On Twitter, follow @cdmblogs for the latest.
If you prefer Facebook, simply like our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/musicmotionnoise

We hope to do more with both these accounts in 2012, too. Marsha Vdovin is here, and counts fully as a NAMM veteran (that sounds really wrong), James Grahame, creator of our MeeBlip synth and the blog Retro Thing is about, and of course I’ll be out and about, too, posting impressions. Stay tuned.

But whether you’re in the US or in one of the many other parts of the world where we count readers, let’s pause to consider what makes us thankful.

I’m immensely thankful to have the opportunity to make music. I find it’s always worth reminding myself of that, and reminding to fight for the time to do it, to keep myself sane. Highlights for me so far in 2011: playing a friend’s grand piano in Brooklyn on a wintry-feeling March day (the samples of which make up the performance Saturday), spending Hurricane Irene jamming on a Mono/Poly with King Britt and Rucyl Mills, firing up Pd and getting lost in granular samples on a gray day in Berlin, assembling a track in Reason or Ableton in a hotel room… these are the sort of moments where, all at once, you find under almost any circumstances you can reclaim your sense of center and happiness, and give everything else clarity.

I’m also, and I don’t get to say this enough, unbelievably thankful for the readers of this site and some of the print projects I do. As a professional writer, writing is not a claimed right, but a privilege granted at the pleasure of your readership. Then, on this site, I get the gift of being able to see the inventions and expressions of people around the world. And yes, even getting criticisms and hearing people argue with what I say is a terrific motivator, one I don’t take for granted, especially when print writing remains largely without feedback. For me as a musician, it’s come to be part of who I am – not only my personal output, but all this input, having the chance to write about what’s happening. It doesn’t conflict with being a musician; it’s an essential element of that process for me.

I’m so grateful, in fact, for these two things, that I feel I can always do more.

And more is coming. I’m thankful that after a lot of work behind the scenes, there are new possibilities that lie ahead to expand upon what CDM does. And yes, as some readers or residents of Berlin have worked out, I’ve personally for the last few weeks been in the capital of Germany and not the city of New York. You may also have met Marsha Vdovin, who came onboard earlier this year as Business Development Manager and who has already moved forward what CDM can do and how it can grow.

Also, as of this morning, delays suffered by our open source MeeBlip project are at last coming to a close, beginning with new shipments of the MeeBlip micro and all-new firmware for all models, available now on GitHub. (We’ll have a full update on the MeeBlip project next week, as everyone gets back from the holiday.)

Most importantly, I’m working now on plans to completely rebuild Create Digital Noise and give readers and like-minded artists the community they deserved, instead of the failed experiment we got. If you’re interested in being part of that conversation, get in touch; otherwise, more on that very soon.

But it’s those things for which I’m thankful that motivate all of this. And I’m thankful, as always, not so much for what lies in the past or somewhere off in the future, but what is halfway-done and in process, partway through the story, which is where I find the really good stuff lies. In that spirit, here’s a documentary that deals with the notion of delivering in beta, and getting things out the door – something that goes as much for music as it does for inventions, I think. (As it happens, director Gabriel Shalom and photo editor/titler Patrizia Kommerell are sitting next to me in a hotel lobby as I write this.)

What are you thankful for? Let us know – or have a look at ten music technologies I gave thanks for last year.

In performance and art, sound and music constantly pull against the formless abstraction of the computer, to find physical expression and realization. In physical control, in tangible production, and in exploration of space, artists explore techniques new and old to refine the still-youthful medium of electronic and digital sound. That adventure is at the heart of a new series at a gallery space in the heart of Berlin, LEAP – the Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance, at Alexanderplatz.

I’m pleased to announce that CDM will be partnering with this new performance/exhibition series, entitled BodyControlled, as a media partner. In the shadow of Berlin’s Fernsehturm (TV tower), we’ll get the chance to share the work of an international roster of artists with everyone else, both in live streams and other documentation, as we look at some of the more experimental threads in electronic music today. (I like the symbolism there, at least, now broadcast over the Internets instead of via the air.) Berlin, like my previous home New York, is a convenient international crossroads, a place where you can find face-to-face some of the work from other parts of Germany, Europe, and beyond.

