Commercial developers are now releasing music creation apps for mobile game systems, in the form of the KORG DS-10 for Nintendo DS and Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP. But some of the best ideas still come from the homebrew community.

What’s most impressive about ToneSynthDS is not so much what it does as its interface, fitting all its functionality into the DS’ two compact screens. Its minimal interface finds an elegant arrangement of everything you most urgently need, with a sequencer screen on one DS screen and basic virtual analog synth parameters on the other. A 4 x 4 matrix next to the main sequencer grid lets you switch between patterns, in a step sequencer reminiscent of the monome and Tenori-On. There isn’t a whole lot of depth to event editing in this early version, but it could be a lovely way to sketch melodic patterns. (And some of those limitations come from the DS itself. Note, though, that this app gets a full 16 real-time channels on the original DS hardware to the Korg DS-10’s paltry two.)

Developer Fanta/Hotelsinus Sound Design has been posting mock-ups, demos, and now builds as he goes. That means that he gets feedback from an audience of readers and incorporates those as he develops the app – another key difference between the DIY/homebrew scene and conventional commercial development.

More good news: this DS app should also run as a PC VST in a forthcoming version, opening up the fun to folks using netbooks and laptops instead of the DS and creating a nice mobile-to-computer workflow.

http://ndscomposer.blogspot.com/

In related Nintendo DS news: If you’re thinking about getting the new DS-10 Plus Limited Edition of the KORG DS-10, you’ll need to get it for the region coding of your DS. (In other words, you probably won’t want to import it.) The “Dual Mode” functions are region-locked, so North American and European users can’t use the Japanese DS-10. That’s not such a big deal, as North American distribution was announced, and other regions are expected to follow, but it’s good to know. See details on the All Things KORG DS-10 blog. (Thanks, DS-10 Dominator!)

Check out some demo videos and a quick run-down on specs, and if you’ve got the capability to run homebrew, you can give this a try. Thanks to Art/toitoy for the tip!

• Two oscillators with fixed oscillators, ADSHR envelopes
• Filter section (in development)
• Ring modulation and “cross” mixing (cross-fading between oscillators)
• 16×16 step sequencer, 4×4 pattern selection

Clearly, there’s a lot of work still to be done, so test this build at your own risk. But it’s already good fun, and the coming roadmap looks logical, with filter options, disk rendering, song mode, and more in store. It’s also an interesting read as far as wrangling with emulators and some of the challenges of DS development.

The wait is over – and rumors that Melodyne’s bleeding-edge technologies to allow direct access to notes in polyphonic audio had failed to come to fruition turn out to be false. (I was skeptical about those rumors in April.) Melodyne DNA did take longer than expected to ship, but then, that isn’t exactly news in the software business. And now you can try this “note access” concept for yourself and see what you think (well, provided you’re an existing customer). Coupled with time-based manipulation of audio in the form of updated tools in Ableton Live 8, Cakewalk SONAR 8.5, Propellerhead Record, Logic Studio 9, and others, with Melodyne handling the pitch, audio today could be more fluid than ever.

Celemony Melodyne
(Note, since you are a bleeding-edge type — the software is also considered compatible with Snow Leopard, though host-by-host certification is still forthcoming.)

What Melodyne’s editor enables:

• Harmonies are accessible, note by note.
• Pitch, position, duration, and loudness and softness can be modified.
• Formant spectra, vibrato, and pitch drift are accessible.
• Pitch, amplitude, and formant transitions between notes can be edited.

Now, all of this is in a plug-in, but that plug-in is more capable than previous versions, with better multi-threading, an adjustable window size (sigh of relief), and the ability to audition and scrub as you edit. That’s not quite as good as having this functionality in your host, but it’s more than good enough to make this usable.

I’m especially interested in what unusual sound design possibilities can be harnessed using this technology – abusing it rather than using it as intended.

Here’s how to get it:
Registered Melodyne customers are able to participate in the beta.
Launch is planned for early November at US$349 / EUR349.

I’m testing a copy now, so if you’re not a Melodyne user, I will get to report back.

More videos:

(Part 3 of 3 appears to be temporarily missing; I’ll add it once it is re-posted!)

