The iPhone’s glass touchscreen may be a thing of beauty, but despite its multi-touch capabilities, it would seem this device is incapable of responding to how hard you tap it. But the developers at Wave Machines Labs apparently didn’t want to take no for an answer.

The iGOG drum suite for iPhone provides drum pads and sample triggering in unique ways, most notably in its velocity-sensitive VelAUcity. How do you get velocity response from a device that’s supposedly not pressure-sensitive? Presumably there’s additional data in the touch events that makes this possible, but for now Wave Labs aren’t saying:

iGOG’s proprietary VelAUcity technology does the unthinkable and turns the iPhone’s screen into touch sensitive drum pads. Play loud, play soft, or play a full-blown crescendo on a crash cymbal, iGOG will capture every nuance of your performance. Just plug in your headphones and start playing.

Here’s the interesting twist: generally, when any of us say “iPhone,” what we really mean is “iPhone or iPod touch.” That’s not true in this case: “NOTE: VelAUcity is only available on iPhone devices. if you’re using an iPod Touch, VelAUcity is disabled.” That seems to suggest that the trick is the built-in mic, or at the very least some private API that’s iPhone-specific. (Audio triggering is most likely, as this app comes from a developer with drum replacement experience.) That would also suggest to me that you might be able to pull this off with non-Apple mobile devices and controllers in the future.

As a result, though, I can’t test it – I have only the iPod touch.

Unconvinced or uninterested? iGOG has some other approaches to how the small Apple handheld can be made more useful as a set of pads:

• Multi-positional pads that assign articulation based on location
• A mic trigger mode — which may be more useful than the VelAUcity. This mode assigns any nearby sound (like rapping a table) as a trigger. (That’s possible, of course, with a variety of software, but having the device itself be portable could be handy, so to speak.)
• Multi-samples, file management, and sequencing for doing more with the samples.
• No, real multi-sampling — 384 multisamples per drum!

Even if you’re skeptical of yet another iPhone app, I think there are some great ideas here for music software (mobile and otherwise). Here’s a look at the mic trigger mode in action:

Oh yes, and speaking of all this audio triggering, the same developer makes the superb Drumagog drum replacing plug-in. With pricing at US$199-379, you have to be pretty serious about drum replacement, but I know people who are who swear by it. There’s really nothing stopping you from whipping up your own solution, but Drumagog has a lot of niceties that make the process easier, quicker, and more powerful.

http://www.drumagog.com

If you are a Drumagog user, you can bring those files into iGOG. That makes this app all the more interesting – it can be both a fun toy for someone new to the idea, and a companion to a more serious (and more expensive tool).

More on iGOG:
http://www.wavemachinelabs.com/igog/

multi-touch the storm – interactive sound visuals – subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.

What if you could mash, mangle, mush, and morph sounds with your fingers on a screen, watching the waveforms dance in response in three dimensions? That “what if” is expressed beautifully in a project by musician-developer Christian Bannister of Portland, Oregon, who works as Subcycle Labs.

The result is like being able to touch sound directly.

Three-dimensional forms morph and vibrate using visuals programmed in Processing, making architectural-organic shapes and spaces that really begin to “look” like sound. These forms can represent synthesis and effects parameters (Christian has done some work with the Massive synth from Native Instruments), or can allow navigation through loops using touch. Gestures remap offsets and duration for audio, scrub and slice, and apply granular resynthesis.

Controls use multiple touch points on a screen (apparently via Community Core Vision and reacTIVision), with sound from Logic, Reaktor, and Max/MSP, and auxiliary control with a joystick array and KORG KAOSS Pad.

Here’s what happens with a Massive bass line:

low frequency entity – subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.

It’s spectacular, gorgeous work, and I can’t wait to see more. It’s well worth reading through the whole description on the blog for more details, technical, musical, and artistic:

http://www.subcycle.org/

Austrian Composer Peter Ablinger has transformed a child speaking so that it can be played as MIDI events on a mechanically-controlled piano, making the piano a kind of speech speaker. Via Matrixsynth, the readers at Hack a Day get fairly involved with how this may be working.

It seems not quite accurate to describe this as vocoding in the strictest sense, so much as a simple transformation to a (much) lower frequency resolution – that is, the 88 keys of the piano. Ablinger, for his part, describes the events as “pixels.” It’s pretty extraordinary that without a bandpass filter, you get something approximating the noisy sibilance of the speech, but this seems to be the result of having lots of events (that is, lots of resolution in terms of time). Edit: Listening again, the short answer to how you can hear so much of the voice through the piano seems to be, you can’t; the original is almost certainly mixed in. It’s nonetheless an interesting effect, and I’d like to hear the piano on its own. In other words, the basic process is, 1) convert the sound spectrum of the recorded voice to a series of MIDI events, and 2) play back the translated MIDI file. You can see that the MIDI playback is accomplished with Pd (Pure Data) running on a Windows Linux/KDE netbook, though it’s not clear what was used to do the original conversion. (The screen shot with side-by-side audio and MIDI appears as though it may be for demonstration purposes, only.)

Correction: The work is absolutely done in custom software developed by the composer in Pd (Pure Data). It’s an ideal tool for the job, and free and open source. I wouldn’t dare try to replicate the results here, but this is fantastic inspiration for playing with sound in Pd.

One Windows tool that’s capable of the job is TS Audiotomidi, as observed by Hack a Day spacecoyote. Whether or not that’s what’s at work here – and it may well be – that utility is itself interesting. Edit: Yeah, far more likely the whole thing was done in Pd. And Pd should be up to the task.

TS-AudioToMIDI

Of course, this is to say nothing of the lovely work done on the mechanical piano. It’s a beautiful piece. Here’s hoping some government bureaucrats got the message of the declaration. Now, we just need a chorus of something really loud – say a thousand trumpets – shouting out the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

SONAR 8.5, I’m sure at some point, was to be SONAR 9. There’s an enormous amount of functionality in this release. But I think the surprise is some of the stuff that won’t necessarily appeal to the widest audio production audience. Here’s a DAW that’s adding unusual new features for arranging tracks, putting an integrated arpeggiator on every track, beefing up its step sequencer (really), and dumping a bunch of class LinnDrum samples into the package. Those are the kind of treats we like in these parts.

SONAR is really a “DAW” in the traditional sense. It does everything. It doesn’t hide features. Given a choice between taking something out and putting something in, it puts the thing in. It has a lot of knobs and buttons. There are positives and negatives to the approach – it’s the reason some readers of this site return to software on game machines that has more in common with early Amiga software. But if you like the feeling of a packed studio, a tool like SONAR can be terrific. As much as I love Ableton Live for sound design and live performance, I find myself returning to something like SONAR for arrangement.

Even with its competitors packing in features, SONAR 8.5 is a tool that really loves MIDI, just as other software focuses on audio. And it’s one of the best-performing tools around. Because it’s so well-tuned for Windows, that means you can drop it onto a wide variety of PC hardware without spending a lot of cash. Most importantly, it could be the first software on any platform that convinces you to try a 64-bit OS – just at about the time you may be doing a fresh install of Windows 7.

Here’s a first run-down of what’s new in 8.5 that I’m personally most interested in:

MIDI lovers, step sequence and arpeggiate away. Every single instrument loaded in SONAR now has a step sequencer, and every track an arpeggiator. The new step sequencer has a lovely pane for controllers, deep control over each step, and probability controls. It could be reason enough to give SONAR 8.5 a try on its own. And yes, this does indeed take SONAR into FL Studio territory – but with a more conventional DAW bringing those kind of features together. FL users probably won’t be impressed, but if you longed for FL-style pattern sequencing but wanted to maintain an existing DAW, this could be for you.

Drum sound goodies. Session Drummer 3 has long been a nice virtual drum tool, and now improves routing and mixing to come closer to what it feels like miking a new drum. But let’s skip the acoustic kits and get straight to the electronic ones: yes, there’s an 808 and 909, as you’d hope given Cakewalk is now “Cakewalk by Roland” but there’s also a 707, a 727, and a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks and Linn Electronics LinnDrum. Oddly, you still have to look at a picture of a photorealistic drum kit – I’d like to see a visual representation of that LinnDrum, please. But it’s nice to have these sounds, unless you have a really big budget for eBay. There’s 2.5 GB of content, but I’ll skip to these files if I can.

