So much energy is spent reflecting on the merits of different tools, or re-hashing tired debates like the comparison between analog and digital, often with the assumption that you can hear the tool in the finished work. But the real value of an expressive, creative tool is that it can produce wildly different results in different hands; it’s the measure of its versatility. And the measure of music is the music itself.

That makes it doubly satisfying listening to the results of the Efficient Music Competition CDM hosted with the Renoise production software and Linux-powered Indamixx netbooks and software suites. While tracker applications have been conventionally associated with certain styles, there’s music here from every possible genre. There are contributing artists at a wide variety of different stages in the development of their craft and creative output – just as all of us are growing and changing. There’s even a spoken word piece with a cow in a can (one of my offbeat favorites). I’m sure you’ll hate some of the music and love some of the rest; some will think the voting results were spot-on and others will be surprised and find the results upside down. Such is taste.

You can download all the entrants in the original Renoise file format, which you can play on any Mac, Windows, or Linux machine even with the free demo version. They’re ranked by popular-opinion vote.

http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/results.php

On the main competition page, most of tracks have SoundCloud players, which means you can also connect with artists you like at that community:

http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/

Remember that all of these tracks are Creative Commons-licensed, meaning they’re ripe sources of samples and sounds you can use freely in your work. If you need them for commercial purposes, you can contact the artists.

Taste aside, though, it’s fantastic to hear the range of activity going on. And keep in mind that the challenge of the competition, as sponsored by the software Renoise and Linux netbook vendor Indamixx, was to do more with less. As lovely as it is to have ever-growing computational resources, this is proof you don’t need them all the time. Even an affordable Atom-powered netbook is capable of real production, which says great things about the ongoing mobilization and democratization of computer music technology.

We have more than just a one-dimensional set of results. The contest judges offer lots to hear, including commentary on the tracks. And I’m pleased to share my own CDM pick and honorable mentions.

Patenting the use of all episodic media on the Web might sound absurd, but the US Patent and Trademark Office has granted just such a patent, to a company called VoloMedia. It’s a significant issue, one that could threaten the freedom of all media distribution online. Wherever you are in the world, you can help.

Intellectual property law was created in order to protect genuine inventions and innovation from exploitation. But predatory patents, based on bogus claims and attempting to stake out broad rights, threaten to do just the opposite.

Here’s a new idea: fight back.

Lawyers are the heroes this time. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s patent-busting project aims to take down unfair patents that threaten common-sense uses of technology. A number of these have applied to music and audio. The EFF has already won a big victory against what had been the worst offender – media giant Clear Channel actually successfully patented recording live shows. (No, really — recording a live gig, then burning them on the spot. The EFF was able to bust that patent.) The advocacy group also scored significant victories against patents on sending and receiving online streams and encoding media. (If someone thought they could patent your ears and charge you royalties for hearing, they probably would.)

Lawyers alone haven’t won these battles. The EFF’s clever twist is to crowd-source its case, by getting people like you to help the group document “prior art” – in plain English, to prove that something existed before the patent. (Without basic chronology, I could claim to have discovered electricity.)

In short, you can help save the freedom of online content.

For anyone whose complaint about OSC aka OpenSoundControl is that it lacks broad hardware support, I have one word for you:

Unicorns.

OSC now runs on magical unicorns. (Would a unicorn not want high-resolution, human-readable messages encoded with time-stamps? I think they would. And because OSC is transport-independent, it can absolutely run on magical Unicorn Beams.)

No idea what this post is about? Don’t worry — I’ll have a talking unicorn narrate a proper, sophisticated, complete introduction to OSC for beginners soon. They’re magical, so they can make complex topics lucid to any audience.

MIDI control of analog devices from Michael Una on Vimeo.

John at HighlyLiquid has been busy this year- he’s got a new kit out and one in the works that really step up the game. You may be familiar with his previous kits, which add MIDI control to Speak & Spell, Atari 2600, or pretty much every Casio. HighlyLiquid also stocks more open-ended kits which can add MIDI control to pretty much anything- I used one in my MAKE Magazine article last year to build a drum-playing robot.

You’re now approved to DJ with your iPhone. Or at least the app is. I’m not sure if I can take credit for getting Apple’s attention, but Apple has approved the TouchDJ application from Amidio. That’s big news, partly because developer Amidio has consistently been at the forefront of musical development on the platform, including their Noise.io synth and wild hexagonal JR Hexatone Pro.

This also is a big blog to the theory that Apple is intentionally blocking DJ apps — and a big boon to the theory that the App Store is just plain clogged, even if it may be disproportionately affecting more sophisticated applications.

Features in the release:

• “Visual mixing,” with a clever interface that uses overlays atop side-by-side waveform views
• Pre-listening using a special left/right adapter
• Faux vinyl and spin effects
• Real-time scratching, looping, positioning, EQ, effects, re-pitching
• Onboard sampler with 3 WAV sample slots, recording from the mic
• Uses a separate MP3 library with companion apps, since it isn’t possible to DJ from the library you sync from iTunes

Now, to me, that last point is a fairly significant one. You have to load tracks you wish to DJ separately, in MP3/M4A format. And I’m sure that this will start various debates about whether you’d want to DJ on your iPhone in the first place. But don’t look at me — I just work here. I’d be remiss if I started out the week talking about apps stuck in iPhone limbo, only to ignore them immediately becoming available. And I will say, Amidio is one of the smartest mobile music developers out there, so it’s worth checking out the range of what they’re doing.

Whether petitions and news stories did help this app to get to the top of the queue or not, I have no idea. I think maybe I’ll start running screaming headlines with things I want in them, if only for good luck.

Tomorrow on CDM: “You Know What Annoys Me? The Fact That We Don’t Have Unicorns. Magic Unicorns. Who Speak OSC.”