I was one of the first people outside Native Instruments to lay eyes on Maschine, and immediately I saw something with real potential. Here was a software drum machine that was different: it was a real attempt to fuse some of the advantages of a software interface with some of the working methods of hardware. Software and hardware had really grown up together, instead of the latter simply being fitted to the former. And, of course, it had NI-style effects and UI look-and-feel, for fans of the software house’s style.

But 1.0 releases are a funny thing. As someone who spends a bit of my life developing tools, you always wind up with a choice of delaying the release, implementing something partway, or choosing not to implement it so it can be done properly later. And Maschine 1.0 lacked for me the one thing that was really essential to workflow – proper MIDI input and output support. Without that, I felt it was difficult to even give it a fair test. You’d wind up getting hung up on what was missing.

Well, good news: Maschine 1.1 gets all the little features I feel are essential to making it a viable and valuable part of the production workflow. It’s in public beta now, and I’m giving it a proper test. But here are the current changes in the present build, which includes all of the major items on my must-have list:

MIDI Out Mode for sounds
MIDI In for sounds and groups
Drag-and-Drop audio export for scenes and patterns in host
Record and trigger scenes switches via MIDI notes in host
Scene retrigger option in plugin mode
Loading groups without patterns
Additional slicing sizes (1/8th etc.)
REX file import
Scene naming
Adjustable metronome volume
Record Count-In option
Quick adjustment of group and sound volumes on controller

MIDI capabilities mean, for instance, you can throw Maschine into your host of choice (including the popular Ableton Live) and make really use of it. And you can drag and drop audio with the host, as well. The ability to have more slicing sizes is absolutely fundamental, as well.

Stay tuned, as this is just a first look at what’s in the beta.

http://www.native-instruments.com/index.php?id=publicbeta [Public beta signup]

The usual disclaimers apply: you need Maschine 1.0.3, backup projects made with 1.0.3 before opening in the beta, once you save a project with the beta, it can’t be opened in earlier releases (though it sounds like it can be opened in the final 1.1.0), and don’t expect technical support – expect to fill out bug reports! That’s what makes it a beta!

Also on the NI front, there are some excellent new Ableton Live templates for the KORE controller – yes, KORE, not Maschine – recently added to the KORE build, so I hope to cover that, as well. What I want is a Native Instruments Timepak(R). Add it to your existing KOMPLETE(R) or KORE(TM) setup, and instantly have more time for sound programming and less need for sleep – aka SCHLAFEN(TM) and – what I often get – SCHLAFEN LE.

Given the passion of the debate, it’s easy to forget that Propellerheads’ Record has been firing up discussion from many people who haven’t actually seen it. Record is to audio recording, mixing, and mastering what Reason is to synthesized sound, and for Reason lovers, it finally delivers that holy grail – multiple racks. Record is a bit like Reason Studio, taking those instruments and giving them a full production context.

Since its release, Propellerhead has amplified polarized opinions about this tool. It doesn’t support plug-ins (though you can use other ReWire clients), it doesn’t do things like film scoring, and thus its singular focus on recording means I think it’s fair for Propellerhead to say it’s not a DAW. Of course, going so far as tell blogs they can’t label it as such is going a bit far, and it only made some people protest more. And the focus on those features hasn’t pleased users who want everything and a kitchen sink on their feature list. Users were divided over the Ignition Key and online authorization scheme (see full explanation), of course.

But it is something about which everyone seems to have an opinion, and for that alone, I love it. That’d be a little more fair if you’ve actually gotten to use it, however. So, now’s your chance to try Record for yourself:

http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/

The beta is a full-featured, open-and-save-capable version, through its expiration date on September 9.

If you’re impatient, we can get you the beta key right now. Just leave a comment, say something intelligent, say “+1 beta,” and be sure to leave your real email address. (Emails are not published on the site; I’ll just see them in my inbox.) If you’d like to be on the CDM Notes mailing list (no other marketing or spam), say “+1 email.”

All out! Thanks to everyone; hopefully we’ve gotten everyone a code who wanted one. Follow comments for some little glitches with their Website…

Once you’ve got a reply from me, download Record by entering your code at http://recordyou.com. You’ll also get two codes to pass along to friends.

Update on registration: I talked to Propellerhead’s web developer – when you get the confirmation email for recordyou.com, go ahead and log in! You’ll be confirmed automatically. Some people saw this login page following the confirmation email and thought something was wrong. Don’t worry, log in, and everything will be fine.

