Native Instruments is releasing some cheaper ways of getting at their software guitar modeler, Guitar Rig, in the form of a cheaper software version and a hardware bundle:

• Guitar Rig 3 XE is a "lite" version of Guitar Rig, focused on the basics — 5 guitar/bass amps, 12 cabinets, and 21 effects. It also some of the "helper" modules from Guitar Rig, including a metronome, tapedeck, and tuner — but no looping module, which is one of my favorites. (See the full list.) US$99 on its own.
• Guitar Session bundles the LE software with Cubase 4 LE, some pop drums for KORE player via a soundpack, and the Session I/O audio hardware. US$250 for the bundle, available June 1 worldwide.

As the last couple of decades have led to making music in software, some of the materiality of physical instruments is lost. No matter how much you love your hardware synths, odds are you spent at least a little time looking into the void of a computer screen. And to the public, much of that is obscured by the back of a display. Instruments face outward; computers face inward.

Enter online photo sharing. Screen grabs can make software rigs visible. For example, someone’s been busy putting together a monster bass channel strip in Ableton Live:

Contained: the synth source is Vember Audio’s Surge digital synth, fed into Ohmforce’s Ohmicide saturator/distorter, Waves’ C4 (a multiband parametric compressor), L2 (ultramaximizer) and Maxx Bass (bass enhancement), and Ableton Live’s own Auto Filter and Saturator. Kids, don’t try this at home. I’m amused because this is hilarious, goes-to-eleven overkill.

Got some screen grabs you want to share? Add them (and anything else music-related) to the Create Digital Music Flickr pool, and drop us a line if you think we’ll find it especially interesting.

I’ll be interested to see if tools like plasq’s upcoming Mac utility Skitch also catch on for this purpose.

Finding exotic software instruments is rarely a challenge. A lot of users stumble more quickly when it comes to the basics. Cakewalk has unveiled a new set of soft synths called Cakewalk Studio Instruments, and a number of things about it are immediately interesting:

It’s dirt cheap. US$49.99 for the whole package.

It focuses on a few basics. There are four modules: Drum Set, Bass Guitar, Electric Piano, or String Section.

It’s available via mass-market outlets. Music tech stuff only trickles into the mass market, as a rule. Cakewalk says you’ll be able to pick this thing up at Apple, CompUSA, Fry’s, Micro Center, J&R, and Amazon.com.

It does phrases. There are included, pre-recorded phrases. Might be redundant in the age of GarageBand, but potentially useful to have.

It has a slick interface. The UI is pretty, provides lots of visual feedback (the bows on the strings even move), and puts controls where you’d expect them in the real world — so electric piano effects show up on a stompbox, for instance, rather than floating in softwareland.

Winning the award this month for “Most Insane Project Mockup”, I give you the Plattabass. It’s a bass. It’s a record player. It has magnetic sensors embedded in the neck. And yes, that is a crossfader. Even crazier: Mobius (Ray Belden) plans to actually build this thing. We’ll be watching.

Proposed specs, courtesy Ray:

1. 2 assignable cross faders, an extreme pitch control that goes to zero RMP, a thumb worn magnet that triggers a sensor inlaid in the back of the neck
2. Three control knobs, and 2 TRS stereo outputs
3. Fender P bass neck, Basslines 1/4 pound pickups, and Fender flat-wound strings
4. Technics 1200 motor, plater , and controls
5. The experimental, spring loaded ,3 pole, zero drag stylus cartridge caddy / Bas string bridge, will be a one off custom piece of metal work
6. I will need a dsp unit that has a phono preamp built in, I was thinking I could cannibalize a Rane TTM-56

What, no built-in refrigerator for the brewskis? Can’t really see the purpose, then.

For those of you who are unbelievers, Ray says he is photographing work on a prototype as he builds it. Hopefully we’ll have photographic evidence soon.

Believe it or not, though, this isn’t the strangest project we’ve seen yet involving Ms. Pinky, the brilliant-yet-affordable control vinyl system (see CDM Ms. Pinky tag). It’s only right that it’d get built into a bass having already been used inside tree trunks and powering vibrating chaise lounges. Got an unusual Pinky project of your own? Do let us know.

Thanks, Ray and Wallace! (Close-up image after the jump.)

If you’re finding massive soundware libraries to be a little overwhelming — on your hard drive, your brain, and your wallet — you’ll like the idea of the new expansion packs from Tone Research. The first two are 13MB downloads priced at US$4.99 each. They work with Live 5 and get bonus features from Live 6. I’m still waiting on my copies, so I can’t yet comment on sound quality yet, but I’ll report back once I’ve thrown these into some songs.

Tone Research Expansion Packs for Ableton Live

Here’s what the creator has to say:

Frost: Frozen Ambiance
Frost features 50 beautiful ambient device groups for your Simpler. Lots of deep, evolving pads and atmospheres sprinkled with other assorted gems to add seriously lush drama to any track, all with an icy vibe. Frost is sourced from some great hardware synths and recorded direct to 24 bit audio. Each and every patch is crafted and designed specifically for Live 5, and just wait till you here these sounds stacked up in the upcoming Live 6 “Racks”! Seriously Amazing.

Fatso: Artery Clogging Bass
Fatso features 50 big bass device groups for your Simpler. Recorded at 24 bit direct from a handful of analog classics, these patches are heavy, hard and high in FAT. We’ve preserved the sounds of the original hardware filters throughout much of the collection to seal in the analog juices. These basses simply scream, so watch your speakers.

In other news: mmmmm, french fries. Is it my lunch break? (And yes, we’re allowed to call them french fries, not freedom fries again, even here in America. I just dub them “that which is delicious.”)

Multi-instrumentalists, Line6 must have you in mind. The equipment maker, known primarily for their guitar products, has plunked a keyboard on their multi-effects box / audio interface hybrid, TonePort. There are plenty of reasons to like the TonePort line: a broad approach to effects that caters to vocalists as well as guitarists, and cheaply-priced but good-sounding effects, in an interface with excellent low-latency performance. (Not to mention retro-looking VU meters, and they’re not just eye candy — they’re assignable.) Not everyone will need a keyboard in the same unit, but if you do, it’s nice to see a real mod wheel, an always-on octave LED (as opposed to most keyboards, which require us to guess which octave we left them in), and handy knobs, transport controls, and foot pedal integration. Deep software integration and a dedicated headphone port could make these a nice addition to a laptop rig.

Line6 TonePort KB37

My own personal preference would be for a standalone unit to go with another keyboard, but I know some friends I’m sure will want one of these. The only major question mark is how good Line6’s keyboard quality is; stay tuned for that and pricing.

Updated: Music thing’s readers have something interesting to note on the keyboard issue: Marcus Ryle, a vet of Oberheim who worked on the classic Xpander and Matrix 12 synths as well as a keyboardist on “We are the World” works on product development. So, did Line6’s keyboard love finally rub off on a product? That sounds good to me. I hope Line6 doesn’t stop there, though. What I love about the KB37 is that, at the very least, it’s a new concept that challenges some assumptions about different markets. A quick stroll through any NAMM show will show you this is a very conservative industry, with pretty rigid ideas of who its customers are, and usually that includes accepted dogma like “guitarists won’t touch a keyboard.” They have a lot of business experience making those markets work, of course, but I’ll bet if you’re reading this, you and the people you know don’t always fit into those categories.

I’d love to see more out-of-the-box thinking about gear that’s fun to play with a computer, blending software and hardware. So, please, Line6 and everyone else, bring it on. (And meanwhile, if I can’t master the guitar, maybe I should take this product as a sign that I should at least practice my singing.)

From South by Southwest comes an interesting chat with DIY synth x0xb0x (and MIDIsense) creator Limor Fried:

Open Source Physical Objects: Limor Fried and her x0xb0x Synthesizer

As someone in comments notes, the idea of selling DIY kits for devices like synthesizers is an old one. But that idea has fallen by the wayside in an era of big electronics makers, soldering iron-phobic consumers, and increasingly restrictive protection of intellectual property. That’s not to say protecting designs is all bad — many early electronic pioneers had their ideas blatantly ripped off and lost money as a result. But Limor’s synth demonstrates that shared designs can make money, offer customers the chance to change their hardware to do what they want (like adding extra knobs!), and provide explicit legal rights for modification (hack your hardware without fear of lawyers). Limor told me she has a pretty successful business built on her kits, so this should be a red flag that there are business opportunities here, not just chances for making cool musical instruments (though that’s great, too)!

Of course, it’d be great to see the idea applied to truly new hardware, and not just loving recreations of the Roland TB-303. But, with the pendulum shifting, maybe that will happen, too.

Incidentally, if you want your very own x0xb0x (”socksbox”), good luck. Limor just announced a new run is near, but it’ll only fill existing preorders. So, get in line. (Anyone got one already and want to send a quick review / photos?)

Joe at Tinfoil points us to his interview with Jean Baudin, the 9-string bass geek whose masterful performance of the Super Mario Bros. theme song launched him to Internet superstardom. He even talks about an 11-string bass. Every wish you could route all 11 strings to a different surround speaker? Now that’d require one serious, um, dodeca-pickup and digital connection:

tinfoil.music presents Bass Gods

Still in a guitar mood? Don’t miss Guitars as massive Where’s Waldo-style screen art over at Music thing.

Remember hardware? Seems this year is all about trying to
cash in on budget virtual instruments. M-Audio has now "released" (I
think that means shippin!) Key Rig and Drum and Bass Rig, as promised
at NAMM. Think bread-and-butter virtual instruments.

Key Rig:

• "Stage keyboards": grands, Wurlitzers, electric pianos, FMs, clavinets.
• Polyphonic synth
• Hammond organ + rotary simulator, "pre-mapped to M-Audio brand
  USB MIDI controllers." (Plug in an Edirol keyboard, just to get them
  steamed.)
• Biggest news of all: a General MIDI module and drum kit! Party like it's 1990, baby!!

Drum and Bass Rig:

• Loop player/creator with 250 loops (but no ReCycle or ACID or Apple Loops support?!)
• Monophonic Bass
• Drum Kit library, GM-compatible (okay, I am all for GM mapping on kits, I'll admit)
• Electric bass model

Whoever writes M-Audio's press releases sounds like they've never used
a synth before. Behold this breathless prose: "Each preset consists of
sub-presets for each major section: filter, amp, mod and FX. Creating
new sounds is as simple as combining these sub-presets in different
ways and tweaking any associated  parameters from there as
desired."

Wow. I've never been able to do THAT before.

But, okay, I'm giving M-Audio a hard time, but the big story here is
flexibility. Unlike GarageBand, which locks you into Apple's apps,
M-Audio's software works as standalone, AU, VST, or RTAS on Mac, VST
and RTAS on Windows. And at US$129.95, that's cool.

This is a simple, cheap way to round out your instrument collection. It
just lacks some of the personality and originality of some of its
(admittedly pricier) competitors. Think of it as the economy station wagon of soft synths. (and other
that, I'm still waiting to hear the thing, at which point I could
change my tune in either direction)

No link yet at M-Audio; read the Harmony Central post of the press release with pictures.

The ThinAmp from AXL,
introduced in January at NAMM, is a portable amp packed into the size
of a laptop: only 2" thick and just 5 lbs. (!) You can literally fit it
into a laptop bag — in fact, you can probably fit it and your laptop
into a laptop bag. The amp is geared at guitarists, but Synthtopia reviews it and finds it suitable for laptop, too.

Of course, you can't expect a whole lot of sound out of a 2" amp; while
it has EQ and DSP presets for reverb, vibrato, flanger, chorus, and the
like, the ThinAmp's sound will be a bit thin with just 10W of power. On
the other hand, for US$140 street and at this size, this is pretty
tempting.