The MPC name and MPC legend are as big as ever. But the current products? Not so much. Let’s face it: Akai could use a bit of a renaissance. Users these days put just as much stock in the MPC as a concept, and the MPC hardware still attracts users, but other products are stealing Akai’s thunder (Ableton Live, Native Instruments Maschine), and the human faces beloved by users aren’t at Akai (from the hacked JJOS firmware to Roger Linn off working on the Dave Smith-released Tempest). And while it doesn’t have the same mass appeal, hardware from other makers – the Tempest or the Machinedrum and Octatrack – have more street cred these days. That isn’t to say Akai isn’t doing well, but ironically, most of the Akai users I run into these days are using the APC with Ableton, or a treasured MPC from some years back.

This week, we get a glimpse of Akai’s strategy for changing that. The surprise: all three products are controllers for software, not the all-in-one, integrated hardware that made the MPC famous.

To many, it may be more the sad end of an era than the beginning of a new one. With plenty of software tools on the market, Akai was in the eyes of a loyal user base the go-to name for integrated hardware. But we’ll see if the MPC can win over those same folks with greater flexibility, as an apparent concession to the reduced development cost and expanded capabilities of relying on a computer for horsepower.

The MPC Renaissance is a larger controller with integrated audio and MIDI interface. It has a “Vintage Mode” said to emulate the sound “character” of the MPC3000, MPC60, and other units. And it comes with a fold-up LED screen and backlit pads. But the actual sound generation relies on the computer; it’s an interactive controller. We’ve, of course, seen this notion before, in Native Instruments’ Maschine. Whether that direct comparison is ultimately fair or not, the popularity of Maschine and the fact that it came first will make such comparisons inevitable. The major difference in Akai’s approach is that this is a big controller, complete with vintage-style palm rests and loads of I/O. It’s a Cadillac Escalade to NI’s Volkswagen Jetta. And with that extra space, you get more controls, like a stunning 4×4 array of encoders with LEDs, as popularized on Akai’s APC.

And the hardware looks far more elaborate than what we’ve tended to see, even from Akai. It’s the first controller that seems like it’d look at home next to an original MPC.

I like that the controller won’t be mistaken for anything but an MPC. The big question is, is Akai any good at making software? The first screenshot isn’t exactly pulse-quickening, though it does have plug-in support out of the gate. I wouldn’t judge on a preview, but I’ll say this: I think the software will make or break this product, and that’s what I’ll be asking about when I visit Akai at NAMM in Anaheim.

The other two products are teased now and coming soon:
MPC Studio is a “slimline” controller. (Well, almost anything would be more slimline than the massive, wide-load Renaissance, so we’ll see what that means.)

MPC Fly is a controller for iPad 2. If you can get over the name and the latest leap on the iPad bandwagon, consider this – there’s some seriously major consumer appeal here, and of the three, the Fly is the one where Akai is first to market. That makes a big difference. I can see why they kept it for last, even if it may be the least appealing to MPC loyalists.

I’ll reserve judgment on any of this, as I have no idea who worked on these products at Akai, or what the quality will be. My concern is that the appeal of the MPC is really integrated hardware, and mixing the computer into the equation is something other products already do reasonably well – ironically, including Akai’s own APC coupled with Ableton. It seems a huge test for Akai going into this generation of music production.

Now, I’m willing to accept the possibility that this will be a flexible, functional approach. But first, I’ll just wait through what I imagine will be a hailstorm of angry MPC purists. After that settles down, we’ll finally see if Akai is, as they’re putting it, “changing the game” – or if they’re in the same league. What determines that may be just how much the game has changed already. (And from the Ableton side, it’ll be a big test of the partnership with Akai for integrating hardware and software.)

Video below, with some artists onboard already – AraabMUZIK, Sean C, and LV.

Product specs and full info will be available week after next, coinciding with the massive NAMM trade show in California. We’ll be there with Akai.

Early spec highlights – basically, think MPC-style sound samples and features, and lots of audio I/O, as the two things missing from most rivals:

MPC Note Repeat, MPC Swing and MPC transport controls
MPC software for Mac or PC with 64-track sequencing capability
Two XLR-1/4” combo inputs and dedicated turntable input
Four-channel USB 2.0 audio interface and two-port US B 2.0 hub built in
Up to eight pad banks
Two MIDI inputs and four MIDI outputs
Stereo 1/4” out, stereo assignable mix 1/4” out & S/PDIF I/O
MPC SOFTWARE
64-track sequencing capability
6GB+ sound library, including all of the sounds of the classic MPC3000
Instant mapping and real-time adjustment of VST plug-ins
Record each track as an MPC drum program, Keygroup program or VST plug-in
Runs standalone and as VST, AU or RTAS plug-in
Supports WAV, MP3, AIFF, REX and SND
Supports samples and sequences from any MPC ever made
Mac and PC-compatible

http://www.akaiprompc.com/
http://www.akaiprompc.com/mpcrenaissance.php

Owing to a tradition that goes back to the first samplers and hip-hop pioneers, sampling and digital performance have become a kind of instrumental technique. You might play well, you might play poorly, but even working with samples, you can actually play.

You can look at the simple design of the monome as the hardware embodiment of digital, a reflection of an array of pixels. You can see it as an extension of Roger Linn’s MPC and other drum machine concepts. It’s probably both those things. But since the monome itself makes no sound, it’s been software that has made that design musically relevant. While the original vision of the monome was as a blank canvas that could perform any function, ultimately a community of musicians focused their efforts on expanding a single patch, creator Brian Crabtree’s original mlr. Talk to these monome players, and they’ll very likely tell you about some little modification they made last night to use in a set they’re playing tonight, because they wanted some feature or another, or a little subpatcher they borrowed from a friend to solve a problem. Add up all those little hacks, and you get evolution.

Now, descendant mlrv has evolved into a live music-making environment of its own, and not just for the monome. Version 2.0, released this week, supports monome-like controllers such as the Novation Launchpad, Akai APC, and Livid Ohm/Block, but also conventional MPC-style grids like the Akai MPD.

The word the creators use to describe the playing technique: “hypersampling.”

mlrv is built in Max/MSP, so if you have a Mac or Windows and version 5 of the software (or Ableton’s Max for Live), you can edit the patch. Otherwise, you can download a free runtime and use the patch itself for free. Pay US$18, and you get your name on the startup screen and special email news and downloads. Pay US$80, and you get limited edition vinyl from artists galapagoose and ‘%’.

The project is the work of Trent Gill, Michael Felix, and parallelogram; check out developer galapagoose playing with it live in the video at top. (I will say, though, even as I am writing on a Website, you get more out of being in the same room with a live performance.) All the details:
http://parallelogram.cc/mlrv/

The software will be available February 1, with a release party that evening for the software and music. Also, while we’ll have details tomorrow, Handmade Music will host performances by galapagoose, %, and other monome artists (alongside chip music, MeeBlippery, and laptopism) on Saturday February 5. Both events happen in New York City at Culturefix.

On February 5 with CDM, you can come at 3pm and check out an open lab to get your hands on mlrv and talk to its developers. Then stay for the party Saturday night – US$20 buys you admission, supports the artists, and nets you a two hour open bar of beer and wine recently celebrated by the NY Times’ drink critic, Frank Bruni. Full details coming in a separate post, or in the meantime, RSVP on Facebook.

Tuesday night launch party details, NYC
http://bit.ly/hmfeb5 = Handmade Music party Saturday night, complete with hands-on during the day, more live performances at night!

Finally, here’s the obligatory, somewhat amusing, preview vid:

Ableton Live may have “Live” in the name, but just as with any musical equipment, getting it ready for a show often involves elaborate configuration to make reliable control a reality. Over its decade-long life, Live has been tweaked, adjusted, and cajoled into road-ready digital rigs. With Max for Live a kind of software developer kit for Live users, that has led some users to share their configurations. I’ve been watching Darren Cowley iterate his own Isotonik setup, a combination of hardware control, software template, and custom Max for Live devices, for some time now. That rig has finally matured to the point that he’s ready to share. Get ready for some hard-core Ableton geekery – though it might just be your next live Live setup.

Isotonik couples on-screen virtual devices with the physical controls of the APC40, but going beyond the default configuration from Akai and Ableton. Like a dashboard for your Live set, the software/hardware combo consolidates controls for cueing up and activating tracks, launching and looping scenes, slicing up beats, and adding audio effects. (Glitch, anyone?) Sure, you could do these things without Isotonik, but by bringing together rapid assignment of effects and navigation between tracks, the software becomes a kind of cheat – in a good way.

In fact, it’s compelling enough as a story that I think it’s worth reading even if you don’t use Live, the APC, or Max for Live.

A new release was just updated today with fewer objects and greater performance. And in addition to the template, the package includes some really fantastic effects, themselves worth the price of entry.

The price is a scant GBP £14.99, with an extraordinary amount of software included. Full details, documentation, and download link at Darren’s site:
http://thestudiosessions.co.uk/

For my own part, I’ve found myself getting a bit existential when thinking about this problem. Which makes more sense, musically: adding a layer atop something like Live to gain rapid access to features, or simply building from scratch (in environments like Max, Pd, SuperCollider, and the lot), in order to put together only those building blocks you need? The former is more complex and the latter potentially more reliable, though I always find that finding simpler solutions often involves more work, not less (especially if the words “from scratch” come into play). There’s no right answer to these questions, though; only an answer for you. So I think it’s well worth having a look at how Darren has approached this. You might just find the result is exactly what you need, and even if not, it provides some serious insight into the workflow of making Ableton Live, Max for Live, and the APC40 come together for real use.

Isontonik Template – Demonstration from Darren E Cowley on Vimeo.

I asked Darren to share his thoughts about the background of the project, how he put it together, and how he uses the result.

I managed to persuade [retailer] DV247 to let me buy their shop demo APC40 and by the end of the second I was frustrated with what I couldn’t do…. Having a DJ background I missed being able to tweak the bass’s across all the tracks at the same time but hardmapping these controls lost me the ability to use what the APC was designed for with it’s blue hand control of racks….

Pretty quickly I found myself using the excellent [MIDI software utility] bome’s midi translator to remap controls to solve this problem, one problem solved I found I enjoyed the challenge more than playing the music and so I set about creating a second mode of control based more on my playing style with CDJ’s. At the same time the nativeKONTROL series came out so I decided to share my template with anyone who already had a copy of Bomes….

With the announcement of Max4Live I started to get interested and when the invite to the beta landed on email I was made up, sadly after a month of testing I still didn’t have a stable version and so in release day I shelled out like many others for what appeared an unproven piece of software that had the promise of greatness…

I quickly set about creating a device that would give me control over the macros in the first rack giving back that DJ mixer style control, one of the first devices to be uploaded onto max4live.com I got some excellent feedback and made some new contacts who prompted me to keep developing. Many brick walls were hit and thanks to people like Mike Chenetz of max4live.info and Andrew Pask of Cycling I managed to get my head around some of the undocumented control_surfaces functions….

A two week break on a beach in Thailand with a pad and an ipod gave me the opportunity to sketch out how I saw the controls would work, deciding on the scene launch buttons as my scene choosers….

Pretty soon I had worked out how to make five different scenes of controls for the clip stop buttons, 8 others for the Activate/Cue Solo/Rec Arm Buttons…. Reset functionality for my macros and a slave version of the master device to reduce the overall size of the device.

I wanted a simple scene that enabled the standard functionality with a slight twist, the clip stop buttons should light up if a clip was playing in a track and I should be able to launch the highlighted clip, play it again or play the clip below whilst still having the red-box control….

Next came a scene that could give me some semblance of Traktor like looping control, and then I wanted to be able to activate a 2 bar loop on a clip even if it wasn’t in focus….

Inspired by the monome performance videos I spent ages trying to work out how to mimic the effect with the 8 clip stop buttons spending ages working with the playing_position function to not find a satisfactory result, then a fantastic how to video from Mike Chenetz led me to look into the chucker object and quickly I had a running metronome that could play back a slice of the last two bars of audio much like Clist’s beatlookup, that I could change the size of the slice with a twist of the Cue Volume knob…

The original Keymasher Tim Exile had just released the Finger and a guy called GBSR on the Controllerism forum had just posted a similar effect using an impressive routing system using Abletons sends, given Max4live control over the Live API I created the ability to punch audio to a return track and then send that return track to another chaining effects….

When playing I find I normally use the vanilla/standard scene but then jump into a different scene mid track to add some variation to what I’m playing, with the addition of the ability to control all 8 sends on each track with the track control, a smart knob per track that can handle 8 different effects and finally a Looper controlled from the APC40′s transport buttons

I’m probably at the point of Ableton not being able to cope much more, with each update from Ableton and Cycling 74 the whole setup has become more and more stable and I predict even bigger things when they’ve completed their “Quality” drive….

Thanks, Darren.

Trying this tool out? Got your own rig for Max for Live – or other software – that you’d like to share? I’d love to hear your feedback. You know where to find us.

Even before Max for Live was available, hackers had found a way of interacting with “secret” APIs inside Live for custom control, allowing them to customize Live’s behavior and make it work more seamlessly with hardware. That included providing something Ableton themselves had not: real, native control of Live via OSC, for more control than MIDI alone can provide. I was assured such hacks would continue to work, and sure enough, they have. Here’s how to get started.

You may wonder, of course, why even bother now that Max for Live is available? Max for Live is a powerful environment for creating instruments, effects, sequencers, and other devices within Ableton Live, and via its access to the Live API, it can even be a tool for customizing how Live works. But it adds an additional layer of abstraction, it is somewhat limited in how much it can manipulate interaction with hardware, and anyone wanting to use your creations will need to own Max for Live and not just Ableton Live. And not only that, but some people will simply prefer scripting in a language like Python to working with visual patching. (There’s still reason to consider M4L, too; see the full link to its “API” for Live, below. But we do have multiple options)

So, with that out of the way, here are the current solutions:

Make your own MIDI remote scripts.

Hanz Petrov has written an intensive introduction to creating your own MIDI remote scripts in Python, using the new Framework classes:

Introduction to the Framework Classes
http://remotescripts.blogspot.com/

Use OSC, via the Live OSC API Hack (or MIDI)

Ableton doesn’t have native support for OSC — unfortunate, given that’s now a feature of major visual applications (Resolume, VDMX, GrandVJ, Modul8, and others). But while we keep bugging Ableton for OSC to be on equal footing with MIDI, you can make use of a special Python hack that provides an OSC API to Live.

If the above scripting seems intimidating – and I can certainly see why it might be – the LiveOSC API is refreshingly simple. Because you can simply send OSC messages directly, controlling Live with tools like iPhone apps or Processing sketches or even hardware could become comparatively simple – and yes, simpler than working in Max for Live. If you only have MIDI, there’s even a MIDI API, too. Here’s where to start:

Complete documentation of the LiveAPI project [assembla]

http://monome.q3f.org/wiki/LiveOSC

Why it’s nice: you can send something as simple as /live/play/clip (track, clip) and trigger a clip. That’s even more direct than the usual MIDI interface.

Most importantly, this now works with Live 8.1. See the video below for an example of this in action:

mlrV4live tutorial (&casio madness) from StevieRaySean on Vimeo.

Check out his Arduinome build documentation, too. (Arduinome is an authorized clone of the monome using readily-available parts.)

The Max for Live way: Live Object Model

Complete LOM documentation at Cycling ’74

And yes, it makes my head spin a little, too. (Or perhaps the word is “oscillate.”)

Max4Live.info (Michael Chenetz) has done a great job of making this a bit more manageable. In the video below, he explains how to use the interaction between Max for Live and Live; there’s also a tutorial on sending messages to a control surface like the Launchpad. But note that some of this can actually more complex, and more hardware-specific (APC/Launchpad-only) than the hacks above. It’s a case in which the hacked version actually works a little better than (cough) the official version.

Max For Live Paths, Objects, and Observers from Michael Chenetz on Vimeo.

My own challenge for myself: just make the Launchpad intelligently control device parameters, something it currently doesn’t do. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Thoughts on the merits of these different approaches? Projects you’ve made using one or another? We’d love to see them.

Ableton Live-specific controllers just got another addition. You probably could have guessed this would come out, following the APC40 and Novation’s grid-only Launchpad last year, but the Akai APC20 is the new, smaller sibling to Akai’s APC40. The APC20 does basically everything the APC40 does on the latter’s left-hand side — it’s a grid of buttons, a set of mixers for your tracks, buttons for activating tracks (and solo/cue/record), and shortcuts for moving around and triggering the transport. Using the buttons, you can trigger clips or notes, with additional buttons for scenes and stopping clips around the outside of the 8×5 array.

The “Note Mode” is new, officially, but I believe hackers may have gotten the APC40 to do that. Hopefully it’ll be rolled out to the APC40 in an update.

What the APC20 doesn’t do is everything on the right-hand side of the APC40: you lose out on additional shortcuts, the crossfader, and most importantly, the controls for pan, sends, and Device Rack macros, though the controls seem to suggest you get some control back via control pages, as on Novation’s Launchpad. That makes the APC20 less appealing as a standalone to me. It gives you mixer faders missing from the Launchpad (which relies on buttons for the job), but it loses the ability to control devices and effects. And unlike the Launchpad, it seems the APC20 still requires external power rather than bus power.

Instead, it seems that Akai hopes you’ll buy the APC20 as a companion to your APC40, for, uh, 60 worth of APC. (I think we have a new unit of measure.) With what Akai calls “Combination mode,” you can add the 40 and 20 together for control of 80 buttons and 16 tracks. In Akai’s press release, it also seems that Akai thinks customers might add an APC20 to an existing rig with other gear — though that puts it in competition with the Novation Launchpad for the same job.

You can also buy six APC20s and use those together, and if you buy that many APCs, I recommend two things: one, seek professional help, and two, definitely send us photos.

This does still trigger the concerns I’ve been trying to raise since I reviewed the APC40 last year. Why should something as simple as chaining multiple devices together for control be a feature specific to a certain product? Haven’t we been chaining devices together as a standard feature all the way back to the invention of MIDI, now over a quarter century ago? (For the record, you can combine multiple control surfaces in Ableton Live. But the moment one set of controllers does that and another doesn’t, based on support in the software itself, that ceases to be a standard feature of Ableton.)

That said, for APC fans looking for some more control, the APC20 should appeal. But if I had to recommend a first APC, I’d still strongly recommend the APC40. Having a controller with built-in controls for everything Live does – clip triggers, mixing, cross-fading, effects, and device control, with all the shortcuts – really is a nice luxury.

http://www.akaipro.com/apc20

Pricing: Not yet announced Estimated US$199 street

Availability: Second quarter 2010

Now, it’ll be interesting to see if this is the last Ableton hardware controller news from this year’s NAMM or not; time will tell.

In the Pocket (Rhodes and Moog Light Paint) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

Fantastic, hip, soulful keys couple with brilliant stop-motion editing, as a Moog and Rhodes keyboard are splashed with light painting, in this new music video from Ethan Goldhammer. (See his blog for more.) It’s the perfect example of how a much-seen technique can retain its novelty when used creatively, especially as the sound itself seems to dance in light-up oscilloscope patterns.

Background:

Original music by Ethan Goldhammer and S. Burke.
Time Lapse footage shot in August 2008 on Block Island, RI.
Stop motion and light paint September 2008 in Cambridge, MA.

The lesson here: gear pr0n and special effects work perfectly when they visualize the way we feel about our musical objects and sounds.

Okay, so how did he do it? Ethan responds:

Ableton all the way. Recorded as loops with an [Akai] apc, then arranged later. The secret is also, making the animations, rendering them in [Final Cut Pro] but then WARPING them in ableton to the proper timing and bouncing them back to FCP.

Nicely done. Of course, this is why some audiovisualists have turned to Sony Vegas for Windows – formerly developed by Sonic Foundry, Vegas is actually half audio, half visual software. On the other hand, Live is a comfortable and flexible tool that does many things Vegas can’t.

Ethan also has a beautiful rendering of “Air on a G String,” the second cut from the legendary Switched on Bach. Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, please don’t stop Ethan; I’d love to see more collaboration instead.

Air on a G String (Oscilliscoped) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

I really have no words for this one, other than there’s a hilarious APC40 meme happening on the Ableton forums. Is it love? Disdain? The APC as the new “All Your Base” for the Live warping set? Does it really matter?

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=116396

It’s good to know that, even as Ableton Live use has spread, us computer music folk are really not normal.

Via Tara Busch on Twitter of AnalogSuicide.

Warp: Engage

The new Warp Mode in Live may actually be friendlier to new users; it’s existing users, accustomed to the previous way of working, who seem thrown for a loop. (Erm… excuse the pun.) I’m at a bit of a disadvantage myself in that I tend not to do a lot of warping/remixing. But Medway Studios has a set of tutorials specifically geared for people wanting some tips on how to assimilate the new working method:

Part 2:

Our friend Dennis DeSantis of Ableton offers his own take in a video shot at NYC-based music tech learning center dubSpot. This is a pretty good conceptual overview of what the whole thing is about.

Basically, what I’m hearing is that people used to previous versions of Warp Markers, while they find it confusing at first, do like the new system once they understand how it works.

Controllerism

Mark Mosher has been doing fantastic tutorials on his site Modulate This. For one thing, he’s got tips for getting Wacom tablets to work in Live 8 and finally getting text entry support, which means Kore works properly in Live at long last (among others).

Best of all, he has a tutorial that demonstrates how he’s putting together all his controllers – the Notation ReMOTE SL with Automap and the Akai APC40 – and making them function more effectively using some subtle controller changes in Live 8.

What’s interesting to me is that this isn’t so much about unique, proprietary stuff added to the APC integration, but basic feature improvements in Live itself, which could help you be more effective with other controllers, as well. That’s the kind of functionality I like to see, because it helps everyone.

All of this is great, but we are getting a little heavy on the Ableton-only video tutorials. It’s time to pick up the screencasting tools and demonstrate other tools, too. I’ve got some time blocked out this summer for the task. Requests?

Not a whole lot to see in this very first video, but it does give you a feel for what the hardware itself is like.  Update: AKAI requested that the first video in this story be removed by its author on Vimeo, so we no longer have a video to embed.

The integration between software and hardware we should see revealed more over the coming weeks. I’m hoping to get my hands on one myself in the near future; I haven’t yet.

Of course, the APC isn’t alone. I’m still eagerly awaiting the Ohm64 from Livid, a beautiful controller with a wooden body, made with care in the US. Unlike the APC, the Ohm has a customizable MIDI response — the way the hardware itself responds is programmable. And, of course, there’s still the classic monome (site | cdm tag), open source hardware with an elegant minimalist design. Custom Max control patches have made the monome a favorite, especially for those with the chops to not only use the community-made patches, but build their own – by coincidence, the monome folks just posted a link to a library of Max monome objects. For both the Ohm and monome, it’ll be easier and more powerful to integrate Max objects with Live when Max for Live ships later this year. Even the APC will get its own custom patches. And, as Hédi points out, there’s also the elegant, compact, solidly-built Faderfox, which could also get a new lease on life with Max patching.

The upshot of all of this: even if people are using the same controller, they won’t necessarily use it the same way, which is how it should be. Stay tuned.

Update: this just in – a second video of the APC, this one sent to us by our friend Stephan Vankov (tetmusic.com). We’ve seen Stephan before, tearing up a wild audiovisual remix of The Karate Kid with the crew at the CDM NAMM party last year. It’s nice to see the APC out of the trade show floors, naturally.

dubSpot, the West Coast + East Coast music technology training center is doing an eight-city tour of the US to talk about Ableton Live 8 and the Akai APC40 controller. They’re enlisting some of my favorite people to do the workshops. I like the curriculum: it’s not just “here’s how to use Live,” but a real focus on music production, finishing actual music, and pushing the envelope with live visuals, onstage performance and controllers. We also have a $25 discount exclusively for CDM readers if you want to attend.

I want to thank dubSpot for helping sponsor CDM this month – their support makes possible our own free tutorial content and artist coverage slated for later in May.

The tour kicks off this week in San Francisco, but will travel to other US cities soon (dates to be announced; stay tuned).

The artists doing the instruction are some folks whose work I particularly enjoy:

• Jon Margulies, author of Ableton Live 7 Power among other things, and the person doing the Live 8 curriculum here in NY. And like me, Jon is a secret Medievalist (he’s played early music at Spoleto).
• Moldover, “Moldy” to his friends, co-founded the Warper series in NYC and the new LoveTech party in SF, and has become notorious for hacking Novation keyboards and espousing controllerism.
• Christopher Willits is an utterly brilliant guitarist capable of morphing the instrument into all kinds of sounds, for those of you who don’t know his work. And he’s been doing a lovely series of tutorials for our friends at XLR8R TV.

… plus a powerful roster of artists: Funkaid for Africa, Dub Mission, Jason Short, Dub Gabriel, and Barry Cole.

The workshop is $125 for one day or $225 for both. If you are lucky enough to hail from sunny San Francisco, dubSpot is also offering a $25 CDM discount if you head to their site via this link:

http://www.dubspot.com/pages/abletontour.jsp?aff_ref=CDM

But we’ll have more for the rest of the world, too – I’m playing with the Warper crew on the sidewalk in front of dubSpot NY in June, and we’re working on a way of doing a live stream to the CDM planet from there. Stay tuned.