As expected, Apple moved its Logic Pro music production tool to the App Store. And the results are mostly what you’d expect. The biggest change is the price: Logic gets slashed to US$199.99, while MainStage gets a so-low-you-might-as-well-try-it $29.99 sticker price.

Wave editor Soundtrack Pro, removed from Final Cut Studio, is gone here, too. Lesser-known mastering tool WaveBurner gets the axe.

Logic Pro 9 is still Logic Pro 9. Today is a minor update that you can now download via the App Store if you choose. Logic Studio remains for sale through Apple in its boxed edition, but at two hundred bucks, the App Store version is the winner.

No Logic Pro X

If you were expecting Logic Pro X, my guess is, it’s just not done yet. I still expect the number ten to follow the number nine. (Amazing how that works.) I don’t expect Logic Pro X to produce the kind of disruption that Final Cut Pro X did, however. Logic already has a 64-bit infrastructure. Final Cut had an aging code base, deeply rooted in deprecated versions of QuickTime, that prompted Apple to do a ground-up rewrite. The initial results made people unusually unhappy, and perhaps justifiably so, but ground-up rewrites of software this complex tend to be ugly at first. There’s no reason to believe Logic will face a similar overhaul. Whatever Apple is doing, I’m in no rush; Logic is a deep program, and I’d rather wait for upgrades from everyone (note to all developers everywhere) than have serious production software rushed out before its time.

Logic Express is also, not surprisingly, eliminated. At $200, there just isn’t a spot for Express any more. And I’ve never been in love with these kind of product tiers; you’re constantly explaining to people whether they should get Express or Pro, as they desperately try to work out how “serious” they are in light of the products.

What is notable is MainStage: there are some welcome tweaks, and absurdly-cheap, standalone pricing that should get some attention.

Most importantly, $30 now gets you all of the instruments and effects from Logic in MainStage, including instruments like Sculpture.

MainStage

The real changes software-wise come in MainStage. For starters, if you don’t love Logic but want to try Apple’s live performance / instrument and effect rig, you can now do that. MainStage works standalone, and you even get all the Apple Loop sound content and sample-based instruments previously available in Logic Pro – Jam Packs and all, what once could have cost you hundreds of dollars is now thirty bucks. One thing I wondered about with the App Store was how Apple would handle distribution of all that content. They’ve thoughtfully allowed you to check off only the content you want to install, saving bandwidth and hard disk space if you don’t want everything.

All those instruments and effects: You also get, bundled into the package, an extensive collection of everything from guitar amps and stompboxes to the Ultrabeat drum machine to virtual instruments from analog to the unique physical-modeling Sculpture. Because MainStage supports ReWire, that means if you, say, love Ableton Live or Cubase more than Logic, but longed for some of those Apple instruments, you can now play with them in your DAW for thirty bucks without having to buy the whole Logic package. You’d just route audio straight into your DAW.

Check out the extensive list of instruments and effects on the MainStage product page. (They’re called “plug-ins,” but they can only be used in Logic and MainStage, not in other tools.)

For onstage or live studio use, MainStage also includes a looper, backing track player, and other useful tools.

MainStage 2.2 also delivers some new features for your $30. From the release notes, I spot a few highlights:

• Now takes “full advantage” of Macs with four or more processor cores
• New template picker, Assignments and Mappings view for streamlined screen and hardware control
• Bigger interface elements
• More MIDI control, SMF support for sending SysEx and other data when you make a patch change, block unwanted controller messages
• Support for: Akai MPK25, Akai MPK49, Alesis Q25, Korg nanoKey2, Korg nanoKontrol2, Korg nanoPad2, updated M-Audio Axiom and Oxygen models, Novation Nocturn 25

There are also some bug fixes and improved ReWire support.

None of this is really earth-shaking in itself – though it’s nice to see those patch change additions for people with hardware rigs. But the big news here is that, with MainStage unbundled from Logic, it’s in a whole new product category. It could be a viable option for Mac owners wanting to control plug-ins and hardware from a streamlined setup, even if they’re not Logic fans. And that could open MainStage to new audiences using other DAWs. Years ago, I reviewed a similar app, Rax, now marketed by Audiofile Engineering. (At the time, it was developed by Plasq, now better known for Skitch, which they just sold successfully to Evernote.) I was disappointed that no one really picked up on the app.

The idea is great: make a simple, straightforward app that gets you actually playing instruments on your computer with minimum fuss. It still seems like a great idea, and perhaps now the time is right. Rax/MainStage shootout, anyone?

Bottom Line

Sometimes, it’s news that something isn’t news. For all the rumors that the App Store transition was going to be a big deal, I think for Logic users, it’s probably not. It could be a more convenient way to distribute Apple’s software. And it sure makes those days of giant Logic boxes and blue Emagic copy protection dongles seem distant, huh? But I don’t think the question is whether competitors will go to the App Store, specifically. I think the question will be more generally, when will we cease to see boxes of nothing but software in stores? It seems stores may continue to carry hardware bundles, but that software will get delivered, you know, on the Internet.

Who says technology doesn’t last? The Apple II platform will be 35 years old in April, yet it’s still going strong. It even gets a brand-new drum machine software, launched this month, complete with eight wavetable-based drum sounds, and a clever sequencer. The surprise: the whole combination, delivered on a 5 1/4″ floppy disk, can be stunningly usable, as in something you’d actually want to make music with. Not bad for a computer you can typically pick up for a few bills at a flea market. (Emulators can also run the software, so you don’t even need hardware. Of course, that’s not nearly as much fun.)

Creators MJ Mahon and 8-bit Weapon released the software last week, but I wanted to wait for a full video demo and tutorial so you could see it in action. See also screen shots.

And even if you don’t want to shell up the cash, there’s a demo version.

We’ve got a sound sample of what the results sound like, via the artists:
DMS Drummer Demo by cdm

Full details:

Apple II DMS Drummer Software
by MJ Mahon & 8 Bit Weapon

Introducing the amazing DMS Drummer for Apple II personal computers! The DMS Drummer is the only wavetable based Drum Sequencer for the Apple //e, IIc, IIc+, and IIGS computers. It comes complete with 8 drum sounds: Bass, Snare, Rim Shot, Hand Clap, Tom, Hat Open, Hat Closed, and Lazer. DMS Drummer also has a massive sequencer built-in for song writing or just some creative noodling. The DMS Drummer monophonic sequencer patterns have 16 spaces. You can create up to 16 unique drum patterns and arrange them into 256 available arrangement slots. Each drum sound can also be re-pitched or “tuned” to the users preference inside the “Tone” section of any pattern. For example, you can take the single tom sound and create a rich sequence of multiple toms in various pitches like in our demo song. Each song sequence can be saved on disk as well for safe keeping.

Features: 8 Drum Sounds (tune-able)
16 Programmable Patterns
256 Arrangement Slots for Patterns Programmable Tempo
Saves your work
3 Demo Sequences by 8 Bit Weapon & ComputeHer

Requirements: Apple //e, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs computer with 80-column capability
5.25″ floppy disk drive
Monitor. [Ed.: remember, you can use a TV...]

The artists:
http://www.8bitweapon.com
http://www.computeher.com

Buy the software:
http://8bitweapon.com/store.htm [not available in the Apple App Store ]

US$14.95 on a floppy, US$9.95 for a .dsk file you can use with an emulator

One (free) emulator option on Windows, for instance, these two recommend:
http://applewin.berlios.de/

This is atop their DMS 8-voice synthesizer, with chippy-sounding Acoustic Piano, Vibraphone, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, Trumpet, Clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, and banjo

By the way, I have to note: lately, there’s been less value given Steve Wozniak’s original, more “open” design for the Apple II. Because it allowed for massive expansion, the platform had one of the longest life cycles of any computer platform, ever, made from 1977 through 1993 and driving much of Apple Computer’s early success, without which products like the Mac and everything since would never have happened. I only wish we could find a way for modern computers to retain this kind of longevity, both in usability and hardware life, rather than have their toxic, precious guts find their way to landfills.

Apple’s GarageBand music creation and amp simulation on iPad is now also on the company’s handhelds, with iPhone (3GS, 4, 4S) and iPod touch (3rd-generation and better) support. You only have to buy GarageBand once; the app runs on all those platforms, so if you had the iPad version and also own a compatible device, you can automagically add it.

The iPad is definitely the roomier device, so what can you do with the handheld?

• Touch Instruments (pictured here) let you quickly tap out musical ideas.
• Amp and stompbox models work. As I’ve said in the past, that makes the handhelds into usable practice amps or pocket-ready effects boxes.
• Lay down multiple tracks (recording external audio one at a time), and edit in a simplified GarageBand track editor.
• You can still exchange files – up to eight tracks of recorded or generated music – with GarageBand and Logic on your Mac. That makes this a usable pocket sketchpad.

In short, not only does your Mac have little to fear, the notion is that these handheld apps could actually give you added incentive to do production back on the desktop.

Also in this update are features that will be useful to the iPad version, too, but are clearly intended to make the palm-top edition more usable. “Smart Instruments” let you play along with chords – ideal if you can’t quite twist your fingers into strumming positions on your phone. And there’s a historical musical precedent for this, too: think autoharps and frets and capos, musical innovations intended to make playing an idea easier.

If you want a bit more sophistication, the instruments expand to provide features like glissando, Leslie simulation, tuners, and so on.

Our friend Jim Dalrymple of Apple-focused tech site The Loop spots other enhancements. If you discovered the previous version frustratingly didn’t let you change keys without transposing audio, or didn’t let you set 3/4 or 6/8 time signatures (“do I hear a waltz?”), those holes have been patched – useful in the iPad version, too. Also, you can export to AAC or uncompressed AIFF even without going via GarageBand or Logic, a helpful issue.

US$4.99 new, or free update for existing customers. (Fear not for starving programmers. It turns out that this “Apple” company also makes those “iPhone” and “Mac” things, too.)

But this is all feature talk. What’s impressive to me is the way Apple has boiled down the interface of GarageBand into a smaller space. What’s left is only what is strictly necessary – complete with some photo-realistic imagery, yes, true to Apple’s notion of polish and texture. It makes a stunningly clear and obvious interface design, and that to me is inspiring: not as something I hope other developers will copy, but the kind of clarity I hope they’ll find in their own voice. After all, GarageBand for iOS shares DNA with Logic, not just mobile apps, and therefore a far more complex heritage.

Playing the glass surface of your phone as a musical instrument is likely to be relatively limited – compare a tangible instrument, which feels fun to play. But as a sketchpad, and as a pocket reduction of other things, this has appeal.

Images courtesy Apple. (Check out high-resolution versions.)

Apple App Store Link

People still find heroes – imperfect as they may be, people who provide inspiration. I’ve been talking a lot this year about the impact of Max Mathews; more on that soon. But in the aftermath of Steve Jobs’ death, it’s touching to see some of the reactions. French Rock band Bravery in Battle write CDM to share their music video homage to the Apple leader. They’ve gotten quite a lot of attention in French, as well (French-language links):

«Ayez faim, soyez fous»… les bonnes paroles de Steve jobs mises en musique [Liberation]
Un bel hommage à Steve Jobs en musique (vidéo) [stevejobs.fr]

We are Bravery in Battle, a French rock band. When we heard of Steve Jobs’s death, on October the 5th, we decided at once to write some music to pay him homage.
We have been using the Mac to make music for almost 15 years now and it’s completely part of our creative process. We also have been using
the iPad on stage since the very first days of its launching to trigger samples and play instruments too cumbersome to carry.
Without Apple and its products, we wouldn’t the artists we are today.
But we didn’t want to write a song, we wanted to use Steve’s very words and hear his own voice. That’s why we used his memorable 2005 Stanford Commencement Address. We have chosen the words which seemed the most meaningful for us and for the occasion.
As an additional homage, we played all the music on an iPad, with GarageBand : a Steve Jobs Tribute using only his devices and softwares.
To make a video; we used the same Stanford Address (made on a Mac, too, with Final Cut Pro X).
The original speech was very widely consulted on the Net in the hours following Steve Jobs’s death but our video tells something else. It focuses on a single point and increases its emotion.
For Bravery in Battle
Paul Malinowski

The tenth anniversary of the iPod debut means you’ll find plenty of commentaries on Apple’s iPod and how it has changed music. It’s an issue that’s been talked to death enough, continuously, in the past ten years that I’m literally uncertain there’s more I can say about it. Here’s one good, compact commentary from Daring Fireball, inspired by Macworld’s sharp review from the 2001 debut of the hardware.

Instead, let’s consider what hasn’t happened: Apple hasn’t discontinued the standalone iPod, as distinct from the iPad and iPhone and other general devices. For music lovers, that’s a big deal. The sad news is, the category itself has all but entirely imploded.

The last ten years has been in almost every category a kind of battle between dedicated devices and convergence devices. Anecdotally and statistically, you’ve seen people abandon dedicated video cameras, still cameras, audio recording gadgets, and audio players for something like their iPhone. Little wonder: unless you have enormous pockets, if the integrated device does the job – and its battery doesn’t give out – it means something that’s always at the ready.

Apple’s legacy in music players is curious: they both defined the category, and wiped out all the competition. And that’s true even before Apple changed the category again with the iPhone. That’s not the normal pattern: typically, in electronics or any other tech, the pioneer defines a space in which other competitors come and play. Not so with the iPod: a combination of shifting consumer trends, the profound success of the iTunes “ecosystem,” and the general ineptness of competitors to make quality, differentiated alternatives has led to the iPod standing more or less alone. The iTunes issue shouldn’t be overlooked: recall that when the iPod launched, record labels were still concerned about copy protection. The result was an iTunes-iPod relationship that ultimately kept consumers from working out the complexities of moving their music library to another, rival player. (The fact that most of the rival players weren’t any good didn’t help, so we can’t ever really know how much of a factor this was.)

Two things have happened this fall. Microsoft did discontinue the Zune, in what seems the final death knell for any major dedicated music player that isn’t made by Apple:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD is dead

But, secondly, even as various analysts predicted Apple would kill the dedicated iPod players or even the iPhone-with-no-phone iPod touch, Apple didn’t discontinue anything.

My favorite player remains Apple’s iPod Classic. It’s beautifully designed, holds an absurd amount of music no phone can match (160 GB), and has a simple, clean interface for getting to your music. It’s sad to me only that it’s the only choice, particularly because the one thing rivals did have going for them was easier, more open sync rather than iTunes-only solutions. In fact, even the original iPod had as a major selling point the ability to work as a dedicated hard drive. As a purchaser of the first iPod, one of my favorite features was the ability to easily tote around a big file or two atop the music library.

Oh, yeah, and it’ll still run when your phone battery is dying, and it costs just US$249 – no phone contract required. Ahem.

http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/

Phones as playback devices are pretty great. But remember that the original dream of the iPod was something different: it was the ability to put your whole music library on one device and take it anywhere. My main question is how that legacy will pan out. Dedicated music devices give you distraction-free access to nothing but music, and ongoing storage innovations mean that something that’s just a music device may long exceed what the convergence devices can do, surviving for the reason SLR cameras do.

Apple’s iPod series will last so long as people keep buying them; Apple seems in no hurry to walk away from extra revenue. (It’s part of the reason why they’ve got all that cash, folks.) But I wonder in the long term what will happen to the category. To me, the major gaping hole is something a lot of us wanted even when we saw the first iPod: a dedicated, pro-quality music player, a kind of audiophile iPod. It doesn’t need any fancy features or silly gold-plated jacks, just something dedicated to playing music and nothing else. I wonder if we’ll ever see that, or if it’ll be another casualty of the explosion in consumer gadgets. In the meantime, long live the iPod Classic.

And for the record, if you do have an original iPod from ten years ago, you can still make it sing: install Linux and it’ll even run Pd.

One of the smallest measures of time in the world is now the time that elapses between when Apple ships a new mobile product and someone has uploaded a video / album / feature film with it. It’s rather amazing. Somewhere, other tech vendors are … crying.

But that said, I think the video above is a wonderful thing. Perhaps the mobile smartphone is this generation’s new PortaStudio – something so readily accessible and portable that there’s really no excuse not to record a musical event when it happens. And however you do that I think is healthy.

So, in case you’re curious how a spare cable or adapter or two and a phone can be there – just in case someone forgot their laptop / ADAT machine / reel-to-reel deck – let’s just copy the full press release, as it’s told as a very nice, personal little story. And the music is sweet-hearted, too.

The app in question is Sonoma WireWorks’ FourTrack.

CDM’s own Marsha Vdovin has her 4S and loves it, hopefully shooting with it a bit over at AES. I’m, meanwhile, hobbling along with my unlocked original G1 in Europe, so, uh, if any vendors want to buy me off, I’m game.

Here’s the other thing: while the iPad gets a lot of attention these days, our internal stats at CDM tell us many, many CDM readers have iPhones – and only a fraction of you have iPads. Little wonder: it’s easy to justify a smartphone, harder to justify a tablet on top of the laptop you probably already own.

But enough of that: let’s hear how they recorded. And reminisce about the days of the portable tape 4-track. (It worked for the likes of John Lennon.)

“I’ve been touring lately with Alexa James and thought my new song “Come Running to Me” would be a great song to sing with her. We started doing the song together on a recent tour in Europe, and people seemed to like the song. We took that as a cue to get a recording of it, and thought- why not the new iPhone 4S? Let’s see what it can do,” says Rory Partin, a Los Angeles based recording artist.

