If you’re heading out into the wilderness to find a record store, why not actually head out into the wilderness – the one with trees – and find music there?

Today, a you’ve no doubt heard, is Record Store Day. The official site is a useful resource, today and around the year. Today brings a number of special physical releases, favoring vinyl but also including CDs. A mobile app download will help you locate record stores in your city, both in the US and other countries around the world.

All of this does raise some deeper issues. Record stores can be terrific places, supporting artists with in-store events and introducing listeners to their music. But, more generally, is it meaningful to find ways of making music physical, and then finding a place to go hear it?

That question was asked compellingly this year by Really. Really itself is more than a conventional record label; it’s an inter-media arts collective (design, coding, visual arts, and the like included). Its charter sets out the goal between releases “to focus on the live aspect of music, on the fact that it is made first to be interpreted, by the musician and the audience.”

In a project called “Out of the Woods,” Really took a music release and made it truly locative in the physical sense. Playing with the digital intervention of placing physical USB drops in locations, the artists sent would-be listeners into the woods of the Grunewald. (I’m reminded of my dear friend Dave Karpf, with whom I worked at the Sierra Club, whose favorite motto was “get the f*** outdoors.”)

You need GPS to find the spot, and then, espionage-style, you pick up music from a log. Instructions read, charmingly, like this:

You will find Verspätete Erinnerung close to a path crossing almost the whole forest.
The dead tree, laying on the ground, is burnt from the inside, but blossoms on the outside. Have a look at its heart, we tried to bring our own kind of life there as well!

GPS: 52.486442,13.243954

look carefully for a black cable
inside the tree

We’ve seen other locative works, of course – most recently, a virtual piece employed GPS in locations like Central Park. But here, much like that expedition to your record store, you travel to a location on a quest to get music that you can’t find via other means. You acquire, hunter-gatherer style.

It’s worth considering that the recording itself is an anomaly in the history of music. “Old-timers” talk about recordings as though these strange objects are music, and as such, the perceived assault on their physical distribution and attack on the value of music itself. Yet, travel back in time just a couple of centuries in the millennia-long saga of human music making, and the recorded music object would seem like some dark art, a captured moment in time freezing something that is normally live, in-person, and human.

This is not to say that these strange inventions we’ve created that store frozen time are a bad thing. But, then, maybe that explains the record store: it treats them as something sacred, and restores the sense of place. It requires that you experience music with other human beings.

And while I admire Record Store Day, there is a certain throwback quality to the entire event – Android and iPhone apps notwithstanding. Even the graphic design of the site, complete with retro records, and the contests, with historically-styled record players and commemorative Queen drums, seems tinged with nostalgia.

Nostalgia is one of the things that music can make us feel, but music can also send us out into the wilderness. And if the record industry grew out of absurd ideas – Edison and his imagined technology for recording business memos – maybe music can take on more absurd and wonderful ideas yet.

It’s enough to make you want to wander out in the woods, and off the beaten path. Record store today, wilderness tomorrow.

Really used a collaborative team to make their project (below). How will you figure out how to distribute your next album? Will you try to get it in the hands of lots of people – or make just one, and give it to someone you love?

— Lorenzo Cercelletta – organization, installation, design process & video editing
— Valentina Ciarapica – video shooting & editing
— Katrin Dathe – installation support
— Wiley Hoard – photographs
— Matthieu Pons – organization, installation, design process & coding
— Gino Ruggeri – backstage video shooting & editing
— Juliane Teitge – organization, drawings & installation

http://rreeaallllyy.com/map.php

Music in the woods, as seen on The Creators Project and Sugarhigh

Record Store Day, as seen many places, including our friends at Synthtopia

If you’re a Mac user, we’ve got some cheap and free tools for you. And if you’re a Max patcher, you may be surprised with how they were built: they were all exported from Max 6.

This week, we welcome a guest writer developer Dan Nigrin. Amidst some new controversy about Apple and app distribution, here Dan looks at how Apple’s marketplace can indeed be useful to developers using Max 6, the popular graphical patching tool. (Incidentally, the libpd library could work for App Store apps, too, and for mobile on iOS and Android, along with various other tools, so developers now have lots of options for getting their ideas out there.) -PK

CDM has covered the Mac App Store and its impact (or not) on music software quite extensively in the past – see Apple’s App Store May Not Work for Audio Devs; Developers Respond, October 2010, and Six Reasons the Mac App Store Means Little for Music Creation – At Least For Now, January 2011.

But I think a new development may start to change things, at least a little bit. Cycling ‘74’s newly-released Max 6 now makes it possible for standalone apps created with it to be released on the Mac App Store. Previous versions of Max caused some standalone preference files to be written to a Preferences folder on the Mac; believe it or not, this violated an Apple Mac Store rule (an app can only write to very specific locations, not including the Preferences folder – go figure). To Cycling’s credit, they changed the preferences file location starting in Max 6, and so that obstacle has now been removed from getting Max apps in the Store.

I first asked the question about getting Max-built apps in the Mac App Store around the time Apple originally announced it in 2010 – see a thread in the Cycling ’74 forums. Soon after, Oli Larkin tested the waters, and he was the first to discover the above problem with the preference files. After Cycling addressed that, James Howard Young then tackled more minutia required to pass all the approval and validation steps Apple requires, and was the first to successfully get his app live on the store, followed soon after by Oli’s and then my two. We all shared our experience on the above thread, and with each other in private emails.

The apps have done quite well (Audio Plugin Player, below, made it up to #7 on Top Paid Apps in the Music category of the App Store within 48 hours of release), though we are all still experimenting with different price points, support models, etc. — usual App Store growing pains, I would imagine. Here are the apps currently available – note that there may be more, these are just the ones I know about:

Four Apps, Available Now

Defective Records Software (Dan Nigrin)
Audio Plugin Player
Get it on CDM Apps

A lightweight VST and AU instrument plugin host, that allows you to play these instruments using either your mouse, computer keyboard (including support for non-US keyboards), or MIDI device (both hardware and software MIDI devices supported). It has a simple, one-screen interface, without any of the complexity that a DAW takes for a newcomer to get up and running.

Defective Records Software (Dan Nigrin)
General MIDI Player
Get it on CDM Apps

An easy way to turn your Mac into an instrument, using its built-in General MIDI support. You can play these instruments using either your mouse, computer keyboard (including support for non-US keyboards), or MIDI device (both hardware and software MIDI devices supported). It has a simple, one-screen interface.

James Howard Young
TapNTempo
Get it on CDM Apps

A fully featured metronome that offers customizable sounds, real-time tempo tapping, and beat and division capabilities. TapNTempo’s easy-to-use interface includes the best of the traditional metronome, but feature bloating is avoided in favor of simplicity.

Oli Larkin
pMix
Get it on CDM Apps

pMix is a sound design, composition and performance tool that allows you to morph between VST plugin presets using an intuitive graphical interface. 

Presets are represented by coloured balls that are positioned on a 2D plane. The size of each ball and its proximity to the cursor affects the weight of the associated preset in the interpolation.

Morphing between presets often results in the discovery of interesting hybrid sounds. By constraining sound manipulations within a predesigned “interpolation space” complex transitions can be achieved that would otherwise be hard to manage.

pMix can load four VST2 audio plugins. It comes with a suite of specially designed plugins which cover a range of experimental DSP techniques (noise generators, FM synthesis, formant filtering, frequency shifting etc). These plugins can also be used in other VST host applications.

Conclusions, Looking Forward

I made a decision to “start simple” with my App Store apps, compared to for example my Klee or Cyclic. But as you can see, you’re not limited to just simple apps – Oli’s, for instance, is obviously quite complex. So I think that this is just the beginning of what I expect will be many Max apps on the App Store – it makes it possible for the many, many interesting projects developed in Max to reach a much bigger audience that possible before. Just taking a look at the Projects page on the Cycling web site gives a sample of what soon might find its way there.

Perhaps even more exciting is news from Damon Holzborn and Brad Garton of Columbia University, that they are working on a path from Max to iOS apps, and in a way that makes them totally compliant with the iTunes App Store. Really looking forward to this!

We’re looking forward to this, too, so we’ve assembled a special section that shows apps built with Max available on the Mac App Store. We may soon follow this with other tools (Pd, Csound, etc.) if there’s demand. But here are those Max options:

Made with Max, Featured on CDM Apps

Can You Play in the Sandbox?

Ed.: One issue to watch as Apple’s brave, new App Store moves forward is sandboxing requirements. For these Max apps, it shouldn’t necessarily be a problem, but before it appears that we’re endorsing the App Store for all music apps, regardless of purpose, we’re not. A number of Apple developers have raised some concerns about sandboxing and how it’s implemented. They’re worth reading if you’re a developer – and may, in turn, inspire some tweaks from Apple in terms of how this is done. All via Daring Fireball:

Sandboxing and xScope 3.0 [furbo.org]
Fix The Sandbox [Red Sweater]
Sandboxing and Clipstart [Manton Reece]

Here are Dan’s own thoughts on the subject:

No, I’m not concerned about plugin hosting with respect to sandboxing; the sandboxing rules stipulate that you’re allowed to access files on the host system if the user specifies the file in which they are interested via a file dialog. So, in my Audio Plugin Player app, for example, that’s what I do – the user is prompted to pick the plugin they want to use via file dialog (or they can drag and drop it onto the app). That way, I am not breaking any sandbox rules.

Also, one can request additional “entitlements” for one’s application, which allow it to access locations that are not currently “approved” areas within the file system for the app to access. I’d be surprised if requesting an entitlement to access the Plug-Ins folder was not allowed… Ed. That would be, of course, relevant to Apple’s own Logic Pro as a host; despite predictions to the contrary, it appears third party developers should – theoretically – have access to the same entitlements as Apple’s own apps. And if that’s not enough, you can still distribute via other means, including in Mountain Lion, and in contrast to the App Store-only iOS model. -PK

It makes sense that the App Store, with its specific sales model and technical requirements, will suit some applications well and not others. Because you can choose to install apps from other sources, that leaves both users and developer free to choose based on their needs.

As musical old-timers repeatedly sing the sad song of the supposed demise of the full-length album, a funny thing has happened. Lovers of games have taken up a growing passion for game music, and in particular the indie score for indie games. Independent game publishing and independent music composition – from truly unsigned, unknown artists – go hand in hand. Indeed, the download and purchase charts on Bandcamp are often dominated by game scores. Fueled by word-of-mouth, these go viral in enthusiast communities largely ignored by either music or game reportage.

Far from the big-budget blockbuster war game, these scores – like the games for which they’re composed – are quirky and eccentric. They reject the usual expectations of what game music might be, sometimes tending to the cinematic, sometimes to the retro, sometimes unapologetically embracing magical, sentimental, childlike worlds.

And now, defying music’s typical business models as well as its genre expectations, you can get a whole big bundle of games for almost no money. Pay what you want, and get hours of music. Pay more than $10, and get loads more. You just have to do it before the deal ends (five days from this posting), at which point the bundle is gone forever. In a sign of just how much love listeners of these records feel, there’s a competition to get into the top 20, top 10, and top-paying spots, which with days left in the contest is already pushing well into the hundreds of dollars. But for that rate or just the few-dollar rate, these are the true fans. You’ve heard about them in theory in trendy music business blogs and conferences, in theory. But here, someone’s doing something about it, and it’s not a fluke or a one-time novelty: it’s a real formula.

http://www.gamemusicbundle.com/

Game music itself is, of course, a funny thing. Game play itself tends to repetition, meaning you hear this music a lot. So it says something really extraordinary about the affection for these scores that gamers want to hear the music again and again. This gets the musical content well beyond the level of annoying wallpaper into something that, even more than a film score you hear just once or a few times, you want to make part of your life. That endless play gets us back to what inspired ownership in the first place, to buying stacks of records rather than just waiting for them on the radio. And in that sense, perhaps what motivates owning music versus treating it like a utility or water faucet hasn’t changed in the digital age at all. Maybe it’s gotten even stronger.

We’ve already sung the praises of Sword and Sworcery on this site; it’s notably in the bundle. But I want to highlight in particular one other score, the inventive and dream-like Machinarium. Impeccably recorded, boldly original, the work of Prague-based Tomáš Dvořák, Machinarium mirrors the whimsical constructed machines of the games. There’s a careful attention to timbre, and music that moves from film-like moments to song to beautiful washes of ambience, glitch set against warm rushes of landscape. For his part, Dvořák is a clarinetist, and his musical senstitivity never ceases to translate into the score. It’s just good music, even if you never play the game, and easily worth the price of admission for the bundle if you never listened to anything else (though you would truly be missing out). It’s simply one of the best game music scores in recent years.

And another look at Jim Guthrie’s score to Sword & Sworcery:

Game Meets Album: Behind the Music and Design of the iPad Indie Blockbuster Swords & Sworcery[Create Digital Music]

Game Meets Album: Behind the Music and Design of the iPad Indie Blockbuster Swords & Sworcery [Create Digital Motion]

Also in this collection: Aquaria, To the Moon, Jamestown, and a mash-up, plus a whole bunch of bonus games when you spend a bit more that feel heavily influenced by Japanese game music and chip music.

And some of the best gems are in the repeat of the last bundle, which you can (and should) add on for US$5 more:
Minecraft: Volume Alpha, Super Meat Boy: Digital Soundtrack, PPPPPP (soundtrack to VVVVVV), Impostor Nostalgia, Cobalt, Ravenmark: Scourge of Estellion, A.R.E.S. Extinction Agenda, Return All Robots!, Mighty Milky, Way / Mighty Flip Champs, Tree of Knowledge

I’ve sat at game conferences as composers working for so-called AAA titles lamented the limitations of the game music production pipeline. Quietly, indie game developers have shown that anything is possible, that the quality of a game score is limited only by a composer’s imagination.

More music to hear (and some behind-the-scenes footage), including a really promising Kickstarter-funded iPad music project from regular CDM reader Wiley Wiggins:

Gibson Guitar has announced in a press release they’re acquiring the Stanton Group, which includes, aside from the well-known Stanton DJ brand, KRK monitoring products and Cerwin-Vega loudspeakers.

It’d be easy to see this as a guitar company buying a DJ company, but it’s more than that. KRK and Cerwin-Vega are speaker/monitoring brands. Stanton and Cerwin-Vega each have footholds in the larger consumer arena, not just the pro world, a detail Gibson is quick to emphasize. And Gibson themselves have quietly, steadily grown beyond just guitars. The new “Gibson Pro Audio” banner is added to a list of brands that Gibson reels off: “Epiphone, Dobro, Kramer, Steinberger, Tobias, Echoplex, Electar, Flatiron, Slingerland, Valley Arts, Maestro, Oberheim, Baldwin, Sunshine Piano, Take Anywhere Technology, J&C Fischer, Chickering, Hamilton, Wurlitzer.” But it would seem dropping the “Guitar” from the name would be realistic.

There are two interesting details to the way the press release is worded. First, the lead is that Gibson’s move is “part of its continued expansion as a lifestyle brand.” That’s perhaps going to send a chill down the spine of anyone who prefers to focus explicitly on “musicians.” Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz even says the move “allows us access to 20 in 20 consumers instead of the one in 20 we currently hit.” That contrasts with the emphasis of, say, organizations like NAMM who talk about the general market of “musicians,” not only “lifestyle,” whatever you take that to mean. On the other hand, this is really nomenclature we’re talking here; the question I have is how “lifestyle” actually translates into a strategy, and how well it works for Gibson.

The other detail is more interesting. Gibson and Stanton Group reps each stress the potential for overlapping R&D. Juszkiewicz has touted R&D projects in the past, though largely centered around new guitar tech. We’ll see if the two companies can deliver on that R&D promise and do something really innovative. I have no idea what that’d mean in this case, so if anyone cares to speculate, I’m all ears.

Anyone?

Gibson Guitar Acquires Market-Leading Pro Audio Companies KRK, Cerwin-Vega!, and Stanton [PR Newswire]

Online chatter has in past not been very kind to Gibson on its past acquisition record, so I expect some people will raise the spectre of at least one acquisition again. Let’s see… comments…

I don’t personally view this as flame-bait; Gibson’s a perfectly-respectable guitar maker and I imagine there could be some smart business opportunity here, especially with Stanton together with Gibson in Nashville. However, let’s consider: the names Gibson and Stanton, guitars and DJing. I imagine some flame-broiled comment thread on the Internet somewhere.

And yes, reasons to be skeptical:

Promises of this sort of R&D synergy could easily fail to materialize. And whether Gibson can manage these essentially unrelated businesses is an enormous question mark. There aren’t a whole lot of acquisition success stories in this business.

You can expect to see ongoing appearances by Ghostly International, the 12-year-old label with roots in Detroit that has since established firm outposts in California and New York, in these pages. (Pixels?) The reason is simple: Ghostly is a grand experiment in how to retain relevance as a label in the second decade of the 21st Century. But like any label, the proof in that exercise lies firmly in the sonic output, so while I’ll ramble a bit here, the best thing to do is to simply point to a lot of things to pipe into your headphones – particularly as Ghostly has been on a bit of a tear in the opening weeks of fall with plenty of free downloads and mixes to give you a free sample. (The first taste is free, natch.)

Ghostly is perhaps best known, traditionally, for its ties to Detroit and artist Matthew Dear (aka Audion), but contrary to proper belief, the founding role – and ongoing helmsmanship – belongs to Samuel Valenti IV. The label’s presence is now international, founded on slickly-produced tracks that seem to embody a certain zeitgeist. The recent release by mainstay Tycho is coated with a sonic equivalent of the golden patina that seems to resonate from the artist’s tinted photos and designs, emanating a warm, partially-nostalgic glow that nonetheless remains firmly digital and future-minded. Ditto Com Truise, whose modern-retro sound is now crossing Europe, or the previously-covered samplist Gold Panda.

It’s notable that Ghostly’s evolution now has been from narrowly-focused label – often experimental, as with its IDM-ish Spectral Sounds imprint, or techno-focused – to design and taste hub. Ghostly’s model for how to address the exploding access to global stuff now on the Web appears to be to cast itself as a curator, assembling stunning output by designers and design-geek goodies, and ensuring its content flows at a steady but comfortable rate through blogs, Facebook pages, and free online radio pages. While all metrics suggest that all-you-can-eat streaming services are devouring actual sales, Ghostly’s strategy could prove a bellwether: they plaster the free mix services and such, but also are developing a loyal following that consumes everything from vinyl to , all as they cultivate a subscription service that focuses on access to just their releases. (See Drip.fm, formerly the Ghostly Music Service, which in turn has a landing page that hints they may extend the same model to other labels.) Whereas just throwing your music to the winds of the cut-rate services threatens to destroy just the kind of boutique music Ghostly represents, the label suggests that careful curation could rise, not fall, in value in the wake of the cheap fire hose of sounds now available to consumers.

But that’s Ghostly. Let’s listen to some music. It’s especially worth mentioning here in the “hump day” of an autumn work week, as many turn to some of these Ghostly tracks, like the free Music for Ideas compilation, to gain inspiration for getting work done and things made. In particular, Lifehacker spotlighted Tycho in a recent feature. (See their Work Sounds series, and thoughts on whether music really can make you more productive, though I don’t wish to be glib about that on an actual music site.)

Here’s some material to watch and listen, to use as a backdrop to work or dance, or to simply let yourself drift away…

For starters, there’s the 8tracks compilation Ghostly made for itself earlier this month. With cover art by Ghostly design regular Michael Cina, it covers the gamut of recent releases, with appearances by Shigeto, Tycho, Matthew Dear, Com Truise, Jacaszek, Mux Mool, Gold Panda HTRK, plus remixes by Nicolas Jaar, Star Slinger, Teen Daze and King Midas Sound. (I can’t say enough good things about Nicolas Jaar; I’m still working on nailing down an interview. And kudos to 8tracks for being a service with a nicely-designed, clean interface that lends itself well to this sort of track compilation.)

As seen on drownedinsound.com, a good place to discover this sort of thing.

My favorite moment: the chilling, gorgeous Jacaszek track “Elegia,” which apart from its scintillating string and vocal timbres and pads, has a heart-tuggingly melancholy pulsing ostinato that moves the thing forward, before a surprising and satisfying twist in direction at the end. You’ll want to file it away for an icy day. Jacaszek is well worth listening to, generally, with richly-cinematic, Classically-inspired, electro-acoustically-skilled, moving music out of Poland. He’s newly-signed to Ghostly – check out his performance from Poland’s own, legendary Unsound Festival, in the video below:

For that aforementioned mix to boost your productivity, look to Ghostly’s “Music for Ideas” compilation, a free set of downloads celebrating the label’s appearance at a TEDx installment in hometown Detroit. It’s accompanied by an especially-gorgeous, organic Michael Cina explosion of ink and color, seen here. You get more Shigeto, Lusine, Tycho, Mux Mool, Dabrye, and company, but also the likes of Ben Benjamin, Osborne, Solvent:

Ghostly Essentials: Music for Ideas

As they describe it:

A 10 song experience of Ghostly’s artists, each with a unique mood. The Music for Ideas compilation is a joint effort between Ann Arbor-founded Ghostly International and TEDxUofM; it’s release coincides with TEDxUofM 2011: Encouraging Crazy Ideas, the second annual self-organized TED summit at the University of Michigan.

Music for Ideas is meant to awaken the creative flow, the tenet on which TEDxUofM 2011 is based.

If you like that free download, fill up your music collection at this page:
http://www.theghostlystore.com/collections/music-free

MP3.com – yes, there’s still an MP3.com – has a good snapshot of what Ghostly’s about, accompanied by three free downloads. (Ah, free downloads from MP3.com – wow, that takes me back.) Notable: art rock duo out of Melbourne HTRK is one of the downloads, and MP3.com wisely points to the electro-acoustic bent of many Ghostly releases, something often missing from more restrictive electronic labels.

Label of the Week: Ghostly International [MP3.com]

And more HTRK listening: (“Hate Rock,” not to be confused with “Hate Beak,” the heavy metal parrot I have failed to mention for far too long)
http://mp3.com/artist/HTRK

Shigeto has his own mix, as spotted on XLR8R.com, neatly timed to coincide with a tour of Russia and China. (I know we’ve got some Russian and Chinese readers, so do go say hi, and if one of you is handy with a camera, perhaps we can get you a press pass.)

SOB.021 Shigeto by streetsofbeige

Listen to Shigeto’s Mix for Streets of Beige [XLR8R.com, with RU and CN tour dates]

Tycho is on tour now through North America, alongside Swedish rock band Little Dragon, and delivers this tasty remix of that outfit (not to be confused with the experimental outfit Little Dragons, plural):

Little Dragon – Little Man (Tycho Remix) by Tycho

If somehow you’ve missed it, you can follow the exploits of Tycho – including his aesthetic-candy tastes in design and visuals – alongside contributors like Ghostly’s and Moodgadget’s Jakub Alexander, a good place to find goodies for your eyes and ears and play “where is Tycho now”:

http://blog.iso50.com/

And you can see inside Tycho’s studio in some gear pr0n on Wired:
Tycho Shows Off Old-School Synths Used to Craft Dive’s Ethereal Sounds [Wired]
…though, of course, you read CDM, so as the saying goes, there’s nothing there you haven’t seen before.

Gold Panda is featured in a beautifully-produced film of his live performance at a sold-out show at London’s Koko. We previously followed Gold Panda in 2010 – I might add, before this record really blew up – in an in-depth behind-the scenes feature here on CDM:

Gold Panda Interview: Inspiration from Samples, Loved Ones, and Distracting Dogs

See also, from earlier this year:
Gold Panda on Sampling; Moby on Drum Machines

And if all this leaves you wanting to shake your butt around to Matthew Dear – I know there are times when that’s all I want to do – there’s a fantastic, house and techno mix from the label legend in Miami. The next time Berlin gets hit with a frozen ice fog that blots out the few hours of daylight, this is very much getting switched on, at least if I’m not in the mood for staying in messing about with long reverb tails and endless drones.

Matthew Dear DJ Set @ SAFE – Electric Pickle, Miami – 10.22.2011 by Matthew Dear

Ghostly also has a nice approach to YouTube, one worth emulating: in addition to the requisite music videos (I do want my music television), they use the service to tout upcoming releases.

http://www.youtube.com/user/ghostlyintl

If there’s a downside in any of this, it’s that Ghostly is so firmly established as curator and brand that it seems to me it falls on other venues for the kind of experimentation that might lead to future sounds, experimentation that may need to draw outside the lines of what makes Ghostly’s notion of taste so clear. And of course, I’d like to see a release that to me throws caution to the wind, even from Ghostly. At the same time, Ghostly can supply a model for upstart labels that have such aspirations, in the ways in which it crosses media and engages Web networks: there’s a roadmap here for how to thrive, let alone survive, that is not exclusively the domain of a name this well known. Look, learn, and steal.

If you have a label you’d like to see spotlighted, do get in touch. Big and small, you know they’re welcome here. (I have a few things to dig out of my inbox that look tantalizing and go in very different directions, so stay tuned.)

Previously:
Hot for Heat: Warm Up Your Weekend with a Mix from Ghostly’s Moderna (Missy Livington)

After 100 Records, A Bento Box, July Events Full of Ghostly International

Dispatches: Interviewing Lusine on Detroit’s People Mover

And, naturally, for more:
http://ghostly.com/

The first rule of giving is that you need to make sure that the entity to which you’re giving is actually asking for support. In the wake of a devastating fire started during London’s rioting that wiped out a Sony warehouse, indie labels are indeed asking for such support, says a representative of fundraising efforts. Sony’s facility housed, under contract, massive stocks belonging to UK distributor PIAS, representing in some cases the majority or entirety of inventory of dozens of independent record labels. For smaller organizations, insurance funds may not arrive in time to continue day-to-day operation, at a time when small labels are often on the brink of being able to operate from one day to the next.

That’s the picture painted by Dan Salter, who tells CDM about the effort Label Love, which in the immediate aftermath of the fire was already communicating with labels and beginning organizing efforts. Along with Hannah Morgan, Dan is leading efforts to help keep the lights on at labels, and to communicate with the rest of us about what’s going on.

Note that this is not organized by PIAS; you can read their official statements by following the distributor’s official site. (PIAS say they are also working on cleanup and efforts to benefit labels, but no official statement has yet requested funds; they’ve mainly thus far clarified what’s happened and how they’re responding but stopped short of asking for donations, beyond volunteers to help cleanup the site.)

Updated: An official PIAS-organized fund is detailed below. In addition to providing loans to labels, a statement by PIAS and the Association for Independent Music suggests that the effort will also help coordinate third-party drives like Label Love.

If you’re not up to speed with what’s happened, see yesterday’s post:
150 Indie Labels Lose Stock as London Warehouse Burns; Details Emerging, Reports, and Benefits

CDM: First, who are you? Whom do you represent?

Dan: We’re not actually affiliated to PIAS, we are a little group of bloggers & music fans that wanted to do something to help.

Have you communicated directly with any labels? What have they told you, if so?

We’ve been in touch with a number of the labels. We write & run a number of music blogs so we already knew quite a few people involved but many more have got in touch since Monday. Some of the stories are heart wrenching, people’s whole livelihoods have been put at risk by what’s happened.

Insurance will presumably be distributed through SONY. That said, do we know if stocks were covered by insurance? I know that Sony had told PIAS they’re working on keeping stocks flowing.

We’re not totally clear on the insurance situation, as you say it might be a question for PIAS, but I do know that even if insurance is paid it may come too late for many of the smaller labels. These companies run on a day-to-day basis and this kind of break in their cash flow could be terminal.

What do we know at this point about losses that may be suffered by labels? How are they coping?

I’m not sure of the overall situation but we’ve been contacted by a number of labels who have lost pretty much everything & have said it’s very touch and go as to whether they can survive this.

Who made the decision to begin fundraising? Was this something that came up via fans of the labels, or that the labels asked for? What’s their response?

A lot of these people affected are people know personally and are friends with when we heard the news we responded by thinking about what we could offer as gig promoters and the idea of benefit shows was born.

How will funds be distributed once collected?

100% of money donated through PayPal will go to the labels affected. Money raised from the events less costs will also be distributed to the labels.

Ideally we want to distribute the money in relation to the percentage of stock lost by each label. If we can’t get the relevant information to do that then we will split it evenly between the PIAS clients.

If people want to help now, what are some ways they might do so? How can they give or volunteer?

They can either donate through our PayPal account, link is on http://cognitivedissonancerecords.com/labellove/ or if they want to offer their services they can mail us at labellovebenefit (at) gmail (dot) com

Some people were circulating the idea of buying downloads from their favorite labels who have been affected. Would you encourage that, as well?

It’s a great idea but we would encourage people to use independent sites like Rough Trade rather than iTunes or Amazon as they take a far smaller cut & the labels will benefit more.

And more broadly, can you tell us a bit about yourself and how everybody’s doing over there? Much appreciated!

To be frank, our minds are a little bit blown by the scale of the response to our suggestion. We initially envisaged doing a few small gigs around London, we never expected to be dealing with the sheer volume of offers & support that we have, it’s been amazing & humbling. Right now there’s only a couple of us at the core of this and we work full time as well but we’re hoping to have a team together soon to help us cope with what’s happened!

Updated: an official PIAS and Association of Independent Music (AIM) fund has been announced.

This morning, we are announcing the creation of a fund to help independents affected by the catastrophe. They will be able to draw upon the fund to help cover the interruption to their business and the cost of getting back onto their feet.

The fund is being provided by some of AIM’s larger member labels, other well wishers and from AIM’s reserves, and will be made available to affected smaller labels pro-rata to labels’ [PIAS] turnover this year, as required.



Funds will be made available as interest-free and security-free loans repayable within a year. 



Total initial funds available are £250,000.



[PIAS] are first and foremost focused on supporting their labels. AIM will be coordinating the fund, and also other offers of help in the form of promotions and benefit gigs.



Source: AIM, via their site musicindie.com.

The likes of Mute and Beggars Group also repeat what Label Love are arguing: that smaller and emerging labels may not yet be prepared to whether the immediate aftermath of these events without additional help. The fund would appear to help the cash flow problem.

Artist Tricil sung the praises of Topspin in April. Since then, I did my own LP release on Bandcamp, about which I hope to share experiences soon.

But how do the two compare? And how might they even be combined? Recording/mastering engineer and artist Jimmy Ether recently posted some thoughts to his Google+ account, shared here by permission:

Topspin vs Bandcamp mixed with other options
I was pretty sold on going with Topspin for the back end store and promo features for the Headphone Treats site I’m rebuilding. Until today. I’ve always been a big Bandcamp supporter, but they were just missing a few features I felt we needed for the more full-scale assault I’m hoping to make:

1) An integrated store across artists – actually, both services sucked at this (until today). It was possible in Topspin, but you had to get hacky with tags to have multiple bands in one account. Which I never really wanted anyway. Now Bandcamp lets you span any artist on their cart system, which is brilliant. Lets the bands manage their stores and I can just tie them into our site. Exactly what I wanted.

2) High-Resolution, 24-bit FLAC – Again, Topspin was going to be hacky, but doable. But wait! Bandcamp is now allowing 24bit files up to 192kHz??! How did I miss this? I’ll have to see how the download options work, but this is awesome if all pans out acceptable. With what I’m doing, it’s literally two different masterings per album (fully dynamic 24bit/88.2k… slightly more compressed 16 bit for regular lossless down to MP3), so I need to see how that’s going to work. Hopefully I can select formats to be made available for each album and just offer two versions.

3) Campaigns – this is a pretty cool aspect of Topspin which may or may not have been beneficial. Kinda nice to be able to offer a free download of an album for an email signup or Facebook like. But there are other services I could use for that… or I can just roll my own using Bandcamp download codes. And now we have G+ possibly stealing some thunder from Facebook, so it’s reminding me of all that time I spent on MySpace building followings for all the artists. Yeah, that panned out. Social media is wonderful, but you have to keep things centralized and in your control.

4) Mailing list – ummm… Mailchimp? Emma? I’d much rather integrate either of those into my site than use Topspin’s more limited interface. Mailchimp is especially interesting with their killer API, which I’ve used a little bit. I’m a reseller for Emma, so I can send mail way cheaper through them but their integration is a tad clunky and requires more coding on my end (done it before though). I’ll have to weigh that.

So, that’s my current thinking on all the music tech offerings. Speak up if you think I’m missing something though. Discussion is good. Or if your curious what I’m on about with any of the above. Happy to clarify.

That seems a good conversation starter to me, and a jumping-off point for a more in-depth discussion. The competition is certainly heating up: Bandcamp just unveiled a merchandise store, and Topspin is enhancing their features, as well. (Correction: I originally claimed that email capture at Bandcamp was a recent addition, but a reader points out it was unveiled in 2008. I could say time flies, but I will instead just admit I was mistaken. And in fairness, while competition drives enhancement, arguably user requests are the prime motivator.)

So, other users, we’d love to hear what you think, or if you have other questions about either service we can investigate or direct to the sites themselves.

And while we’re at it, Jimmy’s own site has a growing archive of information, including some recording tips – and, oh yeah, some music to hear:
http://jimmyether.com/about/

On tablets, on displays, multi-touch control these days is calibrated largely as a software interface – more Starship Enterprise panel than violin. As such, it works well for production tools and exploring compositional ideas. But it falls far short of being an instrument: even on the much-hyped iPad, touch timing and sensitivity is too imprecise, and the absence of tactile feedback and real, kinetic resistance makes you feel like an operator rather than a musician.

Several projects in experimental instrument research seek to change that. But of all of them, the one that has generated the most enthusiasm is Randy Jones’ Soundplane, co-developed with hardware designer Brian Willoughby. CDM shares a conversation today with Randy about his brilliant Aalto synth, and I’m working on a review soon. But wonderful as Aalto is, many of us are still eager to hear more of the Soundplane controller. I chose to wax poetic and optimistic back in December of 2008:
Intimate Control: Multi-Touch, New Models, and What 2009 is Really About

I shouldn’t have put a year on my predictions, though – good things take time. (If I could clearly recall what happened in 2009, maybe my general prediction was correct. The past tends to blur together for me into a continuum in the manner of the modern technologist, a vague assemblage of stuff that happened in the 60s with things that are actually still in the future.)

The good news: Randy continues working on the Soundplane, and Aalto will help.

Continuing our interview, here are the thoughts most relevant to Soundplane — and a glimpse of what it’s looking like as he works on it in the lab.

First, Randy explains his ideas about running a small business, continuing what he had to say in our Aalto story. The basic idea: Aalto’s software will bootstrap Soundplane’s hardware.

I think the whole idea of venture capital is sort of a poisonous one. It’s a little like bands wanting to get signed right away. The first thing you want to focus on is giving up your autonomy, really?

Instead, why not scrape together whatever you can from friends or family and just make something that you can sell right away, however small. I didn’t have enough saved to finish the Soundplane project so halfway through I switched to putting out Aalto as a plan B for paying the rent. Now it’s out and it’s a product I’m proud of that I think reflects where we’re coming from, and it’s going to fund Soundplane development, and it’s letting tons of people know we exist. Just get a foot in the door, do something useful.

He also shares his feelings about patents:

Some people won’t like to hear this, but I applied for a patent on the sensor used in the Soundplane. I know, the patent system is totally broken, and often, if not usually, used in stupid ways. But if there’s one thing I think it is actually good for, it’s to protect small companies like ours that innovate against a bigger entity simply stealing their R&D. This is why it was designed, right? I don’t know if our patent will save the day if such a thing ever happens, but if it does I’d much rather have one than not. It’s a pain to write one but it’s not impossible, you just need a lot of patience. “Patent it Yourself“, Nolo Press, is a good reference.

The patent question raises some additional questions for me – in fact, I’d love to see open source hardware that’s also backed by patent protection, in the same way that the GPL license is made tenable largely through the existence of traditional copyright laws.

But I do tend to agree that in the case of a truly novel technology, which this is, patent protection may be necessary. The question for projects like this will be whether to operate as a conventional, patent-protected design, or whether some sort of open source model with a patent covenant and a copyleft license like GPL will make sense — both preventing exploitation and allowing free experimentation. If there are any IP lawyers lurking around out there, let us know (I have some contacts, too); and definitely let us know if that’s a conversation you’d like us to continue.

In the meantime, the important thing is that Soundplane lives, and using Aalto could help it come to fruition. We’ll absolutely keep you posted.

As proof, though, more shots from the lab:

Also, must-read article from shortly after Jones’ NIME presentation:
Why Soundplane?

The whole article is worth reading, but Jones argues that not only is it likely many people will try to do tactile multi-touch, but it may be necessary. For those of you not all that good at hardware design, you could be just as essential as well to there being any future for these curiosities. The designers need other designers. The hardware needs software creators – lots of them. The software creators need to try lots of ideas. And everybody needs players, composers … users.

It’s all-too-tempting to sit back on the Web and marvel at what everyone else is doing, to take their genius and novelty as an engraved invitation to give up on your own work. “It’s been done before.” “Someone else is already doing this.” It’s probably a topic for a dedicated article, but it’s simply the wrong reaction. “It’s been done before — maybe it’s worth doing. Or doing again. Or doing better. Or doing over and over again.” “Other people are doing this — that means I have someone else to do it with.”

Historically, revolutions aren’t solo pieces. They’re ensembles.

Updated: speaking of work being ensembles, while Randy’s name is most associated with the Soundplane project, credit is due to hardware designer Brian Willoughby, who did the hardware design for the instrument. As he wrote in comments on CDM in 2010, when we covered Roger Linn’s Linnstrument: “For my part, I’ve been deep into the process of designing the analog circuits, DSP hardware and firmware necessary for the product, so it’s nice to poke my head up for a moment and see interest on this site, as well as to hear about other engineers trying new things and inspiring ideas.”

Software can easily enough emulate, down to each knob and patch cord, a vintage synthesizer. But can a genuinely new software synth incorporate the ideas about instrument design beloved in a classic synth like the Buchla modular? How do you balance open-ended sound design with the sorts of limitations that give an instrument personality, limitations that inspire?

And could all of this be meaningful even for someone first discovering synthesis, who may never have seen or heard of a Buchla? (If that’s you, please don’t bail on us just yet!)

It’d be pretty pointless to celebrate the legacy of designers like Don Buchla or Bob Moog if you didn’t think that legacy would be carried on. Randy Jones, of Madrona Labs, is just the kind of person to watch. He’s the creator of the innovative multi-touch, tactile Soundplane hardware, as well as the semi-modular Aalto soft synth, updated this month. Madrona has just released Aalto 1.2. The banner feature: Windows support, meaning you now have full 64-bit (or 32-bit) support on Mac and Windows alike. There’s now really no reason not to try out the instrument, with free demos on each.

What makes Aalto special? It has a unique interface that focuses on sound, and semi-modular design that allows you to produce the sort of sounds a Buchla modular would – without trying slavishly to emulate that hardware in software. It’s something new. As Randy puts it:

The main UI element is a combination oscilloscope + dial that is totally new. It’s inspired by the Max/MSP multislider, as well as the idea “computers are so fast now, and promise so many new possibilities for visualizing sonic systems, why are we still making virtual knobs?”

Randy is reflective as well as inventive, so here are his thoughts on designing the instrument – as well as the most unique approach to copy protection (and cookie-cutter soft synths) I’ve ever heard. (And I do mean heard.)

Aalto, a Tool for Sound Designers; No Two Are Alike

I had two basic ideas: one was to build a softsynth that really encouraged people to make their own sounds, made it fun and easy. Also I wanted to make software that could duplicate some of the Buchla sounds programmed by Morton Subotnik– those wonderful Vactrol / LPG plunks, because I’d never heard that done in software before.

So I picked the Music Easel as an inspiration, not just in sound but in UI, making a small set of modules that would lead to a surprising variety of results.

Limitations are really key, and while Max/MSP and other general environments that try to do everything are very useful, I think musically there’s a lot to be said for making fixed instruments that you learn and don’t mess with. That way you don’t have this situation where everyone ends up with their own instrument. This idea goes for hardware as well as software…

I think good instruments are style-agnostic… hardware as well as software. Making something for a particular genre is just reacting to fashion, which is the enemy of expression.

It’s depressing how popular sample sets are. There are so many possibilities for making your own sounds—recording sounds well, processing and synthesizing them are all easier and cheaper than ever before. If you do electronic music, timbre is a crucial element– how can you buy a sound from someone else? That’s like a poet buying words from someone else.

Aalto is designed to be unhyped. Sit well in a mix. Good music makers have their own compressors, they don’t want a synth to decide to compress itself. Good music makers have their own effects, they don’t want a ton of reverb and delay slathered over every preset.

A precise tool that’s good for learning is also good for using. Knobs are marked with actual time and pitch units. It’s harder to learn synthesis if your knobs all just go from 0-1.

Nothing that affects the sound is hidden. Everything is one click away. Aalto has no menus. I think this makes it a softsynth actually good enough to perform with, not just playing notes but moving through patch space.

It’s easy to go off the rails. Enough rope to hang yourself. A whole world of bad sounds is available at the touch of a dial. Because without them, the surprising good ones wouldn’t be there, only the boring good ones.

The signal scaling to oscillator pitch is a handy knob– one turn of it totally messes up the musical intervals if you want. It’s also easy to get back to a default.

As a composer and performer I’ve been burned time and time again by copy protection, so Aalto doesn’t have any. You can make as many copies as you want, but only run one of them at a time. The registration is embedded in the plugin itself, so there’s no keyfile to worry about. Want to use Aalto at a friend’s studio? Copy it to your zip drive and use it.

Because of the embedded license info being available, I went and did something a little weird: each copy of Aalto makes a slightly different sound. No more than different units of a Prophet-5, but the filter cutoff and oscillator detune and some other parameters are slightly affected by your unique user data. So the sound of the synth is in a way made very personal to the license holder.

Though it’s not so easy to make a good one, it’s a lot easier to make a new softsynth than a new hardware synth. So why are softsynths mostly so boring? Why so little experimentation? I think more interesting things are happening on tablets, with weird audio-visual toys people wouldn’t have made without the interface being available. But the sound quality is not there yet with the tablets. We still have these desktop and laptop computers of amazing power that everyone is using for production… but where is the spirit of innovation that we see in the tablet space?

Being a Small Company

Little companies can do stuff unimaginable a decade ago, thanks to the internet for research and promotion, and the open source community for access to tools. There’s this big area of possibilities with companies like ours that have more of a craftsman than a startup vibe, are not in it to get bought out but to make things of value and beauty over the long haul. Certainly the monome folks are a huge inspiration to me here.

You don’t need a big team to make and promote cutting edge tech anymore, you just need a few really good people. What that means is that companies like ours can innovate and make a product for an audience of a few thousand, something that a Roland or Korg would never bother with, and have a sustainable business model doing that.

Hopefully, this gets the conversation started. Randy’s very open with his ideas, so we’ll be in touch; if you have other questions for him, let us know. And, of course, we should look at Aalto very soon.

http://madronalabs.com/aalto

Let’s get this out of the way first: if you’re looking for a tool for composing and editing scores on your iPad, Avid Scorch isn’t it — not yet, at least. But as a score reader, Scorch could be a glimpse of a future in which tablets create a new marketplace and exchange for notated music.

Scorch is, first and foremost, a score reader. It shares the mature notational display engine of Sibelius, and makes use of Sibelius’ (and now Pro Tools’) scores. That includes Sibelius’ broad library of musical symbols, guitar tab features, and handwritten fonts, among other features. (It even includes the somewhat silly, but potentially-comforting, textures that have long been a feature of the desktop product.)

The role of tablets in digital music is still evolving. But it’s not hard to make a case for the form factor here: unlike a MacBook Pro or a PC tower, you can put a tablet on a music stand. As such, a tiny device can have dynamic access to a near-limitless collection of music. We’ve already seen impressive takes on the classic jazz fake book on the iPad, and they handily beat the older form when it comes to weight or bulk.

That leaves the question of what reading a score on what remains essentially a computer, in place of on paper, actually means. Scorch shows off some advantages here. For instance, you can transpose scores – say, for a singer, or a different reed instrument – in realtime. (That grumbling noise you hear is people complaining about the loss of musicianship and the ability to sight-transpose. I agree, to a point – but I’ve also known some musicians who could do that who also used the transposition button on a digital piano.)

Other features could broaden the appeal of notation in general. With one tap, you can convert a line to guitar tab, dynamically, as seen in the image below. You can change fonts, or pull out a single part, in order to improve readability. These are things that would normally require a copyist to go back to the drawing board and make new parts, even in the computer age. The very notion of what a score is is changing: that score becomes dynamic, electronic, and live, open to instantaneous shared revisions.

I’m following up with Avid’s developers and testing the application myself, as some questions remain. Turning pages electronically could theoretically be easier … or not. There’s an interactive “Music Stand” mode, but that’ll require an actual test. (Stay tuned for results of that shortly.) Depending on your instrument, you may not have a hand free, and on the iPad, there’s no way to tape multiple pages together to increase the size of the paper. My bet is that we’ll badly need a footswitch. (See this week’s discussion of augmenting tablets with foot pedals.)

While I investigate that, though, it’s just as interesting to ponder that Scorch is not just an application, but a marketplace. Using Apple’s in-app payments (the rules for which this week were loosened), you can purchase scores or download free scores. The display even looks like e-reader apps from Apple, Amazon, and others. With brick-and-mortar music stores few and far between, and the record store long gone, this is huge news. Demand for notation has been on the uptick, as popular music, reality TV, and shows like Glee continue to feed on – and feed – appetite for musical expression. (I need to pull some solid numbers on that, but I do know there are some positive signs; that’s probably a topic for another story.)

Scorch could be the start of something big – and with electronics makers around the world, not just Apple, betting on the tablet, it could be a sign of other tools to come.

I still imagine many people want to use tablets to make scores, not just consume them, and I expect that to be a growth area, too. But Scorch is notable as the first big-league entry into what could be a transformative arena. And it could be transformative in ways that are more profound than even digital distribution of music. Notation has evolved the way it has on a paper medium, designed to be fixed, still influenced by the conventions of the pen and engraving. The next question: will scores, from creation to display, need to change, too?

Avid Scorch