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.

Teenage Engineering’s hotly-anticipated synth / music-making hardware OP-1 finally got an official release last week. Early stocks promptly sold out, but new waves of deliveries should refresh availability. We’ll have more from TE on the launch and the instrument soon.

In the meantime, you can thank early-adopter Ludwig Mueller for being brave enough to post early experiments with the instrument. Ludwig is a proud owner of the beta release, one of a handful of people who signed up to get access to the OP-1 prior to its public launch – and even before functionality in firmware was entirely finalized. I’ve heard now from several readers who are beta users, and a variety of reactions to the instrument. Oversimplifying, they appear to break down to those who adore the OP-1′s restrictions and those who curse them (and those who do both). In the video at top, Ludwig shows off the process of layering beats and tracks; he not only plays the OP-1, but uses it as a production and composition tool. I asked him to share some further thoughts on how he likes his OP-1 — and what, exactly, it really is.

The OP-1 in short is a mixup of an [Akai] MPC, a pretty great synth, a radio, a mic, and a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation]. All of these components are rather limited looked at individually, but I guess what you can say here is that the sum is greater than its parts. It is the mixture of these parts and the device’s limits – recording is destructive, [so there's] no undo once you record two or more instruments on one track – force you to think ahead. But at the same time, the OP-1′s layout and abilities make you want to try out things you’d never consider in a DAW. So depending which takes over – your brain or your inner child – your results will vary from one extreme to another.

A thing that I really like about OP-1 is the fact that you can’t overtweak. In a traditional DAW, I’d EQ every track and add a little compression, etc., etc. On the OP-1, there’s no such thing. It either sounds good or it doesn’t – and if it does sound good, you keep going and building the track. At the end you turn up the mastercompressor, which BTW is quite amazing, and you’re done! Again: I love the mastercomp!

I can say that I finish a lot more projects / beats / tracks with the OP-1 than with a DAW. Granted, they feel more raw and have some hiccups here and there, but I’m willing to take that in exchange for the fun I have using that little device. And by now, quite often I actually prefer this rawness to the slick sound of my DAW tracks.

Of course there are times when I crawl back to the laptop, and do another track dissecting every element. But this doesn’t last for too long usually. With the OP-1, I can focus more on the music than on the technical side of things; it’s so immediate: No long boot up, loading programs, plugging in things. It’s just a switch and 5-second wait and you’re good to go. It also really fits the bill regarding the overall sound I want to achieve: it’s warm yet punchy. You can actually overdrive the output quite nicely using the mastercompressor within the unit. The achieved overdrive can be quite pleasing to the ear, I think.

I have heard many people say that TE should bring out an OP-1 iPad App. I am 100% certain that a touchscreen can not give you the same feel as a nicely-designed device with quality buttons and encoders.

Right now, I am on the latest OS (the one that is also available for download on TE’s site) and I didn’t have any problems at all since upgrading to that version.

If you visit www.soundcloud.com/yellow-tangerine there is a set on my page called “OP-1 Stuff”. All these tracks are exclusively OP-1 and nothing else.

Let’s give that OP-1 Stuff a listen, indeed:
OP-1 Stuff by YΞll❍W T∆ΠgΞriΠΞ

Thanks, Ludwig, for the thoughts. Plenty of design and workflow thoughts to chew over here, I think, even if you aren’t using an OP-1 – some of these same ideas about limitation can be applied to other hardware and even to software. So I’m curious to hear people respond to the musical ideas here, and not just the issues specific to the OP-1.

I welcome any reactions from OP-1 users — praise and criticism alike.

For the latest from Teenage:
http://now.teenageengineering.com/

Ready to make your Ableton Live pattern programming a bit more polyrhythmic with the power of math?

In Monday’s reflections and round-up of cycles and circles, I mentioned Euclidean evenness and Godfried Toussaint’s research. The basic idea is that a mathematical algorithm for spacing pulses has a lot in common with traditional preferences for polyrhythms spanning everything from rock hits to conga patterns and musical cultures around the world.

Reader Tony Wheeler has turned those patterns into MIDI clips so you can drop patterns into Ableton Live. Drum patterns and dance music are obvious applications, but this could be an idea starter for melodic patterns or music in a variety of idioms.

Each individual pattern will sound like an isolated cycle; it’s often when you put them together that they’re most compelling. Here’s an example; Tony added a regular bass drum just to make things more grounded (it actually calls attention to the asymmetry of the other patterns).

ScaledKit by wheelmaker

Tony has another terrific tool for Ableton Live that generates the AMS files used by Operator to tune oscillators to alternative pitches, as we covered previously:
Free Utility Makes Endless Oscillators for Ableton Live Simpler, Sampler
Direct link: AMS File Utility for Ableton Live

And for harmonic experimentation, see the Circle of Fifths Chord Resource:
Circle of Fifths Chord Resource in Ableton Live

This is all fairly academic stuff, but the funny thing about it is there’s nothing stopping you from making either a dance music hit or some experimental new kind of music that doesn’t sound like it came from Ableton.

Alternative tunings for Operator oscillators and Euclidean polyrhythms? There are many tools aside from Ableton that will work, too, but whatever your tool, this could be a great way to jump-start a musical idea. Airport layover, meet musical productivity.

Updated: Another great way to go is the Eckel VST plug-in, also donationware. It works on Mac (Universal) and Windows, and since you can dial up parameters, may be easier to use than the MIDI clips, depending on your workflow – especially since you can still choose pitch. (Or, hey, grab both!) Thanks to John Larsby for the reminder:
Shuriken.se: VST – Eckel

For Dr. Toussaint’s part, you can glance over his syllabus on Discrete Mathematics — and find a reference to Tony’s Ableton experiments.

Grab the download and read more on this topic (free, donations welcome):
Euclidean Rhythm MIDI File Resource in Ableton Live [Age of the Wheel]

Swedish developer Magnus Lidström is something of a virtuoso of music software, having worked with Propellerhead (Malström, etc.) and releasing his own unique µTonic (MicroTonic) and Synplant instruments. It’s been a bit since we’ve gotten new work from him – little matter, as I find his instruments tend to stand the test of time – but that changes now. MicroTonic, a well-loved drum machine cum drum synth, gets a major update this week, a 2011 New Year’s present to the producer community. (It is indeed a gift if you own a previous version; upgrades are free.) And one more thing – Sonic Charge is also releasing a terrific “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect” that does wonderful things with audio.

MicroTonic was already a lovely combination of percussion synthesizer and pattern-editing drum machine. New in µTonic 3.0:

• A morph slider which interpolates between eight drum patches – all MIDI-controlled and automation-ready, for crazy performance and production options
• A matrix editor for accessing all eight drum channels’ patterns at once
• MIDI pattern drag and drop, for Ableton Live users (and all major hosts)
• Choke groups, MIDI pitch wheel and program change support, new pattern modes, undo/redo
• Prettier improved skin and UI improvements

And there’s much more, as well. See the full changelog:
Changes in µTonic v3.0

Just as compelling as MicroTonic, though, is a new US$29 effect called Bitspeak. Sonic Charge describes Bitspeak thusly: “It will make you sound like a robot. Robots are cool. Bitspeek is cool.”

But that doesn’t quite do it justice. Bitspeak is vocoder-like in that it works on the same fundamental principle. But it’s closest to the compression algorithm used in mobile phones – it’s a “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect.” Pitch, volume, and formant data drive an oscillator, noise, and filter. The resulting timbres can sound like conventional ring mods and vocoders, or something quite different – and I’m really intrigued to try this on different sources. As presented here, you really have a gamut of possible effects.

And yes, it sounds like a Speak ‘n Spell turned into an effect. Listen to those sound samples for more.

The two Sonic Charge plugins are available for Windows VST and Mac VST and AU. MicroTonic even supports Mac OS 10.4 and (G5) PowerPC, so it’s an ideal choice for an older machine. (Bitspeak requires 10.5 and Intel on the Mac side, but also supports XP on Windows, so still works on an older PC.)

