As the company turns 10, Ableton has introduced a set of discounts and giveaways, the most notable of which is a new entry-level edition of Live. Live Intro smooths out a lot of the wrinkles between different starter versions of Live, from LE to hardware bundles. At $99, “Intro” finally gets a logical feature set:

• Full ReWire support, both as host and client (or “Slave” and “Master,” if you want to be all kinky about it)
• Full MIDI support, including remote control, output, MIDI clock (though none of the nifty “external device” support for outboard gear)
• Warping and time stretching, minus the “Complex” and “Complex Pro” modes
• 4 VST/AU instruments, 4 VST/AU effects per project
• Missing Vocoder, Looper, Multiband Dynamics, Overdrive, Frequency Shifter – but you do get SImpler and Impulse
• 2 in, 2 out audio, though you can have up to 64 tracks and unlimited MIDI tracks
• No track grouping
• Full WAV, AIFF, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC support
• New extras: 7 GB of audio content in the boxed version, 1 GB in the download version

Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Who need them? The entire month of December seems to be on sale when it comes to music tech.

Christmas (and Hanukkah, for that matter) are nearly here. Whether it’s economic pressure or just some aggressive holiday pricing, there are some big deals out there that could make excellent gifts – or might just give you a nice list for shopping for yourself before or after the holidays. (Yes, it’s true: most of what readers suggested in our “gift guide” for the CDM Winter 08 special wasn’t really all that practical. But it does make a nice list of things you love.)

Here’s some of what’s on our radar screen:

Software: it looks bland. It often sounds the same. Then there are the gems, like Ohm Force’s incredibly tasty line of plug-ins. Their delay plug-in Ohmboyz really isn’t over-hyped when they call it “the best delay money can afford,” as it’s almost frighteningly deep, with wild special effects and dirty-sounding vintage-style possibilities.

And those wacky interfaces aren’t incidental, either. Dave Cronin of San Francisco design firm/consultants Cooper just posted a great blog entry on “whimsical interaction design.” He says he’s been pondering whimsy in design, pointing to the playful music app Bloom, but also humor by industrial designers Droog, wacky Google cartoons, and, yes, Ohm:

In many cases, it seems that playfulness in interface design is not just for laughs but also help users tap into a different part of themselves than the strictly rational mind. OhmForce, a bunch of slightly crazed French audio software whizzes provide “funky” skins for their products that feel designed to help users think a bit more like Lee Scratch Perry, and little less like Bill Gates.

OhmBoyz does so much, indeed, that you might need to tap a bit of that irrational part of your mind just to use it successfully. Oliver has a great screencast for wire to the ear.

Ohm Force OhmBoyz from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

And that’s just one of many wonderful Ohm creations. If you want to invest in some new Ohm goodness, ProToolerBlog is doing a group buy. The idea is, the more customers commit to buying, the more the price goes down. The discount is up to 35% off already and should hit as much as 50%. (In fact, sign up now and you automatically get that 50%; see comments.) Details and specifics here. Let us know if you’re feeling the Ohm love, and if there are any others you’d want to see in a screencast. (how about “synth grain” plug Symptohm?)

Strange Ohm group buy interactive widget thing, showing discount

What it is, how it works, which plug-ins you can choose and other details

Ohm Force Site (get ready for lots of wacky Flash; sorry)

If you haven’t spent every last penny you own on the latest playourwiibox, your strength hasn’t been taken away from coma-inducing leftovers and you’re in the mood for some jaw-dropping music tech bargains, well just read on dear CDMers because we have the best sales to help you start your new year of music-making off right.

I’m excited to be hosting a new event at Macworld Expo called the Music and Technology Symposium. It’s a day-long intensive event during which top Mac musicians will share their creative secrets and talk about all areas and all levels of music production. The confirmed lineup includes a broad range of people, from producer COUNT (DJ Shadow, Radiohead, Halou) to guitarist Joe Gore (Tom Waits, PJ Harvey), producer/composer Walt Szalva of Planet-3 Studios (Neil Young, Paul McCartney), and musician, circuit bender, and writer Chachi Jones (Robotspeak, TapeOp). We’ll cover the basics of setting up music production techniques that work, for beginners and advanced users alike, and also talk about musical issues and how to unstop your creative process and work in a way that’s personally satisfying. Most of the panel (myself included) write about technology as well as use it in our music, and the day will be filled with demos and mini-performances. (Yes, I am on vacation, but this was too important not to share … more on the artists soon, as it’s getting to be an interesting lineup!)

The event runs all day (9-4) Friday, January 12, 2007 at Macworld in San Francisco:

Musicians and Technology Market Symposium [Macworld Conference & Expo Site]
Registration Details (Use code D-CDM; details below)

If you’re in the San Francisco area or thinking about Macworld, we have a special discount which you can apply to the symposium a la carte or to a whole exposition registration (several of which also include the music symposium). In addition to the symposium, Berklee College of Music and MusicPlayer network (Keyboard, GuitarPlayer, EQ, and so on) will be staging workshops on the show floor, I’ll be chatting about my book at the Peachpit Press booth and presenting a workshop on interactive visuals, and there will be the usual workshops on Logic, GarageBand, and more. It should be a fantastic show for musicians.

You do need to register soon, though, to take advantage of the discount: