The content we watch on the Internet is, ultimately, just data. We view that data in fairly narrow, conventional ways, but there’s no reason that has to be the limit. In one of the more novel applications of the API for audio-storing service SoundCloud, one 3D printer is happily turning your music tracks and recordings into custom iPhone cases, each uniquely based on the waveform of your sounds.

This week in Austin at South by Southwest, SoundCloud was attracting attention with that notion, as partner manager Caroline Drucker showed off a custom case built from the sound of her walking across a train platform a pair of signature high heels. (It’s the U6 U-Bahnhof Schwartzkopffstraße, if you must know, specifically. The USA Today featured the footwear and the case. “Must’ve been the shoes.”)

It’s primarily for fun, of course, but it does illustrate a point. Just having a smartphone along is enough to capture sound in all kinds of situations – don’t overlook the built-in mic. (Just make sure you’ve got ample focus on whatever you’re trying to record, since these mics are very vulnerable to background and ambient noise, and use an app that lets you record in a lossless format, making it more useful for musical sampling.) Odds are you’ve been in the situation Caroline was and – if you’re paying attention to your environment – got a great sound just walking around.

Here’s that original sound, as recorded with the iPhone SoundCloud app (equivalents are available for other platforms, too, so finally put that mic to use for something other than just calls):

And if you do want to sport your sounds on an iPhone case, check out the cool Shapeways app. (And this might just give you other 3D printing or laser-cutting ideas, so go for it.)

http://www.shapeways.com/creator/thevibe

More on some of the other SoundCloud news soon.

You can visit CDM’s editor on SoundCloud, of course. Lots of people send tracks, so if you share your work, send a note to go with it, please!

There’s a beautiful immediacy and tactile quality to hardware step sequencers. And there’s all the flexibility, convenience, and power of software.

Solution: combine them.

We’ve been following various custom creations for the music production tool Renoise – the latest being a lovely performance grid, and back in 2009, the beginnings of Launchpad grid sequencing.

You can thank Renoise’s powerful API, which allows its users to modify the way the app works with surprising ease (at least for the hack-inclined), all for free.

The latest is Lauflicht, an 8-, 16-, or 32-step step sequencer for the Novation Launchpad controller (or, alternatively, other controllers like the monome) and Renoise. What’s nice about it is, you can add as many tracks as you want, with whatever samples and instruments you want, but then trigger those steps from hardware. Now, this will appeal of course to those who want these kind of regular rhythms – I’m already anticipating some frustrated responses from our fans of non-duple rhythms and polyrhythms in comments. But if that is what you want, this looks fantastic.

The creator sells the tool for EUR24. How much that means to you is dependent, of course, on the stability of the Greek government. (Sigh.)

Side note: rockin’ domain name.
http://www.stepsequencer.net/

Via BrenMcGuire on CDM comments – thanks!

Lots more videos; check the site for the artist’s own techno tracks:

Ed.: Hacking Web databases to search sounds, remixing tools to automatically create dub tunes, cameras to sequence and analyze images in new ways, Montréal hackers have been busy. Trevor Knight writes from the event with full coverage from Canada, latest outpost of this global music coding phenomenon:

Music Hack Day made its first appearance in Canada at the end of September, painting the event with a Montréal flavour, complete with bilingualism, Montréal-style bagels, and even an appearance of Stephen Harper in a hack. Over the Saturday-Sunday event, musicians, programmers, and hackers scramble to create any sort of new music project.

With the help of dozens of laptops, gallons of coffee, several APIs and staff from such companies as The Echonest, Soundcloud, and Grooveshark, the assembled hackers churned out and presented 24 hacks in 24 hours.

Bruno Angeles took home first prize for his hack, FaCeQuencer, which uses computer vision and a webcam to control a squencer/looper and at the same time, outfit the user appropriately to the style of music.

Free Assembly, the hack from Graham Boyes, took second prize and recreates a target sound using a database of samples. It uses The Echonest Remix API for the analysis and finds target sounds sourced using Freesound.org’s API. The power of this hack was clear when Graham demonstrated using a drum and bass track as the target sound and a recording of a dog playing in water as the sample.

With a heavy presence of students and researchers from the Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Music Media Technology (CIRMMT) and McGill University, several of the hacks incorporated data-mining. For example, David Weigl, Hannah Robertson, and Andrew Hankinson created wuzhear, a venue-based database of historical concerts in Montreal from the Montreal Jazz Festival website and last.fm’s API, including set information and playable with a Grooveshark widget.

The Wub Machine 2.0, from Peter Sobot, automatically creates Dub or Electrohouse remixes of an audio sample, while The Beatbox Machine allows one to record beatboxing and return a drum sequence replaced with actual drum samples.

For a complete list of hacks, check out http://wiki.musichackday.org/index.php?title=Montreal_2011_Hacks

Now that Canada has tasted the sweet Music Hack Day nectar, there’s already buzz for a hack day in Toronto.

Dac Chartrand (Renoise) writes with more details. Dac has his own set of hacks, but I’m excited enough about it that I’ll put that in a separate post -PK:

Other "Renoisers" were on site, but used the 24 hour session to try new ideas, but not present them. For example Steve Sinclair (Radarsat1) tried to port Mark Zadel’s Different Strokes to Android. Different Strokes resembles a freehand drawing application. The drawn strokes create animated figures whose motion is mapped to sample playback. The musician performs by assembling networks of strokes live, generating audio patterns. Steve got drawing and particles working but not enough time to hook into the Android audio subsystem, so he didn’t bother presenting.

Longtime CDM readers Studioimaginaire were also on site hacking away at their multi-touch table. They were there the full two days but also didn’t bother presenting. I tried to talk them into it several times, saying that the crowd would obviously vote for them just on cool factor alone and that they would walk away with a prize, but they stuck to their principles. Something to be said about the vibe of the event. Hackers were there to have fun.

David Viens of Plogue made am appearance for the demo session Sunday afternoon.

Good times had by all.

Renoise 2.7 is now available, following some eight weeks of testing by the community. The update, which the developers describe as “back to the beats” in reference to focusing in this release cycle on musical workflow, delivers plenty of features that make the modern tracker more modern. I wrote about them back in March, with some detailed Q&A from the developers – including tips on where to get started:

Renoise 2.7 Adds Sample and Slice Savvy; Tips and Inside Info from the Developers

The short version: better automation, sample slicing, and sample keyzones, plus improved DSP and audio routing and MIDI routing, make Renoise more usable. For people slicing up and sampling audio, even, I dare say, MPC-style, it’s a huge release.

2.7 Release notes

But that’s not the only story here. Renoise are also announcing 500 MB of free sounds designed by Puremagnetik, all in the native XRNI file format. That’s from a sound house better known for Ableton Live sounds than Renoise. And, at the opposite end of the spectrum from preset soundware, Renoise is involved in a Berlin Music Hackday that could bring new DIY features to the tool – plus tooling that makes it easier to grab and update tools from the community.

We’ll start with the Puremagnetik news. Rather than just tell you about the sounds, Puremagnetik’s Micah Frank shares how the sound set was built, and what they learned about making soundware for Renoise. That includes some valuable tips for anyone interested in programming sounds in the environment, as well as insight if you’re just curious to try the resulting sound pack free. Micah shares:

About Puremagnetik: Puremagnetik is a sound development company that I founded in 2006. I had freelanced as a sound designer with Ableton for some years and didn’t see many 3rd party choices for that platform. Puremagnetik was launched as an affordable subscription service offering new “Micropaks” every month, with a focus on Ableton Live content. That was 5 years ago and we are continuing to produce new packs every month. As of this writing we have almost 60 Micropaks in the catalog, a number of bundles, standalone libraries and Max for Live content. We have close to 40k registered users and are working with a number of developers (desktop and mobile) to help realize their sound libraries. By the time you read this, we will also be offering content in Renoise’s XRNI format.

Why Renoise: Always on the lookout for products that break away from conventions, I became interested in content development for Renoise soon after the 2.6 release. It’s obvious that Renoise is created by a small and dedicated team of developers backed by a strong, supportive community. To my surprise, I couldn’t find many resources for Renoise format instruments. All of the above reasons factored into Puremagnetik’s conception in the first place – to fill a niche within a community of dedicated individuals that are passionate about their work. Once the Keyzone Editor was introduced, it was clear to me that someone had to make content for this innovative product.

What it was like making the 500M sample pack: The first thing we did is comb through our entire catalog and pick a well-rounded selection of kits and multisample instruments. We are working with an independent developer (Renoise user MXB in building a tool to translate our libraries to XRNI. [That tool is now released; see comments. -Ed.] So this was a huge asset in efficiently building this library. After importing the sounds they were fine tuned and tweaked with modulations and envelopes. The final step was exporting the monolithic XRNI files. Throughout the entire process we worked alongside the Renoise team to ensure that Q/A standards and selection of sounds was spot-on.

