Minor releases and bugfixes don’t generally make CDM news, but this is a special occasion. Ableton founder and CEO Gerhard Behles got everyone’s attention this week by making the rare public announcement that Ableton’s development team was temporarily halting work on new features to focus on fixing bugs. That has prompted some seriously impassioned discussion, on the Ableton forum but also here on CDM. Look past some of the hyperbola and name-calling, and you’ll see some insightful comments on both sides. In fact, the whole affair reveals a lot about how music software customers view bugs, updates, support, release cycles, and pricing – developers, take note. Naturally, some of the disagreement comes from whether or not users are experiencing bugs: those that aren’t, as always, are happier. But there’s some common ground, too.

Also sobering: read further into comments, and you’ll see who can really lose out in credibility when stuff doesn’t work the way people expect, even more than a developer – music tech journalists (so, um, yes, folks like me). Not to apologize for myself or my colleagues, but one challenge has long been that it’s difficult for one user to find reliability issues. As the comment thread itself demonstrates, some people are blissfully happy whilst others are in absolute agony; look through the specifics of the changelog, and you’ll see why. One person, based on their behavior in the software, could see dramatic, regular crashes, while another sees nothing at all. Now, CDM has an advantage there – we can operate 24/7/365, we don’t have a weeks-long delay waiting for print, and we have a complete feedback loop with you. If you’re finding issues, I want to hear about them.

New release: Late yesterday, the 8.1.1 release moved from beta to final release, meaning you can go grab it now from the latest releases download section. Synthtopia has posted the full changelog.

Some highlights:

New features are great, and yes, it’s often us users asking for them. But reliability and stability are more important to most of us. It’s therefore a welcome surprise to see Ableton’s CEO post the following message on Ableton’s forum today, announcing that the company will put new features on hold until some reliability issues are fixed. For developers other than Ableton, it should be telling to see how users respond — if this kind of frankness inspires confidence rather than concern, it could mean that talking more openly about bugs and how to fix them could open up more dialog between developers and users:

Update, 12/29: One release with some fixes is already available, in the form of 8.1.1. It appears to address a showstopper bug I personally encountered with Drum Rack performance under certain situations. I’m testing that fix and others. I don’t believe this is the only update to 8.x that Ableton is planning, or the one to which this message refers, but it is a start. Check out the downloads page.

Some of you have experienced and reported problems with Live 8 several months ago that we have still failed to fix. This is both painful and necessary for us to discuss. We owe you sincere apologies, as well as an explanation and outlook for the future.

Novation has unveiled this week their own “free” step sequencer offering for Ableton Live. It’s some lovely work, with basic melodic pattern playback that comes alive once you add some envelopes.

It’s a cool creation — but for me, it’s massively overshadowed by a new video featuring the upcoming Renoise 2.5 beta with the same Launchpad controller.

I’ll introduce it by saying, simply… hot damn.

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?

Looking at the monome hardware, it could be difficult to understand how a simple array of buttons has become the most important musical design of the decade. It’s been the software that has brought this to life, not least the work of stretta (aka Matthew Davidson).

In the early days of electronic music, the creation of modular systems for synthesizing sound was a major breakthrough. Today, we can produce modular systems for composition, for assembling the music itself. And in a world in which “more” is the key word, many of these systems, by design, do less, focusing on the essential.

stretta reached a major landmark late last week, with the release of the maxforlive monome suite. It’s a set of seven Max for Live devices, with variations, which can be dropped into Ableton Live for use in musical projects. But it’s also more than that – it’s a modular model for how stretta thinks, and each module is designed to be used with the others, all without ever having to take your hands or eyes off the monome controller. Included in the pack:

• obo matrix step sequencer
• pitches for playing notes on the monome
• polygomé 64 for polyphonic, step-sequenced, transposing pitches
• press cafe for repeating patterns of pitches
• spectral display for blinking lights to visualize sound
• step filter step-sequenced filter bank
• automatorgator MIDI- and audio- and OSC- controllable pattern gate

Details and download link (no explicit license coming yet, but Matthew has promised an open license):

maxforlive monome suite released

I got the chance to talk to Matthew about the project, how he created it, how to approach using it, and what it was like working with Max for Live.

All photos by Matthew Davidson; released under a Creative Commons attribution license. Click the images for full-sized versions.