This is a profound comment on so many levels. I’ll let it speak for itself:

Yes, you can contact with me. But, if you would want that I played on your party on cassettes, then I refuse. I do not play on cassettes any more. In general, I don’t want play in the club, because people come there to drink and to search partner for copulate. This is bad.

- Artjom, Russian DJ and alternative interface researcher, commenting on Homemade Cassette Tape DJ Mixers + Max/MSP PC

We feel you, Artjom. T-shirt designs will be accepted.

Editorial note: One of the problems with the Internet is that you can’t detect tone. So let me be clear, any would-be kill-joys: I like this quote because it, haiku-like, sums up the world of music. And it mentions cassettes. What’s not to love? Jeez.

We asked to hear from some actual studios targeted by plug-in maker Waves’ anti-piracy police (aka “banpiracy.com”). Here’s one report from Nick Buxton, via comments:

I haven’t read all the comments but wanted to add our experience; all our recording software is legal, we use uad plugs but wanted to see how waves worked; couldn’t get a demo version, so tried out a “copy” on personal projects; decided what we already had was better so decided not to buy; but didn’t erase the “copy”; stupid; now maybe we were denounced, although since we didn’t use it on any commercial projects, this is not likely; whoever is behind this, got a court order by claiming that we advertised wavelab on our website, which was true, and that wavelab belonged to Waves, which is not; result, visit from a court officer, examination of our computer, legal proceedings; now we could fight this; false information for a court order, no proof we used the software, we are a tiny company; etc etc… but this costs legal fees, time, stress; so we are considering taking up the offered “solution”, ie buy the plugs, probably have to pay some legal fees, but end of story; i am making no excuses; we were wrong; but this does not seem to me the best way to sell your product

Peter has disappeared for a well-deserved break. I can’t replace him. I can’t even see myself getting to the place from which I could see the path which would allow me to tell you something about music or audio which he hasn’t already covered at length and in depth. However, I can tell you plenty about the inner workings of the CDM sites. So I’d like to give you a bit of an update on where the site has been going, ask for your feedback on how you use the site, what you’d like to see from us in the future, and pave the way for Peter to talk about some cool new stuff we’ve been working on when he returns.

According to our Basecamp account it has been exactly 1 year since we first started working on the CDM redesign. You remember how CDM used to be don’t you? Internet Explorer users having to scroll down 2 pages before reaching the first content item? Great times! According to our stats only 41% of CDM readers are on IE. You know that it works in IE now, right? You can change back if you really want to…

Around 90% of our visitors are from the USA, followed by the UK, EU, Australia, Canada and Netherlands. Our biggest search terms include “garageband for windows”, “create digital music”, “ipod mixer”, “pro tools”, and “ableton”. This, and the CDM comments feed leads me to believe that this site’s biggest readers are savvy, bleeding edge digital tech gurus and base level newbies who have just learned to type, decided to call themselves DJ SHINY and hunt down an iDJ.

We’re more or less continually working on the site (ok, so we take a break occasionally to laugh at press releases from phone ringtone companies), but occasionally we get really excited and decide to do something big and cool. Last time that resulted in CreateDigitalMotion, which I’m rather proud of. More recently we’ve been working on some new features we hope you’ll like, but that was put together without any consultation from you, dearest reader, you might hate it. So I’d like to get a little feedback on what you’d like to see from the site. How do you use it? What would make coming here a more pleasant experience for you? Which bits of the site do you use/not use. Do you use RSS? Are you happy with Feedburner? Do you have trouble finding information outside of the blog chronology?

Our readers are smarter than your readers. And, erm, this writer, sometimes.

Keyboard Magazine, 1985: Recalling music tech from back in the day.

I remember that issue. Was surprised to notice that it’s now 21 years old. Crap. *I’m* old. Those were coolest issues with the SoundPages, the little flexible tear-out 45’s. Heh, I think that was the year I got my first synth, an SH-101 with the pitch bend neck and guitar strap (still have it). Good times, good times. -Eric

Graphics, Schmaphics: It’s about the experience, right, Nintendo? (Especially when you can’t see and have to play by ear, literally.)

… What is kind of cool about the game is that the screen is all but useless after the first couple of obstacles, because they get dimmer and dimmer visibly. -Anonymous GBA Soundvoyager reviewer

When Fish and Gadgets Collide: The experimental design-art Koibeat pictured at top is just far cooler than a KAOSS Pad; sorry, Korg. Fred has seen experimental Japanese automats in performance:

… Very strange group and difficult to describe, but really a must-see if you like automats, absurd situations, japanese pop music and humour. -Fred/Lanquarem

And in other news, readers discuss hands-on experimence with the NuLOOQ controller from Logitech (and one of the reps from the company will evidently pass the idea on to the engineers), and help troubleshoot ReWire and Logic.

Quote of the week: Rosling’s advice for turning voice over IP to your evil Dalek purposes (with Soundflower, once we get it working):

Scare your friends and family by throwing a ring modulator->delay on your voice mid-Skype.

Posts this week stirred some controversy and discussion from big issues to small:

“The OLPC program is not perfect, but at least they’re trying something. It’s open and there is a great deal of room for the individual countries and regions to adapt them to their needs.”
-David Wagenbach in a heated debate on the value of adding music software to the One Laptop Per Child initiative, aimed at China, Brasil, Thailand, Argentina, and (possibly) even the US and Canada

“Akai got one big thing right with the MPD16: getting there first. They were way ahead of all these other contenders … the MPD16 was introduced 4 years ago at summer NAMM 2002, and with the MPD24 they’re now on their second generation when everyone else is at most 16 months into their first … No question, the MPD16 had its faults. But for a long time it was the only option for a compact pad controller. I learned to love it, warts and all, because even with its limitations it was better than using a keyboard controller for drum programming.”
-Mies van der Robot on Akai drum pads, new and old.

“I asked Jamie [Lidell] about his Max patch a while back, being a nosey bugger. He said he made it about 4 years ago and hasn’t really changed it much since. He said it is very, very simple and most people assume it is much more complex than it is; it was about the second thing he ever made. He also said that he had talked to the people from Cycling ['74] about it … and they were more than a little suprised at the brutality and wonkiness of it.”
-Angstrom, having discovered that Max/MSP doesn’t have to be a pit you get lost in trying to create something fancy, whatever our readers might think

“… I find it refreshing to even see/hear anyone discussing the basic question of being creative. We live in a time where the tools for creating are very powerful, but as humans we are bound to the level of understanding that we are comfortable with. The individuals that are driven to reach the edges and be really creative have always been a small percentage … Personally I would prefer to be motivated by inspiration than tragedy (having experienced both).”
-Hawk, talking about more than just Max/MSP

“When we strip away politics and the hostilities of religion (or abuses of religion), we find we have way more in common than we might otherwise suppose.”
-Damon, hoping, as I expect we all do, for times with more music and more peace

For those of you not in the know, you can keep up with the flow of comments on CDM and messages on the CDM forums via RSS feed. (If you’re like me, you’re loving the new beta of Google Reader, which makes reading feeds a whole lot easier.)

Create Digital Music comments
CDM Forum posts (Create Digital Music / Create Digital Motion combined)

To follow the feed of a post you’ve replied to, you’ll find an RSS feed inside comments, too, but it’s usually more convenient just to follow all the comments since they’re relatively low volume.

As always, if you have any trouble with these features or suggestions, we want to hear them, preferably on the feedback forum.

Being behind the scenes on a website is great fun when everything is working. Site admins can have an overview of everything going on: Instantly seeing new comments, forum threads, incoming links, spam forum signups and reader feedback gives a faint feeling of superiority which is just delicious.

With CDM2.0 we’ve tried to bring some of that flavour to you, the punter. We’re not letting you into the site stats or referrals just yet, but we do have RSS feeds for all posts, comments and forum messages. If you haven’t been watching those recently or aren’t into RSS yet (you should be, here’s an article, CDM can be your first subscriptions) I’ve got a couple of recent hilights for you.

Comments on CDM tend to be well thought out, polite and enlightening, which makes the occasional misguided unintelligent gibbering even more for us. Unfortunately these tend to turn up most often on older posts:

Thereminy Game Scores: Destroy All Humans!: A mister Poopinator had this to say: “this is the dumbest game ever invented! who the crap would ever want to play this piece of frog diarhea!! you guys are queer.”
Peter: I loved that “you all are queer” comment. Couldn’t find it in my heart to delete THAT, it was classic!

Analysis: Prototype Numark iPod DJ Mixer attracted some “passionate” (Peter’s description) comments when new, but it’s continued to give over time. DJ Chrome’s comment was even more beautiful coming as it did after the iDJ2 announcement: “i RECENTLY BOUGHT THIS MIXER AND ITS A BIG DIFRENCE FROM CD MIXING…..NO DOUBT IT WILL NEVER BE CLOSE TO A VINYL DJ BUT ITS SO MUCH EASY THEN LOOKING FOR CD OR LOOKING LIKE A COMPUTER GEEK WITH A LAPTOP. AND THE BEST THING IS YOU GOT SO MUCH MUSIC IN THE PALM OF YOUR HANDS AS TO A CRAP LOAD A CDS IN CASES!”

Of course it’s not all caps and monkeys, the forum has slowed down a little but we’ve currently got CDMers on Myspace, Python + Midi, syncing video with a live band and a new electronic musician asking for live performance tips.

Can’t wait to hear from you.