Thoughts on the latest XRNI format: Despite its simple interface there is a lot going on under the hood. I personally love the “point” setting in the envelope params. And the selection of filters really kicks ass (my favorite is the Low Distortion). Just in coupling these two things, one is presented with vast sound design possibilities, and that’s before you beat sync pitch envelopes!

For the most part, editing is very intuitive if you have previously built multisample instruments. The instrument editor is still in its infancy so there are some parameter persistency issues that need to be ironed out. It is somewhat cumbersome to save variations of the same instrument as it saves each one as a single monolithic (flac compressed) file.

Overall, it’s easy enough to dive into the editor, tweak the available settings and resave the instrument however you like.

Room for improvement in the format: The most valuable thing for us from a development standpoint is sample grouping capabilities. Our instruments really become 3 dimensional once we can program group modulations based on user events. Our TeeBee instrument for example is heavily dependent on groups of samples to create a realistic emulation of the original TB303. So this is a feature I would like to see implemented.

I would love to be able to save track DSPs with the instrument but perhaps that could conflict with Renoise’s native architecture and workflow. However, this capability when combined with Renoise’s effects and Meta Devices could open enormous possibilities for sound design.

More LFO waveforms with an even slower frequency would be very welcomed into my Renoise sound design toolbox!

Each parameter setting has 4 envelope preset slots but these are currently shared between parameters and are only session specific. It would be really cool to have independent preset buttons per parameter that save with the instrument. That way, the user can load it up and call any number of combinations for instant sound shaping variations.

Velocity crossfading.

Visit Puremagnetik at http://puremagnetik.com/ — you’ll see new Renoise-format sounds starting to appear.

Included in this pack:
Analog Synth Basses
Circuit Bent Drum Kits
Buchla Drum Kits
Mellotron Strings and Flutes
Glitch, Toy & Lo-Fi Sounds
Fender Rhodes Mark II
Model-C Clavinet
Electric Guitar
Upright Bass
Classic Analog Synths
Grand Piano

And there’s more soundware free with this release, too, I see from the Renoise site:

Additionally, Berlin based artist and longtime user Beatslaughter has blessed us with a touch of evil in his sample pack “Beatslaughter SoundPack Volume 1″.

Those two sample packs total over 800 MB and let producers jump into all the latest sampling features of Renoise 2.7. The packs are free for all registered users new and old, and are waiting in the Backstage.

Get Your Tools Faster

It’s like an App Store for Renoise hacks: tools.renoise.com has gotten an upgrade, and there’s a new automatic updater called the Tool Updater. Combined, this should make it easier to keep your tools fresh, and customize Renoise to do what you need. I’m a huge fan of the lightweight hacking mechanism they’ve built into Renoise, and the fact that it’s an integral part of the software.

Hack Renoise

As a mentor at Music Hackday Berlin, if you happen to be in Germany later this month, you can learn how to hack Renoise from the developers. I’d love to see some new projects. (I may even try to see if I can drop by, if I’m in fact in England around the same time!)

Renoise will be mentoring at Music Hack Day Berlin. The event takes place on the weekend of May 28th in the MTV Network offices located at the Spree river. Erik, dblue and Taktik will be on site to discuss Renoise, the Lua API, drink beer, and give out high fives. Check our community forums in the upcoming days for more details.

Background/info:
http://musichackday.org/
http://vimeo.com/7129735
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/02/music-hack-day-nyc/
http://fuse.tv/music/music-hack-day/
http://www.billboard.biz/bbbiz/industry/digital-and-mobile/midem-2011-can-hacking-save-music-1005009032.story
http://blog.programmableweb.com/2010/02/03/48-hours-31-hacks-stockholm-music-hack-day/

And yes, I’ll happily, happily share any interesting hacks or creations here on CDM.

Of course, there’s plenty here to enjoy in Renoise even if you don’t hack – you can grab some free sounds and go play! Let us know what you think.

Remember the music industry? We used to talk about radio play and record deals. Now, we’re talking developers, APIs, and analytics. Of course, the test, now as then, is whether there’s actually substance for music listeners and artists. On Friday, we looked at Apple’s Ping and how, via TuneCore, artists who aren’t Lady Gaga can get their own pages. We also saw some vigorous discussion of TuneCore, which helps you get your music into “big bucket” sites like Amazon and iTunes, and SoundCloud, who together offer integrated sharing and distribution.

The Echo Nest is an unusual animal in this landscape, an “intelligent platform” for other tools built on machine listening. Via algorithms that analyze music and try to absorb human knowledge about music, Echo Nest powers apps that do everything from matching beats to workouts to tracking data for artists and labels. They even apply natural language algorithms to try to absorb text about music, meaning a robot may be … listening to … everything I say. Okay, moving on… (This leads to some interesting sci fi scenarios… No! Robot! Obey your master! You will NOT harm Katy Perry!) Check out how it works.

The latest news from Echo Nest: they’re partnering with online store 7Digital to connect all that data with some actual music sales opportunities. The result: a DIY online music store platform. Developers can create their own applications and music sales websites, drawing on all of the intelligent data on music from Echo Nest – from machine-analyzed news feeds to musical attributes of individual tracks – with the 7Digital store. 7Digital is now up to 10 million songs, with art, previews, and sales. And whereas a lot of deals (like Ping) are closed, in this case the “product” is actually a toolkit that relies on developers to do interesting things. Whether or not this particular idea gets traction, that’s an interesting shift in models.

If you’re skeptical about those machine algorithms, you’ll be gratified to know even Echo Nest’s own Brian Whitman conceded around the Ping launch that he has “a strong aversion to music recommenders and music similarity services.” And Whitman knows his stuff – he’s an MIT Media Lab PhD and co-founder of the company. But there’s no saying this has to be limited to recommendations – as those jogging apps that analyze tempo illustrate.

I spoke to Echo Nest to find out more about the new offering, and to see what they think about other trends, like Apple’s much-hyped – then much-criticized – Ping.

Jim Lucchese of Echo Nest and developer Paul Lamere respond.

CDM: How do the two APIs fit together? That is, given that The Echo Nest and 7digital each have their own open APIs to begin with, what’s unique here about the joint offering?

Paul: We’ve incorporated 7Digital Artist and song IDs into our Rosetta stone system. [Ed. As the name implies, that's a mechanism for translating all the different ID numbers used by music databases for tracking songs, since there's no universal numbering system for music.]

This means that developers can use 7Digital Artist and Song IDs with our APIs, and can instruct our APIs to return 7Digital IDs.

In addition, all Echo Nest results can be limited to the 7Digital ID space. This is useful for tasks such as search and artist similarity. For instance, we can limit the results of an artist similarity query to include just artists that are in the 7Digital catalog.

We have also applied the Echo Nest analyzer to each of the 10 million or so 7Digital tracks. This means that we have a very detailed understanding of what every song in the 7Digital catalog sounds like. We know the tempo, mode, key, time signature. We have a detailed understanding of the loudness profile of the song and of the rhythm structure of the song, we know where all the bars, beats and tatums are. We have a detailed understanding of the harmonic and timbral content of each of the songs. With the Echo Nest / 7Digital partnership, developers can get access to this detailed analysis for any of the 7Digital tracks and use this analysis for all sorts of apps.

The Analysis data allows developers to create interesting playlists using the new Echo Nest Playlist API based on the 7Digital catalog. For instance, a developer could create a playlist of songs by artists similar to Lady Gaga with a tempo between 120 and 135 BPMs. You can read more about the playlisting API on my blog [Music Machinery]:

Is that a million songs in your pocket, or are you just glad to see me?
Echo Nest Playlist API Methods

Is this something that might become relevant to other stores, too — provided, of course, they were as open as 7digital is with their data?

Jim: We expect so, though we’ve found that 7Digital is definitely the most forward-thinking around open API access and developer offerings.

You mentioned that monetization for developers could be a big draw. How does that work — is it simply a 7digital affiliate program, essentially?

Jim: Yes. It’s like an uber affiliate network of developers. Sell tracks through your app and get a cut of each sale.

What sorts of applications do you imagine this might encourage?

Paul: I see a wide range of possibilities here:

• Music discovery apps – given the deep data that Echo Nest has about music coupled with the content that 7Digital can provide will make it much easier for developers to create new music discovery and exploration apps – think of a next generation of Ishkur’s guide to electronic music
  [4], or musicovery [mood-based radio search]
• Music listening apps – Applications that help people listen to music – for instance I can imagine a pandora-style app that gives the user more control over the listening experience – ‘more music like this but with more energy’ or ‘give me music by hair metal bands from the 70s that are from the UK’
• Music Interaction apps – since developers have access to a detailed analysis of each track, it would be possible for developers to create interesting music visualizers that respond to the music
• Apps that we can’t even think of – never underestimate the creativity of a developer – someone will create something that we can’t think of around music that we can’t even imagine now, but will become a big part of our music experience.

Artists are becoming increasingly excited about engaging these platforms themselves, particularly as many of them get more savvy about development and use independent distribution to get their work out there. Is there a place for music makers to do something with this kind of technology?

Paul: That’s a big question – some areas where platforms like 7Digital/Echo Nest platform will be relevant to artists are:

• Interactive media – the recent Arcade Fire interactive video ‘The Wilderness Downtown‘ is an excellent example of the type of interactive app that artists will be able to create on top of platforms like 7Digital/Echo Nest/
• Analytics about fans – artists are spending more time figuring out how to market their music. APIs around data about who is listening to, going to shows, or writing about an artist will be very useful for artists

What about the end user (that is, the listener) – what will this allow a music lover to do that they couldn’t before?

Paul: As the music app space developers, we will see better applications for music discovery and exploration. A music lover will be able to find more interesting music that they will like.

Music listening apps can be greatly improved with access to all of the contextual information about the artist and the song, along with recommendations for other artists And you can see context-dependent playlisting – a user could create a ‘jogging’ playlist that has songs at just 135 BPM, or a high school reunion playlist of pop songs from 1985.

One of the things that struck me about Apple’s Ping announcement was that – while we’re waiting on information about any potential API – the general sense was of something pretty walled-off, specific to just their store, in the client software, and not connected to the Web and across platforms. Do you see a contrast in philosophy here?

Also, the initial reaction of the press surprised me; the first response was that Apple’s installed user base would just wipe everyone else out. I disagree, but how do you see open offerings like this fitting into (or providing alternatives to, or both) that Apple ecosystem?

Paul: There’s no question that Apple’s installed base makes their foray into social music a significant event. Millions of people who would never think of visiting a social music site like Last.fm will now become part of a social music network. That will be good. Music is very social, and one of the best ways to discovery new music is through one’s friends. However, social music systems can have some problems: Feedback loops, decreasing diversity in listening, susceptibility to hacking, schilling and spamming, and the cold start problem (where new artists have no way to break into the listening rotation) are all issues that plague social recommender systems.

Systems that can draw on multiple sources of data – social data, plus other data like curated reviews, blog posts and the content of the music itself can provide a way to avoid the problems inherent in social-only systems. I think that music discovery applications that are built on broad sets of data (like we are building here at the Echo Nest) will ultimately do a better job in helping people finding new music.

The most interesting possibility I see with the opening up of all the different music-oriented APIs is the emergence of a thriving music application developer community – (like we are starting to see coming out of the Music Hack Days). This developer community is ultra creative and they love music. They love to listen to it, and they love to create it. I am convinced that these developers are going to have as much of an impact on the future of music as the iPod did. These developers will be creating the applications that will help all of us to create, to discover, to interact with and to listen to music.

Finding samples and remix-able music — or advertising the availability of tracks you want to release for that purpose — has just gotten a lot easier. As part of a raft of improvements to the SoundCloud service – including some nice non-CC enhancements to search and tag browsing – the service has boosted integration with free licenses. You can now search for CC content, and the license is visible directly in the player, going beyond what even services like Flickr and Vimeo have done.

You can add SoundCloud to CC-focused sites like ccMixter and the Freesound Project as tools in your freely-licensed arsenal.

I spoke to the folks at SoundCloud about the changes, and about how they see Creative Commons fitting into a larger picture. Henrik Lenberg, Business Developer at SoundCloud responds.

CDM: Can you detail exactly what’s changed?

SC: As far as Creative Commons features are concerned, the biggest changes in this release have been the introduction of a CC landing and discovery page, prominent placement of license information on track players and pages, and advanced search by license type. The basic features before provided a really simple way to select a license, and these changes make it more straightforward to find and identify Creative Commons-licensed material on the site. SoundCloud is geared particularly towards audio creators, and this release should make it much simpler to find samples, sounds, and tracks that can be used for remixes, mashups, and other compositions.

What have been some of your favorite uses of CC so far on SoundCloud?

We’re just wrapping up a series of blog posts with some of our favorite CC users on the site, which can be seen at http://blog.soundcloud.com/tag/ccinterviews. You can see there we’re getting all kinds of music under CC licenses on SoundCloud, but also field recordings, audiobooks, and plenty of other sounds. As far as samples are concerned, we’ve got the OLPC Sample collection online, which is over 6000 CC-BY samples, as well as really interesting collections, like the Stretta Samples and Karmadrums who makes on-demand drum loops on real drums. We’ve also got all kinds of sample-making companies, including Twisted Tools and Sample Magic.