Rory pre-ordered his phone, and in thinking about how to approach the video, realized they would need a second phone. So this past Friday, iPhone 4S’ release day, Alexa went at 5:30 am to camp out in the long line at the Apple store. Approaching the front of the line around 10am, she was almost in the store. But then AT&T systems started to overload, and delayed her getting set up. Soon, Verizon and Sprint were also facing delays because of the great demand of the new iPhone 4S. Alexa was finally up and running around 1pm, and the recording began.

Sonoma Wireworks created an app called FourTrack which is the app Partin used for the recording process. Along with a learning curve of a new app itself, there was also the learning curve in how to best record into the app. “We spent hours,” says Partin, “recording guitars, keys and vocals using different microphones and plugging those directly into the phone because usually you can get a cleaner sound going direct (like you see in some shots of the video). But we found that we got the clearest and best sound just holding the phone near the instrument or voice. We couldn’t believe how much better it sounded to just use the built in mic that comes on the phone. So when our guitarist, Jeffrey Miles was recording his guitars, I literally stood next to him and held the phone over his shoulder.

To record my vocals, I was able to fit the iPhone 4S in between an open slot in the microphone clip on a mic stand, and I sang into that. Alexa was next to track vocals. By the time we got to her, it was 4am. I then re-recorded the keys. The three of us pulled an all-nighter, and left around 7am Saturday morning so i could go catch a plane.”

Mixing down the tracks was also an interesting process, as FourTrack iOS has, you guessed, it, four tracks. FourTrack iOS allows you to bounce tracks, so we were able to do several guitar tracks, mix them on the iPhone 4S, and then bounce them down into one track. You can then send those files to your laptop to make room for more tracking, as well as for back up and a final mix. We also used our MacBooks for final video edits for the sake of time. Alexa grins, “We obviously didn’t have fancy lighting or makeup artists, but the quality of the iPhone 4S to take video is quite amazing in spite of how I looked after a few hours of sleep and camping out at the Apple line.”

rorypartin.com
alexajames.com
http://www.sonomawireworks.com/iphone/fourtrack/

Hang on, I’m supposed to be keeping up the anti-Apple bias everyone tells me I have.

Hey, what’s up with rounded rectangles, anyway? What’s wrong with corners?

Better?

Wait, crap, this may be one of the posts where I get told I’m personally responsible for the destruction of the Earth and my promotion of capitalism. Uh… we are the 99%?

(Seriously, I do have concerns about toxic waste, human rights, and mineral extraction; that’s why I’m glad to see people making music with these tools and finding lasting, meaningful uses for them.)

Sure enough, rumors are surfacing saying as much. (I’ve gotten at least one email, secondhand – no, Apple, no Apple employee has said anything to me; if they had, I wouldn’t even think of posting this story). For instance:
Apple Moving Toward Release of Logic Pro X? [MacRumors]

Now, of course, what I’ve heard even more than rumors is users of Logic in an absolute panic that Apple will muck around with their product. Putting it diplomatically, feedback to Final Cut Pro X has not been overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea what the next version of Logic will look like, so it’s very possible Apple will indeed screw around with Logic in a way that makes its existing user base unhappy. But, since I feel free to speculate idly simply because I really, truly don’t know anything and thus can’t get anyone fired / violate any NDAs (again, Apple, please, please, please don’t hurt me), I’ll say this:

Assuming Apple is “running away from pro users” is probably wrong. This was a widespread reading of Final Cut Pro X. I think it’s fair to say Apple hoped their adjustments would attract new users put off by previous versions and other pro non-linear editors. Otherwise, though, I have to disagree. Apple’s pro user base is hugely profitable, in direct sales and high-margin, high-end Mac sales, and there are a lot of those users out there – I’ve sat with that team at Apple as they talked video pro sales numbers, for actual sales from pros, not even including pirated copies. (Anyone who thinks Apple likes to see their product pirated so they can sell more Mac hardware? Highly unlikely, that, too.) There’s a big difference between wanting to alienate your pro user base, and doing it inadvertently. I think Apple’s reputation is such that people have come to believe that everything they do is part of a grand plan, even when it’s not.

Developers want to make changes. Big changes don’t always work as expected, or work right away. Users are resistant to changes, and far more resistant the more the use of software is part of their pro, up-against-deadlines, demanding workflows. That’s the bottom line. I’m not going to be terribly complimentary here, though: I think the problem with Final Cut isn’t that it was designed for non-pro users, but that it wasn’t finished or fully fleshed-out. Enough has been said about that – see The Internet – but I can imagine anything similar in Logic would cause some (rightfully) unhappy users. And quality and implementation are everything; there’s a reason I gave Motion a positive review in Macworld, and you haven’t heard similar complaints about it, even though it uses some of the same UX paradigms and underlying engine. I hope future updates to Final Cut are more like that version of Motion in terms of user experience. (This is not a Final Cut review; that’d be glib. Suffice to say I tried Final Cut Pro X and decided to do editing in another program, and that I do appreciate some of what I believe Apple was trying to do, and that I do hope future versions are more successful. This is the reality of using pro tools.)

That said –

Apple is probably not overhauling Logic as thoroughly as Final Cut. Final Cut’s code base, as of Final Cut Pro 7, was not 64-bit and was dependent on deprecated video frameworks; it’s not unreasonable to assume that Apple felt they had to start over from scratch. Logic already has 64-bit support, and is already built atop parallel audio frameworks like Core Audio and Core MIDI that haven’t changed so radically. So while file management, save and undo, and other Lion-style features would likely call for changes, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose the old Logic, necessarily. And Logic has already undergone one Apple-administered UI overhaul, which was able to preserve the way Logic users work with the tool. Part of what’s admirable about Logic is its longevity, love it or hate it, so while a UI reskin is almost certainly in the works, that doesn’t mean Logic Pro X will be like Logic Studio X.

Apple will probably try to do Mac App Store distribution and take out some bundled apps. You don’t need rumors to figure this one out. App Store distribution? Almost certain. Unbundling tools like Soundtrack Pro or the rarely-used WaveBurner, each of which has robust competition from other developers? Certainly not unlikely. The interesting question here will be how Apple handles the sheer size of things like bundled audio content, and whether Logic’s support for plug-ins will mean either adjusting App Store rules, or whether Logic will get a special exception because it’s Apple (fully within their rights).

Apple probably won’t dump support for plug-ins. Apple continues to actively develop its Audio Unit plug-in format and push validation, and if they didn’t support plug-ins, they’d disrupt users and the entire vendor ecosystem. I’ll be stunned if that goes away. One thing they almost certainly will dump is technologies like Pro Tools interface compatibility – Avid has been moving toward Core Audio support, anyway – and possibly even ReWire. But while any change anywhere in a DAW will impact someone, neither of those would be likely to radically change user relationships to the tool.

Also, as a reader points out, Final Cut Pro X supports plug-ins.

The most interesting thing to me about all of this is whether the appearance of Logic on the Mac App Store, if it happens, will impact other audio apps. So far, it’s been a desert there, as I and some others (read: developers) predicted, partly because music software is so dependent on the plug-in ecosystem and sales to users through direct channels or music stores.

Additional evidence: GarageBand is already in the App Store, and supports plug-ins (AU). So the real question here is more the question of whether other hosts would try to / be allowed to follow the same model, and whether even plug-in distribution, using approved Apple frameworks, were allowed. (The former seems more likely than the latter: you can run a host without a plug-in, but not visa versa.)

What I’m interested in is whether other software follows suit at all. Aperture, Motion, and Final Cut haven’t necessarily produced an onslaught of other pro tools for visual Mac users – at least, not so many high-end or flagship tools, though there are many really useful smaller ones. Will audio be different?

Disclaimer: I know nothing. All of the above is purely speculative, based on things that to me seem pretty obvious. I’m not divulging secret, privileged information, my brain isn’t under an NDA, and all of that means I could be completely wrong. Take with a box of salt.

Updated: I neglected to link, by way of contrast, this editorial from around the time of the most heated Final Cut followup:
The End Is Night…

In it, Chris Randall (himself a plug-in developer tasked with supporting Logic and AU validation) argues basically the exact opposite of what I do here.

In review, my entire analysis above could be summed up as this: Logic will be on the App Store. It’ll still be more or less the Logic you love, or don’t love, as the case may be, but it’s unlikely to introduce radically new feelings even if you aren’t getting a stack of DVDs.

In the ongoing struggle to make a laptop into an instrument, there’s inevitably the scramble onstage (or even in a studio) to get everything primed and ready to play. You want to adjust settings, launch certain applications, and generally get your laptop ready for actual music making.

Wouldn’t it be nice to make all of that happen automatically, magically, instantly, and robotically? It is, after all, a machine. (They’re supposed to be working for us, I’m told, assuming they’re following the Three Laws.)