Full info:
http://www.soniccharge.com/bitspeek
http://www.soniccharge.com/microtonic

Checkerboard Step Sequencer V2 from Josh Silverman on Vimeo.

Shall we play a game?

Have your checkers chops ready, because Josh Silverman’s Checkerboard Step Sequencer, a tangible interface for music, will test both your game mettle and your grooves.

Built with the open source coding tool OpenFrameworks and Ableton Live as sound source, the checkerboard fuses computer vision technology and … well, some beats.

This video should make obvious the relationship between the position of the checkers pieces and the noises they represent and trigger. It’s still a work in progress, but for now I won’t subject you to the cacophony that is the sound of an actual game of checkers.

Aside from the kick drum, which just keeps pace on every beat, all other drum samples are triggered off the board.

In this version, I’ve implemented a Mute Region that surrounds the board. When the application sees activity in the mute region, it disables the updating of the sequencer. This way, my hand doesn’t trigger a cacophony when I move the pieces.

More technical explanation on Josh’s blog:

How it works [prettyextreme]

As it happens, you can meet this project in person if you’re in the NYC area. We’ll be hosting Josh on Sunday night at Handmade Music, at Culturefix’s Lower East Side. 4:30-6p is an open lab, a chance to check out this project and others (including MeeBlip!), followed by cacophonous demos and raucous music starting at 7p.

Detailed Lineup; Handmade Music site
Event on Facebook

Historical precedent: It’s fairly hard to top John Cage and Marcel Duchamp playing chess, with or without sonification, but apparently sonified they were:
John Cage Playing Chess [Uncertain Times]

No information on what the chess game sounded like, however. Backgammon, anyone? Thanks, SkyRon, for the tip! Also, from 1997, a grid game with Toshio Iwai and Ryuichi Sakamoto; thanks, Ctrlsave. (Interesting to reflect on how much easier this is to do in 2010, thanks to more accessible software and greater, cheaper horsepower.)

Ah, Mondays. If you’re looking for a way to brighten your work week and you’ve got an iPod touch or iPhone you can drop into your pocket, iOS music and audio developer Pulse Code tells us they’ve made four of its apps free for this week only, through August 8. That includes BtBx [iTunes], a simple and fun drum machine, DB-303, a simulation of the Roland TB-303 bass line synth and a particular favorite of pocket iPhone musicians, as well as a couple of fun toys – a robot tone synth and sound effects maker called Android FX and a text-to-speech “robot comedian.” These will all run on iPad, too, of course, though none has yet been adapted to iPad’s native resolution.

The development house has also just released on a couple of other (paid) apps, including a fascinating-looking graphical subtractive synth called PolyWave. It works with some similar ideas to the hardware proposed with our Dreams contest, in which you draw the sounds you want. And on the subject of transforming voices – a topic we covered last week on Android and desktop, there’s a new vocal transformer.

The microphone input itself on mobile devices is an interesting one. It becomes a sound source, a modulation source, and a controller. (It’s not hard to add to hardware projects, too – DIYers, take note.)

Developer Amaury Hazan, a former developer of the interactive music app RjDj, writes to say he’s just finished his PhD thesis (ah, that… yeah, working on it), and that some of his doctoral research helped lead to a new iOS app. We covered that research some years ago here on CDM, and now it’s found its way into a new “beatboxing” app, which uses your voice as an input to sequence sounds. It’s a fascinating idea, if one that may require some practice. You can see the technique in the video above, or go grab the app for iOS at US$2.

http://billaboop.com/en/boomclap
iTunes link
A nice Wire to the Ear write-up

I’d love to talk to Amaury – and anyone else, if interested – about research in using mic inputs, so consider this a teaser and conversation starter.

Generative: the rhythmic frontier. These are the voyages of the starship MicroTonic. Its online mission: to explore strange new grooves, to seek out new beats and new musical cultures …

Yes, Patternarium, by software scientists Magnus and Fredrik Lindström of SonicCharge (Synplant, µTonic, Reason’s Malström), have built a server-based rhythmic generation tool. You, the human, don’t have to do much: reality TV show-style, just vote up or down patterns you hear, and the generative scripts will continue spawning new, evolved rhythms. I suppose if you believe in the power of democratic action, eventually this could lead to some sort of new replacement for the “Amen break.”

I actually am more in love with the interface than the thought of servers making beats for me. The results play as a lovely, radial arrangement of rectangles. As for the accompanying starfield and Star Trek: Wrath of Kahn The Motion Picture typography, well, that’s just a bonus.

http://www.soniccharge.com/patternarium

These aren’t just beats for your browser, though. You can download the results to SonicCharge’s fantastic synthesis-powered drum machine (VST, AU/PC, Mac). And that brings us to the real news hidden in this story: SonicCharge are cooking up a new version of MicroTonic, which is good news, indeed. They’re not saying much, but they are willing to reveal that the new version supports drag and drop of patterns as MIDI files, meaning that you’ll be able to easily create a bank of pattern-triggering clips in something like Ableton Live. (A recent update to Native Instruments’ Maschine did the same, suggesting drag-able grooves are something we’ll see more often.)

Always delicious, always rhythmically nutritious, µTonic aka “MicroTonic”:
http://www.soniccharge.com/mtonic

Can’t be bothered to try it yourself? Need a narration? Here’s Torley with a video, via Synthtopia.

Trifonic: Editing Beats – Part 1 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

No more secrets: that could well sum up the zeitgeist of music making in 2010. So it is that Trifonic, aka virtuoso beatmeister brothers Brian and Laurence Trifon of San Francisco, share their technique for chopping up and glitching out audio. Their new blog, Next Step Audio, is entirely dedicated to sharing their production techniques:

http://nextstepaudio.com/ [site slightly erratic response-wise for me at press time]

The video tutorial on beat editing, published by Next Step Audio, starts out generically enough: grab the ubiquitous “Amen break” as a sample, load it into Apple’s Logic Pro, slice it by beat and adjust to transients, gate… but Trifonic explains how they take the results further, drawing envelopes for modulation and winding up with something far removed for the original. Of course, if you’re fatigued of the “Amen break,” you could apply the same technique to samples of your own playing, and you could substitute your DAW of choice, from Live to Pro Tools, for the editing.

Part of what makes this tutorial compelling is that the duo has a distinctive musical identity, rather than being the anonymous, all-knowing voice music tech instructors had tried to be in the past. It’s worth checking out their music, too. Digitally-distorted, glitching beats had threatened to become a tired cliche years ago, but Trifonic combines those sharper digital timbres with rich, warm layers of sound. The shifting textures of the video for “Parks on Fire,” a big single for them, matches that musical structure perfectly in visuals. (The video is the work of the terrific Scott Pagano, an LA-based visualist.)

There’s plenty more music to share, too, and you can even grab a free Trifonic bass patch for Logic’s EXS24 and Native Instruments’ Kontakt 3 (or compatible samplers, which includes just about everything).

You can grab a free MP3 of Trifonic’s “Transgenic” in the “Rust Mix”:

And Trifonic are regular contributors to ccMixer, the Creative Commons-licensed remix site. They’ve got loads of work under an attribution / non-commercial license. That has, in turn, encouraged a crop of remixes of their work, which seems in keeping with the techniques they’re espousing.

(See my rant last week for some concerns about the non-commercial license relative to images. It’s less of an issue, I think, with samples, but I do hope to connect with the CC folks soon and talk on CDM about the relative advantages of Non-Commercial versus ShareAlike or some combination.)

http://ccmixter.org/people/trifonic

In part two of the beat editing tutorial, Trifonic go further with glitching and special effects.

As noted by commenter Bryan Gilstein, “It doesn’t matter, we’ll go nuts with it.”

Amen, brother.

Trifonic: Editing Beats – Part 2 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Trifonic have a bass patch sample that they share for free, too, in EXS24 and Kontakt 3 formats. It’s a wobble bass, yes, but with a few nice twists.

Good music, good production tips – I’m sold. (Now, is anyone else aside from me thinking about how these techniques could become real-time / live instruments?)