How do you hope the new functionality might be used? What do you think might come out of it artistically?

I’m sure that some of the uses will surprise even us, but I’m expecting to see the same kind of outpouring of creativity that has accompanied Creative Commons licenses on other platforms. I hope there’s an uptick in remixes of CC licensed material on the site, and I imagine that video creators, podcasters, independent video game makers, and other people who need to find music for their works will begin to discover SoundCloud as a resource.

With more Music Hack Days coming up, what does this release mean for the developer community?

We’ve included Creative Commons filtering in our API so now you can build apps that let you find and use CC content in various ways. For example, one thing we expect to see is the possibility to search and browse samples and sound effects within your favorite sequencer or audio editor, then preview the results and drag and drop the sounds you prefer right into your arrangement. We believe that bringing tools and content closer together really can change how audio is shared and reused, and Creative Commons is an important piece of getting this puzzle together. We’re big music hack day fans, and glad to offer developers an easy-to-use resource for any type of CC content.

We hear regularly from the Creative Commons organization about how they perceive the business potential of artists, and why it isn’t simply creators giving their work away for free with no reciprocal benefit. We also hear from naysayers who, very often, seem to have little understanding or experience of CC. Coming at this from the perspective of a third party, what do you think the value might be for independent artists?

Well, first off, it’s absolutely true that Creative Commons licenses aren’t for every artist, and they’re not a magic bullet to finding a business model or getting your music heard. But it’s also important to note that every CC license requires at least attribution to the original artist. While there are certainly some artists who have the problem of too many fans trying to listen to their music free, many more are grappling with the issue of getting their name out there, and all of the CC licenses make sure that if your material is being used you’re still getting credit.

Ultimately, there are a lot of musicians and other artists who actually want to allow people to copy music for their friends, or to sample it or remix it, or use it in an independent film or game. Creative Commons is just about letting artists and users make that agreement in a simple and straightforward way, by granting permission in advance, and reserving the rights that artists do want to hold on to. Again, not everybody sees things the same way, and we’re not trying to make everybody use one license or another. For users who do want to use these, we’re simply giving them the freedom to do so.

What about labels, who have tended (with the exception of the various netlabels who focus on CC) not to use the technology? Is there a place to demonstrate some use to that crowd?

There may be a way to convince labels to use Creative Commons, but it’s not really something we’re focusing on at SoundCloud. Netlabels using CC have gotten increasingly popular, and there are many very high-quality ones on SoundCloud now. There have also been a few high-profile artists who have broken from their labels in order to pursue alternate distribution methods, including releasing under Creative Commons licenses, but those are still a bit rare. Maybe as more examples pop up of artists releasing profitable CC-licensed music, that will convince the major labels to experiment a bit more. We’re not here to push one business model or another, but if it ends up being something they want to explore, we’re ready for them with the features!

If you’re ready to check out SoundCloud’s Creative Commons implementation, have a look here:

http://soundcloud.com/creativecommons/samples
Find, Remix and Reuse – SoundCloud Style [SoundCloud blog]

Renoise, the tracker-style music production host, has gotten a massive injection of customizability, scriptability, and hackability. If all you want to do is plug in some controller hardware and have more tangible control of music making, that scriptability can be nicely hidden away. But if you are ready to hack on your music app, this is some enormous news.

For that reason, Renoise 2.6 is being called even by its makers the “Renoise Geek Edition.” But if this hackability catches on, it could mean a music tool that’s more fun to use for everyone – not just scripting geeks.

2.6 has been released into a private beta for registered users, with the full release anticipated soon.

The video at top sums up why the open API is potentially a big deal for everyone. Right now, you can use a pre-built script for two-way integration of hardware like Novation’s Launchpad. As other folks get into the tools used here, though, that could (if hackers get so inspired) lead to lots of other hardware support and musical ideas.

The other big news, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is that longer samples now “autoseek.” That’s best seen in the video below, although I can put it this way – this means if your music isn’t all microsamples, you can now more easily produce and perform in Renoise.

Here’s my personal take on the 2.6 changes. Keep in mind, I’m just wrapping my head around this stuff, too, so take this with a grain of salt. But I can at least express why I’m excited about digging into this release, having followed these developments for some time:

Script everything – using a truly open API. Firefox has extensions. Renoise has Lua scripts. You can customize the user interface, manipulate musical elements in your song, control MIDI, audio, and OpenSoundControl, or actually dive in and create features Renoise doesn’t have yet. Those ready to code can use the elegant scripting language Lua, which means that – while you’ll definitely need some basic coding chops – the results are surprisingly simple and readable.

http://code.google.com/p/xrnx/

You don’t need a separate add-on product, and the API is fully documented, free, with a whole bundle of scripts and snippets under an open source MIT license. Renoise itself remains proprietary, but that means the scripts themselves are free to remix, and coders are free to distribute their work to all Renoise users.

That approach contrasts with the solution devised by Cycling ’74 and Ableton for Ableton Live. Live is not directly scriptable; the so-called “Live API” used by hackers was a set of private APIs. Max for Live provides some, but not all of this functionality, and it’s a paid add-on, so you can’t distribute your work to all Live users. On the other hand, the Lua scripting engine is just a scripting engine – it’s not the synth, sequencer, effect, and multimedia-processing platform that Max is. For some, that may actually make the simpler, more direct Lua interface more appealing; they’re just not directly comparable.

Two-way control of everything.

Using these scripting features, it’s possible to get much richer, two-way communication between control hardware and Renoise software.

That means one of two things:

You don’t care about code. No problem — grab control templates from a community of people who do care enough to hack things together. If you’ve got a Behringer BCF/BCR, Novation ReMOTE, Nocturn SL, or Launchpad, or Livid Ohm 64, you can get started right away. For everything else, watch for the community to fill in the gaps. (monome?)

You’re a coder. Dive in and make things work the way you want. What’s ground-breaking about what Renoise have done is that everything is built atop an open, extensible API for the software itself – rather than kludging together various protocols and tools, which has been the traditional industry solution (if you’re lucky, and there’s any customization at all). Renoise’s Duplex uses an object-oriented system for describing hardware and software and communicating events bi-directionally between them. It’s all built in the API, so it’s all customizable. There’s even an onscreen tool so you can mock-up interactions with hardware you don’t yet own (or haven’t yet built).

Everyone can share their work at a centralized site:

http://tools.renoise.com

OSC Support

Renoise joins MOTU Digital Performer, the open source DAW Ardour, and a host of visual apps that support full, native OSC. That means support for networked, transparent control from anywhere to anything. You can even send Lua scripts as OSC commands, so this new API is really controllable from anything.

Better Linux Support

Linux now adds DSSI plug-in support, bringing a full complement of Linux plug-in compatibility, as well as 64-bit Linux support.

More Support, Tweaks

Mac, Linux performance enhancements (especially on 64-bit Linux), and better support for hardware-based plugins (which I’m assuming means latency compensation) round out this update.

Needless to say, this is all something we’ll be covering more. Stay tuned here.

Thanks to Johann Baron Lanteigne and everyone who sent this in.

From the source:
http://www.renoise.com/about/what-s-new-2-6/

Developers for iPhone, iPod touch, and now the iPad have long complained about lack of access to the iTunes library, the file store and metadata for uploaded files. While version 3.0 of the OS provided limited playback capabilities (play/pause/stop), it was a far cry from what you’d need to build a DJ or other music app that made use of a user’s content. You couldn’t, for instance, adjust volume control, cueing, no mixing, or scratching.

Update/clarification: I may have exaggerated how much access is available. Obviously, Flare is working, as you can see, but the question of the exact mechanism by which it works and the documentation of the updated APIs is something that remains to be confirmed, beyond Asyn’c experience. I’m actively researching this issue. I’ve changed some wording to reflect the fact that what we do know about access to this functionality in the SDK, and how it works in the real world, is based on one shipping application for iOS 4 and the experiences of the developer of that app. The other issue is what mediates between the file in the database and playback; that is, unlike on desktop, you don’t necessarily get direct buffer access to files without an additional step. But the upshot is still that you can scratch tunes from iTunes, at least! -PK

Executive summary: It appears what has opened up is the ability to export assets from the library on the device, and following that extra step, use a local copy for access to buffers. See comments for more discussion. This would fall well short of being able to manipulate buffers from the file directly, but it’s a step. Stay tuned for further info next week as I confirm with developer sources.

With iOS 4.0, currently available for the iPhone and iPod touch, that changes, at least according to what we’re hearing from one developer – and seeing demonstrated in a shipping app. CDM has confirmed with developer Async Games that a new public API (meaning a fully supported developer tool) provides something closer to full-blown access to the iTunes library, in terms of not only metadata about tracks but also manipulation of audio data during playback. Result: you can now, for instance, scratch audio from songs uploaded from iTunes on a Mac or PC to the device. If correct, that would be likely to mean a coming flood of DJing on the iPhone and iPod touch, soon to be followed by the iPad whenever the 4.0 OS becomes available for Apple’s tablet. (Nor is this even limited in applicability to DJ apps – iTunes could become a more convenient way for syncing your own tracks and samples, or loading a playlist of backing tracks or other musical content onto your Apple mobile.)

