Out of the noise of the Internet, don’t be surprised if some of the music being made is – unexpectedly – wonderful. So it is with a compilation curated by Chris Randall from the Analog Industries community. Unsuspected Sounds is unexpected. It’s proof that those people writing all those comments really do have time to make music.

It’s nice seeing this come from Chris and the community he’s assembled. For his part, Chris doesn’t fit the stereotype of a blogger; he’s got industry experience as an engineer as an artist, is known to many as a veteran of Sister Machine Gun, and now leads dual lives as music maker and plug-in and mobile developer. (See: Audio Damage.) The guy has craft, across technology and art, such that one can see a dividing line between the two. So, fittingly, Chris pulls from his readers people whose music is evidence of the same.

All of this goes to a good cause, as well. It’s the sort of thing so many of us hope online communities will be. It’s nice when, at times, they actually are.

The sounds themselves fit into the amorphous but, for me, delightful category of “ambient/IDM,” into some catch-all of smart, doesn’t-quite-fit-in music made with electronics, inflected with beats without being slave to genre. (Please, someone, if you can rename that zone of music, you’d do all of us a favor. I know it’s my job as a journalist or whatever. But I’ll be your friend for life.) Thoughtfully constructed sounds, venturing into sometimes-moody, quirky, but personal and passionate realms, this is music that makes you feel intimate with its creators and what moves them when they’re being themselves. That’s perfect for a music compilation that itself represents a community that has gathered around common interests online.

I’ll let Chris explain the rest to CDM:

The story is pretty simple: what I did is have Analog Industries readers submit an exclusive track; I got 92 submissions, and curated the 10 on the album (well, 9 plus mine) out of those. 100% of the net proceeds (that is to say everything after production costs are covered) go to charity, specifically the Breast Assured Foundation.

The cover art was done with a Processing sketch created by Stefan Goodchild. [The sketch code is on GitHub.] The sketch does an FFT on an audio waveform and spits out a circular motif; top is left channel, bottom is right channel. I made a single audio file that was the entire album, and created the image from that. (As an aside: Stefan does audio-reactive visuals in Processing for several big acts, notably Peter Gabriel and Blur, and he did the Varese, Schaeffer, and Derbyshire T-Shirts that I sold on AI a while back.)

Chris also has some nice reflections in what he wrote for the release:

“I dream of instruments obedient to my thought and which with their contribution of a whole new world of unsuspected sounds, will lend themselves to the exigencies of my inner rhythm.”

-Edgard Varèse (Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music)

“unsuspected sounds” is a collection of electronic music curated from the Analog Industries community, with 100% of the net proceeds of the sales donated to the Breast Assured Foundation, an organization that provides early breast cancer detection services for underprivileged women via a sophisticated mobile screening lab. Featuring ten tracks of all-new music, “unsuspected sounds” is a genre-spanning collection that provides a perfect soundtrack to modern living.

Available now at Bandcamp as both a DRM-free digital download and as a download + 12″ vinyl combo.

Side A:
1. Goldbaby – Ten OP
2. Bitmud – All The Beauty Is Gone
3. Chris Randall – Abstract Sixteen
4. Sabama – Doublethink
5. Pauk – Here She Comes

Side B:
1. Ancient Young – Silica Resonance
2. Russian Corvette – Pattern Recognition
3. Anodize – Bismuth
4. Milkfish – Just Once My Day Blows Yours Away
5. Jukebox – Objects In The Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

Pay-what-you-want, minimum $5 for the digital download only, $15 for the vinyl + download. Get some new music, and help out a good cause!

http://analogindustries.bandcamp.com

This week holds for me lots to talk about on CDM, lots to teach, lots to make – and for many of our readers, it’s an action-packed week coming back from summer vacation and/or a long weekend. So, let’s start it off right with some good music.

Jakub Alexander is a Brooklyn-based DJ whose work I’ve followed for some time. He’s one of the contributors behind the always-tasteful ISO50 blog, and he helms Moodgadget, the underrated and eclectic label that is perhaps more than other the “farm” label for Ghostly. Under the alias Heathered Pearls, Jakub is himself on Ghostly, and released an LP entitled Polite Isle. I’ve been meaning to do a proper interview with Jakub on all this stuff, but perhaps what I really need is just a couple of great music mixes to boost my productivity and make it happen.

