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: