If you’re using Ableton Live 8, you’ve hopefully already discovered the joys of Track Groups. Track grouping is a welcome feature in any DAW, but in Live, the mixer-centric Session View can easily get unruly with endless columns of vertical tracks.

I wanted to share some discoveries about Track Groups, including what I thought was a big realization about how they worked with clips that turned out not to be as exciting as I thought.

To group tracks, select multiple tracks first (click one, then shift-click the last one), right-click (ctrl-click on Mac), and choose Group Tracks. The result – what’s basically a submix:

• You can save space by collapsing tracks in your view, clicking the triangle at the top of the Group
• You can add insert effects to the whole Group, and signal will be routed through that entire chain (making them like a quick send)
• You can control the whole “submix” Group at once using the Group’s mixer parameters

No surprise there. Here’s the surprise.

Indaba Music, a community and suite of online tools for musicians, announced today they’ve revamped their online recording and production tool using Java and JavaFX. The result: a platform-agnostic, online interface that allows you to record music “directly to the Internet.” And the band Weezer is excited enough about it that they’re giving their official endorsement.

Indaba, along with some others, already had an online music production tool. The new version expands on that idea, allowing you to record audio signal directly online, and beefing up tools for mixing, editing, and looping. Just like tools like GarageBand, a pre-built set of loops is ready for people to quickly mock up songs.

With some help from Sun’s JavaFX technology, the browser/desktop barrier isn’t as noticeable. You get a graphical-looking interface that works the same anywhere, plus the ability to drag audio files to and from your desktop.

indabamusic.com

javafx.com

Interestingly, Weezer’s endorsement focuses on the fact that they don’t know how to use other music software. I have to admit some skepticism here – a lot of musicians I think are savvy enough to get to use creative new music software, and a lot of the basic functions of the Indaba software itself are straight out of tools like ACID and GarageBand. Nor do you have to worry about any JavaFX tool blowing away your REAPER, Logic, Live, Pro Tools… well, you know.

On the other hand, while this is basically just an ACID-style audio production station in the browser, I’m curious about what new applications might take advantage of in-browser collaboration that don’t look like existing audio tools. Maybe we’ll have specialized tools for working out specific ideas or sharing snippets in-progress. And there’s no question that building some tools in the browser makes sharing more immediate.

I’ll be talking to the Indaba folks and the JavaFX team a little bit about the technology, and with Sun in particular I’ll be sure to ask about some of the future potential here for other tools. If you have questions, let me know.

Welcome to the alt-DAW scene. Last week, not only did Renoise continue its rebirth of the forgotten “tracker” genre of music making software with ReWire support, but we saw a big new version of REAPER, the beloved lightweight audio production tool from the original creator of Winamp.

What makes an “alt DAW”, or “indie” production software? To me, it’s:

• small development teams of a few people
• tightly-integrated communities directly involved in feature requests
• trusting users instead of adding significant DRM, returning to the traditional “shareware” business model of old
• affordable pricing

That’s not to take away from some of the bigger players – I was struck this week with the (unsurprising) ubiquity of Ableton Live at MUTEK; it’s a real testament to what they have accomplished. But choice is essential, and looking at the history of music technology, it’s in the periods of real choice that the most interesting things have happened. It makes everything better when developers really have to compete.

Cockos REAPER has spread almost virally as an underground DAW, partly because you can download the thing and get started with without any restrictions, then buy it for as little as US$60 for personal use.

http://www.reaper.fm/index.php

It’s not just for Windows people any more, either – the Mac version is now officially supported. You can run on Windows 7 or Windows 2000 or even 98 (with limited support). You can run on 10.4 Macs, or even PowerPC (though Intel is recommended). You can even run on Linux with official WINE support, though I’d still like to see a native Linux version, especially as Linux on netbooks is getting so lovely.

Version 3.0 came out this week. There are a huge number of improvements:

This is going to get confusing, isn’t it, with a product name like “Record”? (A “Record Tutorial”? A “Record Video”? Maybe it’s just me…)

Anyway, if you’re hooked up with the Record beta and looking to get started, Propellerhead have posted a video tutorial to get you going, with more planned. There’s also a new Record blog:

Record Blog

There’s an update on the state of beta testing, and you’ll find some notes from Props CEO/founder Ernst on why they’re creating Record:

When we designed Record we went back to our original roots, the drive that made us create Reason a long time ago. In 1998, when the Reason design came to life, there were already incredible synthesizers. You could already make music with your computer. There was immense power in the solutions that existed.

Now, I’m sure that won’t calm down any of you who won’t use Record because it has a dongle, or because it lacks MIDI output for talking to your hardware synths. But, then, that’s why we have more than one tool from which to choose in music technology, both commercial and open source.

For instance, since I know there’s a rabid Reaper community out there, I’m happy to see these two apps face off in an audio software slam.

Just to be contrary, I’m going to tag this post “DAWs,” because even if Record isn’t a DAW, I think it clearly can be an alternative to DAWs as a “piece of software that allows you to record and make music.” Really, while there’s no convenient acronym for that, that’s the whole point of all this software, right? (Then again, that’s all the more reason not to call anything a “DAW,” because “workstation” is a meaningless word that has little to do with actually using computers to make music.)

And, sure, if I had it to do over again, I might simply call this blog “Create Music.” Or “Music.” Or just “ate.”

Cakewalk today did something quite unorthodox for the company: it launched a product on Facebook.

The results are what clearly aim to be a GarageBand killer for Windows users. Music Creator had always, quietly, been a big hit for Cakewalk: it’s cheap, entry-level software for the PC, which has the potential to reach a big audience of computer users. But the software itself was nothing to brag about, with a dated-looking interface.

Music Creator 5 looks stunningly different. The arrangement window has the familiar, GarageBand and ACID-style loop arrangement window. But there are additions you might expect in a bigger DAW: quick in-line access to track parameters, video preview frames at the top, elaborate time displays and editing tools. There’s also a sophisticated-looking mixing mode with graphical EQs and other options.