We’ll give out keys until we run out. Propellerhead shared some with us, but then composer Josh Mobley, whose work is featured in Record and has been an advocate of the software from the beginning, reached out. Josh gave us half his stash of keys to share with CDM readers, because he’s devoted to Propellerhead’s stuff. How devoted? He has a Reason tattoo. And it’s nice to hear that Record is pleasing a Reason fan, as that to me remains the big test. Josh has done some significant commercial work, ranging from NBC’s The Office to Ford Motors to the US Department of Defense, with scoring, music, sound design, remix, and environmental projects.

http://www.joshmobley.com/

And he’s a superfan in the best way. I asked him why Record matters in his work:

I love me some Reason. In fact, I love it so much, I got a tattoo on my wrist of the Reason logo. Most people thought I was out of my mind but I love it. Why? Things really didn’t start taking off for me until I started using Reason. I took one look at the program and thought, they made this for me. I started busting out tunes faster than I ever had before. And people were snatching them right up. It dawned on me right then and there that this self-contained environment had freed me up and allowed me to be creative without scrolling through a bunch of plug-ins and whatnot. The distractions of making music were gone. A limited tool set that can be routed and combined in an infinite number of ways. One needs only to look at the patches and music that [Reason user] peff is making to see that reason is the most powerful music instrument in the world.

And now, we have Record: Audio+Reason+SSL Mixer. Having used it since the early alphas, I can honestly say that Record is every bit as musical and easy to use as Reason. The time stretching is, frankly, jaw-dropping. The new mixer sounds like the SSL at my old studio. You can easily do a whole song in Record without any other software. However, Record+Reason is a lethal Combination.

I could go on and on, but at the end of the day, you really need to spend some time with this program and see what’s possible. I can almost certainly guarantee that you will be making music faster than you ever did.

Now, a superfan is not a fanboy. Fanboys, as we know, are the folks who get defensive even in the face of some obvious shortcoming, who spend lots of their time talking down other people’s choices. The superfans I’m guessing are generally too busy actually using their software – in this case, making music.

And if you do find software you love enough to tattoo on your wrist (see also our friend Jo with Reaktor), you don’t need any reviewer or forum commenter or expert or anyone else to tell you what to think. You’ll know.

Do tell us what you think of Record as you use it, and good luck snagging a code.

Previously:
Propellerhead Record In-Depth Preview: Recording, Reason-Style; Beta Test Now
Propellerhead Record: New Getting Started Video Tutorial, Blog
How Propellerhead’s New “Ignition Key” Authorization for Record Works

Native Instruments has updated its sampling engine, releasing beta versions 3.0.5 for its Battery drum sampler and 3.5.0 final for the flagship Kontakt sampler. Both are free upgrades. (For anyone who thought that somehow Maschine was replacing Battery, it isn’t: the former is a drum machine, whereas the latter is more like a high-end drum sampler.)

There are a number of significant enhancements, but perhaps the most interesting is the support for 64-bit memory addressing. On 64-bit Windows Vista (and upcoming 64-bit Windows 7), that gives you true 64-bit memory addressing for — well, more memory than you have. (The theoretical limit of Windows’ 64-bit architecture on Intel is 16 terabytes.) This allows native 64-bit memory addressing on Windows for both Battery and Kontakt.

The Mac isn’t quite capable of that just yet (at least no audio applications beyond Apple’s own developer tools support 64-bit memory addressing yet), but the Kontakt Memory Server gives you up to 32 GB on 10.4 and later. Clarification: The Kontakt Memory Server is available now only for Kontakt.

The other important development for both Battery and Kontakt is that compatibility with Pro Tools 8 under Mac OS 10.5 Leopard has been restored.

Getting Kontakt on 64-bit is a very big deal, because of the widespread popularity of the sampler. At the same time, the fact that it’s not alone is a good thing — it suggests 64-bit memory for samplers may be catching on. Steinberg’s HALion, Cakewalk’s Dimension Pro, Garritan’s ARIA, and the open source Linux Sampler Project are some of the more familiar samplers that have gone 64-bit recently. (Note that, despite its name, Linux Sampler can run 64-bit on both Linux and Windows.) Cakewalk did a lot to lead the way here on Windows by getting both its SONAR host and Dimension Pro (among other plug-ins) fully 64-bit early. Garritan is equally interesting, because their Plogue-based engine is getting licensed out to soundware makers and, architecturally, is built more as a cross-platform engine. Garritan ARIA is also targeting Linux, and Cakewalk and Garritan are also supporting the open SFZ format.

