For the lover of musical instruments and technology, southern California’s NAMM show is a giant toy shop. It’s work for many of its attendees, of course, but we know many of our readers dream of the objects that will make their next creations. And sure, inspiring lust is not our aim; on the contrary, there is some love that goes into these things. In the ideal, that’s the relationship of creator and consumer. These are things not to be bought and discarded, but kept and really used.

So, we have a different look at the NAMM show, through the lens of CDM contributor Marsha Vdovin, who has been at this show more times than she might like to count. I’ve added some comments about what these devices are and why they’re important. And the next time we see them, these inventions pictured in silence here, we expect them to be working hard on music far from the din and flourescent glare of the trade show floor.

As always, click for larger images. Photos by Marsha Vdovin; words by Peter Kirn:

Roland’s V-Guitar marks a surprising collaboration, bringing the famed American guitar maker Fender together with the Japanese electronic maker to make an “electronic guitar,” merging the two company’s tech on a digitally-augmented Stratocaster. More on this soon – but the extended playing techniques won over many guitarists.

The Danish design aesthetes of AIAIAI have improved upon their TMA-1 headphones with a studio model. Same drivers, same basic design, but a “flatter” response to sound (rather than beefed-up, DJ-ready bass) and closed ear design. It’s impossible to hear anything at NAMM, but I can attest that the new design is far, far more comfy to wear. Actually, if I could have kept these on the whole show to drown out the sound, it would have been great.

An easy place to spot a talented celebrity was at the Dave Smith Instruments booth, at which artists clustered around Dave and Roger Linn. They were on-hand with plenty of tweaks to their stellar Tempest drum machine.

Teenage Engineering’s OP-1 grew up, with new features (drum sounds! MIDI sync – at last), and grew out, with a companion product for connecting sensors and USB host mode that could be a boutique item for music DIYers. We’ll go hands-on with each this year, and while readers were disappointed on a lack of some details (will the OpLab be open source?), we expect to get more details from the Teenagers when the product is ready in the coming months.

Readers of tech blogs (ahem) may miss out on the fact that the vast majority of NAMM is really for guitarists, drummers, and traditional instrumentalists. And yes, that includes glittery, pink products from Daisy Rock Guitars. We’ve concluded this model will be perfect for Sparkle Pony. (And really, if you’re not watching Portlandia to get that reference, get on it. Also, Jenny Conlee is crazy awesome.)

Thin, responsive, and expressive, the QuNeo from Keith McMillen – funded on Kickstarter – proves it’s really happening. With continuous pressure response on its touch controls and bi-directional control, it could be the most anyone will ever have gotten from a US$200 controller. Yes, we’ll be watching.

Pioneer wasn’t showing anything new at this show — they timed those launches over the fall with new controllers like the Ergo. But they did have a glossly all-white lacquer set of limited-edition devices that looked absurdly gorgeous. Now if I want to do my flat over in the style of a Stanley Kubrick set, I know what DJ gear I’ll be buying. (If you don’t know what I mean, watch the end of 2001 again – or the living room in Tron: Legacy, which is more or less a copy.) White is the new generic-dull-charcoal.

Akai’s MPC Renaissance is unlike any other mass-market controller we’ve seen. It’s actually substantial, something that feels like a vintage MPC even though it’s designed to work with software (pictured). The audio circuitry is straight out of the modern MPC, but there’s a switch for “vintage” modes – think 12-bit output when the MPC60 is enabled, for instance. Akai told CDM they built the software in-house, but we also learned at NAMM that they licensed time-stretch tech from iZotope, giving their upcoming MPC software generous audio-manipulation abilities.

The Renaissance will cost you, with a street expected well over a grand, but that makes it even more welcome that the same superb pads and response curves are also on the maker’s MAX49 keyboard and cheaper MPC Model.

Just expect to wait: these were prototypes, and there were still some bugs to work out.

The Renaissance is for the MPC die-hard; the MPC Studio is the model that will directly take on Native Instruments and Maschine. It’s slim, sleek, and still has great-feeling controls. And while that makes it compelling competition for Maschine, I’m gratified to see this whole market expanding, new workflows for performance and production, and a push to better quality in the controllers. The days when computer gear meant “cheap and plastic-y” are mercifully at an end. Speaking of which –

Akai’s MAX49 keyboard could be a new model to beat. The keyboard action is satisfyingly springy, with a new keybed not seen in previous models. The pads are identical to those on the Renaissance, and feel more the way proper MPC pads should. Not everyone will love the light-up, touch-sensitive resistive faders, but I found with a bit of pressure, they worked well – and that means never having to worry about a fader catching up with the value in software. You also get serious features: Control Voltage, a full complement of MIDI ports, and aftertouch. Did I mention Control Voltage? It’s nice to see a controller keyboard with a slightly premium price, build, and features.

The last surprise from Akai was this MPC DJ. The company says it’s a prototype only, and had little more to say about it, but it’s fascinating to see the MPC and turntable controls converge.

Moog’s Minitaur was my favorite synth of the show. It just sounds consistently brilliant, no matter which way you turn it or play it – and I accordingly noticed it was the synth the most people were actually playing on the show floor.

This is what a 24-karet KORG MonoTribe looks like, alongside a silver-plated model. There’s little more one can say. It is, of course, one of a kind — and already spoken for.

The other thing of beauty at the KORG booth: a limited-edition reverse-key SV-1 keyboard.

iOS accessories were numerous, but a few were genuinely useful. IK Multimedia’s iRig Mic “Cast,” for instance, is coupled with handy software for podcasters, as a quick tool for interviewing or podcast recording.

It’s not a new product, but one of the reviews to which I’m most looking forward is this Eers product. It promises custom in-ears you make yourself, rather than the enormous cost of getting them custom-made. Stay tuned on this one – protecting your hearing and making on-stage gigs go well is perhaps as essential as gear can get.

The just-intonation Hymnatron from the Dewanatron crew was one of the most compositionally-compelling instruments at the show, with a unique sound, tuning, and key layout. And it looks mighty handsome in this one-off wooden case.

LiveWire’s modular was among the many dreamy modular rigs at Big City Music and Analog Haven, two Los Angeles hotspots for analog modulars. Did we mention space was more plentiful and inexpensive, and gigs more generous, in LA than in NYC, Chicago, or San Francisco? Funny coincidence, that.

Many modules graced this show, but the most intriguing was not analog, but digital – think digital algorithms in an analog, patch-cord-modular hardware workflow. Tom Erbe, maker of long-beloved SoundHack (the app, and then more recently the plug-ins) put some of his sonic wizardry into a module, collaborating with one of our favorite modular builders, MakeNoise. The result: the MakeNoise Echofon. As such, it’s a perfect emblem of our Create Digital Music, Create Analog Music philosophy. Dear Berlin friends: let’s plug this into your monster modulars, okay?

Big City Music is a wonderful place. The other candidate for best new module: brilliant creations by Metasonix, as previewed here. We’ll be watching for these to be patch-able, too.

Casio had its classic CZ-1000 synth on-hand at its booth. The Casio XW isn’t quite a successor to the CZ, though it does include some of those waveforms and phase distortion sounds. What it does appear to be is a very affordable, do-just-about-everything workstation at a fraction of the price of any of its rivals. For someone who wants a jack-of-all-trades gigging keyboard, this could very much be a contender.

Our friends at Beatport are evidently getting into the hardware business. The most interesting launch wasn’t a set of TMA headphones with Slimer-green cords (I’ll take the Studio model, thanks, or just a non-Danish set of studio cans). Instead, I was intrigued by the eminently-practical line of gigging cords Beatport is working on with Hosa. They include features live digital musicians and DJs badly need, like color-coded cords you can find easily at a show, and hinged USB cords you can cram into tight spaces. More on those soon.

Thanks, all. Lastly, I want to thank everyone I got to spend time with at the NAMM show, and particularly Marsha Vdovin, who is responsible for these photos and keeping our schedule together. NAMM is always too crowded and too short, but it can lay groundwork for a whole year. And I’m excited for this Year of the Dragon. Be seeing you.

For the rest of our NAMM coverage:
http://createdigitalmusic.com/tag/namm/

Photos by Marsha Vdovin / Words by Peter Kirn.

What should DJing software look like, anyway?