Martin Delaney, London-based Ableton Live trainer, has put together a nice tutorial for production education center Dubspot with one way of accomplishing that using Apple’s free Automator. I was always a fan of Automator, particularly in its use in the workflows for the Soundtrack Pro audio editor from Apple, but it seems like almost no one else (Apple included) seems to remember it’s there. So here’s a way to put it to some free, powerful use.

Of course, there are probably other ways of accomplishing this – shell scripts and the like – if anyone wants to suggest something. Automator has the advantage of some serious ease of use.

Have a look, and download this set of Automator actions free:
Video Tutorial: Simplify Your Ableton Workflow Using Apple’s Automator [Dubspot]

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re looking for a tool for composing and editing scores on your iPad, Avid Scorch isn’t it — not yet, at least. But as a score reader, Scorch could be a glimpse of a future in which tablets create a new marketplace and exchange for notated music.

Scorch is, first and foremost, a score reader. It shares the mature notational display engine of Sibelius, and makes use of Sibelius’ (and now Pro Tools’) scores. That includes Sibelius’ broad library of musical symbols, guitar tab features, and handwritten fonts, among other features. (It even includes the somewhat silly, but potentially-comforting, textures that have long been a feature of the desktop product.)

The role of tablets in digital music is still evolving. But it’s not hard to make a case for the form factor here: unlike a MacBook Pro or a PC tower, you can put a tablet on a music stand. As such, a tiny device can have dynamic access to a near-limitless collection of music. We’ve already seen impressive takes on the classic jazz fake book on the iPad, and they handily beat the older form when it comes to weight or bulk.

That leaves the question of what reading a score on what remains essentially a computer, in place of on paper, actually means. Scorch shows off some advantages here. For instance, you can transpose scores – say, for a singer, or a different reed instrument – in realtime. (That grumbling noise you hear is people complaining about the loss of musicianship and the ability to sight-transpose. I agree, to a point – but I’ve also known some musicians who could do that who also used the transposition button on a digital piano.)

Other features could broaden the appeal of notation in general. With one tap, you can convert a line to guitar tab, dynamically, as seen in the image below. You can change fonts, or pull out a single part, in order to improve readability. These are things that would normally require a copyist to go back to the drawing board and make new parts, even in the computer age. The very notion of what a score is is changing: that score becomes dynamic, electronic, and live, open to instantaneous shared revisions.

I’m following up with Avid’s developers and testing the application myself, as some questions remain. Turning pages electronically could theoretically be easier … or not. There’s an interactive “Music Stand” mode, but that’ll require an actual test. (Stay tuned for results of that shortly.) Depending on your instrument, you may not have a hand free, and on the iPad, there’s no way to tape multiple pages together to increase the size of the paper. My bet is that we’ll badly need a footswitch. (See this week’s discussion of augmenting tablets with foot pedals.)

While I investigate that, though, it’s just as interesting to ponder that Scorch is not just an application, but a marketplace. Using Apple’s in-app payments (the rules for which this week were loosened), you can purchase scores or download free scores. The display even looks like e-reader apps from Apple, Amazon, and others. With brick-and-mortar music stores few and far between, and the record store long gone, this is huge news. Demand for notation has been on the uptick, as popular music, reality TV, and shows like Glee continue to feed on – and feed – appetite for musical expression. (I need to pull some solid numbers on that, but I do know there are some positive signs; that’s probably a topic for another story.)

Scorch could be the start of something big – and with electronics makers around the world, not just Apple, betting on the tablet, it could be a sign of other tools to come.

I still imagine many people want to use tablets to make scores, not just consume them, and I expect that to be a growth area, too. But Scorch is notable as the first big-league entry into what could be a transformative arena. And it could be transformative in ways that are more profound than even digital distribution of music. Notation has evolved the way it has on a paper medium, designed to be fixed, still influenced by the conventions of the pen and engraving. The next question: will scores, from creation to display, need to change, too?

Avid Scorch

The gaming industry has made their bet, and it’s that touchscreens go better with tactile controls. Might digital musicians reach the same conclusion?

A funny thing has happened on the way to the touch era. The vision of a device like the iPad is minimalist to the extreme: an uninterrupted, impossibly-slim metal slate, as impenetrable as some sort of found alien scifi object. The notion is that by reducing physical controls, the software itself comes to the fore. It’s beautiful conceptually … and then you find yourself tapping and stroking a piece of undifferentiated glass. For navigating interfaces – and even, I’d argue, exploring sound design and composition – it works brilliantly. But for live digital performance (what to game lovers is called “gaming”), for anything that wants tactile feedback, it can be imprecise or unsatisfying, or both.

Watching this shake out as a design problem is fascinating, especially coming from the perspective of music. Digital musicians were exploring alternative interfaces since before it was cool. Given the ability to make any sound we can possibly imagine, the question of how you design an interface around sound is compositional, philosophical, essential.

Whatever winds up working in the marketplace, there are some fascinating ideas for combining touch with tactile. Since both are good at certain tasks, why not do both?

We’ve seen several examples among musicians and researchers exploring how to augment the touchscreen with physical input:

Mike Kneupfel’s research at NYU’s ITP program, in the video at top, investigates adding additional inputs. See: Extending the Touchscreen.

We saw that kind of extensibility in an iPad dock concept by Livid Instruments.

While it lacks additional tangible controls, I/O extensibility is featured in a still-as-yet-unreleased “pro” dock by Alesis, and most recently in a DIY dock by circuit bending pioneer Reed Ghazala.

Now, game vendors are moving in the same direction – even with prototypes that look quite a lot like the research project above. (Sometimes, arriving at the obvious conclusion is necessary for a great design.)

Sony’s PlayStation Vita, successor to the PSP mobile game platform, augments touch input with tactile controls in much the same way as Michael Knuepfel’s work does. Notably, it also proposes how these inputs can coexist in a form factor that’s larger than a phone, but smaller than a tablet – scaled roughly to a comfortable holding distance between your two hands. (Microsoft and Apple each unveiled standard split keyboards on Windows 8 and iOS 5, respectively. The era of thumb ergonomics is now fully underway.)

Nintendo’s Wii U controller combines a lot of sensing capabilities into one device. Like Sony’s effort, the centerpiece is the combination of the interactive touch display with analog controls. But true to its Wii heritage, Nintendo is packing other sensing technology, too. While its evolution has been more piecemeal, the same is true of the Xbox 360 in the Kinect era. The Kinect camera is really a bundle of mic and stereoscopic camera sensing with software intelligence for motion analysis and even speech analysis via a variety of methods. While Kinect is touchless, the conventional gamepad still plays a role.

What’s the relevance of all of this evolution to music? Digital music’s demands parallel gaming, requiring precision, accessibility, scalability from beginners to hardcore experts, and real-time interaction. Also, music research has often been at the forefront of experimentation with a variety of means of translating sensory data to expression. And since musical practice itself is roughly as old in human evolution as language, if not older, it’s a key way of glimpsing how ubiquitous interfaces can become meaningful.

Let me put that another way: the stuff game companies are doing now looks a heck of a lot like what computer musicians have been doing for years.

While much of the acclaim for platforms like the iPad has been for their transparency and unadorned interfaces – and while I believe those are valuable concepts – bundles of capabilities for interacting with the world can become powerful. That means efforts like Apple’s addition of USB MIDI connectivity to the iPad, or Google’s nascent work to standardize USB host mode and open hardware development (based on Arduino), take on new meaning. Add to this additional connectivity via Bluetooth and wifi, and it may be that we only really see what these platforms do when, like the PC, they start geting sociable with a range of other gear.

This could also mean that communities like the music community have a chance to prove that the “post-PC era” is a little different than it’s been described in the mainstream press – and maybe a little less a radical departure. The “post PC era,” we’re told, is less about being a hub for a lot of hardware. But as people look for tactile feedback, some of the coolest applications of these platforms may not be in the mainstream use as “consumption” devices, but at the fringe.

I’ve just come from the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in New York. You’re not missing much; there were a handful of people snapping up the tablets. (I think the 10.1, and a few other Honeycomb-based tablets, do have a bright future, though their growth may be a bit slow at first as developers get their hands on them and give people a reason to buy them.)

What was most compelling to people at the launch, though, was a planned appearance by pop star Ne-Yo (at least according to some staffers to whom I spoke).

But the connection was, at best, tenuous. It may be when devices like these tablets are made more viable for musicians onstage that that connection starts to make sense. And that may mean that Apple and Google/Android vendors alike need to start to think more aggressively about the larger ecosystem and hardware applications. Remember all those futuristic promises from Apple about hardware accessories? Right now, the most significant hardware is the Square payment add-on, and it uses a hack to make it work through the audio jack. Both Apple and Google can do more work to open up hardware development.

It’s all well and good for the tablet to be a “post PC” device, to be different from PCs, to be better. But they may simultaneously need some of the openness to other gadgets that made the PC age so revolutionary.