Easier-to-edit audio. I gave Apple deserved props, I think, for making Flex Time’s implementation in Logic 9 elegant and allowing squishing of audio materials around. But what frustrated me about their tool was that you couldn’t take your warped audio and do other stuff with it. AudioSnap 2 could blow it out of the water. SONAR had this going before, but I frankly found some of the selection tools and interface a little off-putting. The UI has now been cleaned up, the Transient Tool makes it easier to grab trasients in your audio, and selection looks better. You can do tempo detection, mapping, and syncing, so that this is useful not only for smooshing around your recorded audio but also mapping it to a tempo. And most interestingly, the transients you find in Audio Snap can be integrated with the new Step Sequencer. There are also audio fidelity improvements for working with vocal, reed, and brass instruments.

A Media Browser brings files together. MIDI patterns, audio loops, grooves, and such can now be dragged-and-dropped into one place. That’s not a new idea, of course, but having custom presets for different locations is a welcome improvement (and why is it so hard to get other browsers to do that)?

A new way of improvising arrangements, “Matrix View.” A cell-based interface for non-linear triggering of audio and MIDI clips sounds like Ableton Live. But think of this more as an alternative way of trying out arrangement ideas. Because it loads from RAM only and not from the hard disk, and because SONAR is built more as a studio tool than a live tool, I don’t expect it to be a Live killer. But if you’re happy with the SONAR workflow and want to try out ideas in its environment, it could still be useful. (Cakewalk’s Project5 went a similar route, with similar results.) It’s just about the only copy I’ve seen of Ableton’s Session View, and it really does feel like a copy, so for that reason it’s probably the change I’m least interested in in SONAR. I do think there are other features here that are far more original, though.

You get strips for working with vocals and drums. For vocals, the VX-64 is a combination tube-emulation mic pre + de-esser + compressor/expander + tube EQ + doubler + delay + output strip, which I already loved after seeing it bundled with the VS-100 hardware. For drums, the PX-64 is a combination pre + transient shaper + compressor + expander + contour EQ + delay + output strip – so, roughly the same thing, with some drum-specific tweaks. Cakewalk has done a lovely job with these strips, and they could be the sort of thing that justifies SONAR’s investment. I can’t imagine not liking the PX-64 having enjoyed the VX-64, both for its audio quality and the ease of drag-and-drop routings.

Why you may finally go 64-bit. The BitBridge XR plug-in not only lets your 32-bit plug-ins work on the 64-bit operating system, but gives each of them 4 GB of RAM for up to 128 GB of RAM. That’s possible on the Mac side with Apple’s Logic – but only with its sampler, not with third-party plug-ins. And SONAR ships with a lot of 64-bit plug-ins in the box, not to mention that major vendors like Native Instruments are providing support.

Improved performance, Windows 7 ready. You can now hotswap audio and MIDI interfaces without restarting, and audio and stability are improved. And when you do get the Windows 7 upgrade – which, based on my research so far, you will want to do from either XP or Vista – SONAR has been rigorously tested. I don’t want to just repeat that without supporting evidence, though, so stay tuned for a separate story.

I still don’t think SONAR is for everyone – though, of course, I don’t really think anything is for everyone. (That’s the marketing people’s job, to claim that one product solves everyone’s problems.) Sitting in front of SONAR’s interface can still feel like getting into a jumbo jet cockpit. The Matrix View is not – and is apparently not intended to be – a replacement for Ableton Live’s live performance features. Open as SONAR is, I think it has new competition from the extensible architecture of Reaper. And, of course, all of this is meaningless to Mac users – though I hasten to add, while the Mac faces a tough 64-bit transition ahead, Windows users can grab SONAR, clean install 64-bit Windows 7, and possibly barely notice anything at all aside from a whole bunch of gobs of memory.

But I’ll say this: it’s funny how a few subtle changes can change how you think, but the combination of brilliant effects, this ridiculously-powerful step sequencer, and the possibility that AudioSnap really nails audio manipulation has me taking a second look at SONAR. Expect more details later this fall. (I’ll be writing this up for CDM and not Macworld for obvious reasons.)

Upgrades for existing SONAR 8 users are US$79 (Studio) – US$99 (Producer). If you purchased SONAR after July 1, the upgrade is free. For new users, SONAR is $499 for the Producer edition with the extra effects and instruments, or $299 for Studio without them. (But, really, I think you want the Z3TA+ synth; you’ll just have to trust me on that.)

For many, mobile technology and developing for the iPhone and the iPod touch is a fad and a Gold Rush. Good designers, though, take a longer view of how interaction can be expressive. And there are few people with a better sense of the big picture of small devices than Dr. Ge Wang. The co-founder, CTO, and Chief Creative Officer of Smule has a background that goes well beyond the latest Apple platform. Along with Perry Cook at Princeton, Ge Wang is the co-originator of ChucK, a real-time programming language for synthesis so efficient some people use it live onstage. (ChucK, as an open source project, now has a terrific team of people behind it.) ChucK is the sonic engine that powers Smule’s projects. Ge Wang also teaches at Stanford, working with students and fellow researchers to explore new ways of interacting with music technology.

Ge Wang joined me for a lengthy phone conversation recently. He really contextualized why the iPhone is important in the grand scheme of things, but also how the people at Smule and Stanford (and Princeton) can approach technology for musical interaction, focusing on what devices are rather than what they’re not.

(The audio here, believe it or not, is extensively edited – Ge Wang is that easy to talk to. I hope the next time it’s over beers rather than Skype.)

The full interview can be played below, or downloaded directly.

Download MP3 of the interview

Thanks to KORG and the Nano Series for their support of programming on createdigitalmusic.com.

Lastly: a video of the Smule team headquarters and playing around with Leaf Trombone for a Zelda duet!

More information:
The Mule Chronicles [Smule Blog]
http://smule.com/
Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), Stanford University

Previously, for more on Ge Wang and CCRMA:
Make:TV Meets Stanford Musical Inventors, Feedback Piano

Video + Audio Subscriptions, iTunes Podcast

CDM is now launching regular audio content on the artists and inventors we cover as part of our series CDM Sounds. You can subscribe (and review the podcast) via iTunes, where you’ll also find our new video series:

cdm Sounds Podcast [audio]
cdm TV [video]

Or using your software of choice, subscribe directly to RSS. (I like to follow podcasts with Banshee and Winamp this way.)

We’ve fixed some transcoding issues for iPod touch/iPhone on the video podcast. Please do test this and let us know if you have any issues on your software/hardware.

Welcome to the alt-DAW scene. Last week, not only did Renoise continue its rebirth of the forgotten “tracker” genre of music making software with ReWire support, but we saw a big new version of REAPER, the beloved lightweight audio production tool from the original creator of Winamp.

What makes an “alt DAW”, or “indie” production software? To me, it’s:

• small development teams of a few people
• tightly-integrated communities directly involved in feature requests
• trusting users instead of adding significant DRM, returning to the traditional “shareware” business model of old
• affordable pricing

That’s not to take away from some of the bigger players – I was struck this week with the (unsurprising) ubiquity of Ableton Live at MUTEK; it’s a real testament to what they have accomplished. But choice is essential, and looking at the history of music technology, it’s in the periods of real choice that the most interesting things have happened. It makes everything better when developers really have to compete.

Cockos REAPER has spread almost virally as an underground DAW, partly because you can download the thing and get started with without any restrictions, then buy it for as little as US$60 for personal use.

http://www.reaper.fm/index.php

It’s not just for Windows people any more, either – the Mac version is now officially supported. You can run on Windows 7 or Windows 2000 or even 98 (with limited support). You can run on 10.4 Macs, or even PowerPC (though Intel is recommended). You can even run on Linux with official WINE support, though I’d still like to see a native Linux version, especially as Linux on netbooks is getting so lovely.

Version 3.0 came out this week. There are a huge number of improvements:

• MIDI editing with inline editing, event filtering, Sysex, controller automation – finally, REAPER is getting as good with MIDI as it is with audio
• Automation lanes
• Unlimited folder nesting
• Multichannel audio support
• User-created track and mixer control panels and macros
• Game controller support, including joysticks and even Guitar Hero controllers, which you can integrate with existing MIDI and macro facilities
• New graphics engine, new theming

And that’s just a few examples; see the full changelog:

http://www.reaper.fm/whatsnew-300.txt

You can script your own audio and MIDI plug-ins using JS, and use 64-bit plug-ins included with the package. And all of this is a 4MB download. And there’s no DRM.

While some software increases memory and resource consumption with new versions, REAPER reverses the trend: it’s getting more lightweight and faster as it develops. That’s something we need more of; it’s absolutely possible with the right development approach, and is a welcome change from the “get fatter as computers get faster” approach that infected decades of software development.

