What’s the best way to help get someone started on computer music making? From comments, we get this request from a mother looking to buy the first software on a budget for her teenage son. I’m, uh, hoping your son isn’t reading this (actually, he probably won’t mind – just remember, act surprised).

I am completely new to this kind of software, but my teenage son is requesting the likes for Christmas. I started out looking at Ableton Live 8, but am a bit wary of the price. I’ve also looked at Reason and Apple’s Logic Studio. The price is a bit of a deterent, (he’s not an only child) and I have also looked at the Live Intro and Logic Express. I would love some advice on what to get. He is wanting something that will let him play around with the existing song library on his iPod (mixing songs together, making remixes of individual songs etc), as well as something he can create his own music with. He’d like to be able to save or record what he does. Eventually he might want to be able to plug in a guitar or mic and add his own playing/singing to what he has done on the computer. Any suggestions?

The monome phenomenon in music making owes a lot to a combination of powerful elements: elegant, human-readable messages that describe button presses (using OSC), open software built with a patching environment that anyone can modify and customize, and sample-slicing audio playback mayhem with the popular MLR tool.

In one tutorial, you can learn about all of these elements. The idea here is to use the monome hardware, but this could be easily adapter to other grid controllers or a device of your own invention. You’ll also learn a bit of Pd (Pure Data), the free and open-source cousin to Max/MSP. It demonstrates that you don’t need the commercial Max for all of these applications. And that’s important even if you’re a die-hard Max lover, because Pd can run places Max can’t – meaning knowing a little of both could help you out.

By the time you’ve finished with the tutorial, you’ll have learned about OSC messages and how do to basic sample slicing in Pd – good stuff. It’s the work of Ben aka ucacjbs.

How to make a simple version of mlr in Pd [monome docs]

Message thread: Tutorial: a basic MLR in Pd (pure data) [monome forum]

Yes, the monome community rocks.

Let us know what you think of the tutorial and if you have other feedback / ideas / mods.

Seeing a tracker interface for the first time can be intimidating. But dive in a bit deeper, and you’ll discover what’s actually a very efficient interface for programming in musical sequences and working with samples. With just ten days left in the Renoise – Indamixx music production contest, there’s still time to get up and running using even the demo version of Renoise (into which you can import samples). And this could be a great excuse to learn a new tool.

Dac, who’s a big part of support and community for Renoise, has put together a nice tutorial showing off the workflow in the tool. It’s nothing all that unusual: bring in samples, assemble patterns, make music. Some of the voice over is hard to hear, but this is a good start. Now, I still like reading and writing better than video just in terms of how I learn, so I may try to work on a written version for the end of the week; feel free to shout encouragement.

For more Renoise inspiration, forum regular djnick sends along a PsyTrance video made in Renoise – so, yes, you can make PsyTrance with a tracker, too, if you like. He samples Peter Jennings talking about ecstasy. Yeah, whatever – as if you can make Peter Jennings any more trippy. Watching Jennings is the ultimate natural high.

Alongside our Renoise + Indamixx netbook-optimized production competition, I’m kicking off this week a series of CDM and guest tutorials on working with Linux audio tools, Renoise, and more. First up, here’s a basic look at how to route the free-as-in-beer linuxDSP effects toolkit into the powerful, modern, open-source DAW Ardour. Correction: I implied that linuxDSP had an open source license, which is not correct. It should be considered “freeware” but not free software. Ardour, of course, is fully open source, and this is as much a tutorial on how to use JACK to route effects as it is linuxDSP per se.

http://www.linuxdsp.co.uk/

Vocoding Voices in Live 8 from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

Continuing our growing collection of Live 8 video tutorials, our friend Bjorn of Covert Operators sends over a terrific tutorial on making use of the vocoder. Now, unlike the “misuse” tutorials we’ve been running, this is actually how this effect is designed to be used. On the other hand, if you’re still interested in misuse – and you’re not terribly interested in conventional effects – this can be a great way to wrap your head around the tool’s proper function, before you start warping it in another direction.

I think it’ll be fantastic having a vocoder ready to use, and if you haven’t played with a software vocoder, Live 8 should be a nice place to start. If any of you take this in another direction, do let us know.

Covert Operators has a whole bunch of downloads, tips, and tricks some available cheap, some free.