“Press play” … “button-mashing” … the very criticism of digital music is often directed at the button or switch, even as the cult hit monome spreads arrays of buttons like a virus.

Well, we’re still interested in what you can do with a button, so to fully focus you, we’re only giving you one button with which to play. The challenge of limiting interaction to one button has already spawned an explosion of entries from game designers, who have fought their way through intense competition for the legendary Gamma indie/experimental game competition. We’ll see the winners at the Game Developer Conference next week.

But we want to see what people can do with a single button and sound. Friday, March 12, sonic (and game-based, and other) objects involving a single button will converge at San Francisco’s Gray Area Foundation, in the midst of GDC.

The deadline is officially today, March 1, but as I follow up on entries, we’re extending that to Friday, March 5, by the end of the day NYC time. There are already some terrific-looking submissions, but we’re willing to entertain the possibility of more, at least for a few more days. (if you have something you want to share online but can’t ship, let us know that, too)

How to enter – simplified rules:

It doesn’t have to be a game. (But it could be.)

It does need to do something – make noise, make lights, move, or otherwise interact.

It needs to operate on its own. We have to be able to plug it in and have it function, without the addition of a computer, etc.

It needs to be shipped to California for March 10 arrival, to be ready for the opening Friday, March 12. It will then be shipped back to you.

Send submissions, as detailed as you can, to:
onebuttonobject@kokoromi.org

Party + Hack

Part of the beauty of the one-button limitation is that it encourages quick hardware hacks and simplified designs. It’s a design you can make even if you’re out of time. We’ll be having a party to finish off creations in NYC on Saturday afternoon, building last-minute creations for Handmade Music Monday night (details forthcoming) and the One Button Objects show in San Francisco. If you want to get your own little hackday going between now and then and join us online from your local hackerspace / studio (anywhere in the world), let us know in comments. Here are details for those of you near NYC – plus some music for everyone to listen to while you solder/code/build:

Handmade Game Objects Hackday + Party
SATURDAY OPEN HOURS @ 2PM – 6PM
L TRAIN – 915 WYCKOFF AVE ( SILENT BARN )

Map
Facebook

Babycastles teams up with Handmade Music Night for a hacking afternoon. Come make crazy new video game objects, art, and controllers with us! We’ll have a jungle of fun stuff like dentures and gloves (high five to play!), but you should bring some fun things too. No experience at all necessary! (Bring soldering irons, tools, etc. if you’ve got them.)

with music by CHEESE’N'BEER CHIP MUSIC COLLECTIVE MATINÉE

ADAMGETSAWESOME »>
http://myspace.com/adamgetsawesome
Adam uses a gameboy with LSDJ and a lot of alcohol! We assure you that his name is not just all talk, he does in fact “get awesome.”

Zen Albatross »>
http://8bitcollective.com/members/Zen+Albatross/
Zen Albatross make stuff with pixels, Game Boys and ancient spirit magick. He also blogs about art, airships, bleeps, bloops and other swell things.

Goatslacker »>
http://music.goatslacker.com/
Goatslacker is Florida’s Josh Perez who promises to fill you up with high octane chip music.

and curry by chef Syed Salahuddin

And yes, that music lineup includes Goatslacker, who did the MUSE covers in 8-bit. It’s the sort of high-energy music that goes well with trying to keep your brain on hardware hacking.

Seriously, if anyone wants to switch on a webcam or IRC chat while you work on your submission, let us know and we can co-hack internationally.

Software of the year: Propellerhead Record

For all the major releases and upgrades and gear, as well as the dominance of a certain Berlin-based developer, if you had to pick one application of 2009, it’d be Record. Record tops the list not because everyone dropped everything to go use it, but quite the contrary. Record bucked industry trends, and provided a love-it-or-hate-it view of what audio software could be. In other words, it was quite reminiscent of Reason.

Centered on a mixer, emphasizing “recording” (perish the thought), and omitting expected features like MIDI out and plug-in support, Record resists modern-day conventional wisdom. That was divisive enough, even before the debates began over Record’s new hardware key. In the long run, it may be the simple fact that Record brings audio signal to Reason that gives it staying power. But in 2009, Record was the application about which everyone had an opinion.

See our original preview, May, plus details on the "Ignition Key" authorization system

Developer of the year: Ableton

What a year it’s been for Ableton. The company kicked off the year with “Share,” “Extend,” and “Touch,” as well as the release of Live 8. It sounded simple. But Ableton’s tech dominated CDM headlines in ‘09 with the variety of user tips and tricks, rants and raves. How’d they do?

New gear: Hardware was in the spotlight – and ranked highest in CDM clicks – even above the software. Many users embraced Akai’s APC40, the first commercial hardware to really balance a variety of Live’s features, as well as Novation’s affordable, simple Launchpad grid controller. But even as Ableton emphasized the ability of this hardware to work out of the box, hackers set about customizing their own control. We saw the Launchpad used with Renoise (complete with a mocked-up Renoise logo decal), and the Korg nanoKONTROL hacked to integrate more seamlessly with Ableton – even when KORG and Ableton themselves hadn’t worked on support. Lesson learned? Make tools for musicians, and you may find some support and development gets crowd-sourced, whether you intended it or not.

See: Hands-on with the Launchpad, nanoKONTROL Myr for Ableton Live, APC40 Hacking Superguide

Live, meet Max: Max for Live has already led to some incredible work, most notably stretta’s fantastic compositional toolkit for the monome. It earned praise (for setting a new bar for sheer power) and criticism (most notably for lacking a free runtime). Some jumped on M4L, some swore they’d stick to the traditional Max, and others swore they’d seek alternative or free solutions. In the end, Max for Live has wound up becoming bigger than, well, Max for Live. It’s begun a discussion of how live performance should work, and how software should integrate and be extended. And that’s a story that should be with us for a long time.

And a few wrinkles: The third prong of Ableton’s initiative was barely visible in ‘09; while a beta is underway, we don’t know much more about how Share will work in December than we did at NAMM in January. Live 8 has been beloved by some, even as others users expressed frustration with stability issues. CEO Gerhard Behles surprised everyone this month on the Ableton forum by conceding the company could do better and promising developers would re-focus on squashing bugs, even putting new features on hold.

As the saying goes, any press is good press. Ableton and their fired-up user base stayed front-and-center on CDM in 2009, even as twists and turns complicated the narrative. The story isn’t quite as clean and tidy as it is was at the beginning of the year, and you can read the full spectrum of comments calling this year everything from a triumph to a failure (and, hopefully, a few more reasonable thoughts in between). But without a doubt, Ableton is the developer of 2009.

Story of the year: Switching from Mac to Ubuntu

After years of tired debates about the merits of operating systems, the potential of the philosophies of open source versus proprietary, and whether Linux is ready for the desktop, in 2009 we saw a new spin: what if you switched to Linux to make your life easier?

That was the question Kim Cascone asked with his switch to Linux. And he wasn’t alone. One of the most-asked questions this year was how to make Linux work for music, particularly as users sought out more-reliable, more-affordable solutions for audio. (Yes, I know – “Linux” isn’t necessarily more reliable out of the box, as “Linux” could mean any number of setups, which I suspect is part of why the question was asked so much.) The popularity of Kim’s story, along with the turnkey Indamixx laptop or the Linux Laptop Orchestra we saw last week, suggest a challenge to CDM as much as a story. It’s the story we’ll likely see more of in 2010.

Linux Music Workflow: Switching from Mac OS X to Ubuntu with Kim Cascone

Biggest opportunity: Rock Band Network

Want a glimpse into the future of the music business? Here’s one way it could look. Rock Band Network provides an extraordinary level of control and customization, allowing your music to work as well with the hit game as music adapted by the developers themselves. As a revenue stream, as a promotional opportunity, and as a new way to play with your music, it looks fantastic. And don’t miss the fact that what made it possible was close collaboration with the DAW Reaper – a big coup for that package. Now, if we could just have the Amplitude Network, too, for electronic artists.

See our inside look at RBN with the folks at Harmonix

Surprise vintage tech: The return of CV

MIDI? What’s that? The biggest surprise revelation in January was that MOTU was set to release a brilliant plug-in called Volta, which elegantly bridged the gap between computers and, through control voltage, analog synthesis. Matthew Davidson (who wowed us with OSC and digital tech in 2009, too, in his monome work) walked us through his creation:

Analog, Meet Digital: MOTU Volta Connects the Mac to CV Synths, Effects Graphically

We also saw other CV solutions, DIY and commercial, Control Voltage on Moog’s Theremin, and in perhaps the hardware product of the year, Moog Music’s exquisite double-band MuRF resonant filter. And yes, the Moog piece even has MIDI for pattern changes and sync, while still making use of CV.

Most annoying story of the year: Anything to do with T-Pain

Yes, the iPhone is well awesome mobile technology. Yes, 2009 was the year in which the music world went from talking exclusively about “albums” to talking about “apps,” too. Yes, it’s amazing how Smule has popularized music technology and alternative interfaces and all that good stuff. Unfortunately, it was tough to focus on some of the wonderful things going on when you had to deal with the sudden and inexplicable success of T-Pain, capitalizing on everyone’s least-favorite effect – AutoTune. Not getting enough overuse of pitch correction on FOX’s hit show, Glee, ruining talented voices of kids and Broadway stars? Now put it on your iPhone, and suck the joy out of the (otherwise fantastic) “I’m on a Boat” video. We all love you, Smule, but, I’m on a phone? I’m in a time machine, trying to escape to some year where AutoTune has finally died.

To cheer up, let’s just remind ourselves why Smule’s chief mind Ge Wang is still cool, while I try to work out how to get off T-Pain’s press mailing list:

Interview: Smule’s Ge Wang on iPhone Apps, Ocarinas, and Democratizing Music Tech

And the Rest

Most important OS release:

Windows 7, for finally making us feel good about leaving XP – and, with the help of tools like Cakewalk’s SONAR and its BitBridge 32-bit plug-in support, giving us a good reason to go 64-bit, too.

Most popular how-to’s:

Instructable: How to Build a Music Studio in an Apartment

Abusing and misusing groove extraction in Live 8

Best reason to attend NAMM 2010:

The hopes of catching Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 synth, in the flesh

Most popular feature, and a reminder of what matters more than the gear:

Take it to the Stage: Reflections on Live Laptop Music from Artists

This analysis piece from a variety of top artists started a discussion about what playing laptops is all about. There was certainly no consensus, but it was – rightfully – the most popular feature story of the year, and something we should cover as often as possible. It’s the reason we’re all here. (Thanks to Primus Luta for putting this together.)

More Top 2009 Lists

Beatportal

Francis Preve takes on the top ten releases of the year for Beatportal, and I can’t help but agree. Having made my list of what caused the most controversy, these are the tools that – big splash or not – deserve some technological recognition.

MetaSynth remains a fascinating and unique tool for sound design, finally in a more modern release, and one I hope to work with more soon.

Logic 9 was a huge DAW release, though to that list I’d add SONAR 8.5 – two radically different tools, each markedly more mature this year.

FXpansion DCAM Synth Squad looks like the most brilliant soft synth of ‘09, and I’m long overdue in spending some quality time with it.

Dave Smith’s Tetr4 synth might make the top of my list if it didn’t have to compete with other fine synths from … Dave Smith.

Then there’s Melodyne, which resulted in some unique and creative results this year.

A must-read: 2009 Studio Technology Top 10

MusicRadar

MusicRadar, the online site that accompanies Computer Music and Future Music (among others), reviews the year month by month. But the list you want is:

In pictures: the best hi-tech gear of 2009

Yours’

Of course, in the end, what all these stories have been about is the full spectrum of ideas from our readers. So have at it. And Happy New Year.

Sampling and online reuse are enormously common in our culture today. But if you really believe in making some of that culture freely accessible, it follows you must also make free licenses explicit. Simply taking something because it’s there isn’t fair to the person who created the content, whose rights should come first, and it doesn’t help advance the cause of free content. If we want content to be more freely accessible, we need to give first priority to those materials explicitly licensed for free use.

All of that is to say, we need to obey the law. And that’s generally been the goal on CDM.

Here’s the rub: while Creative Commons licenses show a lot of promise, they also have occasionally run up against vague definitions or not-quite-airtight license variants. Case in point: the “non-commercial” restriction commonly used by creators. Let’s say you upload an image to Flickr. Adding a “non-commercial” restriction seems logical enough as a way to protect yourself against your image being abused, right?

The problem is, when looking at the actual language of the license, the definition of non-commercial use is not clear. Here’s what the license says:

“You may not exercise any of the rights granted to You in Section 3 above in any manner that is primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or private monetary compensation. “

Source: the current full text of the license (3.0)

Is CDM’s usage of Flickr images with non-commercial Creative Commons licenses a violation of that license? It’s not entirely clear. While the site uses those images for illustrative purposes, and while the site carries ads from which we gather revenue, it’d be a stretch to say the use of the images themselves was directed toward monetary gain.

Ultimately, though, an ambiguous license isn’t good enough. To be able to use images without contacting photographers for their permission, we need confidence that the license is clear. And even if we were on legally good standing – and it’s unclear that we are – we would want to obey the intentions of the content creators.

The question of commercial status and the Creative Commons license led to a prolonged Twitter discussion between me and Chris Randall of Analog Industries and plug-in maker Audio Damage. Unlike CDM, the Analog Industries blog is copyrighted, not under a Creative Commons license, but Chris has used CC licenses in the past for his music. Chris’ argument was, in short, that CDM was in violation of the CC-NC license as the use constituted a commercial use. The obligation lies with me to prove otherwise, and based on the survey results, I don’t think I can.

I’m not the only person bothered by the ambiguity. Creative Commons has conceded that questions about commercial or non-commercial are some of the most common queries they receive. And the situation was ambiguous enough for CC to undertake a full survey of CC users and creators.

The results of this survey were published in September:
Defining Noncommercial

Read through the complete results, however, and the question of non-commercial status is murkier than ever. The most significant question for publishers (and many content creators) is at what point a site with ads becomes a commercial use. You’ll see the answers can vary wildly depending on how the question is asked, and what the respondent understands to be the usage case.