At the end of August, Jakub gave us this:

Tracklist
Boards Of Canada – Ithcus Sound
Ikons – Honey (Coyote rmx)
Woolfy vs. Projections – Isabella
Tornado Wallace – Swimmin’
Worst Friends – Ski Hive
Clashing Egos – Aminjig Nebere (Joakim’s afrobot mix)
Motor City Drum Ensemble – Raw Cuts #6
Studio – Life’s A Beach (Todd Terje beach house mix)
Sourya – Anatomy Domine (Prince Language mix)
Blackjoy – Moustache (Prins Thomas diskomiks)
Tiger & Woods – Deflowered
Spoon – Don’t You Evah (Matthew Dear mix)
Seth Troxler – Aphrika
John Selway – Shake The Snow
18 Carat Affair – I Wanna Love You

Once you exhaust that:

Dolphins Into The Future – Onset – Beyond Clouds
Ducktails – Horizon
White Rainbow – Major Spillage
High Wolf – Utopia
Nacho Patrol – Caravelle
Subway – Delta Ii
Stellar Om Source – Island Best
Nite Jewel – Bottom Rung
Newworldaquarium – Noworldbutu
Direwires – Leamington (Rob Theakston Remix)
Benoit Pioulard – Drowsy
Lusine Icl – On The Line
Loscil – Strathcona
Signer – Dreaming About Making Music To Dream To
Heathered Pearls – Untitled (12/10 Field Recording: Pioulard Talking)

And here’s some more, via Bandcamp:

I want to talk to Jakub more about his original music and the label, but since I’ve tipped my hand that I’m working on that (and put him and me on the spot in the process), please do let us know if you have questions. (“Who the hell are any of these people?” is a valid question. “Who is this Peter, anyway, who keeps saying words?” That, too. Answering questions is why we’re here. Journalism!)

Want visual inspiration with your sonic stimulation, in the meantime?

Aside from the always-gorgeous ISO50, washes of misty pastels and hazy gauzy geometric goodness evolve as though you’re waking in a beam of sunlight and happiness at:

http://heatheredpearls.tumblr.com/

– along with the essential what-is-Jakub-doing-now stuff.

And, oh yeah, there’s even an awfully-pretty t-shirt. (Okay, talented artist-designers: it’s fall. I’m headed to Berlin, possibly Chicago in December. Hoodies, people, hoodies. I guess I can wear the t-shirts indoors.)

Now… downloading mixes, donning headphones, getting to work, hoping for legroom as I fly across America. You?

http://ghostly.com/artists/heathered-pearls

“HALO: REACH” Game Audio Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Our friends at Designing Sound have been rocking out on that site, with extraordinary original and linked content for sound designers, ranging from work on games, broadcast, and films to sonic exploration for the curious field recorder or producer. (Designing Sound is hosted by CDM and Noisepages – hence the new template, which will benefit from some corrections we’re making over the coming days.)

Now, they’ve launched a second site just to pull together video content.

If you love sound design of any kind, get ready to curl up on the couch with this one. I could say more, but instead I’ll simply give you a moose and some Halo above, and let every minute you have be spent watching sound design videos:
http://designingsound.tv

Tim Exile, talented musician, Reaktor guru, and mad genius of interactive live performance, has started a video blog. It’s tough to describe what’s covered in the video, other than to say Tim is starting more or less an open house in his brain, which can only lead to good things. He talks live, music making, and his current plans, including a tasty-sounding open studio series in London. And through the whole thing, he has a Lite-Brite-style visualization he programmed in Reaktor, well beyond what I’ve ever been able to make Reaktor do.

It’s clearly more Tim talking directly to fans than a properly-formatted video blog, but it is starting a conversation, meaning if there’s something you’d like to see Tim do with the medium of video, now’s the time to tell him.

“Interactive music … well, well, well…”

Designing Sound, as the name implies, focuses entirely on the craft of audio from film to games. While there are industry-driven sites devoted to the topic, this blog is entirely the labor of love of composer and sound designer Miguel Isaza, whose writing has also appeared on Spain’s Hispasonic and Monofónicos. (Miguel also tweets to Reaktor aficionados as reaktorlovers.) That personal perspective has imbued the site with the feeling of artists talking to artists.

http://designingsound.noisepages.com/

All week, Designing Sound has focused on Rob Bridgett, who has worked on numerous sound designs for games. Despite the massive growth of the game industry, most top artists have worked largely in obscurity – even less so in sound. There isn’t an equivalent of Ben Burtt, Randy Thom, Walter Murch, or others. (Those greats have been featured in Designing Sound specials, too.) Gaming is a young industry, to be sure, but that’s no excuse for simple ignorance.