Upgrades are $149 if you bought Reaper after September 1, $199 otherwise, or EUR249 for Europe, or $99 if your favorite color is blue, or $123.5 * PI / 2 if you had LE, or $999 for REAPER Suite, or $699 for a Grande REAPERccino Latte, unless you don’t want all the plug-ins, in which case you can get Tall as an upgrade for $119.3587 plus a $150 fuel surcharge, unless you bought your license on a full moon…

Oh, okay, actually, upgrades are free for two major upgrades – meaning if you buy now, you’re covered through 4.99. And there’s one version, called REAPER, which includes… REAPER.

You’re seeing what this hype is about, right? And, if you’re like me, you’re wondering why, you know, other things can’t be a little more like this?

Updated: Sorry, I lost my mind and wrote “JavaScript” instead of the unrelated scripting language JS. Here’s a good explanation from the JS Programming Reference to what this is.

JS is a scripting language which is compiled on the fly and allows you to modify and/or generate audio and MIDI, as well as draw custom vector based UI and analysis displays.
JS effects are simple text files, which when loaded in REAPER become full featured plug-ins. You can try loading existing JS effects and since they are distributed in source form, you can also edit existing effects to suit your needs (we recommend if editing an existing effect you save it as something with a new name–if you do not you may lose your changes when upgrading REAPER).

JS Programming Guide

There’s also an extensions SDK in C++ and an LGPL-licensed SDK for control surfaces. You can contrast this with Ableton, which will charge extra for its Max for Live runtime and has no officially supported or documented API for control surfaces, which means that support for more exotic devices routinely breaks, and trying it yourself is harder.

Sonic scientist Peter Neubäcker of Melodyne has been wowing Internet audiences for some time with the automagical powers of the company’s Direct Note Access (DNA). The vision: manipulate individual pitches as easily as MIDI notes, even in polyphonic passages of a single instrument. At NAMM last month, the company showed the first product, Melodyne editor, due to ship in the spring for US/EUR 349.

There’s just one little catch: a solo developer has beaten them to the punch, at least prior to them shipping their DNA flagship editor tool. And if you want it right now, it’s yours for 25 Euros. (The final version will cost 99 Euros.)

Jonathan Schmid-Burgk, sole developer and a student at Harvard, announces:

The time has come to announce the release of the world’s first published polyphonic tone manipulation software. The dream of musicians to isolate single notes out of chords and so to manipulate most forms of recorded audio has come true on the 20th of January 2009.

Shell out EUR25, and you get a Mac VST plug-in that can manipulate audio easily. With monophonic audio, you can create polyphonic harmonizations. You can isolate and manipulate individual harmonics – meaning not only can you do pitch manipulations, but presumably sound design, as well. You can change individual notes or chords in recorded audio, to fix mistakes or (more interesting) actively recompose audio.

I feel about this the same way I do about Celemony: this gets really interesting when you use it for sound design. For some inspiration, skip this post and head straight for the sound samples on the site:

VisualVox polyphonic 0.9 [improvisator.de]

Via the awesome rekkerd.org

Also check out his Harmony Improvisator which creatively generates harmonies from MIDI input – an interesting thing to mess around with even for those of us who know / have taught (ahem) classical harmonic theory

Now, VisualVox Polyphonic isn’t without some catches, as you’d expect from the solo-student cheap alternative:

• It’s Mac-only and VST-only for now. (Just keep in mind, though, that means not only Cubase works but things like Ableton Live on the Mac, as well.)
• Jonathan warns that there are still some bugs, there are big temporary files, there are occasional glitches in the algorithm, and it doesn’t quite sync properly with hosts, requiring exports.
• The interface isn’t as slick or fancy as Celemony, and may be slightly less convenient for editing.
• Update – people are having some significant hosting issues with this. (Your mileage may vary, though the fact that this was tested in Cubase tells me those folks may have better luck.) So stay away if you don’t like bugs – this isn’t a final release. We’ll have more as this evolves, okay?

But here’s why I’m anxious to test it, nonetheless:

• It’s cheap – meaning it might be more open to people just curious to experiment. (I actually wonder if he shouldn’t keep the EUR25 price and make up for it on volume.)
• No iLok dongle, as required for Celemony. Correction: Celemony also allows challenge/response — so you have a choice.
• There are some interesting fine-tuning options for the algorithm and manipulation parameters. That could make this more interesting for sound design – and something even Celemony users might want to run alongside the more polished tool.

In other words, none of this is likely to dampen enthusiasm for Celemony, but that’s a good thing: more is more better. Could this mean the floodgates are about to open for creative sound design tools that mess with audio in new ways? Hey, I hope so.

If anyone tests this, we’d love your report – and sound examples.

It’s looking like 2009 is set to be a great year for open source and hardware hacking. Likely lost in a lot of the CES news, BUG Labs, makers of open source, Linux-based hardware you can snap together like Lego bricks, now has a range of new modules. Most interesting to readers here: there’s an audio module, with input, output, a speaker, and even the possibility of basic onboard DSP. Combined with the other modules – GPS positioning, accelerometer/proximity sensor, physical computing-style inputs and outputs for sensors and robotics and switches and things, a touchscreen, a Linux-powered computer, a camera with stills and video, cell phone SIM – this could lead to some interesting projects. It’s certainly got competition from conventional computers and new Linux-powered devices like the Android platform, but then, that just makes for a healthier range of choices for designing your own mashed-up, hacked-up hardware of the future.

More details on the new modules on Create Digital Motion, where I’m especially excited that a new module added to the lineup is a tiny, tiny projector:

Bug Labs Open Source Linux Hardware Gets a Pico-Projector Module, More

And since I have a dev unit to work with, including the audio module, I’ll get to coding and report back later this month and next. It’s a little tricky – the development environment is gorgeous, but it’s a lot easier to do simple Web-style apps than it is tougher jobs like audio – but stay tuned. And if you’re in New York and interested, I think there will be some informal hacking get-togethers at Bug Labs and with local audio brain trust Harvestworks.

And yes, this means you can imagine an iPod-style music player that’s a lot more interesting than the off-the-shelf one, at least to us supernerds.

Update: Phil Torrone, whose work with gadgets made me a fan before MAKE even existed, is of course all over this. I love his idea of an “alt.CES” alternative to the mass-manufactured gadget party. And he’s already thinking about location-based music players:

This is really cool news, I can finally re-make my location based MP3 player again, the first one was made in 2002 using Macromedia Flash, GPS and Pocket PC, yikes. The way is works… you put in a playlist based on location, so maybe you’ll hear "Eye of the tiger" when it known you’re jogging up that HUGE hill, or maybe your MP3 player only plays bands in the town you happen to be in…

Welcome to Alternative CES — "alt.CES" – BUGLab modules [Make:blog]

Perhaps it’s a sign of the times that, as far as the conference calendar for 2009 goes, some of the most interesting discussions about audio, composition, and technology are happening at a game developer conference.

The terrific GameSetWatch “alt.video game” blog has a nice overview of the goodies at GDC in March for audio lovers:

Previewing GDC 2009: Inside The Audio Track [GameSetWatch]

But even that doesn’t cover all the goodness. Check out the full Audio Track schedule:

Audio Track, GDC @cmpevents.com

I imagine for someone looking to get started or develop in game audio and music, there’s tons of value here, especially if you’re near San Francisco in the spring. Here are some highlights for me – and a general critique of why really experimental, bleeding-edge tech seems to be sidelined.

Challenges for designers and composers:

• Composer Challenge: this yearly challenge gets both established and emerging composers to do a single, 60-second cue, reality TV-style. (Top Composer?) For the sound designers, there’s the similar…
• G.A.N.G. Sound Design Demo Derby, a yearly critique of 60 attendee sound design work. (Game Sound Idol?) From the Game Audio Network Guild, which is also beefing up its community.

Technical discussions:

• Reflections on real-time DSP design from Guy Whitmore of Microsoft Game Studios. (I initially misread this as being about the use of GPU shaders for audio processing, but it’s something equally important: explaining to visual people why real-time audio matters, too!)
• SOCOM Confrontation developers on doing online audio for 32 players (32-player online music collaboration, anyone?)
• High Dynamic Range Audio from Battlefield: Bad Company takes a new approach to mixing with “real-world” sound levels – something that I would expect could be interesting far beyond the realm of game audio design.
• Why going beyond the physics models of the vehicles helped racing game Pure sound good
• Simon Carlile on research into virtual environments and 3D sound design

And on the creative side:

• Legendary game composer Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy, etc.)
• Musical storytelling ideas, with Garry Schyman (Bioshock, which had a great vintage-sounding score). Garry also has a session on keeping orchestration on budget.
• Kenneth Young on sound design in Little Big Planet