And I think we’re going to have a real blast kicking the series off this Saturday night, 8pm Berlin time November 26. The premiere of the series begins with installations and performances that manipulate spaces, real, virtual, and imagined. New works make noises with reel-to-reel tape, code, mechanical percussion, and more. I’ll be playing a live set with Pd, producing granular architectures from the harmonious sounds of piano and synth. And a highlight promises to be Robert Henke (of Monolake and Ableton fame, among other things), performing an epic 12-hour performance from just before midnight to morning the next day. (That leaves ample time for visitors to slip off to Berlin’s legendary club scene – or a nap – then see how things have evolved after dawn, if you so choose.)

Here, we take a first look at some of the artists, whose work can be sculptural, challenging, and adventurous. In the first preview videos, we see artists working with the mechanical qualities of tape and robotically-driven percussion to make sounds in physical space. A diverse program is slated for the coming months, too, so I can promise some diversity in ideas and aesthetic. The lineup:

Performances on the 26th November:
Stephen Cornford & Paul Whitty (UK)
Peter Kirn (US)
Robert Henke (DE)

Installations until 2nd December:
Stephen Cornford (UK)
Julian Oliver (NZ)
João Martinho Moura (PT)
Robert Mathy (AT)

Additionally, a recording of Robert Henke’s performance will be played as part of the installation

Let’s have a closer look at some of the upcoming work:

Stephen Cornford, in Binatone Galaxy, spotlights the strangely-beautiful sounds of the mechanisms of tape players, moving them from playback devices into the realm of being themselves instruments. Listen to the video above to hear what a chorus of recycled tape players sounds like, courtesy amplification.

Playing with Paul Whitty, Cornford also makes tape players into noise-making live instruments. One such performance below, though expect each of these to take on their own identity in Berlin this week.

At top, Robert Mathy’s work effectively becomes a “score” for a space, as percussion sets the environment into a choreographed set of sounds. (See also work like David Byrne’s Playing the Building project, which transformed an old ferry building in Manhattan. Here, Mathy works on a smaller scale.)

Volume consists of 24 electronic motors mounted on surfaces with different materiality, which are part of the exhibition room. Each motor is equipped with a small metal spike. When a motor gets activated, the spike knocks on the surface of the object on which the motor is mounted and produce a specific sound. All Motors are connected to a main control, which consists of an Arduino board and some electronic parts.
The score is composed of a series of varying random algorithms. They are diversified in temporal and spatial coordination, as every sound has his individual origin in space. The score is adapted in a new way for every room where the installation is shown.

João Martinho Moura‘s “Supercollider Shape,” above, is a minimal virtual sculpture of sound and imagined ink.

Robert Henke’s program notes:

The music of Robert Henke is preoccupied with the present: how something sounds in that moment and what color and substance convey a rhythmic phrase? Music as a state. Only later will this condition be formulated over time. The artist’s installations are always explicit and in turn relate to the phenomena of temporal change.

The work Microsphere, developed for LEAP, combines both fields and explores the boundaries between installation and live performance. Acoustic sounds from percussion instruments distributed throughout the room are recorded during the performance, slowed down repeatedly, atomized into tiny particles and distributed to many speakers. Over the course of twelve hours, more and more sounds are produced and the result is an ever-growing repertoire of spatial-tonal gestures. The composer withdraws from the machine and lets it develop and change itself constantly over long periods of time. The structure of the performance arises from many variable and instantaneous decisions during the performance. The possible outcomes may be small and delicate, almost inaudible and static, or loud, brutal and full of complex repetitions.

Watch the performances

From anywhere in the world:

Tune in 8p (20h) Saturday (CET) / UTC + 1. Performances at 9p, 10p, and then 11p – 11a. Livestream link:
http://www.livestream.com/leapberlin

In Berlin:

While we remain committed to covering this for the rest of the planet, for those handful of you in Berlin, of course, we’d love to see you in person.

Facebook event

Opening and Performances | 26th November 2011 – 20.00

Exhibition | 28th November 2011 – 2nd December 2011, 12h-18h

LEAP
Lab for Electronic Arts and Performance
(Berlin Carré 1. Stock)
Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 13
10178 Berlin

FREE entry

LEAP isn’t the easiest place to find. Here’s a video to guide you in the door (add the Benny Hill theme music if you feel it’s appropriate):

And, as I say so often … stay tuned.

Full program notes [English] [PDF]
http://www.leapknecht.de/

We live in a fragile world, and I’m immensely grateful for the opportunities we’re gifted to share ideas about music making and engineering, sound and tools.

I will continue our regular content, but I also want to ask all of our readers to reflect on our friends and colleagues impacted directly and indirectly by the aftermath of Friday’s tsunami, earthquake, and nuclear crisis. It is to date one of the most far-reaching disasters in its connection to the larger audience for this site, though we remain sensitive to loss throughout our community worldwide. I want to specifically send our thoughts to our Japanese readers, and our friends at Korg, Roland, Yamaha, and too many other manufacturers and press outlets to name as they face the challenges ahead.

We rely on electricity and network availability to even be connected to one another via this outlet; recent events in Egypt and Japan correlate to odd silences in countries that otherwise make large showings in server logs. But absent those connections, we can still contribute.

I’m sure there will be musical benefits; one such sound design project is being discussed at the monome forum. But as we as musicians and artists share one larger global community (this site alone registers visits from seven continents, and we’re English-only), here are good ways to give. All are in what I’ve been able to research efficient, generous, and well-respected organizations, and all equip themselves to handle not only these most recent events, but unexpected crises around the world. I’ll be giving on CDM’s behalf.

International Rescue Committee
Global Giving
American Red Cross | International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies
Tech writer Rick Martin has compiled an excellent list of ways to give sorted by where you are in the world.

Updated: See also the record label 12k online shop who are giving 100% of profits (and are themselves supporters of Japanese music), and, in turn, their beneficiary Japan Society’s relief fund

It’s easy for the other things we do to seem meaningless in the face of tragedy, but I believe that part of why we share with each other, commercially and culturally, with music and with tools, is because it is a gift to do so, to be part of a greater community of people. Wherever you are in the world, I can’t thank you enough for that.

Take a very short survey, and you’ll be entered to win some six months of intensive training in music production and Ableton Live, or copies of some of our favorite recent software, a two-app box set of Reason and Record from Propellerhead or Roger Linn’s AdrenaLinn Sync.

Knowing more about our readers helps us develop Create Digital Music, Create Digital Motion, and the Noisepages community as free resources, both by letting us know about you and helping us to work with the sponsors who pay our bills. It’s also a chance for you to tell us where you’d most like to see us invest.

I think privacy is important. Questions are kept strictly anonymous; we don’t associate your IP address, location, or email address with your answers. You’ll answer a minute or two of quick questions, then be provided with a separate form for your email (because otherwise we can’t contact you if you win); winners will be randomly selected.

I’m also pleased to get the chance to help our friends at DubSpot celebrate the launch of their online school on Monday. The Live training includes 66 hours of hands-on instruction and labs and three levels of Ableton Live education over half a year.

Reason and Record Duo from Propellerhead gives you the latest version of both these music-making tools for Mac and Windows – a virtual rack of gear, plus recording, mixing, and production.

AdrenaLinn Sync 2 provides beat-synced modulation and effects and now runs on Windows (VST/RTAS) or Mac (VST/AU/RTAS).

The survey will close 11:59 PM NYC (US Eastern) time, Thursday, February 3. You must enter before that time in order to qualify.

Enter the survey to win!

http://cdm.2011.sgizmo.com/s3/

And thanks, as always, for your support for this independent site and community. More on the prizes below (with some rather interesting videos, all).

Ableton Live Training Online from DubSpot

DubSpot offers training from its expert staff, like the free tutorial featured above.

Ableton Live Core Program ($2,495)
6-months / Three levels / 24 sessions / 66 hours of hands-on instruction + labs

The Core Program introduces you to the fundamentals of producing music with Ableton Live, creating a number of sketches while developing your own unique sound, then developing your ideas into two fully fleshed out songs.

Courses:
Ableton Live Level 1: Shake Hands with Live
Ableton Live Level 2: Completing Your First Track
Ableton Live Level 3: Production Essentials

http://www.dubspot.com/ableton-live/

AdrenaLinn Sync

AdrenaLinn Sync is a software plug-in from Roger Linn Design that provides the same unique beat-synced filter modulation and sequencing effects of our AdrenaLinn III guitar pedal, plus quite a bit more. Though intended for guitar, it adds fascinating rhythmic tonal effects to any instrument or processed audio.

