’d like. The possibilities are literally endless.

Taylor explained that the Lemur was designed for “idiosyncratic interface control, because nobody wants to perform all the time on a laptop.” In fact, the Lemur should probably have been called the Chameleon due to its ability to transform itself from a mixing board to a drum machine to video controller, to a way to convert incoming email into MIDI data (gee, I wonder what my SPAM would sound like?).

Ed: The Lemur is now weeks away from shipping, with a price of US$2495. Much has been made of how expensive it is, but keep in mind this isn’t just any old LCD touchscreen: anything cheaper lacks the ability to tap more than one place at once. Of course, I still can’t afford one, but if you can, let us know — and what’s really exciting is thinking a couple of years down the road as these get cheaper. -PK

Photos by Lee Sherman.