It’s just a teaser, but for once, the idea is simple, straightforward, and clear. Native Instruments have taken their DJ software, Traktor, and combined it with a grid of pads for sample triggering and loops. The upcoming hardware/software combination we expect later this spring.

At the risk of stating the obvious, what’s significant about adding loop triggering to any DJ set is that you can more easily move beyond playing and mixing tracks. Even without drum machines, this kind of manipulation is part of the grand tradition of DJing, made all the more impressive when ground-breaking DJs were able to accomplish it using only a turntables. (It’s perhaps a triumph over the linearity of recorded music in the 20th Century that, at last, artists found a way to subvert recorded music’s permanently-frozen state and reclaim the playback device as an instrument.)

What the upcoming product does is to take the virtual deck metaphor of Traktor and makes each deck a sampling machine. Each deck can trigger one-shots and loops, coupled with the mixing, cueing, and effects possibilities of Traktor as a DJ tool.

The obvious comparison will be to Ableton Live, but here, it’s as significant what is different as what is not. This wording from NI’s description will admittedly sound a lot like Ableton Live and colored renditions of the monome: “Stylish multi-color pads trigger loops and samples, allowing for on-the-fly remixing.” There’s definitely some influence there.

But the grand-daddy of all these things is sampling drum machines, the first instruments to popularize triggering one-off or looped audio content from a grid. (Tip of the hat here to Roger Linn and his designs.) Ableton’s breakthrough was taking that sample-triggering grid metaphor and cross-breeding it with the DAW, the all-purpose studio workstation with its channel strips, tracks, and arrangements. In Live, the track is king.

NI’s breakthrough here promises to be seamlessly making each deck – not each track – the focus for sample triggering. And their hardware literally combines the DJ mixing and effects functions with those pads. In the future Traktor tool, the deck, not the track, is king. And that makes all the difference. The deck will behave like a deck for cueing (a common complaint about Live), for one, but it’s also important that whereas Live gives you as many tracks as you want, you’re forced into the limitation of four decks in Traktor. That limitation is neither positive nor negative, but rather something that will influence every other decision you make. (Having looked over the shoulder of Richie Hawtin’s impossibly-enormous Live set recently for Plastikman, with tracks that scrolled on seemingly endlessly, I can tell you this isn’t a minor point.)

Of course, the other amusing point is the timing of when NI is tipping their hand. NI already makes a popular sampling drum machine, Maschine, combining a dedicated controller with software. Akai has just entered the ring with their own revision of the MPC – combining a dedicated controller with software to make a sampling drum machine. NI, for their part, here reveals that their next move is a new dedicated controller/software combo that also adds in DJing.

Anyway, for now, it’s just a video, so everything else is speculation. Feel free to have a look and let us know what you think, which, knowing comments, I’m certain you’ll do in no uncertain terms.

Side note: My brain is fuzzy; can anyone remind me of the capabilities of 4decks? This was, as I recall, a Reaktor patch that combined looping and decks.

The MPC name and MPC legend are as big as ever. But the current products? Not so much. Let’s face it: Akai could use a bit of a renaissance. Users these days put just as much stock in the MPC as a concept, and the MPC hardware still attracts users, but other products are stealing Akai’s thunder (Ableton Live, Native Instruments Maschine), and the human faces beloved by users aren’t at Akai (from the hacked JJOS firmware to Roger Linn off working on the Dave Smith-released Tempest). And while it doesn’t have the same mass appeal, hardware from other makers – the Tempest or the Machinedrum and Octatrack – have more street cred these days. That isn’t to say Akai isn’t doing well, but ironically, most of the Akai users I run into these days are using the APC with Ableton, or a treasured MPC from some years back.

This week, we get a glimpse of Akai’s strategy for changing that. The surprise: all three products are controllers for software, not the all-in-one, integrated hardware that made the MPC famous.

To many, it may be more the sad end of an era than the beginning of a new one. With plenty of software tools on the market, Akai was in the eyes of a loyal user base the go-to name for integrated hardware. But we’ll see if the MPC can win over those same folks with greater flexibility, as an apparent concession to the reduced development cost and expanded capabilities of relying on a computer for horsepower.

The MPC Renaissance is a larger controller with integrated audio and MIDI interface. It has a “Vintage Mode” said to emulate the sound “character” of the MPC3000, MPC60, and other units. And it comes with a fold-up LED screen and backlit pads. But the actual sound generation relies on the computer; it’s an interactive controller. We’ve, of course, seen this notion before, in Native Instruments’ Maschine. Whether that direct comparison is ultimately fair or not, the popularity of Maschine and the fact that it came first will make such comparisons inevitable. The major difference in Akai’s approach is that this is a big controller, complete with vintage-style palm rests and loads of I/O. It’s a Cadillac Escalade to NI’s Volkswagen Jetta. And with that extra space, you get more controls, like a stunning 4×4 array of encoders with LEDs, as popularized on Akai’s APC.

And the hardware looks far more elaborate than what we’ve tended to see, even from Akai. It’s the first controller that seems like it’d look at home next to an original MPC.

I like that the controller won’t be mistaken for anything but an MPC. The big question is, is Akai any good at making software? The first screenshot isn’t exactly pulse-quickening, though it does have plug-in support out of the gate. I wouldn’t judge on a preview, but I’ll say this: I think the software will make or break this product, and that’s what I’ll be asking about when I visit Akai at NAMM in Anaheim.

The other two products are teased now and coming soon:
MPC Studio is a “slimline” controller. (Well, almost anything would be more slimline than the massive, wide-load Renaissance, so we’ll see what that means.)

MPC Fly is a controller for iPad 2. If you can get over the name and the latest leap on the iPad bandwagon, consider this – there’s some seriously major consumer appeal here, and of the three, the Fly is the one where Akai is first to market. That makes a big difference. I can see why they kept it for last, even if it may be the least appealing to MPC loyalists.

I’ll reserve judgment on any of this, as I have no idea who worked on these products at Akai, or what the quality will be. My concern is that the appeal of the MPC is really integrated hardware, and mixing the computer into the equation is something other products already do reasonably well – ironically, including Akai’s own APC coupled with Ableton. It seems a huge test for Akai going into this generation of music production.

Now, I’m willing to accept the possibility that this will be a flexible, functional approach. But first, I’ll just wait through what I imagine will be a hailstorm of angry MPC purists. After that settles down, we’ll finally see if Akai is, as they’re putting it, “changing the game” – or if they’re in the same league. What determines that may be just how much the game has changed already. (And from the Ableton side, it’ll be a big test of the partnership with Akai for integrating hardware and software.)

Video below, with some artists onboard already – AraabMUZIK, Sean C, and LV.

Product specs and full info will be available week after next, coinciding with the massive NAMM trade show in California. We’ll be there with Akai.

Early spec highlights – basically, think MPC-style sound samples and features, and lots of audio I/O, as the two things missing from most rivals:

MPC Note Repeat, MPC Swing and MPC transport controls
MPC software for Mac or PC with 64-track sequencing capability
Two XLR-1/4” combo inputs and dedicated turntable input
Four-channel USB 2.0 audio interface and two-port US B 2.0 hub built in
Up to eight pad banks
Two MIDI inputs and four MIDI outputs
Stereo 1/4” out, stereo assignable mix 1/4” out & S/PDIF I/O
MPC SOFTWARE
64-track sequencing capability
6GB+ sound library, including all of the sounds of the classic MPC3000
Instant mapping and real-time adjustment of VST plug-ins
Record each track as an MPC drum program, Keygroup program or VST plug-in
Runs standalone and as VST, AU or RTAS plug-in
Supports WAV, MP3, AIFF, REX and SND
Supports samples and sequences from any MPC ever made
Mac and PC-compatible

http://www.akaiprompc.com/
http://www.akaiprompc.com/mpcrenaissance.php

Who says technology doesn’t last? The Apple II platform will be 35 years old in April, yet it’s still going strong. It even gets a brand-new drum machine software, launched this month, complete with eight wavetable-based drum sounds, and a clever sequencer. The surprise: the whole combination, delivered on a 5 1/4″ floppy disk, can be stunningly usable, as in something you’d actually want to make music with. Not bad for a computer you can typically pick up for a few bills at a flea market. (Emulators can also run the software, so you don’t even need hardware. Of course, that’s not nearly as much fun.)

Creators MJ Mahon and 8-bit Weapon released the software last week, but I wanted to wait for a full video demo and tutorial so you could see it in action. See also screen shots.

And even if you don’t want to shell up the cash, there’s a demo version.

We’ve got a sound sample of what the results sound like, via the artists:
DMS Drummer Demo by cdm

Full details:

Apple II DMS Drummer Software
by MJ Mahon & 8 Bit Weapon

Introducing the amazing DMS Drummer for Apple II personal computers! The DMS Drummer is the only wavetable based Drum Sequencer for the Apple //e, IIc, IIc+, and IIGS computers. It comes complete with 8 drum sounds: Bass, Snare, Rim Shot, Hand Clap, Tom, Hat Open, Hat Closed, and Lazer. DMS Drummer also has a massive sequencer built-in for song writing or just some creative noodling. The DMS Drummer monophonic sequencer patterns have 16 spaces. You can create up to 16 unique drum patterns and arrange them into 256 available arrangement slots. Each drum sound can also be re-pitched or “tuned” to the users preference inside the “Tone” section of any pattern. For example, you can take the single tom sound and create a rich sequence of multiple toms in various pitches like in our demo song. Each song sequence can be saved on disk as well for safe keeping.

Features: 8 Drum Sounds (tune-able)
16 Programmable Patterns
256 Arrangement Slots for Patterns Programmable Tempo
Saves your work
3 Demo Sequences by 8 Bit Weapon & ComputeHer

Requirements: Apple //e, IIc, IIc+, or IIgs computer with 80-column capability
5.25″ floppy disk drive
Monitor. [Ed.: remember, you can use a TV...]

The artists:
http://www.8bitweapon.com
http://www.computeher.com

Buy the software:
http://8bitweapon.com/store.htm [not available in the Apple App Store ]

US$14.95 on a floppy, US$9.95 for a .dsk file you can use with an emulator

One (free) emulator option on Windows, for instance, these two recommend:
http://applewin.berlios.de/

This is atop their DMS 8-voice synthesizer, with chippy-sounding Acoustic Piano, Vibraphone, Acoustic Guitar, Electric Bass, Trumpet, Clarinet, square wave, sawtooth wave, sine wave, and banjo

By the way, I have to note: lately, there’s been less value given Steve Wozniak’s original, more “open” design for the Apple II. Because it allowed for massive expansion, the platform had one of the longest life cycles of any computer platform, ever, made from 1977 through 1993 and driving much of Apple Computer’s early success, without which products like the Mac and everything since would never have happened. I only wish we could find a way for modern computers to retain this kind of longevity, both in usability and hardware life, rather than have their toxic, precious guts find their way to landfills.

What makes rhythm human? Music technology has introduced machine rhythms, perfectly-calibrated to electronically-perfected grids, yet we know that natural playing is more organic. Or, that is, we know we have certain intuitive preferences. How do those preferences and rhythms really work? And what does that mean for music technology?

Fascinating new research investigates more deeply, using – you know, science!

Here’s the summary of the research itself:

Although human musical performances represent one of the most valuable achievements of mankind, the best musicians perform imperfectly. Musical rhythms are not entirely accurate and thus inevitably deviate from the ideal beat pattern. Nevertheless, computer generated perfect beat patterns are frequently devalued by listeners due to a perceived lack of human touch. Professional audio editing software therefore offers a humanizing feature which artificially generates rhythmic fluctuations. However, the built-in humanizing units are essentially random number generators producing only simple uncorrelated fluctuations. Here, for the first time, we establish long-range fluctuations as an inevitable natural companion of both simple and complex human rhythmic performances. Moreover, we demonstrate that listeners strongly prefer long-range correlated fluctuations in musical rhythms. Thus, the favorable fluctuation type for humanizing interbeat intervals coincides with the one generically inherent in human musical performances.

Hennig H, Fleischmann R, Fredebohm A, Hagmayer Y, Nagler J, et al. (2011) The Nature and Perception of Fluctuations in Human Musical Rhythms. [PLoS ONE 6(10): e26457]

Hear that? One of the most valuable achievements of mankind! (Uh, that makes me want to practice a bit more, as I’m not sure I’d necessarily describe my last gig that way!)

James Postlethwaite, who sends this in, accompanies his news tip with an articulate letter considering the value of the research, so I’ll include all of it here:

Whilst reading the latest issue of the journal Nature (No.7372, Vol.479) I was surprised to se a picture of a TR-808 in the Research Highlights section, featuring research of note in other journals.

The research was about the correlations of rhythmic imperfections in human drummers, which correlate over a longer time period than the random singular imperfections that are inserted by some computer programs. At least I think that’s what it was, as I’m not a mathematician.

I do note that the sample size used in the statistical analysis was only 39 subjects, though the results were of a decent significance. The audio files are available in the supporting files section, CDM has a large readership, t-tests are very simple to run… Just an idea.

It does though serve as a nice reminder that a lot of the tools that musicians use nowadays do have roots in academic research, going back to the days of the early synthesizer. It also reminds me of a comment from a friend who used to own a 909; that one of the charms of this machine was the unique imperfection in the rigidity of the sequencer.
I don’t know if this has been corroborated by other people.

Finally, the piece in Nature magazine seemingly wasn’t written by a fan of electronic music, as it starts: ‘If you have endured much 1980′s pop music, you might agree that drum machines steal the soul from the beat. Their cold regularity is sometimes ‘humanized’ in the recording studio…’. Possibility of bias?

“Endured” 80s pop music? Yes, I’d say that counts as a bit of bias (just on the part of Nature). Imagine reading a story on bee populations, which began “Yeah, Bees. F*** bees.”

But the research itself looks solid and intriguing – and James is asking a variety of other interesting questions, so I’m going to open it up to discussion. Hope this is something we can follow up on. (Academics, attack!)

By the way, a quick search of Nature reveals that the journal regularly publishes material of interest to sound and music – worth noting, as there was a time when that wasn’t true. (Max Mathews was one of the first to help computer music break into the scientific mainstream.)
My search results
And, for example: Rhythmic synchronization tapping to an audio–visual metronome in budgerigars [hint: think tap tempo meets birds]

Updated: Nature wrote a quick blurb: Doctoring the beats
…though it seems from the excerpt that they either didn’t understand or tried to oversimplify the role of rhythmic variation in digitally-sequenced music. The study is, to me, more interesting.

Okay, I think this may be some of the best / worst promotional marketing I’ve seen for music software. It runs something like this:

Do you want to be just like Jamie Lidell?

The answer is as close as the iTunes App Store and your portable device.

Just download Native Instruments’ iMaschine app to your iPhone, fire it up, and then …

Forget it. Really. I mean, this guy is actually lying in bed in his PJs, the sound you’re hearing is really just the crappy internal microphone on an iPhone 4 iPod touch, and what you’re hearing really is the line out, and this is really all one take. (I confirmed as much with Native Instruments’ Constantin Köhncke as we watched the final take earlier this week at their office.)

For all we talk about microphone selection and placement and such, there’s not much substitute for being able to sing. That is, iMaschine can make anyone sound like this, just so long as they are Jamie Lidell.

And, actually, maybe that means this isn’t such bad marketing after all – perhaps not for iMaschine so much as music software in general. I’m kidding, of course – once you realize you’re not Jamie Lidell, you can work out who you are. And you do have a voice of your own.

iMaschine

I could at this point mention the features in iMaschine, but … what’s the point? It records stuff. You can lay down beats and then sing into it. Just like you can do with other tools for your iPhone or your laptop or even a piece of used sampling gear you found on eBay, all of which can fit comfortably into a bed on a lazy weekend.

In fact, who cares about how technically-sophisticated your software is, or if you have a fancy, high-end mic handy? I hope that we’ll all get a few minutes lying in bed somewhere this weekend. (I know that’s part of my plan.) So, use the internal mic on your laptop, or phone or tape recorder or whatever, use that bicycle for the mind, and in the words of Sesame Street’s “Sing,”

“Don’t worry if it’s not good enough / for anyone else to hear / just sing / sing a song.”

I’ll have a review of iMaschine by next week, but I’m even more interested in what you make.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Can’t get enough of the upcoming drum machine, Tempest, by Roger Linn and Dave Smith? Reader Josh Decker sends in this video by Josh’s friend Rob Baker, aka Redivider, tearing up the machine as a performance instrument. Also, follow the comment thread on our previous post for some follow-up from Dave Smith Instruments to reader questions. Dave tells us there will be more to say on the machine, and that we can expect a release date that should come very close to “the end of summer.” (Watch your calendar.) The Tempest may not be for everyone – and some of us simply don’t have the scratch for this kind of gear at the moment – but I nonetheless find it inspiring to see what people are doing, especially in regards to workflow.

Product page: http://www.davesmithinstruments.com/products/tempest/

Native Instruments reveals some big news for Maschine that’s … well, smaller. A new package has smaller hardware and lower price, with the same full-sized software. And an iOS version lets you use Maschine on iPad or iPhone.

As their drum machine / drum sampler / groove workstation with plug-in hosting and doubling as plug-in matures, and becomes a focus of NI’s production and performance side, things are starting to heat up. And yes, this news comes just as we learn more about an upcoming analog drum machine. It’s a Labor Day full of drum machines.

Shrunken Maschine: Maschine Mikro is, for me, the best news. It’s cheaper than the full Maschine package. It’s smaller and lighter, with a more compact controller. You might expect NI trimmed down the samples set – nope, it’s the same 6 GB ibrary. Or maybe they added a “lite” version of the software – nope, it’s the same, full Maschine version. And you still get full-sized pads. The Maschine pads are some of my favorite currently on the market – controller or otherwise – so that’s quite nice, indeed. You do sacrifice some hands-on control: the Mikro lacks the big, beautiful screens on the full Maschine, and the additional knobs and triggers. The eight macro knobs on the full Maschine are pretty handy, as are dedicated group buttons.

So, why would I think Mikro’s a good idea? Simple: when you’re on the road, or performing live onstage in cramped spaces, the Mikro looks like a winner, and all with the same software and at a lower price. For studio use, the full Maschine is still your best choice. But I’m personally going to switch out to the Mikro, especially because – like many people, I suspect – it’ll ultimately be combined with another controller in my workflow. You can have a closer look at our two product shots from NI and decide for yourself. (Yes, there’s a Maschine Bag, and yes, I was just talking to King Britt about his on-the-go luggage setup with his Maschine, but I’m still partial to smaller and lighter!)

Finger drumming video: NI has also released a promo vid of finger-drumming virtuoso Jeremy Ellis tearing apart their new hardware. It’s supposed to make you want to buy a Mikro, or something, except it may make you feel somewhat … inadequate … with your own finger drumming, instead.

Really Shrunken Maschine: If the Mikro isn’t small enough – say, you’re on the East Coast “Chinatown” Fung Wah bus and don’t really have room for your knees – NI also has a Maschine coming for iOS in October. It seems eminently practical:

• four tracks
• sampling (perhaps the most fun part of having this be mobile)
• “high-quality” effects (no reason that couldn’t just be ported from desktop)
• instrument and drum sounds from the standard Maschine library
• bring back your sketches into the full Maschine and edit them there

I’m only sorry it’s called iMaschine. Oh, well.

Komplete integration: As a footnote to this other news, NI notes that Maschine and Maschine Mikro each now support sound browsing and parameter mapping for instruments and effects in Komplete/Komplete Ultimate – the kind of tactile control originally in Kore, now entirely focused on Maschine.

Bottom line: For lovers of this workstation, it sounds to me like Maschine for iOS on the bus, Maschine software on your MacBook on the plane, Mikro in the hotel room, standard Maschine in the studio.

Maschine product page
Maschine Mikro

Native Instruments announced this week that they’re discontinuing the Kore product line, focusing those energies on the host-plus-sampling groovebox Maschine.

Kore was an approach to making instruments and processing more manageable and tactile, coupling a hardware interface and standard control mappings with a hosting tool. What first drew me to Kore, personally, was the idea of setting up that host not only as a way of managing presets and the like, but building performance rigs and making them tactile. (I used a number of Kore-based rigs in the production of my recent album.) CDM also, as disclosure and reference, collaborated with Native Instruments to document uses of Kore and the rest of their line on our Kore minisite.