Okay, I should have put that in a table. Imagine a table in your mind. Wow, that looks beautiful.

What else is new in Kontakt

64-bit is the headline, but there are other enhancements, too, in the Kontakt engine:

• “Zero-memory” DFD means you use less memory when streaming from disk (and using less memory is usually the very reason you’re streaming from disk)!
• True multiprocessor/multi-core support for enhanced performance
• A virtual rack of all your installed libraries and third-party content, so it’s easier to find your sounds
• Direct MIDI learn (meaning everything is finally assignable), improved automapping, bypass for effects slots
• Pro Tools compatibility now works properly on Mac Leopard
• KSP aftertouch interpretation – so now you can do something with that aftertouch-transmitting keyboard of yours

Update: Note that these are Kontakt-specific features, and not relevant to Battery for reasons clarified below.

Battery vs. Kontakt

Updated: You will note that Native Instruments is updating Battery and Kontakt more or less at the same time, and they do share some core technologies that allow that to happen. They aren’t exactly the same under the hood, though, as NI explains to CDM:

The core engine technology is the same in Battery 3.0.5 and Kontakt 3.5, but Battery uses a “lighter” version because of its typical use case as a drum sampler.

It doesn’t include the Memory Server and the multiprocessor/multicore support because these features really only become necessary with multitimbral operation, high polyphony and a huge number of instrument samples (and heavy effects usage) like in Kontakt.

Let us know what you think if you’re a Kontakt/Battery user.

New features in Kontakt 3.5 versus 3.0 [Native Instruments]
Public beta of Battery 3.0.5 [at the NI public beta site]

This is going to get confusing, isn’t it, with a product name like “Record”? (A “Record Tutorial”? A “Record Video”? Maybe it’s just me…)

Anyway, if you’re hooked up with the Record beta and looking to get started, Propellerhead have posted a video tutorial to get you going, with more planned. There’s also a new Record blog:

Record Blog

There’s an update on the state of beta testing, and you’ll find some notes from Props CEO/founder Ernst on why they’re creating Record:

When we designed Record we went back to our original roots, the drive that made us create Reason a long time ago. In 1998, when the Reason design came to life, there were already incredible synthesizers. You could already make music with your computer. There was immense power in the solutions that existed.

Now, I’m sure that won’t calm down any of you who won’t use Record because it has a dongle, or because it lacks MIDI output for talking to your hardware synths. But, then, that’s why we have more than one tool from which to choose in music technology, both commercial and open source.

For instance, since I know there’s a rabid Reaper community out there, I’m happy to see these two apps face off in an audio software slam.

Just to be contrary, I’m going to tag this post “DAWs,” because even if Record isn’t a DAW, I think it clearly can be an alternative to DAWs as a “piece of software that allows you to record and make music.” Really, while there’s no convenient acronym for that, that’s the whole point of all this software, right? (Then again, that’s all the more reason not to call anything a “DAW,” because “workstation” is a meaningless word that has little to do with actually using computers to make music.)

And, sure, if I had it to do over again, I might simply call this blog “Create Music.” Or “Music.” Or just “ate.”

I need voice recognition, because I’ve just covered my keyboard with drool.

The Teenage Engineering OP-1 (Operator 1) is a “pocket-sized” controller and synth. For once, it eschews the cliches of modern hardware design for a look that is truly 2009, influenced by the layout of classic Roland drum machines but made minimal and elegant. It’s a controller. It’s a synth. It has … an FM radio in it? (Yes, that’s FM radio, though it also has the FM synthesis you might expect.)

Features:

• Controller functions: transport controls, 4 rotary encoders, 16 dedicated “quick keys”
• Motion sensor so you can shake the thing
• Stand-alone synthesis (no computer needed), with 8 synth models, 8 samplers
• Synth models: FM synthesis, virtual analog, more (can’t tell what other synth models they intend)
• Effects: Delay, Flutter, Filters, EQ
• Sequencer — described as “at present time, secret.” A secret sequencer? Isn’t it already somewhat secret, seeing as the device isn’t shipping?
• Arpeggiator
• FM radio (so you can record Akufen-style radio samples?)
• Built-in mic, speaker
• Record to MP3
• 12 mm thin
• USB 2.0, minijacks for audio in / out+heaphones
• Battery-powered using the power connector, which is “the same as used in robotic automation applications”
• Holes for a carry strap

All of this has an unbelievably beautiful interface.

Teenage Engineering Operator-1

The only real question is, is all of this too good to be true? Teenage promises an initial run of 100 to the “beta” list, with the project completion slated for 10-12 months and price TBA. Now, we’ve heard that before, and painfully, we tend to see a rough correlation looking something like this:

But note, this is only correlation, not causation. That is, the awesomeness of something does not prevent it from shipping. So I’m holding out hope that the OP-1 will indeed see the light of day, and we’ll be sampling FM radio and programming FM synth sequences on a bus. I can’t wait.

(I’ll amend the illustration, and we’ll put the OP-1 alone in the upper right-hand corner of this graph.)

As noted in comments, LSDJ creator Johan Kotlinski is on the team, too. That makes the “secret” sequencer all the more tantalizing. (It still makes sense that it’d be some sort of step sequencer, given the hardware interface, but what kind?)

Teenage Engineering are not new to truly brilliant designs. They created an installation of toy-like robotic singers for Absolut – the vodka company – called Absolut Choir. Heck, I want these, too. Brilliant work.

Found via the wonderful True Chip Till Death.

More information

Operator-1 Details: The Casio VL-Tone of the 21st Century, Plus the Synth Alarm Clock!
High-Density Screens Due; OP-1’s Gorgeous Display

Focusrite – Novation Beta

There’s a registration form for beta testers so you can stay up to date, but you can grab the download immediately. Sounds great to me, as more (quality) feedback can mean fewer bugs!

And what about the HUI support in Automap (which apparently includes the free Automap 3 Standard)? HUI, or Human User Interface, is the older version of Mackie’s control scheme, implemented over MIDI for more extensive control over DAWs’ editing features. HUI support (added first in the 2.0 ReMOTE SL operating system) gives you control compatibility with the wonderful, affordable Reaper DAW, plus Logic, Final Cut Pro (yes, the video app), Nuendo, Cubase, Ableton Live, and others. Some of those are supported separately by Automap, but others – like Final Cut, for instance – could be fun to try out.

Switching tools isn’t a panacea, but it can inspire new ideas, by changing the way you structure your music. Elysium is a powerful new sequencer in development for the Mac the creates generative patterns on a beehive-shaped hexagonal grid. For the hardcore, you can even extend the tool with Ruby and JavaScript.

Elysium is a MIDI sequencer only: it has no sound generation facility of its own. But that makes it an ideal complement to your existing tools and favorite synths; the creator shows it off with Apple Logic Studio (Sculpture physical modeling, anyone?) and Native Instruments Kore.

Elysium [Mac-only public beta, PPC/Intel; 10.5 required]

Most sequencers work like a variation on a score: you compose events in time and it renders those events in precisely the same order each time. Elysium is generative: instead of creating a score, you create a system, and events are determined by the rules of the system. That means the exact deployment of events in time is variable, and things may not sound the same way – or over the same span of time – twice.

To do this, Elysium employs layers, cells, tokens, and callbacks. Huh?

• Layers are roughly equivalent to a track in a traditional sequencer; it’s a single grid of cells, each containing a note, transmitted on one MIDI channel. That means, most likely, you’ll use a different layer for each sound you want to generate in your synth or host.
• Cells are arrayed in a 17×12 honeycomb (a hexagonal grid), each transmitting one MIDI note. They’re organized in a harmonic table – the three adjacent hexagons around a single vertex, for instance, form a triad.
• Tokens are the things that actually do stuff – they’re what make Elysium generative and interactive. Functions currently include Start/Stop, Note (plays an actual note), Rebound (changes direction), Absorb, Split, and Spin (impact movement). Arrange these on the grid, and instead of playing left-to-right as a traditional sequencer would, playback will navigate the spaces on the grid – potentially in unusual and interesting ways. To edit tokens, Elysium uses floating inspector palettes for setting parameters.
• Callbacks give you the power to define your own musical behaviors by scripting them, making your musical world more variable. Elysium uses the same JavaScript interpreter as the Safari/WebKit browser, so you can code in JavaScript. Ruby lovers can even work in MacRuby. These code snippets don’t have to be complex: on the contrary, they’re quite simple and friendly to non-programmers, tantamount to saying “Hey, sequencer, I command you to do THIS!”

Side note: I love the idea of scripting engines. Back in the day, HyperCard’s HyperTalk had simple, scriptable events that even kids could learn. There’s some real potential there, as we’ve seen in Native Instruments’ Kontakt sampler. If you’re afraid of code, don’t be. Even if you do nothing but copy and paste some useful code borrowed from someone else, you can benefit from a scripting engine. Change one variable to suit your purposes – even one number in that code – and you’ve just become a programmer. (Ableton? Ableton Live scripting? Please?)

Anyway, the resulting sequencer navigates through musical materials interactively. Add some layers, and you can create something quite dynamic. If that sounds as though it could become monotonous, consider this: you could use Elysium to trigger a sampler as well as notes on a synth, and you could modulate a synth’s timbres while Elysium drives notes. There’s some serious potential.

Musical Applications

Elysium: Probabilistic Arp from giles goat boy on Vimeo.

Giles Bowkett has a fantastic hands-on feature where he couple Elysium with some hardware sound sources:

Driving Korg Hardware With Elysium [Giles Bowkett Blog]

He also makes note of the similarity to the wonderful-looking reactOgon interface, which took this concept to a tangible table. That means that the actions were actually physical objects placed on the grid that controlled movement – brilliant, though apparently no one knows what happened to the project. (Too bad. I can imagine people playing Warhammer and performing music at the same time.)

There’s a separate hands-on employing Ableton Live, by mmi.

If you want to try this yourself, visit the Elysium project site and be sure to try the:

Introductory screencast

Going Hexagonal

All of this brings us to the question of why hexagonal grids are so cool. It’s been on my mind lately as I just read a fantastic chapter in the book Game Programming Gems 7, a book that could easily be titled “A Collection of Really Cool Ideas from Game Programmers.” Check out the chapter “For Bees and Gamers: How to Handle Hexagonal Tiles.” Basically, the advantages of a hexagonal grid as opposed to our usual square one:

• It’s the most efficient regular tessellation – it has the highest packing density and uses the least perimeter, making for an elegant, organic pattern
• Adjacent tiles can be described as defining a vertex (a point) or a whole edge, and you still get the same number of tiles – six. On a grid of squares, there are only four squares that are adjacent based on side (the ones above, to the right, to the left, an below), but eight squares sharing a vertex (the ones on the diagonal). That makes navigation through the grid somewhat confusing – though it does enable the games of chess and checkers.
• The distance from one tile to an adjacent tile is the same, whichever direction you go.

This comes up in game design because hexagonal grids work well for mapping movements of … well, little dudes fighting in strategy games. The advantage is the inverse of what you get in checkers and chess: you can define one kind of movement from a tile to an adjacent tile.

You can perhaps already see what this means for music. It means hex grids are efficient, they allow unambiguous movement to adjacent tiles, and they form neat little triads and dyads that can make sense harmonically when we’re talking pitch.

At the same time, these seem advantages pose some challenges. The hex grid is so regular, it’s a little hard to look at. There’s a reason pianos use keys of different sizes and colors. It would be possible to use clever coloring schemes to help with this, though the shape would remain regular (and thus a little hard to look at). Elysium does have a color scheme applied, but it certainly requires some adjustment; perhaps the ability to shift on-the-fly to see pitch relationships could help.

I do also wonder if there aren’t ways of using these kinds of grids aside from just putting a note on each tile. Elysium does have more going on, but you can’t see it. It’s all hidden behind the tiles in scripts and slightly hard-to-recognize icons. It’d be great to see more visual representation of movement and interaction. This app is new, so perhaps there’s still time.

That said, I think the capabilities here are already amazing. I was a skeptics of hexagonal grids when I first saw them, feeling as though I’d just been dropped on an alien starship. (Greetings, fellow Cardassians!) But there is something behind the geometries we use. And I have no doubt that a lot of future experimentation with sequencers will involve more than just grids that read, as piano rolls and notation once did, in linear fashion from left to right.

Related

Giles Bowkett also investigates the Erratic probabilistic VST drum machine for Windows, which he says is better suited to drum parts than Elysium is. (Erratic is the plug-in’s name – not that I haven’t occasionally encountered an erratic plug-in.)

Nodal, like Elysium, is Mac only, free, and uses a graphical interface to create interactive rules. Interestingly, it uses square grids to Elysium’s hex grid and provides schematic-like flow diagrams of movement. Each approach, I think, has some advantages and tradeoffs.

Kodu by Microsoft Research uses interactive rules for game design, not music, but I can see the interface working well for musical applications, too. What really makes it work is that you have immediate visual feedback as to what you’ve created, which makes the kid doing the driving very pleased, indeed.

Intermorphic’s own generative suite draws upon a lineage that includes Eno’s landmark Ambient Music I. It’s far less graphical,but can be used to create sophisticated systems, interfaces with mobile devices, and provides deployment options (so other people can hear your generative work and not just a recorded take).

And be sure to check out the generative tag on CDM.

For a hardware device using this scheme (and with a nice solution to the color / mapping challenges), check out the C-THRU Axis.

The AXiS-64 pro MIDI controller [Product Page @ C-THRU MUSIC]

Zillion-Keyed Keyboards, New Musical Layouts, and Microtonal Gadgets [CDM, on NAMM 07]

(thanks, MattH, for the reminder to get this bit in, too!)

While better-known software names may get the attention, Renoise, a music making tool in the mold of a tracker, has long had a lot going for it. It runs on every platform you own (Windows, Mac, Linux) with just one license, applies a unique approach to musical arrangement and composition with a more modern interface, and allows speedy production with lots of keyboard shortcuts. As a tracker, the pattern editing in Renoise allows a “granular” level of control, for quick editing in textual views instead of visual blocks as in a piano roll. Whereas some retro-styled trackers don’t support modern features, Renoise has multi-core support, MIDI, VST instruments and effects, ASIO, audio recording, built-in effects, and flexible routing and mixing. It also has a built-in sampler and sample editing, so you can do audio manipulation from within Renoise as well as make use of your suite of instruments and effects. And the whole thing costs EUR49.99.

Renoise is about to get a major 2.0 update, with support for:

• An overhauled engine with better timing and precision
• Plug-in delay compensation — although what’s interesting here is that this promises to impact more than just hardware DSP platforms like Universal Audio; it also “also compensates your MIDI gear and midi cables wired to other hosts.”
• Audio Unit plug-ins on Mac, plus improved VST support

The AU plug-in support alone could help Renoise crack the Mac community. I also like some of the other features, including new plug-in browsing, drag-and-drop, new filters, and quantization.

Renoise 2.0 Product Page (note: there’s no public beta as such, but if you’re an existing, registered Renoise user, you can access the beta releases; everyone else will for now have to try the 1.x demo)

Discussion on Renoise Forum

Because Renoise is a bit different from the music tools to which you’re probably most accustomed, and because this is an important release, I had some quick questions for main Renoise developer Eduard Mueller (aka Taktik)…

PK: For those who may not have tried trackers before, how would you suggest getting started with Renoise? What should they do once they’ve grabbed the demo in those first fifteen or thirty minutes?

EM: Beyond the manual and the tutorials, the best way to get started with Renoise is to go to YouTube and search for the word “Renoise.” Many proud users show many aspects of the sequencer and “tracking culture” on there. Of course not everything you will find is an epic masterpiece, but the enthusiasm is there, and you get a good vibe for what Renoise is all about.

What was important to you for this release?

EM: The most important feature is the engine overhaul which introduces precision and timing. It allows for level of quantization and accuracy never seen in Renoise before. Moreover, this massive engine overhaul is essential for behemoth features in later releases, such as Zooming, the Arranger, Audio Tracks and maybe even a Piano Roll.

Ed.: Wow — putting a piano roll in a tracker would be a new development, for those who occasionally want the best of both worlds!

What would you suggest to Renoise users wanting to get the most out of Renoise?

EM: Learn the shortcuts. Renoise is like an instrument. It’s like learning a guitar, or a trumpet. You have to get a feel for your QWERTY keyboard to get the most out of it. Of course you can use the
mouse, and that’s not wrong in any way, but the shortcuts allow you to get the most out of the workflow.

CDM: We’ll have more on Renoise soon as the 2.0 release launches, including how you might integrate with workflows in other tools. Stay tuned.