In this week’s interviews with Isaza, Bridgett talks frankly about every last detail of what goes into sound production. He’s frank not only about what can go right in a game production – Scarface, pictured above, gets special treatment – but also what can go wrong. The brutal deadlines, fluid production parameters, and tangled production process of games can exact a toll on sound in gaming. The high point of this: Bridgett has gotten to employ the full resources of Skywalker Sound and has been at the forefront of bringing Hollywood-style sonic treatment to gaming.

I’m sure many readers here are curious about the games industry. There’s still time to forward your own questions to Miguel to pass along to Rob Bridgett.

Exclusive interview

Rob Bridgett Special

Ask your own questions

Incidentally, this is beyond what we even imagined for our fledgling noisepages.com, which we’re readying for a full launch as a community and blogging platform. Miguel created Designing Sound without prompting or assistance – it’s entirely his vision. It’s great to have people sharing information in this way. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.

“UP” Sound for Film Profile from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Miguel Isaza has created a must-read new blog for anyone interested in sound design, and much to our delight has put it on noisepages. He’s being incredibly prolific with posts, covering creative projects to get your ideas flowing, terrific overviews of leading people in the field with links to interviews and resources for learning about their work, and tons of links for learning your craft technologically and artistically.

http://designingsound.noisepages.com/

Naturally, Pixar figures prominently, with some of the best sound design on the silver screen in recent years. I’m looking forward to finally seeing UP; Michael Coleman offers the video above. See Miguel’s site for more links and interviews and an overview of the all-star team that did sound for Pixar’s latest.

Thanks for this great resource, Miguel; I’ll certainly be reading daily.

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.”

Loops have gotten an unfortunate reputation as being a stand-in for real musicians or real musicianship – perhaps because, too often, they are. That’s why it’s always refreshing to see a discussion of how looping can incorporate musical technique. Like many electronic musicians, I have zero background in drumming; I’m a keyboardist and was trained in Classical Piano. But then, part of the gift of being a composer is getting inside the heads of musicians who play instruments you can’t. And when it comes to understanding rhythm, there’s a limitless supply of work to explore from around the world.

Ryan Gauss writes us to share a blog that’s all about rhythm and drumming. Blogging can be a distraction from music making, but in this case, he’s using it to help be even more disciplined in building technique:

Every day I record and post a new drum loop (with a link to the Logic session and .wav files). I organize the beats by category (rock hip hop, jazz etc) and try to change up the production style with every loop.

So far, there’s a terrific piece on “linear drumming” – a style in which you hit only one part of your kit at a time. (Now, this really inspires me in terms of some of the rhythmic sequencing ideas I’ve been thinking about – I’ll have to explore. Maybe I can build a linear pattern sequencer.) See notation at top.

Linear drumming for dummies. | ryangruss.com

There’s also a fantastic video from drummer Shawn Pelton, who to me really exemplifies the marriage of great drumming and sophisticated use of technology (Ableton Live, in this case).

Shawn Pelton’s studio | ryangruss.com

I’ll be reading this site, for sure. Thanks, Ryan.

http://ryangruss.com/ “Fresh Drum Loops Made Daily”
(question – are they best hot, as with Krispy Kreme?)

It’s official: Music Thing, the benchmark music tech blog, is no more – at least for now. Post volume had dropped off of late, so it’s not a complete surprise. And Music Thing’s voice, Tom Whitwell, has gone on to shake up the online world in other ways: running the online output of The Times in London. (Yes, that’s The Times, founded in 1785 and the paper for which all those fonts are named.) Still, it’s sad that Tom will be focusing on a highly-paying job and the Future of News because, well, we really still all like that synth and sound object nonsense better.

Music Thing has meant a whole lot to me in the history of CDM. Back in fall 2004, I had just signed a book deal with Peachpit Press to make a book that, originally, I thought would be called something like Create Digital Music. (Sound familiar? In the end, the publisher opted for the far less expressive and slightly inaccurate Real World Digital Audio, for consistency with a line that would go on to drop most of its audio and music focus.) I had done some writing for MacMusic (as its English editor) and Jason O’Grady’s PowerPage, and had first dabbled in publishing magazine-style content for online communities way back in the days of CompuServe (which netted me a few inches of column space in an issue of CompuServe Magazine back when there was such a thing). And, of course, I had been writing for Keyboard and Macworld. I reserved the domain in the spring and pledged to get to it later that year.

But I’m not sure CDM would ever have really gotten rolling had it not been for Tom. Music Thing, for it part, got its start with a characteristic headline on August 24, 2004.

"A 20-foot long playable horn, built of leather"

CDM followed in October, and from that point on had a friendly rivalry with Music Thing that seemed somehow to encourage readers to hit both sites more. I tended toward futuristic things that didn’t exist yet and Tom tended toward things with knobs. And there’s something great as a blogger about being able to keep an eye on another site running roughly the same pace as you. Not to mention, I always get a huge kick out of Tom’s take on the world and the wonderful things he finds.

For me, a real highlight was Music Thing’s fantastic Small Music series, which plumbed the depths of the origins of signature tiny sounds for Windows and THX, and was possibly one of the most influential series ever on the site. (One got a big reddit shout after Tom quit the blog today!)

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 1: The ‘Intel Inside’ chimes

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 2: The Microsoft Sound

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 3: The THX Sound

TINY MUSIC MAKERS: Pt 4: The Mac Startup Sound

There’s still plenty of time to dig through these and many other stories in the archives.

Tom continues to have deep insights into what makes Web traffic tick. He writes, easily, the best headlines in music tech. And I’m sure he’ll continue to have a big impact on The Times during times that are tough for everybody in publishing.

Of course, in the meantime, the blogging world has gotten a lot bigger. There are many brilliant new blogs out there, not a few inspired at least in part by Music Thing. And we’ve seen new entries funded by actual businesses, in the likes of MusicRadar, Beatportal, and GearWire.

But there’s only one Music Thing. And we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Music Thing: The end of Music Thing, for now.

Other reactions:

The Day the Blog Stood Still [GetLoFi]

Music Thing Rides Off Into the Sunset [Waveformless]

Music Thing Calls it Quits [Synthtopia]

And nicely enough, there’s a strong emphasis on cheap and DIY projects, meaning these can be ideal even in tough economic times.

SX-150 button mod from Collin Cunningham on Vimeo.

MAKE: Blog > Music Makers’s Gift Guide

Assembled by our friend (and Handmade Music regular) Collin Cunningham, these are the geekiest DIY treasures you can find. I got hands-on with a couple of these recently. The plastic Theremin kit is fun, although you won’t get fantastic results out of it. My favorites: the awesome SX-150 synth kit (above), previously seen only in Japan, and the Thingamakit (which also got mentioned in our holiday guide). They’re both affordable and make some lovely sounds the moment you start using them, with hacks possible later.

For fans of the Arduino electronics/microcontroller platform, see Collin’s separate guide.

The monome didn’t make the guide this year, though it topped our list, but given that you have to basically preorder the moment a run is announced, that’s not exactly a slight.

wire to the ear > Five inexpensive Chistmas gifts for musicians

This small but neat selection is just perfect, I think, from the Moog schematic on a t-shirt (above) to flash memory earrings to Live sound packs from Puremagnetik.

Digital LoFi > The 2nd Annual Digital LoFi Holiday Gift Guide for the Disenfranchised

Digital LoFi has some fantastic selections: buy one, get-one-free offerings from Soniccouture (makers of fantastic Kontakt scripts, by the way), a pay-what-you-will EQ, and wonderful donationware plug-ins. The site also calls out CDM’s own Winter Guide print-on-demand – thanks!

Pt. I
Pt. II
Pt. III
Pt. IV

Honorable mention: The wacky scientists in residence at New York’s Eyebeam research center have introduced Hack Me Elmo. (Thanks, Chris Hahn!) That’s right: it’s a blockbuster holiday toy from years past, hacked into something very odd. Check out our own Mike Una’s how-to on circuit bending if you want to transform a toy into something musical and wonderful, also in our Winter ‘08 guide.

And yes, the rest is here: