Back before the iPad (perhaps deservedly) hogged the spotlight, there were interactive tables. And one of the selling points of these new interfaces was collaborative play. Unlike the solo experience of using a computer, you’d gather around a display surface – just as you would a dining room table – and share the device. You’d play together.

The iPad is much smaller, but in a way, that lends a certain charm, cramming hands around its little surface. (Anyone play Hungry, Hungry Hippos?)

Tapping fingers on that shared surface, you have an experience that, while perhaps less finely-tuned than using the iPad one-on-one, you actually get to have with other human beings

And so that reason alone gives Rockmate special mention. I hear mainstream journalists ask questions like “is this the way people will play music in the future?” That’s, of course, roughly as intelligent as someone looking at Pong and saying, “well, I guess that about does it for Wimbledon, huh?” But it’s the awkwardness of playing a virtual band that makes this look like fun, like something families and friends might use. It could also be fun to play after a little too much NAMM. And the developers have lavished functionality on it (see specs below). They’ve also got an intro price of $1, or about one quarter per person. Have at it. I think it looks like brilliant fun.

It’s a set of sampled instrument for four players on a single device, with:

Realtime looper
Smart metronome
Mixer with level and pan controls
Realtime Fx (distortion, multiFX, powerchord)
Chords progression customizable
Create your own chords
Save your styles (Chords progression, FX, Drum, keyboard style…)
Export: .wav or .aac
Sharing: iTunes sharing folder and Email.
Airplay

The chord feature brings back fond memories of home organs for me. From the developers of the excellent DM1 drum machine.

On iTunes:

Rockmate @ iTunes Music Store

Official site: http://www.fingerlab.net/website/Fingerlab/Rockmate.html

Does the world really need another DAW / music production tool?

That thought has to at least echo a couple of times in the back of your mind as you see a new attempt to provide all-in-one computer music making tools. But there are reasons to pay attention to Ohm Studio, aside from the fact that the music making application comes from a fairly beloved plug-in developer. One is, the tool promises to approach real-time collaboration and community (or “cohmunity,” as they say) from the ground up. It’s a desktop app for the cloud. That may or may not be of interest to you, but it at least provides differentiation.

Two, this week we get to find out that the UI looks quite gorgeous.

Cid Andrade of Ohm Force writes CDM with three screenshots of the new interface for the upcoming beta builds. (Previously, we had seen only alpha UIs.) It looks clean and clear; there are strong similarities to GarageBand (which in turn borrowed functionally from Acid), but with some twists. There are quick-access edit tools, freely-routable plug-ins, and lots of integrated tools for collaboration.

Cid walks CDM through what’s in the beta interface and how it works; see the callouts in the image below. (Thanks, Skitch!)

Cid explains:

1 – Sequencing Panel’s “Macro Viewer”: gives an overview of the whole sequence. The movable focus-square has two functions: it allows the user to navigate within the macro viewer and easily locate and go to some region of the sequence, and also shows to all other session members which sequence region the user is working on. In this example, this focus-square is the one controlled by the user who’s actually seeing this screen. It’s over the current selected pattern. All other session members will also see this user’s focus-square, so they will know what he’s working on. There will be an efficient color code allowing a quick visualization of each session member’s focus-squares and current selections.

2 – In this example, the macro-viewer is displaying two focus-squares, what would mean that there are two members working simultaneously in this session. The user who’s actually seeing this screen also sees this second focus-square (the one belonging to the other member) and thanks to that can know where in the sequence he/she is working on. Still, in this example, one user may be editing some rhythmic parts in the sequence intro while the other one is starting to compose a bass line later in the timeline.

3 – This is the current selection of the user who’s seeing this screen. The other members can see a colored pattern in one of the focus-squares that the macro-viewer is displaying. By the color they’ll know which user is.

4 – These are the “power tools”. An user will be able to make all possible audio/MIDI edits using only these tools, as their function can be altered by pressing some keys (of course each edit action will have its respective keyboard shortcut so none will be obliged to use the mouse all the time).

5 – This is the Gear Panel, where the members of a session will place (and freely route) audio effects and virtual instruments (in addition of Ohm Studio’s own built-in effects, it will support VST and VSTI).

6 – The Gear Panel’s macro-viewer. Works similarly to the Sequencing Panel’s one, this time allowing an user to navigate within the Gear Panel (which is virtually infinite in area) to easily locate a specific region. It’s also useful to let each session member know on which Gear Panel’s region the other users are working on, and see/show each one’s current selections.

Thanks, Cid!

The beta is scheduled to start mid-December. There’s still time to sign up, says Cid, if you’re interested in testing.

http://www.ohmstudio.com/ask/for/beta

…and Ohm have plenty of other information about how they’re handling collaboration, community, and versioning, all essential when your project is shared by others:

http://www.ohmstudio.com/

Surprise! Plug-in developer Ohm Force, known for their plug-ins (like effects Ohm Boys and Frohmage), today tease an upcoming collaborative host. It looks like the sort of thing Apple could have done, but hasn’t. There’s a GarageBand-style MIDI and audio editing pane, plus semi-modular routing of plug-ins on a pretty, graphical surface that resembles the “cheese grater” perforated aluminum of a Mac tower, and pop-up window palettes that resemble those we’ve seen on the “flattened UI” of the iPad.

The real feature here, though, is collaborative editing in the “cloud”: sessions are uploaded to a server, which in turn keeps track of versioning. (Actually, it’s quite unclear how that works collaboratively – this means you can “undo” from one version to another, but I can’t tell whether collaborators can try different “forks,” or if it’s all one set of linear changes.) The changes are “real-time,” though usually the trick to allowing international collaboration over the Internet is to make things delayed enough that everyone stays in sync.

There’s also an accompanying Web community for connecting with collaborators. Everything else about the product, however – more features, pricing, and specifics of how it all fits together – is as yet unknown. Mac and Windows are both supported, though – something Apple would not have done, most likely.

It’s an interesting idea, one I think we’ll see more frequently as connected applications grow in popularity. Among other options, Ableton had promised something like this with Share and then fell off the radar. Image-Line had a collaborative tool called Collab for its FL Studio, then abandoned it. The most significant competition comes from tools like Indaba. Indaba’s edge: by being powered by Web tech, you can do all your editing right in the browser; serious users can then keep using their host of choice and just bounce out audio. But while Indaba has an offline editor, too, the addition of plug-ins in Ohm Studio is a big change.

I do wonder with all of this, though: are we consigned to collaboration existing only in proprietary, integrated app-website combinations? Isn’t the whole lesson of the Web about open standards and platform-agnostic communication? Having said that, what would a more open tool look like – and what do people really want to do? (For instance, I wonder how hard it’d be to build a system that allowed open chat and transport control, with standards-based versioning and sharing, using the open-source DAW Ardour? See the post I’m … about to write … for the OSC end of this.) On the other hand, is the kind of integration Ohm Studio is offering necessary to make it all work together? (That last question we should be able to answer once this is in our hands and ready to try.)

I don’t wish to pre-judge Ohm Studio – on the contrary, I think this is a provocative product teaser that immediately raises some of these fundamental questions. So bravo, Ohm, for starting that conversation; I can’t wait to see what you’ve cooked up. And anything that gets artists collaborating is potentially a very good thing.

In the meantime, readers, it seems the most important question falls to you. Do you even want to collaborate with other artists? What would an ideal system look like for doing so? What features would you want? How would you want to work? Is real-time important, or do you prefer some time to sit back and think about how elements combine? When you collaborate now, how do you go about it?

Updated: Your closest bet at the moment is NINJAM, which is integrated with Reaper – a host various folks are using already – or on its own. Using compressed audio streams and latency compensation, it allows the exchange of any audio, and it works on Windows and Mac. But it doesn’t exchange MIDI data. (The site refers vaguely to this happening some time in the future, but I’m unsure of their progress.) And it doesn’t have integration with the Web community, though as readers note, you may want to work with people you get to know a bit first, anyway. Thanks to “PooPoo the Korruptah!” for the tip. (Hmm, no way for me to say that and not sound silly.)

More importantly – anyone out there using it? Or is it just easier to send files back and forth?

http://ninjam.com/

It’s drumming, the multi-player game. The Drummer is an open-source application for the Nintendo DS handheld, developed by Andrea Bianchi and Woon Seung Yeo and presented alongside a paper earlier this year at the NIME Conference (The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression). As with any Nintendo homebrew software, you’ll need a special DS cartridge capable of loading software from flash memory – though if this app were developed more, it could make a terrific DSi app.

The idea is this: while making a handheld game system into an instrument, why not take advantage of its networking features? Grab a friend (or friends) with the Nintendo DS, whip up a drum kit that’s to your liking, then play along.

Oddly, while we live in a networked, Internet age, the client-server model rarely gets applied to music. One of the things I try to explain about the protocol OSC (OpenSoundControl), aside from the fact that it doesn’t have to be about sound, is that it’s really a collection of best practices in open networking communication. It’s not simply about connecting devices to one another in serial fashion, as with MIDI, but forming a network – an idea familiar to anyone who uses instant messaging online. True, latency considerations and other complications can add another dimension of challenge. But I think there’s plenty to explore when it comes to networking devices, and it promises to make computer music a less solitary experience. The Drummer is a good step in that direction.

The Drummer project page + NIME paper
Google Code page

Thanks to Andrea for sending this our way!

Ed.: Circuit bending too destructive for you? Don’t let that scare you away from this year’s Bent Festival, in NYC, LA, and Minneapolis. Key pioneering circuit benders like founding artist Reed Ghazala are quick to argue that bending is a creative, not a destructive act — though some more radical benders might disagree. You say creation, she says destruction — let’s call the whole thing off: this year, handmade instruments and art of all kinds are welcome, say conference organizers, who are…

… continuing to open the Bent Festival to performers and artists that create their own electronics as well as to those who hack, bend, modify and destroy them

Full details:

The Tank is currently accepting proposals for Bent 2008: The Fifth Annual Circuit Bending Festival:

Festival Dates:
Los Angeles Bent Festival – April 17th-19th, 2008.
New York Bent Festival – April 24th-26th, 2008.
Minneapolis Bent Festival – May 1st-3rd, 2008.

Proposals:
Proposal Deadline: February 5th, 2008
Participant Notification: February 15, 2008

This call is for all three festivals.

Proposals to each festival must be submitted separately.

In keeping with the expanding interests of the community, this year we are continuing to open the Bent Festival to performers and artists that create their own electronics as well as to those who hack, bend, modify and destroy them.

We are currently seeking performers and artists to participate at each of the above locations and are specifically looking for submissions in these categories:

Performers
Installation Artists
Artwork Submissions
Workshop Instructors

Please send all proposals and questions to the appropriate email address:

Minneapolis Bent Festival – bentmpls@thetanknyc.org
New York Bent Festival – bentnyc@thetanknyc.org
Los Angeles Bent Festival – bentla@thetanknyc.org

Proposals to each festival must be submitted separately.

PERFORMERS
Bent Festival seeks bands and/or solo artists who incorporate home built or circuit bent instruments or ideas in their performance.

To have your work considered: Please email a short description of your act, along with a link to mp3s and photos if you have them. (Please do not send attachments larger than 1MB).

INSTALLATION ARTISTS
Bent Festival is looking for installation artists who can commit at least 15 hours to creating site-specific pieces of art at each of the venues during the duration of the festival.

Each of the three venues (New York, Minneapolis and LA) are quite different but our goal is to have artists creating work for each of them. Installation artists will be provided with
space, materials, electronic equipment and tools as we are able.

To have your work considered: Please submit via email a one-page proposal of your installation idea along with examples of your past work. Please be prepared to commit to spending time in the installation space during the festival and be prepared for a shared and at times hectic work environment. No white walls here!

ARTWORK SUBMISSIONS
In addition to installation artists, we would like to have featured art work that fits with the spirit of the festival from people who might not be able to join us in person or who cannot
commit to working in the space during the duration of the festival.

To have your work considered: Please submit via email digital images or links of your work and a brief description.

WORKSHOP INSTRUCTORS
Bent Festival is seeking workshop instructors to present on various topics. Topics in previous years have included: General circuit bending workshops for beginners and extremely technical, hands on workshops on a particular aspect or niche of the genre.

To have your work considered: Please describe the subject you would like to lead a workshop on and provide a one-page description of that workshop, in addition include links or examples of your current and past work in the field.

COMPENSATION
Stipends for all festival performers, artists, and workshop leaders will be provided. We have a limited number of travel grants available as well. Please contact for more information.

CONTACT INFO

Each festival has its own submission email address, so please apply accordingly. To apply to multiple festivals, you must send your submission to each email address separately.

Minneapolis Bent Festival – bentmpls@thetanknyc.org
New York Bent Festival – bentnyc@thetanknyc.org
Los Angeles Bent Festival – bentla@thetanknyc.org

Yeah, I guess once you have a Roland Handsonic and M-Audio Trigger Finger you don’t really need drums, huh? Your neighbors / roommate / significant other / Mom are going to clip that sentence out and paste it to your studio door.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t point to the story this comes from: author Spencer Critchley, via the good folks at O’Reilly Digital Media, takes on eSession. It’s a Web-based, collaborative recording system, and this has to be the most extensive feature ever written about it:

The eSession Experience: Online Recording for All

Updated: In case you don’t read comments, we’re getting like an interactive caption going. Brian T writes:

The picture? I think you picked on the wrong guy there… that’s Pat Mastelotto, drummer with Mr. Mister, XTC, King Crimson, and a lot of sessions and electronic projects e.g. mastica, TU, Centrozoon. Just about the best mixer of acoustic and electronic drums (& sequencers) around today.

It’s, uh, not actually the brilliant Pat Mastelotto I’m picking on, it’s the incongruous MIDI gear amongst that giant drum setup. To make matters worse, David notes it looks like he’s giving the finger to the M-Audio. M-Audio, apologies.