You may have heard about Pure Data (Pd), the open-source cousin to Max/MSP and a powerful tool for visual programming or “patching” music and multimedia. Pd has even appeared in the iPhone app RjDj and creating generative music for EA’s hit game Spore. But actually learning how to use the thing? Or learning some of the more advanced possible techniques in sound synthesis and processing? That’s another matter.

“What if, instead of targeting Web content to a single day, you turned it into an object that would last a season? What would you want to save and savor?”

That’s the question I ask at the beginning of the Create Digital Music Winter 08 guide. We’ve filled it with good stuff we love, plus good stuff we hear that you love (via our survey of hundreds of readers for the holiday guide). Via Creative Commons-licensed images, you’ve shared your world of music, and so we share the whole guide as fully free work (it’s got a CC Attribution / ShareAlike license).

Here’s some of what’s inside – we wanted stories that you’d want to live with the whole winter season:

• Circuit bending 101 with Michael Una
• Imagining synths: reflections on the design of electronic instruments with Dan McPharlin, creator of wonderful miniature synths handmade from cardboard
• Tutorial on slicing audio to MIDI in Ableton Live 7, with tips from Live guru Francis Preve plus a free accompanying CDM pack designed by Covert Operators at http://covops.org/cdm
• Holiday Guide, with your favorite gear and software of the year, listening and reading suggestions, and ideas on open hardware from monome creator Brian Crabtree
• Creative tips for surviving winter in Berlin, courtesy monolake (Robert Henke)
• Images from the CDM community and beyond

With the help of graphic editor Nathanael Jeanneret, the results are designed to be an object on paper or read on high-resolution displays. The PDF is available free, with an on-demand print version from Lulu available worldwide (US$19.99 before shipping). I just ordered my print copy rush, so I’ll let you know what it looks like as this is the first time we’ve tried this.

Print Edition + Free PDF Download @ Lulu.com

A big thanks to our sponsors for making this possible:

Ableton Live, our premiere sponsor; now with an unlimited 14-day trial

Audiofile Engineering, makers of Wave Editor for Mac

Highly Liquid DIY MIDI electronics maker

Covert Operators, creators of Live Packs and video tutorials for Ableton Live

I’m really eager to hear what you think.

The Atari Punk Console is one of DIY sonic electronics’ all-time greatest hits. Designed by Forrest M. Mims III — the brilliant electronics artist and engineer whose hand-drawn books were once promoted in Radio Shack — the “Stepped Tone Generator” as it was originally called is an excellent circuit for first-timers or those wanting something simple and adaptable. You can read up on the APC over on Wikipedia, with some good links to what the circuit does.

The Cracklebox is, similarly, a “greatest hit” of electrical noisemaking, a simple, self-contained synthesizer with speakers.

Put them together and add some comic art, and you’ve got the creation you see above, created by Massimiliano Farnea, aka maxfarnea. It’s been watching over the site from the CDM Flickr pool (which has various other stuff like this, as does the pool for our friends at MAKE and some other Flickr pools). So I had to know more. Here’s a quick preview from its creator — and the story behind that fantastic illustration:

There are some strange sites out there. This one, found via Google Alerts, apparently is a Russian site designed to lure readers looking for illegal downloadable PDFs of books. As it happens, the page for my book seems to be stolen from the Amazon.com description; there’s no pirated copy of my book available. (Too bad; I would have been flattered.) But the ad that coincidentally showed up when I loaded the page made me laugh:

I’m not sure whether this means my book helps single guys attract women, or whether it can actually stand in for a romantic life. You be the judge. Anyway, something’s helping sales over on Amazon, so maybe this “ad campaign” worked:

Real World Digital Audio

My friend Francis Preve, tech author and electronica producer / remix artist, has a new title out on Backbeat Books assembling a broad range of production tips, tutorials, and anecdotes from artists. (He’s pictured here, though that’s not actually his pool.) You may know Fran’s writing from Keyboard; for The Remixer’s Bible, he’s assembled Keyboard’s best club production tutorials, the best of the Dance Mix column, and tips and anecdotes from BT, Armand Van Helden, Thunderpuss, and others.

The most interesting decision for the book, though, is to include remixable music from Gabriel & Dresden, Coldcut, Meat Beat Manifesto, and Jacinta on the CD-ROM in Ableton Live 5/6 format. I like the hands-on approach there; will be curious to hear what remixing readers cook up.

I haven’t seen the book in the flesh yet, but I know a lot of what’s in it, and it should be easily worth the absurdly low pricetag Backbeat put on it:

Last Night a Dj Saved My Life: The History of the Disc Jockey

Fran’s other projects include “working on some new original dance tracks, kibbutzing with Josh Gabriel (of Gabriel & Dresden fame), and continuing to lay the groundwork for that dance label [I] keep talking about.” You can find his sound design in the instrument racks in Live 6, too — more on that later. But here’s the interesting part:

Fran says he’s “putting finishing touches on his patches for a secret new product from Korg“.

Reeeeeally? Knowing Fran, I’m guessing this is software, though I’d love a cute new Korg synth to keep around the place. I’ll just sit here and drool and wait, I guess.

So, other Keyboard writers want to brag about your projects? Jim? Craig? Steve? Mike? Ernie? Can you reveal any secret projects in the process?