The caveat appears to be that you need to “import” tracks from the library first; I’m confirming what that means and how long it takes. That would be shy of having direct, buffer-level access to tracks as seen in desktop DJ apps.

So far, the first app to actually ship with support for the feature is Flare Scratch, a simple simulation of a turntable with touch scratch support. You can scratch any song in your iTunes library, meaning this app developer has figured out a way to access audio buffers as they’re played. Apparently, the API isn’t entirely perfect, but it sounds like a step in the right direction, based on the impressions we hear from this developer. The developers of Flare Scratch also make a more full-featured DJ tool called Baby Decks DJ for the iPad, which could mean that, with iPad support, the tablet could become an all-in-one DJ solution. (Of course, a MacBook still has one significant edge – far, far greater storage capabilities.)

Flare Scratch @iTunes
Flare site

Incidentally, this isn’t an issue with Google’s Android platform, which provides open access to any file stored on the user’s SD card, and complete buffer access to that media (video, audio, the lot). Note that there may be some issues even on Android with using compressed assets; I’m writing some tests. Android developers, however, face a different set of challenges, like inconsistent handset audio drivers that can interfere with crackle-free, low-latency audio performance. (That situation looks brighter in the future, but it’s a whole other can of worms.)

Anyway, if you’re all alone on a park bench and want to scratch softly to yourself, you now have a solution. (Other videos, ranging from the useful tutorial to the somewhat frightening demo, at iflarescratch’s YouTube channel.)

I hereby open commenting to a bunch of people complaining about how this will ruin DJing and continue the slow decay of civilization itself. (Hey, I’m just the messenger. Leave me out of it.)

Wish you could make any track swing? Tristan Jehan, grad of the MIT Hyperinstruments Group and c0-founder of The Echo Nest, made that happen at San Francisco’s Music Hack Day. The Python code uses the Echo Nest’s sound-processing magic, available to the world via open Web APIs, in order to analyze tracks and re-synthesize them in swing form. The results are — well, somewhat terrifying, though in a cool way.

Paul Lamere of Music Machinery points this our way and has a ton of examples on his terrific, sound geek-friendly blog. (The post must have captured people’s imagination, as it’s spread virally online, but I know this is the only site you read — right?)

The swing is definitely of the consistent/mechanical variety, but … well, it does serve to prove that not everything should swing, but anything can.

My picks for the trippiest examples:

Enter Sandman- the Swing Version by plamere

Around the World – the swing version by plamere

You probably think of social networking and messaging as being about text, about saying things like “Wow, this tuna salad sandwich I’m having for lunch is delicious!” But the next Tweet you get on Twitter could be a synthesis preset.

Say what?

Working in Max/MSP, Andrew Spitz has developed a tool called Tweet a Sound. It uses Twitter as a communications platform for “social sound design.” Instead of just saying, “Wow, I be makin’ phat basslines,” you can actually share the sound. Whip up a sound using typical FM synth parameters and Max/MSP’s sound engine, then click “send.” You’ll send a string of numbers to your Twitter account, confusing those friends not in the know. But other users will be able to grab and play with your sound.

Andrew even encourages synthesis n00bs to play without fear – grab those envelopes and mysterious-looking settings and see what comes out. So, I hope you synth geeks do share this with some friends new to synthesis, as I think they’ll have a great time.

Right now, Tweet a Sound is Mac-only; we just need someone to save a Windows standalone version. Someone has asked about a Pd port, but let’s put it this way: this is the tip of a very, very big iceberg of sharing. It’s something worth considering in anything you’re doing, not just with Twitter, but whether you can provide networked capabilities in whatever you’re happening to build.

Ableton, of course, recently added the Share functionality to Live. But with open APIs and basic networking protocols, there’s no reason you can’t explore other features. Why not build a drum machine that lets you collaborate with one of your friends on your IM list, or a sequencer that automatically posts ideas as you revise them? Just doing these things for the sake of it could be a waste of time, but on the other hand, these social features could turn Web 2.0 sites into places that actually inspire you to make and share music rather than distract you with mundane activities.

I love the idea; let us know if you have some fun with it.

Tweet A Sound { sound + software } [Andrew Spitz Blog]