Few names inspire love from digital musicians quite like Elektron, makers of the Monomachine, Machinedrum, and SIDstation drum machines. So when Elektron’s founder Daniel Hansson passed away in an auto accident last summer, it came as a shock to the tightly-knit, passionate musical community who loved his work and lost him too young. (It didn’t help that it came within weeks of the loss of Argu, the ingenious discoDSP and Image-Line software developer, also in a car accident.)

Tragedies like this are doubly sad, because in that loss we miss the opportunity to celebrate people whose work we love. So I’m pleased to be able to talk about a celebration of Daniel Hansson today.

The artist community who use Elektron’s stuff have put together a really epic compilation of music in tribute to Daniel. It’s all user-driven — Elektron didn’t do the organizing; the musicians did. The lineup has some of our favorite people contributing, famed and obscure alike:

Autechre, Beautiful Planet Earth, Boom Bip, dDamage, Daedelus, Dntel, Erase, Emnine, Future Image, Honey Claws, How Dragons Disappear, John Starlight, Jon Martensson, John Tejada, Kero, Landstrumm, Material Object, Micronaut, Music International, Orsan Kart, Pelektor, Proxy, scutopus, TS3K, and The Brown Moth, Tiga, The Sea and Cake, TreD Grp, Van Basten, AEVSVS, Wanker’s United

Many of these (The Sea and Cake, Boom Bip, Tiga, Proxy, John Starlight and others) are exclusive tracks.

You get 30 songs for US$5, donated to Daniel’s favorite charity, the World Wildlife Fund. (Additional WWF donations are welcome.) You’re even entered to win a SIDstation. (Yeah, I know — some of you are still smarting from not having won a Tenori-On, just as I am from having had to give it away. At least here, you can lose for a good cause, which is what I intend to do.)

45tribute

Another 25 songs are available free — really free, licensed Creative Commons.

(25 + 30 does not add up to 45, it’s true — 45 was Daniel’s favorite number and was in the name of his C64 group, Zone 45.)

Help Spread the Word

The organizers don’t have a PR budget for this, so we’re their PR — and, hey, I’ll bet we can do a better job, anyway. So do spread the word around.

Thanks to Ryan Faubion, the project manager and curator, for putting this together and letting us know about it, and to forum member / compilation contributor Wendell Edwards aka scutopus for the heads-up.

“Sure, the OLPC project is supposed to do wonderful things for children of the world, but what has it done for me, lately?” Well, if you fancy yourself one of the Earth’s children, the OLPC organization has assembled 8.5 gigabytes of sample content that’s free and Creative Commons-licensed — free to acquire, and free to use.

Jacob Joaquin, who runs the terrific thumbuki blog and the Csound Blog and is part ofthe team developing Csound for the OLPC’s XO laptop, shares the news via Dr. Richard Boulanger at Berklee. (See the press release as a zipped .doc.)

Plenty of people contributed top-notch sound: the Berklee College of Music, Csound developers around the world, electronica celebrity BT (himself a former Berklee and Boulanger student, among other alums), M-Audio and Digidesign, and the Open Path Music Group.

They’re donated under a Creative Commons Attribution license, so you can “freely create, compose, mix, remix, share, distribute and redistribute these samples and use them for any purpose as long as you clearly attribute the source.” That means anyone, anywhere can make use of this library — no OLPC required.

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sound_samples

http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Talk:Sound_samples

Csound, OLPC Style

Whether you like the OLPC laptop itself or not, there’s plenty going on with the project. There’s the immediate impact of the hardware and software, yes — and plenty of opportunity to praise or criticize its utility there (perhaps the mark of a good, ambitious project). But there’s also the secondary impact. The OLPC has captured imaginations in terms of what future computers might be, and what they might mean to more of the population of the planet. More importantly, perhaps, it’s building a family of open source, Linux-based (and cross platform technology-based) tools, which could ultimately outlive the hardware platform. I have my own doubts about the OLPC itself, but the ideas for open sound making are about more than just that hardware. (For instance, just testing Processing, Arduino and Java on this kind of mobile platform can improve that software.)

The sample library is only part of the story; software tools is another part. Powered by Csound, the OLPC team wants to put sound synthesis and music production in the hands of kids — we’re talking serious digital synthesis here, not just GarageBand-style looping. That goal could ultimately go well beyond just the OLPC.

Csound is a free and open source development tool for sound design, synthesis, and signal processing, with a lineage that goes back to original developer Barry Vercoe and in turn descended from the first digital synthesis tools created by Max Mathews. It is the audio/music development system for the OLPC project, with integration with Python (though I’ve heard we should also see additional Java development).

Those geeky details aside, you’ll see in many of the reviews of the OLPC writers mentioning unusual and fun music toys. Those journalists are stumbling upon some of the projects below, and the process is just getting started.

Jacob had shared some brief looks at what he’s working on on his OLPC, but here’s the full overview from Dr. Boulanger, because there’s quite a lot happening:

Craig Anderton is easily the most prolific music technology writer on the planet. We got an exclusive interview with him at Cakewalk at the NAMM show to talk about the technologist who has had the biggest impact on him: Bob Moog.

Craig talked to us about two projects, each a tribute to Moog’s legacy. First, there’s The Minimoog Tribute, an inexpensive expansion pack for Cakewalk’s Rapture and Rapture LE synths. Why another set of Moog samples, given there’s a fake Minimoog patch or thirty in just about every synth? Craig tells us he wanted to do something different: really create patches that “cover” the classics rather than duplicate them, taking advantage of samples of his personal Minimoog but blending them with Rapture’s digital capabilities.

Craig also talks about why he chose Rapture, because “it basically says twist my knobs, man, have a good time.” (I won’t touch that one.) In all seriousness, he describes the relationship with the synth as being a personal one.

And this isn’t just a preset pack. It’s got gear porn in it, too — cue the Moog porn bassline.

Craig Anderton’s MiniMoog Tribute Expansion Pack [Cakewalk]

Liz interviewed Craig for CDM at the Cakewalk booth:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk - Moog Tribute for Rapture [cdm@blip.tv]

But the real reason Craig wanted to have this interview wasn’t just to talk about his product — it was to make an impassioned plea for The Moog Foundation, which is working to save the vast archival materials Bob Moog collected through his life. They’re not just the history of Bob, or the history of Moog synthesizers: they’re a chronicle of the history of electronic music. And they now have met a formidable foe: humid southern weather. But you can help:

NAMM08: Craig Anderton @ Cakewalk - Moog Foundation [cdm@blip.tv]

A portion of the proceeds from the Minimoog expansion pack for Rapture will be donated by both Craig and Cakewalk to the fund, but even if you’ve only got $10 or $15, consider giving something directly to the foundation — or volunteer or contribute in other ways.

Moog Foundation Call to Action

Donation form

Have Moog synths influenced the way you use non-Moog synths and software? We’d love to hear how — aside from the obvious ways, of course. I know my approach to sound was deeply affected by using both the Buchla and Moog modular systems, even applying thinking about sound and synthesis to very different digital systems. Let us know in comments.

Musical activists are opposing a Japanese nuclear reprocessing plant. What’s in it for you: free musical downloads opposing contamination by nuclear radiation. (Any pro-radiation readers will have to look elsewhere.) Nuclear reprocessing is a way of reclaiming spent nuclear fuels. Sounds great, right — recycling and whatnot? Unfortunately, there are serious risks involved. The plant, Rokkasho-mura reprocessing plant in Japan’s Aomori Prefecture, is under fire because:

1. Just two weeks into testing, after the plant opened last year, radioactive water containing plutonium and uranium spilled inside the plant.
2. According to a recent report, this particular plant has a design flaw that makes it susceptible to Japan’s frequent earthquakes — and the plant maker is alleged to have kept this flaw secret for eleven years.
3. Reprocessing in general has been criticized for increasing the risk of global nuclear terrorism.
4. Using nuclear energy as a power source poses numerous risks throughout the fuel cycle both in terms of the environment and terror targets.
5. Personally, they had me at the radioactive water.

Stop Rokkasho.org: Hear [Music downloads]
Via the good peoples of Synthtopia

Music with political agendas has been controversial among readers of this site. But when high-profile musicians like Ryuichi Sakamoto are organizing musical protests, and the likes of Kraftwerk contribute songs, there’s no question these events have an impact.

Massive Attack today pointed their email list to demonstrations protesting a renewed nuclear defense system in the UK. What’s unique about this particular movement is the number of high-profile British musicians expressing their position, including Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, Ian Brown, Jarvis Cocker, Bloc Party, Franz Ferdinand and Razorlight:

Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn, Massive Attack, Bloc Party: No Bomb! [ENERGYLAB]

The movement has a theme song, as well: “Don’t Bomb When You’re the Bomb,” by Blur. Interestingly, the single had a mysterious release: it showed up in UK record shops with only a plain red label and the name of the track written in Arabic. Music link and more explanation from high-cool:

DON’T BOMB WHEN YOU’RE THE BOMB [high-cool.net]

Virgin Records is in on the act, too, with a no-name MySpace page with the track. Nice to see one of the majors taking a political stand.

A fan on YouTube has even assembled a music video:

These days, labels are coming up with all sorts of ways to reinvigorate their back catalogs for profit-making, but here’s a novel concept: putting them to work for peace. 25 years after the death of John Lennon, Yoko Ono has contributed the entire Lennon songbook (including “Imagine”) to Amnesty International, to help attract new supporters to the cause of international human rights. The immediate call to action: seeking a global Arms Trade Tready to help prevent gun violence. Artists involved include Black Eyed Peas, Snow Patrol, The Cure, and The Postal Service. (Shown below: Snow Patrol in the studio.)

The CD release Saturday December 10 coincides with International Human Rights Day. Certainly, there are few worthier organizations for such an undertaking; Amnesty is a powerful global grassroots organization with stringent guidelines to maintain their focus on fairness in demanding human rights standards worldwide. (I got the chance to work firsthand with Amnesty on a campaign to defend environmental activists; they’re an extraordinary organization.) Video, downloadable music, calls to action, and other information at the official Amnesty site:

Make Some Noise [Amnesty International]

It’s great to see high-profile acts getting involved, but many other musicians are singing a human rights message in their music, too; see our previous story on Afrobeat music for Sudan. The interesting question here is whether the Web will make these efforts reach a broader audience.

Indie film and iTunes? Maybe hard to believe a day after the announcement when you can only watch a few ABC TV shows or Pixar shorts, but Dave Ahl of Modiba Productions writes us in with an optimistic take:

I just wanted to let you know how revolutionary Apple’s announcement regarding paid downloadable video segements is for independent film-makers. Modiba Productions (an African music and film company raising money and awareness for African social and political causes thru the arts) has been waiting for precisely this business model.

For the first time ever, small companies without retail distribution or a broadcast/cable deal not only have a way to reach audiences worldwide but
also have the means of funding projects: simply sell video segments for $1.99 through iTunes. At present, it’s just ABC and Pixar but –like the
iTunes music store– this will soon open up to small independent film companies whose work will be featured alongside major media corporations.

I encourage everyone to check out some work Modiba has been doing, including a short film to promote our benefit album “ASAP: the Afrobeat Sudan Aid Project” (which hit #1 on the iTunes World Music Charts):

before on CDM, and both the music and cause are highly worthy. iTunes as a much-needed outlet for indie film? Sign me up. I’ll let you know when we hear more. I’m not likely to be watching this on a video iPod, but on my Mac or PC laptop? Absolutely.

Musicians continue to band together for the victims of Katrina in the New Orleans area and Mississippi. For just $25, you can get 100% of your money to Habitat for Humanity for rebuilding homes, and get an amazing library of drum loop samples from some of America’s drumming masters to lift your musical spirits:

Spectrasonics New Orleans Strut ($25 Web download)

Another fundraiser for victims of Katrina, by way of our friend David Battino at O’Reilly Digital Media:

CD Baby: 100% of Profits to Red Cross

Thousands of artists are participating, and CD Baby is certainly an outfit I trust. We at CDM always advocate supporting independent music, so I certainly can’t resist pointing this one out.

Favorite artists on CD Baby? Chime in with CD suggestions in comments. Better yet, let us know if you’ve got music of your own on CD Baby included in the fundraising efforts.

More bad news continues to pour in from New Orleans, as musicians rally to keep strong and help.

Associated Press had reported R&B legend Fats Domino was missing, but good news — he’s been rescued.

Harry Connick, Jr. calls New Orleans residents “freakishly strong”. Friday he’ll be part of a televised fundraiser with other musicians.

That fundraising concert is likely to be one of many, as musicians rally for the affected communities. Promoter John Vlautin has sent me information on a benefit in Denver; details on that event plus where to donate after the jump. (For more donation links, in case you’re not already inundated with them, see previous story.)