The free Kore Player is immediately discontinued, a casualty of the decision, and you won’t be able to buy Kore. The good news for Kore users is, a set of updates accompany the announcement:

First, an update with the latest sound engines. Schedule: third quarter.

Next, 64-bit support for Mac and Windows. Schedule: fourth quarter.

That would make Kore continue to be useful. Here’s the bad news, however: “Future versions of the Komplete bundle and of individual NI instruments might no longer be fully compatible with Kore, and will not include special preset versions for its sound browser.”

Instead, Maschine, not Kore, will get a free update that incorporates new preset management and parameter mapping features – Maschine now does some of what Kore did. But Maschine doesn’t yet offer some of the other unique features of Kore in terms of its utility functions and modules, its slim, slick touch-based interactive controller, and its performance setup.

To me, it looks like a decision that makes sense – but one that will also be tough for users to swallow. The maintenance updates to Kore are offset by potential incompatibility with future Komplete releases. And while there’s a crossgrade, it’s not inexpensive, because Maschine, too, relies on hardware for control. Through the end of the year, Maschine is US$449 (EUR399). I’d like to see Native Instruments, which recently underwent corporate restructuring, focus more closely on their software range to avoid these kinds of discontinuations. Even when they’re the right choice, they can be tough for users. It’s a particular challenge for a developer like NI that has always released a range of products instead of one flagship. NI, for their part, also tells CDM it was a difficult decision to make.

What made Kore unique also made it hard to support from the beginning: its ambitious combinations of hosting and engine integration features made it development-heavy. So the genuinely good news here is that NI is more focused on one tool, and that’s Maschine – a product that has been both more popular and more (frankly) well-liked than Kore was.

And that makes me unambiguously enthusiastic about the choice. Some things simply have to come to an end. The really important thing here is that this redirects development resources into Maschine, and Maschine becomes NI’s flagship host instead of the two competing with one another.

CDM spoke to NI’s Constantin Köhncke about the decision for more detail.

CDM: What does it mean for Maschine that Maschine, and not Kore, is now Native Instruments’ focus? We’ll see greater hosting features, I see; is there anything you can comment on specifically?

NI: Yes, among other features, the hosting features of Maschine will be expanded. As you are aware, the free 1.6 update already brought the hosting of VST/AU plug-ins into Maschine and 1.7 will see more advanced browsing and parameter mapping for NI instruments and effects.

Given that Maschine is now a host to a lot of people, how would you even categorize the application — it seems broader than what was first released?

Maschine is referred to as an integrated groove production system that now combines a pattern-based sequencer, professional sampler, multi-effect unit and VST/AU plug-in host.

It seems like Kore has had a big impact on the other product lines, as
well. Care to comment in terms of what Kore has contributed to other software?

Most prominently, the category browsing and parameter mapping concepts from Kore were integrated in individual NI instruments.

To put it another way, what would you say NI has learned from Kore?

Kore has been a very complex and ambitious undertaking in terms of the architecture, the hardware integration, and the various usability and data management concepts, so learnings in all these regards were applied for current products like Maschine and Kontrol S4.

Amidst renewed conversation about what drum machines should be – see heated comments – it’s enlightening to revisit the drum machine as marketed in 1982. This vintage Linn Electronics LM-1 “Drum Computer” ad captures a moment in the birth of the modern drum machine. Some of what’s desirable then remains desirable today. Others – “Real Drum Sounds” – are amusingly far less novel, looking back from far deeper into the digital age.

Real time programming, mixing functions, and friendly design, though, remain important – and you can thank designer Roger Linn and his LM-1 for the profound influence they’ve had on drum machine design. In fact, quite a bit of the personality of the LM-1′s front panel and programming approach remain in the imminent Dave Smith – Roger Linn collaboration, the Tempest.

What I find interesting is that the economy of the LM-1′s front panel could still offer something to someone making a new drum machine, whether it’s your humble Pd or Max for Live patch, an iPad/tablet app, or DIY hardware.

Looping back on another impassioned discussion from last week, it’s worth noting Roger’s background: in 1978, as he began the LM-1 design, he was – and is – a guitarist. It took a guitarist to help create the modern sampling and drum programming revolution. (Well, you wouldn’t have expected a drummer to do it, would you?)