For all the emphasis on learning how to use creative tools the proper way, it’s often when you misuse a feature that it really becomes a powerful tool. So, in the spirit of some of the “mistutorials” from Ableton’s own Dennis DeSantis, here’s our friend Michael Hatsis of New York’s Track Team Audio / Warper Party / Dubspot with a really unusual way to achieve scratching effects.

You know the Ping Pong effect for its clichéd, stereo-panning echo effects. But here, it goes an entirely different direction: now that Live 8 has added new delay modes, you can create some special effects that don’t sound like the typical effect. Mike manages to warp and bend Ping Pong into something that sounds a lot like scratching. He warns that “this is not meant to replace vinyl nor will it produce a totally authentic sounding scratch sound.” On the other hand, you start to get some sounds that are reminiscent of scratching but sound unique, which I think is a Very Good Thing.

Live 8 users, download the template:

http://www.trackteamaudio.com/videos/scratchtemplatelive8.zip

There’s also some nice discussion happening over on the Ableton blog. (Main request: automation / dummy clips for more sound-warping power.)

Video: Total misuse of a ping pong delay – scratch effects

(And those of you Pd/Max/SuperCollider/Chuck/Reaktor users out there, maybe this will inspire some DIY effects along similar lines.)

Previously:

Ableton Live 8 Creative Tutorial Videos: Using and Misusing Groove Extraction

Ableton Live 8 Creative Tutorial Videos: Misusing Frequency Shifter

(and, yes, much as I love Live 8, I welcome other tools, too – anyone interested in tutorials to request / tutorials you want to make?)

Selling merch on the road – whether your band has CDs and shirts or you run your own enterprising business in geeky goods as our contributor Liz McLean Knight does – is a big challenge. Buying a full-blown credit card terminal is expensive. That’s why I’m absolutely with Hypebot’s Virgil Dickerson: running credit card numbers on an iPhone is a game changer.

iPhone App Adds Mobile Credit Card Processing to DIY Toolkit

The application in question is called Innerfence, and Apple gets it, too, as they’ve added it to a new TV ad. The app is US$49.99, pricey for an iPhone app but a whole lot less money – and a whole lot more convenient – than a big, clunky conventional terminal. Right now, you also get a $50 gift certificate to iTunes, so you can catch up on LOST and buy the new Depeche Mode and feel like the whole thing is free. The back end is powered by Authorize.net, one of the major vendors of online credit card processing. Unlike Authorize.net’s tangled website, though, this is a beautiful, polished app that works the way you want. Ironically, it puts to shame the terminals Apple employees themselves use at the Apple Store. (In fact, it sounds as though Apple will indeed — unsurprisingly — replace those Windows Mobile-powered devices with iPhones, says AppleInsider.)

There’s no physical scanner, but for casual sales that’s probably okay.

Let me get this straight.

Burial and Four Tet are working together on a record.

But there’s …

No artwork.

No promos.

An entirely … black cover?

And it’s vinyl only?

I’d believe the whole thing were an April Fool’s joke, if the folks at Bleep didn’t put out an email:

We was so excited about this one, we couldn’t wait till next week to tell you… A split release shrouded in darkness (hence the artwork; no sales notes, no audio, no promos). We have been told the artwork will be in a black cover with a black sleeve on good old fashioned black vinyl.

One disc, two sides crafted by two of the most insurrectionary, innovative producers of the last twenty years, Burial and Four Tet… Believe us, this will fly off the shelves. Now available on pre-order and ready to ship for the release date of May 4th. Do not get left out. "Essential Purchase" has never sounded so right.

Look, they even included a thumbnail image of the album art. (I’m not making this up, this is literally what was included in the email.)

Maybe it’s an image of Cleveland at Night.

These guys do know the “Smell the Glove” “Black Album” in Spinal Tap was a joke, right?

The really amazing thing is, black-on-black vinyl-only limited release with only two cuts can’t even distract from the news that Burial and Four Tet are doing an album together.

The release hits May 4 for US$8.99 as a limited-run 12” vinyl.

Is this the test pressing?

It’s Friday afternoon, so you have my official permission as Editor-in-Chief to quote random lines from that scene in comments. GO!

Official release page / preorder from Bleep

(Wait, ships 04.05? I’ve missed it already? Oh, yeah … the rest of you in the world aren’t American. Never mind.)

Update: will it go fast? Will it ever. It’s already sold out, in something like an hour.

Avid, the parent company of music product makers Digidesign, M-Audio, and Sibelius, has decided to assert the brand of its mothership more aggressively. As near as I can tell, that means you won’t see the M-Audio, Digidesign, or Sibelius brand names any more – along with video maker Pinnacle. You’ll see, presumably, Avid Pro Tools? (Right now, you see the Digi site with an Avid banner across the top that says “Digidesign is Avid.” But that was true before, so I don’t really know what this exactly means.)

Avid has also unveiled a new logo made, cleverly, to look like transport buttons on video and audio equipment.

I have to say, I have extremely mixed feelings about this, for a number of reasons. And by mixed, I mean mixed – this could be really positive, or really … not. The good news is, having one brand and one brand strategy probably does make a whole lot of sense. The (potential) downside:

I’m not exactly doing the Android a great service by talking first about all the applications you can get for the iPhone. But I’m still optimistic about the potential for the Android platform. Because it’s built on the Linux kernel, because Google has open-sourced nearly the entire platform, because Google is taking a far more open, developer-friendly approach, and because Android will run – license-free – on almost any hardware, there’s no reason to doubt the Android has a lot in store in the future.

That said, it’s not the distant future in which you’re interested. What can you get in the short term?

With the current SDK, the answer is simple: not much. The Java-based developer tools initially released for the Android are great for building various kinds of mobile apps, but they fall short for anything creative or audio-related. I think they deserve some patience: Apple took a long time to release any SDK at all, and Android out of the gate includes features still lacking on Apple’s platform. The bad news for musicians is, it’s features like real-time audio capabilities that are lacking.

Fortunately, Google has a new 1.5 SDK (“Cupcake”) available in previews now, which should push out to devices very shortly. Briefly, this includes features that allow better audio performance and functionality, plus a full-blown environment for dynamic and responsive music unlike anything seen even on the iPhone. JET from SONiVOX (yes, the folks who do sample libraries) is the best part of this. I’ve talked to the SONiVOX folks, and you can even expect some desktop tools to make creating dynamic music easier. It’s more like a music engine for games than a music tool, per se, but a) it should allow brilliant game scores and b) I think we can warp it to other uses, as well.

And there’s already at least one app that starts to develop the potential of musical applications, called – conveniently enough – Musical.