That said, now having fully read through the results, I think I have to change the policy on CDM. Having some people disagree isn’t good enough, and no matter how you ask the question, a significant number of content creators view sites with ads as commercial – no discussion. (Some even would classify sites by non-profits using ads to recoup hosting costs in this way!)

I’ve found Flickr users have actually been really enthusiastic to discover their work on the site; those are the comments I’ve gotten. Unfortunately, I have to balance that enthusiasm against the larger perception of the policy.

In short, if you’re placing images under an NC license, don’t expect to see them on CDM any more.

New CDM policy

From here on out, I will only make use of images that fit one of the following conditions:

• Creative Commons licenses with BY, SA, or ND restrictions, but not NC
• Public domain images
• Images used as implied (such as press images, etc.)
• Images used by specific permission

Videos are, of course, a different story, as the ability to embed these materials is assumed to mean an implied license, and I’ve never seen otherwise. Likewise, it seems that the use of Flickr tag slideshows and badges containing images – even copyrighted images – does not violate Flickr’s terms of service or the wishes of the copyright holder; this is in essence a view of the Flickr site itself, and should not diminish the value of a photographer’s work nor conflict with their likely intentions when they upload to Flickr.

There’s really no way to operate on the Internet without coming across some of these gray areas, but to me the spirit of the law and the intentions of the creators remains paramount.

How to protect your work without Non-Commercial restrictions

This may raise the question, how do you prevent your work from being exploited while at the same time allowing a site like CDM to republish it? One of the “commercial” uses cited in the survey results is the rather nasty scenario of the spam blog re-purposing stories via RSS. There have been cases of CC-licensed Flickr images being used for ads in bus stops. (See the instance of Virgin’s ads, taken from CC-licensed Flickr images. Note, however, the controversy there – aside from whether they actually complied with the CC licenses – was whether they had the rights to the likenesses of people in those images, which is a different legal area.)

My answer, and the answer on which I’ve settled for CDM’s content: use a ShareAlike license.

What makes ShareAlike unique is that it requires any distribution or repurposing of your content to have the “resulting work only under the same, similar or a compatible license.” That means you couldn’t, say, make an ad out of your photo without placing the ad under the same license — effectively preventing some of the more nefarious uses of CC-licensed works.

I do think that Creative Commons needs to present more explicit, clear, legally-binding documentation for the Non-Commercial restriction in the actual license. But until then, if you’re bothered by this ambiguity, you can resort to the more unambiguous ShareAlike license term.

Note that CDM itself is under a ShareAlike license. Because it’s compatible with any of the other CC SA licenses, that also gives us the right to use SA-licensed content – and, incidentally, were we not licensed that way, we should not have that ability.

HELP US!

To bring CDM into compliance with the non-commercial license, I need your help.

Got some regex skills? A regular expression should be able to purge all the images in CDM’s story database with non-commercial CC licenses, because images link to the specific license used. It’s simply a matter of then pulling the img src, anchor, and image caption div code around that license link.

Get in touch or respond in comments.

Got an image you don’t want to see lost? You can search CDM easily by your name and/or Flickr userid and find your image. Then let us know:

Provide permissions for a CC-NC-licensed image [Google Docs form]

Correction: I can actually observe a number of images I’ve used over the years with links back to CDM from the Flickr pages. So this would actually be the worst possible thing I could do, to remove those images. Obviously, the better solution is to wait and see if someone requests that an archived image be taken down. The Creative Commons license itself is non-revocable, but since this falls into a gray area in which we may not even been in compliance with someone’s license, that’s a moot point. And since those images are clearly marked by license, any derivative work based on them could check first if the license permits derivations. (That’s something you’d have to do anyway, as some images on CDM are copyrighted and used exclusively on CDM by permission.)

As a separate note, I’m now going to go through my own Flickr accounts and remove the non-commercial requirement, because my sense is that ShareAlike will prevent the unlikely event of them being abused within the license terms.

Disclaimer: This story is an editorial, an opinion piece. It does not constitute a legal statement (I’m not a lawyer) or official, binding statement of Create Digital Music’s policy. It expresses only the opinions of its author.

If you’re introducing or demonstrating new products at NAMM, and you’d like to be considered for CDM’s curated NAMM products guide, let us know. Incidentally, since I don’t represent the NAMM organization, that can mean anyone in LA around NAMM or otherwise timing announcements that week, whether or not you’re an exhibitor. One- and two-person shops are as welcome as big manufacturers, as always.

There is no charge to be in the CDM guide, excepting the need to have something cool. We can’t cover everything and want to avoid information overload, but we’ll pick some stuff we know CDM readers will want to know about.

Also, I will be in Anaheim for limited meetings during the NAMM show on Thursday and Friday. If you’d like to meet up (especially if you’re not exhibiting), please get in touch. I know I won’t be able to meet up with everyone I’d like to on this trip, but we can give it a shot.

Manufacturers/inventors, we want to hear from you:
For meetings or to get in our news coverage, I’ve set up a form:
CDM NAMM Meetings and Announcements [Google Docs; form embedded below]

CDM does not break embargoes, period. I’ll be working hard to make sure news coverage is timed; if you can get us materials early, that helps.

Interested in being a correspondent? I’m looking to enlist anyone interested in covering the show floor and getting photos of oddities and awesomeness, as well as talking to artist guests. If that sounds like you, get in touch. To put this another way, if we don’t get materials early, it’s very hard to get them up as quickly!

Keep your schedule clear: the big news is that we’ve got a major event coming up Friday night in downtown LA, and we’re talking to LA-area artists. More on that very soon.

Here’s the embedded form (you’ll need to click through to the site if reading inside an RSS reader):

If you are unable to read CDMotion, you’re not alone. createdigitalmotion.com’s domain was not properly renewed by our previous registrar, 1&1, because of a foul-up with closing out an account with them for hosting. (Early in CDM’s history, the site – small at the time – was hosted by 1&1.) I’ve verified with 1&1 that this domain isn’t getting sold to anyone or anything like that — it’s in the ICANN’s redemption period, so I’m working on getting it back. It’s an embarrassing situation, and my apologies to readers. All the rest of CDM’s domains are happy and healthy in one place; the transfer of this one had simply been botched (by me). We’ll certainly correct the issue and keep you posted.

Question for Internet geeks out there — I am a bit disturbed that while 1&1 says it’s in redemption, they say it’ll take up to five business days to get it back, AND they appear to have parked a search page there. I thought that the domain simply shouldn’t resolve. Got any tips on expediting or what this shady business is with Sedo Parking and DomCollect? Let us know. Maybe, as with other things we’ve learned over the years publishing online, we can at least guide others. -PK

Link love, chip love, software love, music love – Create Digital Music is celebrating five years, and it’s time to spread some of the love back to you here in New York City. Wednesday night, we’ll be celebrating five years made possible by our incredible readers with a big party at Love Nightclub in Manhattan.

We’ve got one of the best sound systems in the city. We have eclectic, handmade, heavy beats from the likes of David Last, King Britt, Ganucheau, and IJ Catling (and me, opening up the sets). And because the Honorary Official Language of CDM is Portuguese, we have the baile funk princess Zuzuka Poderosa on vocals. (pictured below)

Zuzuka is singing. Prepare to dance – yes, even us computer nerds, really.

There’s an open bar (beer + house), 7p – while it lasts (get there early).

We’re supported by HP and Intel, featuring the HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop, which I’ve programmed to take advantage of its low-light/no-light nightvision webcam. I don’t get to keep mine, though – I’m giving it to you. Limber up and compete in our Twitter Twister contest – enter for a chance to hit the mats and out-twist your friends as we emcee and DJ behind you. Whoever wins takes home the Envy and loads of bragging rights.

Wednesday, December 2
7-11pm
Cover: FREE.

Love Nightclub, 179 MacDougal St in Manhattan [Map], near Washington Square (BDFV-ACE to West 4, RW to 8th St)

Facebook RSVP

Going.com RSVP

View Larger Map

Do you have what it takes to win yourself a new Core i7-powered HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop (and enormous pride and bragging rights)? Start limbering up. Photo (CC) Mad African.

ZUZUKA PODEROSA

Zuzuka Poderosa drops Brazilian bred, Brooklyn based swagger like no other. A stylistic blend of Funk Carioca and NYC rumble add a breath of fresh air to today’s international music scene. She’s hard to miss with her unapologetic sultry Portuguese lyrics. This, coupled with booty bumping basslines, she packs New York nightclubs like sardines. The early 90’s NYC Drum n’ Bass scene inspired her to master the wheels of steel. Now, under the alias of "DJ Babyfresh" she spins rare vinyl and Brazilian gems alongside DJ partner Joel Stones ( Tropicalia in Furs Records ). It was a natural progression for her to grab the mic – her passion for writing and poetry could no longer be ignored.

Expect an extremely SWEATY extremely SEXY crowd shortly after this woman hits the mic!