Some terrific stuff, but I also can’t help notice what’s missing – not the fault of GDC, but the direction of audio and music in games. There’s a clear bias for big scores, discussions of orchestras and chorus, and linear, non-interactive, Hollywood-style musical narrative. With the explosion in experimental game design, indie games, online game distribution for the PC, PSP, Wii, Xbox360, PS3, and soon the DS, and lots of terrific ideas about new ways of designing game mechanics, where’s music? Indie game music doesn’t make an appearance in the conference at all. (Note that they do appear elsewhere in the conference, which to me is telling.) And generally, the game music scene of late has tended to be either Hollywood-style film scores or retro, 8-bit soundtracks. With the exception of Spore, whose musical engine was a topic at GDC 08, there’s been very little real progress in generative and truly interactive musical scores. That’s sad, given the promise next-gen consoles had for even things like live synthesis.

Directly related to this, I’m equally surprised that mobile music and audio isn’t getting more attention as those consoles evolve. But then, that again requires a shift of compositional paradigm, to assume that you might actually innovate more with a truly interactive score for a mobile device than you might for a lush, orchestral soundtrack on an A-list PS3/Xbox360 title.

Don’t get me wrong: I think some of the orchestral-style scores for games have been quite wonderful. But it seems like part of the potential spectrum is getting left out, and I can’t say that musical innovation has kept pace with everything that’s happening in experimental game design.

My suggestion: get a group of GDC attendees together at a bar, bring some blank napkins, and think about the future there.

(Note that there is an experimental gameplay session call. It’d be great to see some music entries, huh? See also the project site, experimental-gameplay.org)

If you’re going to GDC, do let us know!

http://www.gdconf.com/

Let’s start with the important bit: the Traveler really is a mobile interface. It weighs under four pounds and fits into a backpack; it’s actually a little lighter and more compact than a typical 15” laptop. Now, if your input and output needs are limited (a mic in, headphone out, and stereo out do suit a lot of folks just fine), your options are obviously many. But the Traveler manages to be this small and pack an absurd amount of I/O and functionality into that small space.

Audio interfaces tend not to get a whole lot of updates, but MOTU has been steadily upgrading the Traveler. New in mk3:

• Digital I/O expanded for a total of 28 simultaneous ins and 30 outs (including digital I/O), on top of the (existing) four XLR/TRS mic ins. Digital up to 96kHz and analog up to 192kHz – all eight.
• True high-impedance guitar ins
• Hardware limiter on the pre, plus a “soft clip” feature that “engages just before clipping occurs and helps reduce perceptible distortion.” (That’s “soft” as in the clip prevention – the process takes place in hardware. I inaccurately described this as being similar to a compressor; it’s not – it’s a different process, and combined with hardware limiting makes this ideal for live mic input.)
• 1 dB trim increments on all analog ins
• MIDI Time Code support
• Optical I/O: choose 16 channels ADAT, 8 channels of SMUX, or two pairs of TOSLink, or mix and match
• New software: CueMix FX software, which turns the Traveler into a mixer with compression, a modeled version of the Teletronix optical leveling amp, and real-time signal analysis
• … and you can access these features from the front panel

… just to name a few improvements. And lest you think FireWire is dead, have a good look at the Traveler. The whole package is powered by the FireWire bus, or you can add a field battery pack. On the Mac side, this is yet another reason not to get a non-Pro MacBook.

New CueMix FX software, which is also available for MOTU’s other interfaces.

A lot of these features are nice, but to my mind, the major draw is still that you get a ton of I/O in a nice, mobile box, now with four mic ins. For anyone doing surround, you also get front-panel monitoring controls, and enough actual outs to pull off various surround setups, with different setups nicely supported in the software. On Mac and Windows, you get full ASIO, WDM, Core Audio, and Core MIDI support. (Linux has been maturing as far as FireWire audio support, though I don’t know off-hand how this will do.)

MOTU isn’t shipping the new Traveler until Q1, but they promise the same pricing as the current model, which has a street around US$850.

MOTU Traveler mk 3 [Product page, which goes into some of the rather lovely effects in there]

If you own another MOTU unit, you’ll be relieved to know the CueMix software features will be available for download on other FireWire audio interfaces.

Bet this would look fantastic as a pillow, too.