Lots more Trifonic at the artists’ website:
http://www.trifonic.com

See also:
Tirfonic @ rcrdlbl [free music]
Trifonic @ Last.fm

…and I’ll see them next week in LA, where I’m sharing a big bill with them at the unofficial NAMM afterparty (more details on that soon):
http://whambamthankyounamm.com/

Seeing a tracker interface for the first time can be intimidating. But dive in a bit deeper, and you’ll discover what’s actually a very efficient interface for programming in musical sequences and working with samples. With just ten days left in the Renoise – Indamixx music production contest, there’s still time to get up and running using even the demo version of Renoise (into which you can import samples). And this could be a great excuse to learn a new tool.

Dac, who’s a big part of support and community for Renoise, has put together a nice tutorial showing off the workflow in the tool. It’s nothing all that unusual: bring in samples, assemble patterns, make music. Some of the voice over is hard to hear, but this is a good start. Now, I still like reading and writing better than video just in terms of how I learn, so I may try to work on a written version for the end of the week; feel free to shout encouragement.

For more Renoise inspiration, forum regular djnick sends along a PsyTrance video made in Renoise – so, yes, you can make PsyTrance with a tracker, too, if you like. He samples Peter Jennings talking about ecstasy. Yeah, whatever – as if you can make Peter Jennings any more trippy. Watching Jennings is the ultimate natural high.

And here’s the original jerk beat tutorial. (Hey, who are you calling a jerk beat? Sorry, that just can’t sound not strange when I hear that phrase…)

Enjoy. Got specific requests for how-to’s, other tips or tutorials you’ve found useful, or questions you’d like answered? Do let us know.

iproducer #4 – Unlink and Conquer + Bonus from Gustavo Bravetti on Vimeo.

Exclusive to CDM (and Vimeo), Live guru Gustavo Bravetti offers a deep tutorial in sound creation in Ableton using “unlinked envelopes.” He assembles quasi-modular routings of effects into one another to create some unusual sounds. I think there are some inspiring techniques here, even beyond Ableton Live – I’d watch it even if I weren’t a Live user.

Gustavo writes:

“This workshop demo video is about using Live’s unique clip unlinked envelopes and Ableton’s effects to easily create elaborated sequenced sounds as well as a “how to” create a bass, a tuned bass drum, a clap and hi hats.”

So, what’s the beauty of the “unlinked envelope”? By separating the envelope length from the length of a sample, you can take a sample of one length and modulate it in time independently with an envelope of a different length. A short sample can warp in a longer block of time for more variety – a 1/16th note sample, for instance, transformed over a bar or two. Add the ability to route the envelope into effect modulation, and you can start to think extreme sonic freakiness. Here, that serves Gustavo’s own electronic palette, but it could suit a variety of musical aims.

You can also go the opposite direction: you could take a long sample and modulate it with a short envelope. For instance, you could select a 30-second oscillating texture, and apply a very short envelope, like a single sixteenth-note peak, in order to create an evolving high hat.

You can think of the unlinked envelope as a modulation source for a variety of sonic targets. It could be a short sample, a chain of effects, or a synth. Here, Gustavo sticks to built-in Live devices, but you could easily add your own plug-ins of choice – especially now that Live has added the ability to more easily choose which third-party plug-in parameters you wish to target.

Part of why I say this is about more than just Live is that you can begin to see how thinking in envelopes can make your musical content more dynamic, a technique you can apply to any environment that allows this sort of routing. It certainly illustrates the power of Live in a way that I think a lot of people miss.

To watch the full HD version, head to Gustavo’s Vimeo account.

I’m going to be organizing a compendium of our best Live tutorials soon; if you have external tutorials you’d like us to link up, let us know.

Previous Gustavo-fueled mayhem:
Ableton Live Follow Actions, Dummy Clips, Making Snares
DIY 808, IDM 101
Gustavo Bravetti Show Us How To Glitch out Ableton Live
Hexagonal Sequencer with vvvv, MIDI, Ableton, and Soon Wii, Camera Input
Live + FM8 = Drum Kit Love: Free FM8 Drum Kit Download