Zuzuka Poderosa (Vigarista Collective)  music, facebook, myspace.

http://twitter.com/ZuzukaPoderosa
www.myspace.com/zuzukapoderosa
www.facebook.com/people/Zuzuka-Poderosa/585267690

Video:

http://www.vimeo.com/5388139
http://vimeo.com/4363268
http://www.vimeo.com/3974321
http://www.vimeo.com/3968169

DAVID LAST

Brooklyn NY resident David Last makes tracks which combine dancefloor energy with the deeper-leaning funk of dancehall, dub, latin music and hip hop. David has become known for his instantly recognizable soundcraft and deeply funky rhythmic sense. His full length CDs for The Agriculture (NYC) and Staubgold (Berlin) have gained critical acclaim and a sizable cult following in the USA, Europe and Japan. He has contributed EPs and remixes for prominent indies worldwide, including Francois K’s WaveTec (NYC) and The Social Registry (NYC).  In 2008 he began the dance music and experimental sounds label KONQUE with Sasha Kaline of Alka Rex.

http://www.myspace.com/davidlast

http://www.davidlast.net

http://percussionlab.com/sets/david_last/live_from_jet_lag

KING BRITT

Well, bios are funny because they tell the story of the past of who you are in the present. I try to only live in the present and the future (as I said, try). Even though beginning my career in 1990 on the now legendary house label Strictly Rhythm as E- Culture, being Silkworm in the groundbreaking, Grammy winning Digable Planets, starting Ovum Recordings with Josh Wink, producing platinum remixes for Macy Gray, Solange, Donna Lewis and hundreds of others, winning the highest grant in the country as the first dj/producer, The Pew Fellowship or starting my empire, FiveSixMedia, I still try to live in the NOW and not the then.

So of course, now, I am a father, fiance’, musicologist of sorts and media revolutionary. My label and company FiveSixMedia, set the example of an individual who is able to live outside the box and show what freedom truly is. Last but not least, co-founder of the amazing Saturn Never Sleeps with my fiance, Rucyl Mills, pushing the boundries of sight and sound.

Doing my own thing on my own time and assisting other to move into that space as well.

The future is bright because I say it is. Stop and smell the flowers

It’s the most wonderful time of the year in New York. Mark your (advent) calendars. And for non-New Yorkers, let me know – who do you want interviewed? What do you want covered? Whose music do you want us to podcast? Our gift to you will be coverage of these events. New Yorkers and metro-area residents of the Northeast US’ Megapolis, I hope to see you there.

Wednesday, December 2: CDM 5th Anniversary Party. At Love Nightclub, CDM celebrates its 5th anniversary at Love Nightclub with Philly’s own King Britt, David Last joined by Brazilian baile funk vocalist Zuzuka Poderosa, laptronica artist and CDMer Ganucheau, and IJ Catling DJing, all one one of the city’s best sound systems. Compete in Twister and you could walk home with a new laptop yourself (HP Envy 15’s Beats Limited Edition). Free + open bar, Manhattan. (Facebook)

Thursday, December 3: TurboTax. Our friends at XLR8R Magazine continue their monthly with future-bass Dub War resident Dave Q and friends, proof that NYC can do dubstep, too. Free + free beer, Williamsburg.

Saturday, December 5: RjDj + Pd Skill Share @ Eyebeam. Brush up your patching skills in the free and open source patching environment Pure Data (Pd) with some of its best developers, Hans-Christoph Steiner and the team behind reactive music environment RjDj. See also RjDj’s hackshop (hoping we can add some extra sprint time not opposite in/out fest) and a party for their new creation on 12/11. All events at Eyebeam. Free, Manhattan.

Friday, December 11: Saturn Never Sleeps. A live beats lineup wrangled by King Britt hits the new Knitting Factory; I’m doing live generative visuals for the evening. DUMBO, Brooklyn.

Saturday, December 12: in/out Festival at The Tank. A new entry this year, in/out Festival looks to be a packed day of unusual music control. By day, the fest features workshops on Jitter, Reaktor, Max for Live, and … felt. (Yes, the Grant Sisters are back with felt as a music controller.) I’ll talk about OSC and visualizing music and musical messages. By night, we make music and visuals, with a lineup ranging from Lori Napolean on appropriated telephone switchboard to monome creator tehn. Tix are cheap at $10 for the whole day. Tickets. Manhattan.

Thursday-Saturday, December 17-19: Blip Festival. The annual 8-bit music and visual chipfest returns with three nights of events. Gowanus, Brooklyn.

That’s just the fests and special events. I know The Glitch Mob play Webster Hall on December 10, among others.

So we have very little to complain about in NYC, and it’s my duty to bring the goodness to the world beyond our Megapolis.

BLIP FESTIVAL 2009 from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.

In LA’s DubSpot Live 8 Sessions, I shared a panel with Daedalus, talking about design, live playing, the monome, and how limiting tools for performance can be powerful. Austin gets its own cast of presenters this weekend.

Sadly, I can’t be in all places at once. If I could, I’d be in Austin – twice over – this weekend. Handmade Music session two hits with an all-new set of learning and noise-making. Whether new to electronics making or an old hand, there’s something to absorb from some of the best mad sound scientists in the world. And our friends at DubSpot are in town, too, with a big lineup of production, recording, and performance techniques centering on Ableton Live 8. And on top of all of that, the city is host to the brilliant art + sound East Austin Studio Tour – a fantastic idea coupling events, studio tours, and art exhibitions I hope we steal in cities like my home New York.

