I have a problem. Let me explain.

Au Revoir Simone’s “Shadows” presented by David Lynch Foundation Television

Au Revoir Simone have released the debut music video, “Shadows,” from their forthcoming album, “Still Night, Still Light.” Yet again, the music is warm and wonderful, with clever, deceptively-simple ostinatos and earnest melodies delivered in wispy vocals. But the release also suggests the new album is going to be more of what we got in the last albums – pleasant and dreamy, but absent, ironically, any hint of “shadows.” The music video comes again from Vikram Gandhi and Brendan Colthurst of Disposable, a firm with expertise in indie-tilted but finely-crafted and always-safe music videos. Their previous outing on “Sad Song”, featuring un-ironic, sweet footage of the trio baking cookies, seemed to capture the blissfully good intentions of the talented Brooklyn outfit. Here, though, the video seems to fixate on its crushes, alternately on the ladies, their vintage synths (just one more effects shot over the top of the JUNO-60), or both. It’s product placement for hardware that isn’t made any more.

I begin to wonder if all of this is moving us, the music fans and critics, into dangerous territory, tangled in indie cred and inescapable nostalgia. I expect some of you wonder why, years into an avalanche of releases with whisper-thin vocals of [boy/girl] atop vintage [square wave synth] and [lo-fi beat box] it would take me until now to come to this conclusion. I love Ms. John Soda and Lali Puna and the many other bands whose stripped-down style is close to Au Revoir Simone’s, but it seems by definition the sort of music that doesn’t need description or explanation or analysis. Yet, oddly, we have even more publicity for a band that seems not to need it.

Here’s a different take on soundware business models: offer your stuff for free, then depend on donations. That’s the tack at Togeo Studios, who have an impressive collection of packs. Wave Attack I, for instance, includes single-cycle waveforms with arpeggiated sequences and leads. Their work is available on BitTorrent, too, which could help defray bandwidth costs. (Well, single-cycle waveforms don’t take up much, but perhaps larger packs might.)

I have to admit, I’m skeptical of the donationware model. The issue is, it seems like a lot of folks just aren’t going to donate – not necessarily for any sinister reasons, but simply because they don’t “get around to it.” Heck, just selling soundware is hard enough. And the brilliant, open source Ardour DAW has struggled to cobble together even a few licenses’ worth of income monthly, despite very reasonable subscription fees and powerful features.

I’m skeptical, but I’m also intrigued. Donationware or freemium models once powered the PC shareware industry and launched the now-massive game company Epic Games (of Unreal fame). Challenging as it might be, these models could open new tools to musicians and would be particularly powerful with open source. It’s something that could help us start new projects here on CDM, while paying our rent / electric bills. So what do you think of Togeo’s work? And that specific example aside, would you be willing to “donate” to software, soundware, and learning materials the way that you do American public radio and TV?

Togeo Studios
Wave Attack 1 Live Pack – mininova [Torrent page]

It’s nearly the holiday season, and as CDM has just completed its fourth birthday, I want to give all of us a present. The idea: a holiday guide that’s a bit different.

• The first CDM treeware. We’ll have PDF and print-on demand versions. And part of the reason we’re doing this:
• Something you can share. CDM certainly has its share of (sometimes frighteningly) advanced readers. But we believe in what we’re doing enough to share it with people with less experience. So we’ll include content you can share with nieces, cousins, strangers on the street. And, of course, it’ll be Creative Commons-licensed.
• Gifts of knowledge as well as objects. You’ve seen the countless lists of “stuff to buy” in other holiday guides. But we believe in DIY tech, and that knowledge can be priceless. So we’ll include information from the best of CDM in 2008 and special guides for the occasion.
• Designed by you. This time, we want to know what you would want to receive, what you would give to newcomers, and what you would want to read. So we need your help – fill out the survey below and this will really be a grassroots effort by the CDM community.

It’s a really tough economy out there. But that’s all the more reason to invest in things that really matter, to look for value, and to look for things that can be shared freely with one another. So, in my mind, I could think of no better time to do this. Give the survey a go.

If you complete the survey, you’ll be entered in a drawing to receive another gift: a free copy of the new, cross-platform T-RackS 3 mastering and mixing suite donated by IK Multimedia. (We’ll have one other opportunity to put your name in the hat later this week, too.)

Fill out the survey below or head straight to:
http://cdm.holiday08.sgizmo.com

And watch for the guide by the beginning of December.

Advertisers: We need your support to help bring this guide to CDM readers free of charge. If you’ve got a message you’d like to get out and want to support our community, do get in touch. (We have some creative possibilities to offer, too.) Use the contact form or email ads (at) createdigitalmusic (dot) com.

Most musicians will be waiting some time before running Vista, so if you can’t upgrade to a new OS, upgrade the OS you’ve got. Our friend Brad, aka Internet indie singer-songwriter star Brad Sucks, is getting into laptop performance and wants some tips for tuning Windows XP. He writes:

I’d be interested in asking your readers how they set up their laptops for live performance OS-wise. I’ve been giving some thought to doing a dual boot WinXP install. So I can have one install as my desktop, mail, etc. And another one with say XPlite or nLite with Live set up, audio drivers and everything ready to go for rock steady live performance. Wondering if anyone has experience with doing this, if it’s worthwhile, what their favorite tools are, etc.”

Both of those items sound like great advice to me. Setting up multiple accounts works well on both Windows and Mac OS X, in fact, though generally it’s been XP where I’ve most wished I had done this. (Thank you, annoying pop-up balloons and rampaging Logitech webcam drivers.) I also like the idea of using nLite for a custom OS install in emergencies, though nLite is also good at cleaning out settings and tweaking Windows to your liking.

But, Windows mavens, any further tips? (And I imagine a lot of this — like the multi-install — would work just as well on Vista.)

Happy New Year’s, everyone. It’s been a lazy, rainy day here in New York opening up 2007, but I’m contentedly looking forward to what for me, at least, promises to be a good year for making music. Sure, forming New Year’s Resolutions is a pretty arbitrary activity, but I say any excuse that lets you add to your resolve is a good one. Here are a few resolutions that come to mind:

1. Play out more: I’ve been in a cycle, personally, of going back to develop material and ideas and get out of the playing-out mode, and I’m ready to cycle back and go play some more. How about you?
2. Practice: It’s all too easy as an electronic musician to let your chops go to slush. Fortunately, I have the staff of Keyboard Magazine to intimidate me, and the fact that they’re such brilliant players is easily enough to drive me back to running some scales and finger exercises and getting back in shape. For added inspiration, you can fire up GarageBand or another easy looping program to build some interactive accompaniments (or go to the old-fashioned method and put on a Jamey Aebersold CD). Trust me: scales are a lot more fun when there’s a rhythm section behind you, even as a classically-trained player.
3. Build some software patches: I’ve been spending time teaching tools like Max/MSP and haven’t gotten to build my own performance patches. Fortunately, it’s possible to keep your projects on a manageable scale, something I’ve learned from my students. Find a simple solution and solve that is usually the advice I give, and now I’ll go take it myself. With tools like Ableton Live, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel when it comes to performance: it’s easy enough to add custom tools built in Reaktor or Max/MSP to Live.

I’ll be checking my own progress against some of these goals. But I’m curious what our readers have as resolutions for 2007. What are your goals for the year?