Mixxx is an impressive-looking, fully free and open source DJ package for Mac (Intel only), Windows, and Linux. (It’s also the featured DJ tool on the Indamixx, Linux-based ultra mobile PC – mine just arrived, so hands-on is coming soon.)

Adam Davison from the Mixxx development team points out some juicy features in the new 1.6.0 release, out yesterday:

We now support vinyl control with Serato, Traktor, and FinalScratch vinyl, as well as Serato CD. This means that you can use vinyl control to drive your mixes without having to buy expensive software or branded soundcards. We also have greatly improved support for MIDI controllers such as the Hercules Mk2 and RMX.

Other features:

• MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC support
• The usual DJ stuff: dual waveform display, pitch-independent time stretch (key lock), BPM detection
• Crossfader curve control
• Adjustable EQ shapes
• Wave recording
• Multichannel playback and capture support
• Multi-core CPU support, GPU-accelerated OpenGL graphics display

And unlike some open source music tools, it’s got a polished website with lots of documentation. High performance could be a big draw, particularly on Linux. I’ll let you know how it works coupled with a custom Linux distribution, mobile device, and touchscreen on the Indamixx. (Personally, I like the idea of keeping a DJ mix ready to go on a portable or older machine, alongside the usual live laptop set.)

Stay tuned.

Mixxx: Free DJ Software

Mixxx blog

[Note: as reader bliss kindly pointed out, Mixxx has three X’s, Indamixx has two X’s; quit with all these extra letters, already!]

When I first saw the iPhone at Apple’s keynote in 2007, my first thought was, this could be an interesting controller: big, pretty display, accelerometer sensors, and multi-touch input. It’s not without some problems (namely, small amounts of latency, the lack of tactile feedback inherent to touchscreens, and the size of your fingers reducing accuracy). But with refurb iPod Touch devices going for US$200 and the flexibility of having an interactive, handheld display, it remains an intriguing possibility.

Nonnus’s new iTM MidiLab (released by Silicon Studios) is a suite of MIDI controller apps. It’s free, with a planned future commercial version. It only works with networked Mac OS X 10.5 computers, so Windows and Tiger users are left out for now (because of the client app required).

Unfortunately, the app itself is held up by contract and distribution issues which seem to be plaguing many iPhone/iPod Touch developers; see a separate article on things mobile Apple developers are unhappy about. But in the meantime, Nonnus sends some details. Updated: Nonnus also notes that latency reports from users have been very positive.

See also the project site:

iTouchMidi (the original project name, rejected by Apple)

And discussion on the Ableton forum:

http://www.ableton.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=95117

Nonnus sends along some additional details in a rough/informal email, with images, to CDM:

Whether you care about the iPhone or not, the Summer of iPhone Development reveals a lot about where mobile computing, and mobile music creation, might be headed. That includes Apple’s challenges as well as its accomplishments.

Despite the hype around Apple’s platform, the iPhone and iPod Touch have some strengths and weaknesses, just as any platform does. The strengths you probably know well by now: slick UIs, rich, mobile-optimized developer tools, and a device people love. That has given us some interesting, genuinely-useful music tools amidst the toys and novelties, demonstrating how even a niche can benefit from development capabilities. But the tight development and distribution restrictions, imposed by Apple and their exclusive US service provider AT&T, have compounded some of the negatives of the device. The result is a platform that has some developers raving and some ranting (sometimes simultaneously).

The big news for digital musicians, specifically, is that restrictions created by Apple may keep some music apps from shipping, or for supporting Apple’s official, exclusive SDK and store.

Case in point: the tasty-looking MIDI controller you see above hasn’t made it into the store - and it’s not alone. If the developer were able to distribute it, you’d have it right now. With Apple controlling the store, you might have it tomorrow, or next month, or never - the frustrating thing being, the developer doesn’t even know. And poor communication in regards to the store is just one challenge that’s turning some developers off from Apple’s device.

Digital music creation was built on the openness of the Windows, Mac, Linux, and even Palm and Windows Mobile platforms. That means the situation with Apple’s locked-down development channels is one to watch closely. It also could mean the jailbroken, hacked iPhone platform is here to stay — and that competing platforms could gain some ammunition from Apple’s relatively closed nature.

Not All Developers Are Happy

It goes without saying that some of Apple’s moves have made some developers very happy indeed. The iPhone/iPod Touch is a platform that strikes a unique balance between desktop-class functionality and what’s needed on a mobile device. Developers have complained that platforms like PalmOS or Java ME are overly stripped-down for mobiles, whereas Windows Mobile isn’t optimized enough and is too much like the desktop OS. Apple has done a lot to balance those concerns and wrap it into a beautifully-designed UI and hardware. (To see just how much they’ve done, look no further than AppleInsider’s iPhone 2.0 critique. Even as they complain about the iPhone’s flaws, they note the ways in which competing devices are worse.)

But that doesn’t mean all of Apple’s developers are happy campers. Here’s a quick round-up of some of the complaints:

Live beginners, want to graduate to Live ninja? Sample pack maker Infrasonik has posted a video that walks you through a number of shortcuts for Ableton’s software. (Via wire to the ear and Synthtopia; I agree with Synthtopia that the narration is a bit cheesy at moments, but yes, it’s still quite useful to have!)

I do find that video, while friendly, can be the least efficient way of getting at information. So here are the shortcuts in text form. These were also in Mac form, so I’ve provided Windows “translation”:

• Option-F11 (PC: F11 alone): Full screen mode
• Option-Cmd-B (PC: Ctrl-Alt-B): Open/close browser (and arrow keys scroll).
• Shift-TAB (PC: TAB alone): Switches between Arrange View and Session View (the linear track view and live performance-oriented clip view, respectively).
• Shift-SPACE: Starts/stops playback at the current playhead position; i.e., it’s a pause function. (SPACE alone starts at the beginning of the song.)
• Cmd-1,2,3,4 (PC: Ctrl-1,2,3,4): Adjusts the active quantization grid in current clips while editing. This one is really essential, of course.
• Cmd-arrow keys (PC: Ctrl-1,2,3,4): Controls Loop Region length. This really speeds up editing in a big way. Up/down uses a large increment (doubling/halving), whereas the right and left arrow keys use a small increment.
• Cmd-D (PC: Ctrl-D): Duplicate (and it duplicates everything, so it’s handy in Session View)
• Cmd-I (PC: Ctrl-I): Insert silence
• Cmd-B (PC: Ctrl-B): Draw Mode – essential for being able to switch between drawing and selection in clip piano roll, envelopes, etc.
• Shift-Cmd-I (PC: Ctrl-Cmd-I): Capture and Insert Scene. This cleans up your set by taking combinations and automatically inserting them in scenes.

(Okay, yeah, I sometimes call it the “Apple” key, but technically, that hasn’t been its name since the Apple II. Really. The sound of “open Apple – X” still makes me sigh with nostalgia, though.)

If you want all the keyboard shortcuts in Live, they’re in the Live manual. Choose Help > Read the Live Manual… and you’ll find it as the last chapter, chapter 28. But Infrasonik did a terrific job of picking out all the best ones, including some that even us old-hat Live users might have forgotten. (Yeah, I’ll admit is. I didn’t know about Capture and Insert Scene.)

Show those Canadian gurus some love:

Infrasonik

More Live Tutorials

Still want more Ableton Live knowledge? Oliver Chessler at Wire to the Ear has thoughtfully assembled a YouTube playlist of helpful Live tutorials. You may have seen some before, but it’s nice to have them all in one place. Because it’s a playlist, you can just scroll through via the player below. Enjoy:

And for still more Live wisdom, Ableton just posted an interview with Hot Chip in which they talk about how they use the tool. (Via Sonic State.)

XLR8R TV Episode 71: Daedelus from XLR8RTV on Vimeo.

XLR8RTV has a fantastic video interview with one of my favorite artists, Daedelus. The man is, as always, like pure musical joy. He talks about his musical influences, the early connections he made (including at USC, alma mater of a number of the CDM community), his approach to live performance, the virally-popular open source monome controller, and, yes, that pro-Obama song. (The original lyrics were catchier.)

The monome connection is an interesting case in music technology. Daedelus was the first artist to gig regularly with the device, possibly helping both him and the monome gain some buzz. It’s not just a gimmick, either, because he remains one of the most virtuosic, erm, monomists on the planet.

But technology aside, Daedelus is one of those guys who can charge up your faith in the future of live computer music. Enjoy!

(And Daedelus, if you’re out there, we’ll have to have you sit down with the CDM TV cameras next time I’m in LA. I promise … well, poorer production values. But maybe we can add some special effects in post or something that XLR8R was too tasteful to do. Like have you fly on your monome as though it’s a magic carpet.)

In other news, CDM’s own Liz “Quantazelle” McLean Knight is featured in a podcast look at the Chicago scene.

Don’t toss that Windows Mobile gadget yet. In fact, you might want to keep glued to Craig’s List for a used unit, if you like the idea of road warrior music production on the cheap, sans laptop.

Amidst all the hype around the iPhone and iPod Touch, Windows Mobile devices could actually win on power apps for on-the-go music making. Maybe that’s because of the similarity to developing Windows desktop apps, maybe it’s because of fewer restrictions compared to Apple’s SDK, or maybe some combination of that and fortune. Nonetheless, during this Summer of iPhone, the makers of powerful Windows Mobile sequencer/sampler studio Griff note on their new blog that Windows Mobile just got a new music app.

Yes, you read that right: a new app for Windows Mobile.

Wildly enough, MeTeoR is basically a pocket-able miniature DAW, boasting:

• 12 tracks of audio with stereo mixdown
• Audio waveform editing with cut, copy, paste, and processing (fade, normalize, reverse, etc.)
• Various effects (delay, chorus, reverb, phaser, filters, pitch shift, noise gate, graphic EQ, and more), with routable aux sends
• Metronome with live recording
• A mixer with full automation envelopes for each tracks (for the mixer lanes and effects)

The whole thing is basically reminiscent of an old version of Cakewalk for Windows, only running in your pocket. I could see it as fairly useful for doing some quick processing or pre-processing on a big project – load those extra files on the subway and keep working on that project, even if you’re up against a deadline.

Not only that, but because the system requirements are fairly flexible and used Windows Mobile devices are fairly worthless, you could easily rescue someone’s unused PDA and press it into service as a music device. They’ll thank you. The environment will thank you.

US$29.95, but unlike Apple’s iTunes store, you can download a demo version. (Imagine that.)

All of this is on paper (erm, pixels); no promises, as I haven’t used it yet. I have to brush off my Dell PDA and give this a try. I know there’s a charger here somewhere…

MeTeoR @ 4pockets.com [Demo download and purchase links, detailed features]

The iPhone and iPod Touch are getting their share of metronomes, guitar tuners, sonic toys, and even one fairly full-featured sample-based drum machine / arrangement tool (BeatMaker). But what about live synthesis? Noise.io (short for Noise for iPhone) claims to be the “first” synth. (I believe, technically, that honor goes to Einar Andersson’s iPhone synth, but that isn’t yet an official iTunes app, and it’s relatively basic by comparison.)

We’re waiting for a video demo and audio samples, and the developer warns that even the image above is an “ugly beta,” not the real thing. But we do know that the synth will incorporate:

ESFM technology - Enhanced Subspace Frequency Modulation. It’s an improved version of FM which has been developed especially for iPhone, the architecture has been redesigned to allow maximum user-friendly approach to creating new sounds.

(The developer explains what that means below.)

There’s also preset storage, tap BPM sync, and gestures for real-time sonic modification. There’s a curious-looking grid (shown at bottom) for modulation.

Noise for iPhone [Official Site. Warning: disturbing, nightclub-style black and pink color scheme]

Price: US$6.99

Availability: Real soon now

Many readers, particularly some loyalists to earlier, less-hyped PDAs and mobile devices, have dismissed some of the recent iPhone creations as “toys” – and in many cases, I agree. But, while I’ll believe it when I see it, I’m encouraged that this instrument is doing something unique with its interface and synthesis method – that is, making the touch interface something interesting and essential to the sound. That’s the kind of territory I hoped would be explored that’s been mostly untapped so far.

And if you don’t have an iPhone, don’t feel left out: the developers promise a plug-in version soon, for computers – with lots of natural advantages, like the ability to drop right into Ableton Live or route through effects. (Hey, I knew there was some reason we were carrying around those 6-pound laptops, eh?)

Mini-Interview with Developer

Amidio’s Ilya Tretiakov tells CDM about what the heck ESFM is (okay, doesn’t involve a flux capacitor or hyperdrive, as I theorized), how the synth performs, and what the plug-in will be like:

DJ-1800 is a long-time favorite of gigging DJs on the Mac. It’s just gotten an update that adds more DJ controller support and the ability to play songs directly from an iPhone or iPod Touch. “DJing” for most readers of this site involves a strictly no-request policy (and, very often, all-glitch). But it does reveal some of the direction digital music is going – and we were able to find out a little more about the iPhone development scene.

The big news is, the DJ-1800 is the first software to support playing music from the iPhone and iPod Touch into a computer DJ set on the Mac. The advantage: instant requests. DJ-1800’s Dave Addey tells CDM:

Paul Lansky, a titanic name in classical computer music, Princeton professor, and real-time algorithmic pioneer, has gone acoustic. He’s also known in more popular circles for having been musically quoted on Radiohead’s Kid A. The New York Times reports:

After 35 years immersed in the world of computer music, the composer Paul Lansky talks with wonder about the enormous capacities of primitive objects carved from trees or stamped from metal sheets: violins, cellos, trumpets, pianos.

"To create the sound of a violin - wow!" he said in a recent interview. "I can’t do that on a computer."

Paul Lansky: An electronic-music pioneer pulls the plug

The Times seems to want to spin this as the end of an era. But while it correctly argues that electronic music is out of the lab and onto the laptop, to me this is more about Lansky’s own personal reinvention. I like this quote:

“Here I am, 64, and I find myself at what feels like the beginning of a career.”

If you’re hungry for some patch content, the download-rich PatchArena has you covered, with a massive library of free, user-created content:

PatchArena Downloads

There are particularly large sections for the all-in-one studios EnergyXT, FL Studio, and a number of others. (Correction: Intua BeatMaker for iPhone/iPod Touch is promised, as well, though I got my categories confused — no files there now, so we’ll check in if some get posted! But it could be a great place to upload BeatMaker presets; see the thread on PatchArena’s forum.)

Francesco Silvestri writes CDM to let us know about his latest addition, a huge set for Cakewalk’s awesome soft synth Rapture. He says:

I’ve released Muz3um, a free set of patches for Rapture the virtual synthesizer by Cakewalk.This collection is built on waveforms from vintage synthesizers.

It features:

• 661 presets organized in categories (Basses, Keys, Leads, Pads, Sequences)
• 573 waveforms
• 36 impulse responses, taken from amp sims, cabinets and lo-fi speakers, providing additional colors to the set

It’s great having those impulse responses alone – meaning even if you’d rather program your own sounds in Rapture, this could be a must-download.

Update: This also works just fine with Rapture LE, meaning lots of Cakewalk customers can use the pack. (Thanks, Chad!)

Have a go and let us know what you think, Rapture users!

Rapture Muz3um OS X

Rapture Muz3um Windows