This is all of interest to a tiny fraction of a percent of our readers since it’s really relevant only if you’re in Austin, but therein lies my plea — if you are in Austin, we could use your help documenting this weekend’s events. Get in touch, and we should be able to hook you up with a free pass for the DubSpot event, plus — well, whatever I come up with to thank you for videoing and/or writing about Handmade Music.

First up, Handmade Music:

This sunday is Handmade Music Austin #2.

We’ll be building 4ms’ Autonomous Bassline Generator. The upper division class is filled but there should be some space in the beginner class. Even if there aren’t any seats available, there will be all kinds of things happening in the gallery space for EAST. You can play with the Thingamagoop 2, Eric Archer’s noisemakers, Andromeda Space Rocker kits as well as other handmade instuments.

Noon – Gallery space opens. Bleep Labs, Eric archer, and friends interactive exhibit.
4 pm – Free beginner class
6 pm – Upper division synth class $45 at door
6:30 – Free performances :
Red X Red M
Douglas Ferguson/Steve Marsh
TelepathiK Friend

Red X Red M
Douglas Ferguson/Steve Marsh
TelepathiK Friend

As always, see:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com

DubSpot’s event includes two full days of programming covering production and performance. It’s about Ableton Live 8, but it’s also more broadly about how to make your tracks sound better, how to get them into the world, and how to be successful as an artist both in your releases and live. Austin includes many of the folks I’ve been hanging out with in NY and LA, plus favorites like Ableton veteran sound designer and Keyboard contributor Francis Preve. Christopher Willits will also take a first look at Max for Live and talk about how he uses Max/MSP to process his playing. And Saturday night is a FunkAid benefit with DJ OBaH, Ocote Soul Sounds, Akina Adderley & The Vintage Playboys, and Daetron Vargas.

I expect we can get a guest in if you cover the event for CDM.

http://www.dubspot.com/abletontour/austin.html

It’s music production. It’s … lasers. If you’re in the LA area, you’ll want to be there. If not, let us know in comments what you most want to see covered / interviewed / videoed for CDM.

DubSpot’s Live 8 Sessions Tour heads to Los Angeles this weekend, for a set of workshops, performances, and demos on Hollywood Boulevard. I’ll be out with the crew, and hosting with DubSpot a special interactive performance lounge Sunday night.

Sunday night will feature generative audiovisual art made on iPhones, and laser-powered, open-source gestural controllers and a laser installation that responds to motion and sound, plus Christopher Willits, Kid Beyond, Irwin, myself, and a lot more.

The weekend workshops: The artist lineup includes legends from a number of genres, including Scientist, Kid Beyond, Daedelus, Justin Boreta (Glitch Mob), Thavius Beck, and Christopher Willits. Other names you may not know have their own resume in sound design and performance (Irwin), producing and education (Steve Nalepa), mastering technique (Daniel Wyatt), and business (Barry Cole). Sunday, monome virtuoso Daedelus and I will talk about controllers, performance, and sampling technique, I hope going well beyond Live to design and playing technique in general. Passes are $110 for one day, or $195 for the weekend. Watch for a similar series in Austin, Texas this month, and other cities TBD, or for everyone else, stay tuned to CDM and DubSpot.

Ableton is a co-presenter, and Live a jumping-off point, but the topics really wind up being about more than any one tool. You’ll find deeper questions about composing, sound design, mastering, business, performance, controllers, and design in these discussions. I hope to work with some of my artist friends and DubSpot to bring more of those conversations to the CDM readers worldwide.

Want a free pass? One free pass awarded by the end of the day Thursday to the first person in comments to … write a really quotable comment about why you need a free pass. (Sorry, it’s the best I can come up with; I have to sleep and leave for the airport shortly.)

Los Angeles Tour [DubSpot]

Sunday night – $5 benefit Interactive Performance Night + CDM 5th Anniversary PARTY CDM turns five this month, and we’ll be kicking off a series of parties in LA, Boston, and New York. For $5 (all proceeds go to the sustainable charity NextAid), catch a night of audiovisual performance and bleeding-edge musical and visual inventions:

• Featured live performances by Kid Beyond, Christopher Willits (Ghostly International), and Irwin
  , with surprises through the night
• Open laser instruments: Open-source, gestural laser music controllers you can build, presented by Meason Wiley (www.cyclespersecond.net)
• 3D mobile music: iPhone-based performance live, synchronized three-dimensional audiovisuals by generative artist Aaron McLeran (Electronic Arts – Spore)

9:00 pm
SUNDAY, November 8
Los Angeles, CA
$5 / free for tour attendees
King King Hollywood | Directions
Facebook page

Full disclosure: The author is currently providing consulting services to DubSpot, and DubSpot’s Live Tour is a CDM advertiser, though there has been no compensation for this story or for my appearance in LA. (In the interest of disclosure, I’m happy to be spending my weekend being involved with the event!) – Peter Kirn

If you’re ready to show your skills creating digital music, we want your work.