AdrenaLinn Sync transforms your input signal–guitar, keyboard, turntable, loops, etc.–into dramatic rhythmic patterns of filtered, resonated, chopped, pulsed, spiked, sequenced, looped, delayed and otherwise manipulated tones.

AdrenaLinn Sync

Reason and Record Duo

Record – super intuitive, streamlined recording software. Reason – the legendary virtual studio rack packed with synths, samplers, effects and all the electronic music production tools you need.

Combine the two and they fuse into one incredibly powerful application, while still remaining the fast, lean, rock solid music production environment that lets you stay focused on your music making.

Reason

Record

Enter the survey to win!

http://cdm.2011.sgizmo.com/s3/

What’s truly wish-worthy? Is it a manuscript paper notebook? An iPhone app? A glitched-out hardware effect? A DAW? A sample library? A CD or book?

Before we put together some of our own suggestions for this year’s gift guide, we want to hear from you. You can add to your own wish list. You can add something you’ve gotten yourself you think someone else – or even a beginner – might want themselves. If you make something you want people to know about, be you a large vendor or garage maker, you can pitch us here, too.

There’s only one requirement: this year I’m absolutely looking for practicality. Sure, someone leaving a restore Buchla 100 Series modular with a bow on it would be nice, but there are too many terrific affordable choices to fail to focus on those. Be aware I’ll be skimming lots of answers, too, so get your elevator pitch right or find a snappy few words as a headline if you want our attention.

Enter the Google Doc directly, or fill it out here; form below.

Oliver Chesler and his Wire to the Ear blog have long been among my favorite reading on the Web. It turns out he and I have both been pondering the idea of doing an audio podcast to talk about trends in music and technology. After we did a panel together, the idea was irresistible. Sure, podcasts have exactly none of the hype they once did, but both of us listen to spoken word content voraciously.

So, here’s the first experiment. We get a chance to speak, uncensored and off the cuff, about mobile apps for iOS we’re actually using, how MIDI might work on those gadgets, Rock Band 3, the MeeBlip, and items currently in the news. Expect very different topics in future. Audio below, on SoundCloud.
Music Tech in Review – Episode 1 – Podcast Chat by cdm

We’ve also assembled links into a handy Bit.ly link bundle; even if you don’t care for listening to us chat, this will give you a hint as to what’s on our radar.
http://bit.ly/musictechtalk1

This was entirely impromptu, but we do intend to plan ahead and do it right and make it a regular thing. That raises a couple of questions. What would you want in such a program? (High on my list: adding some actual music and music discussion, guests, interactive Q&A…) And on a more technical level, I found that there wasn’t an easy way to simply host audio that would work in podcast form. Ideally, you’d want something easily digestible by iTunes and non-iTunes players (I subscribe with Banshee and Google Listen, too), and I’d love to have something we could recommend to bloggers, perhaps even helping them get set up on Noisepages. Any suggestions, readers who have been paying more attention than I? (If you don’t know, let us know how you listen and I’ll keep researching.)

Updated: SoundCloud have added subscription links for podcast readers; you’ll find them on our profile! It’s an experimental feature, but give it a go and let us know how it works. More on this stuff to come…

And, of course, if you prefer words or video, we’ll have more of those.

I’m happy today to introduce a new Create Digital Music, a new Create Digital Motion, and a new community called Noisepages.

The design this week represents a collaboration between Richard Bailey (aka musician proem), who designed and coded the site, graphic designer Nathanael Jeanneret, who conceived and designed the new layout and identity and graphics assets, and myself. We’ve built what I’m already finding a better platform for CDM’s stories, one I look forward to seeing every morning. Aside from how it looks, it’ll be a vastly more flexible and powerful platform for everything we do.

Just as importantly, I’d like to introduce Noisepages. CDM has always been driven by the community of people around it, and your ideas, advice, and creative work. A couple of years ago, we set out to build a community built on writing and creating, and not only social networking and chat. Built on BuddyPress and in beta today, Noisepages is:

• Groups: Gather with other interested folks and chat on forums, share events, and soon other information.
• Blogs: WordPress-based sites where you can chronicle your latest music, VJ reels, Ableton sets, Pd patches, circuit bends – whatever it is.
• Social features: Make intelligent connections with other people and stories, and consolidate information from other networks.

Because there are so many excellent specialized forums out there, we hope to make Noisepages a place where we can come together and share. The site will be free and ad-supported; we’re also working on pricing for features like additional storage and keeping ads off your site if you don’t want them.

Blog data is yours to freely import and export via WordPress, and we want to contribute back to the community the code we develop and the things we learn. That means being relevant to those of you already using your own self-hosted WordPress sites.

For their work on both these sites, special thanks to Jaymis Loveday, who helped conceive Noisepages, to Jaymis, Cal Wilson, and Matt Ganucheau for their development work, and to Wallace Winfrey for helping guide our server infrastructure.

Rollout and adjustment of both CDM and Noisepages will continue over the next few days, and there’s plenty more to say, including what we’re learning about HTML5 and BuddyPress and how Noisepages works. But for now, I’m excited to have the new site out in the world.

I look forward to what’s next.

Lastly, below, a video interpretation of how I hope the launch doesn’t go:

We hear your opinions in comments (sometimes loudly). Now it’s time to be counted. Which computing platforms do you own, and which do you use for music – desktop Windows, Mac, Linux, mobile iOS, Linux, Android? We’re not interested in what you don’t want to see (sorry, trolls), but we do want to know what you want to see more of. Connecting to the platforms you care about is important to CDM. This isn’t a popularity contest – I always enjoy the chance to write to an underserved minority. But it is a chance for us to look at who’s out there, and we’ll share the results. (It’s been a couple of years since our last survey, and a lot has happened.)

I’m not offering an incentive for this survey, for fear it might bias the results, but tell your CDM reading friends to answer – it’s democracy in action.

Answer now… Survey closes 11:59pm Sunday, August 8!

Direct link: [mobile device-friendly for iPhone/Android/etc.]
http://cdm.platform.sgizmo.com/s3/

Want to register your vote on the visual side? See our parallel survey for Create Digital Motion.

Embedded survey below. (RSS readers will likely need to click through to the site.)

It occurs to me that I tend to write long articles, and people don’t always read them closely. And sometimes I do indeed obscure my own ideas, so I’ll make this as clear as possible.

James Lewin on Synthtopia responds to criticism of the iPhone, and differentiates his angle from my own. It’s well worth reading, and clarifies his thoughts, but there still seems to be some confusion about where I stand.

I can spell it out. I’m really not a fanboy of … uh, whatever I’m supposed to be a fanboy of. (Did someone say Windows? Oh, yeah. I can never get enough of Windows. You totally got me.) I’m not interested in taking sides. I choose technologies, and then I yell at them until they do my bidding or I get tired. Some of this yelling can’t be reproduced on CDM. It’d be a bit boring, and it wouldn’t be terribly family friendly.

On some issues – openness, standards, interoperability, free software, and expressive audio capabilities and performance – I make no excuses. I’m not neutral. I believe in these things. As for platforms, the iPhone right now is the superior mobile device, in terms of audio performance. Linux-based platforms, including Android, are better in terms of openness. I want both, but I can’t have both, at the moment. Happily, mobile phones are also not the entire universe. Hardware, conventional computers, game systems, custom electronics, and yes, acoustic instruments and voices and paper … we have lots of means of creating digital music. As writers, we simply put out ideas in the marketplace of ideas. But in the midst of partisanship and me writing so darned many words, maybe some folks lost the plot.

So, to be clear, let me reduce the number of words, and respond in haiku:

iPhone is made well /
Touch and audio work, yes /
Smule making money.

Apple are genius /
Also infuriating /
Lawyers make me sad

Android is open /
Audio drivers are poor /
Latency, jitter

Yay, ‘droid SDK /
Handset makers, please improve. /
Make better drivers

Phones are not PCs /
Verizon cancellation /
Credit card saddens

A synth makes a noise /
Oscillators, delicious /
We still love hardware

Readers become mad /
Shout, “no more iPhone stories!” /
Don’t feed the troll, please

So many platforms /
Create Digital Music /
Please some perspective

(Insert snaps here.)