UPDATED! New contest entry page, new deadline (10/25):
http://www.renoise.com/competitions/indamixx/
Plus tips, tracks, and more to give you additional inspiration:
More with Less:”Efficient” Renoise Music Tracks and Tips

Renoise, the "bottom-up" music production tool that makes brings modern comforts to the tracker interface, and Indamixx, the turnkey Linux-powered mobile music rig, are working with CDM on a contest to produce a new song. You’ll need Renoise to make your track, but the software now runs natively on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and you can even finish your production on the free demo version if you’d like to give the software a taste before committing to it. (Really – you can even save your file. The demo won’t let you save a wav file, but we’ll judge the xrns, and the only other restrictions are some nags – Renoise is a rare return to the old “shareware” model of development.)

Here on CDM, we’ll also be featuring some tutorials on music production using Renoise, using Linux, and using free and open source software, as well as the commercial offerings. So, this is a chance not only to compete, but to learn some new tools. Rather than just feed off your work, I’m really eager to make this competition a chance for us to work together and share knowledge, to give to you. So I’m pleased to have some of the experts in the Linux audio community and Renoise community helping us do just that.

The competition will also be fully Creative Commons-licensed, to make sure you’re free to use our tips and tutorials, and that the track you make is free for others to remix – without abusing your work. (This is not officially CC-affiliated; we’re just making use of their license.)

Aside from the prizes, I’ll be thrilled to have the chance to promote your best work here on CDM, and the winner will become a demo song available via Renoise and on the Indamixx Linux-powered USB flash drive and pre-configured netbooks. (The USB stick means that if you already have a netbook, you can get a stable, pre-configured Linux rig on your existing machine.)

Above: The grand prize, the Indamixx Netbook. I’ve just gotten one in the mail from Indamixx to try, and I’m already hooked on the thing. Based on the MSI Wind, the rig is pre-configured with Linux software, set up in advance for you, with energy XT, Renoise, and ArdourXchange for converting sessions from software like Pro Tools – plus lots of free and open source software, of course. Win the contest, and you get one of your own – and your track will ship as the Renoise demo on this laptop and on the Renoise site.

How to enter:

Here’s how the competition will work:

1. You’ll make your track in Renoise, saving as an .xrns file. (Don’t want to start from scratch? Renoise imports MIDI files and many tracker formats, so you could, for instance, bang out some beats on your PSP using LittleGPTracker, then finish up in Renoise.) You can use any samples you like, but make sure they’re your own recordings or samples you’ve cleared for this purpose, and that you properly attribute them.

2. Make sure your track will play on a netbook – so go easy. For reference, here’s a file used for benchmarking systems. Figure that your track should have a similar task on your CPU.

CPUBenchmark21.xrns (nothing special musically – for testing only!)

3. Post your music somewhere (audio + xrns) – put it on your blog, use drop.io, sign up for CDM’s own in-development blog platform noisepages.com, or whatever you like. If you put the sound somewhere like SoundCloud, of course, you get an instantly-embeddable player.

4. Be sure to apply a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license. I’ll be doing the same with CDM’s tutorials and such. This leaves others free to share your work and to remix it, while ensuring they can only do so if they attribute you properly and if their work is just as free to share. (It does not preclude you from selling it later on, either.) See the details of the license, then sign up.

About the license

License your work 

Choose “yes” for commercial uses – because any commercial use must still share alike, which discourages commercial abuse. Select “yes, as long as others share alike” for modifications. Choose “unported” for jurisdiction. And make use of the other fields to attach metadata to your work.You should get a CC-BY-SA license as a result, which allows maximum flexibility for your work while protecting you from people exploiting your work without also sharing the results.

5. Tell us about it! Point CDM, Indamixx, Renoise, and the contest judges to your track by signing up here:

Contest entry form [Google Docs]

6. Judging will evaluate whether tracks are relatively CPU efficient xrns files, but – most importantly – are original, terrific music. There will be categories judged by producer/remix artist/DJ Ron Stewart of Indamixx and Peter Kirn of CDM, and a user’s choice judged by you via public voting.

Prizes:

An Indamixx Netbook MK II SE, to the Indamixx choice

A registered version of Renoise, to the CDM choice

4 Indamixx USB stick versions, to the user choices

DEADLINE:

October 15

We’ll have updates through the competition.

Stay tuned for more tips and tutorials on Renoise and Linux audio alike, plus a look at the Indamixx Linux-powered netbook rig (I’ve just gotten one for testing – it’s deliciously compact).

Questions? Thoughts? Shout out in comments below.