Some of you are probably already sitting on top of a Max for Live license for your copy of Ableton Live. It’s there, just waiting to do … something. Maybe you’ve loaded one of the many extraordinary patches out there – good move. But as for building your own patches, you may easily have become overwhelmed by choice. Max is a blank slate, and a blank slate that can do everything can make it hard to start with anything.

It’s easy to overlook simple first steps. Max was originally built just to do simple math on messages, before it even had audio capabilities. So that means simple message processing is a great place to start. The Ableton Cookbook’s Anthony Arroyo introduces Max for Live in just that fashion, by starting you out building an arpeggiator. No fancy granular audio processing, no mind-bending processing of the event engine in Live – just some simple, old-fashioned arithmetic. You’ll learn MIDI in, MIDI out, monitoring what’s going on, basic math, and sliders. You can always go deeper after that.

This is the first of more videos to come, all promising to focus on simple devices; I’m curious to see where they go.

Not quite your speed? Here are two more intro tutorials – and one advanced tutorial – to get you going.

Ready to get a little advanced? It’s an older video, but still relevant to new versions of Live – don’t let the date stop you. Here, a serious Max for Live guru goes deep into spectral mixing. It’s not at all the simple, step-by-step approach I’ve just endorsed, but … hey, you’re still with me, and this is fun. Description:

In this video new addition to the Dubspot team Dave Linnenbank, creator of Puremagnetik’s Max Fuel collection of patches for Ableton and Cycling 74′s Max For Live walks us through his Spectral Mixer patch. It allows you to adjust the volume of the loud, medium and quiet parts of a sound and create some very interesting sounds.

Blog post and downloads: Max for Live Tutorial :: ‘Spectral Mixer’ [Dubspot Blog]

Pure Data is a wonder: a free and open source environment for creating your own musical and multimedia creations with graphical programming, from Miller Puckette, the original creator of Max. You can produce everything from interactive sequencers and drum machines to synths to video performance tools by connecting patch cables visually, and you can run on virtually any platform, from BeagleBoards and Rasberry Pi to Mac, Windows, and Linux desktop. Via libpd, you can target other development languages and environments, embed engines in games, or work with Android and iOS.

It’s so important, in fact, that CDM invites Hans-Christoph Steiner, one of the key developers of Pd-extended, to give us a tour of what’s new. (Note: because Pd-extended includes various additional objects or “externals” that Pd Vanilla lacks, you should be careful when building patches for libpd. What I like to do is use Pd-extended as my editing environment, then double-check patches by opening them in Vanilla to make sure I haven’t accidentally used an object that’s not part of the bare-bones version. I can then substitute an object, copy an abstraction, or if necessary build that external.) -Ed.

The Pd-extended 0.43 release has been brewing an extra long time, about 18 months now, mostly because there are lots of big improvements. We wanted to make sure we got it right, so your patches all work, but the improvements all shine, so its taken a while. It’s now solidly beta, so we’re looking for testers. Download a beta build to try here:

http://puredata.info/downloads/pd-extended/releases/0.43.1

First off, the pd-gui side of Pd has been rewritten from scratch. The focus for most of the recent work has been on the editing experience, making your patching experience as productive and flexible as possible. To give some background, Pd has always been made up of two programs: pd is the core engine and pd-gui is the GUI. Since basically all computers now come with multiple CPU cores, this means that pd-gui will usually run on a separate CPU core than pd, so they don’t step on each other’s toes. pd can entirely take over its own core. If you want to make your patch use more CPU cores, then check out the [pd~] object introduced in the last release, but fine-tuned in this one.

There are so many ideas for making a better editing experience in Pd; this release makes big strides to address the editing experience. There are new features like Magic Glass, Autotips, Autopatch and Perf Mode, all available on the Edit menu.

• Magic Glass lets you magically see the messages as they pass through the cords. Just turn it on and hover above a cord, and you’ll see the messages as they go by. You can even look at signal/audio cords.
• Autotips gives you tips about what an object does, what its inlet expects, and what comes out of the outlets.
• Autopatch mode automatically connects objects as you create them.
• Perf Mode, is a mode for performance that makes it harder to accidentally close windows that are part of your performance.

A whole new Pd Window

The Pd Window is also majorly overhauled. First of all, it’s fast. Much much faster than the old one. You can now print thousands of messages per second to the Pd Window and still edit your patch. No more will an accidental dump of info cause the GUI to freeze up (well, okay, maybe if you send 10,000 messages/second, but that is way too many). There are also five levels of printing messages to the Pd Window: fatal, error, normal, debug, all. If you are only interested in fatal errors, switch the Pd Window to 0 – fatal, and you’ll only see the worst problems. You want to see every single message to debug? Switch to 4 – all, and you’ll drink from the firehose.

There is also the new log library, which lets you easily send messages for those different levels. And all messages logged with the objects from the log library are clickable: when you Ctrl-Click or Cmd-click (Mac OS X) on the line in the Pd Window, it’ll pop up the patch where the message came from, and highlight the specific object that printed it. That even works for many messages from other objects, as well.

The Pd Window also includes very basic level meters for monitoring the input and output levels. And for those who want to play with the GUI in realtime, you can type Tcl code in the Tcl entry field, and directly modify and probe the running GUI.

Customize the GUI with Plugins

One thing that you can do now is customize the GUI using GUI plugins. You can change all sorts of colors, some fonts, and many behaviors. Want to create a new object when you triple-click? Try the tripleclick example plugin Want to make the patch cords disappear when you leave Edit Mode? Check out the “only show cords in edit mode” example. Those are the simple ones. There is also Tab Completion, a search engine for the docs, a category browser for the right-click menu, a buttonbar for creating objects, and more.

You can find many GUI plugins in the new section of the downloads page as well as documentation for making your own. (What kind of GUI plugin will you write?)

Write Pd objects in more languages

Traditionally, Pd objects are written in Pd (abstractions), C and some in C++. This new release includes two “loaders”, Lua and Tcl, which allow you to write regular Pd objects in either Lua or Tcl. Pd is not the best for processing strings, so if you need to do that, you can now easily use Lua or Tcl, both very easy scripting languages for working with strings. Lua is often used for OpenGL work, so you can also run Lua objects to work in conjunction with Gem. Also, the Tcl loader lets you write GUI objects in pure Tcl, no C needed.

Multi-processing, Pd-style!

The [pd~] object now works out of box. In case you missed the introduction of the [pd~] object in the last release, we’ll introduce you now. [pd~] is Pd itself incapsulated into an object. You can run any patch inside that instance of Pd, the difference is that the Pd in the [pd~] object runs in a totally separate process. So if your computer has multiple CPU cores, which basically all computers do these days, then the Pd process inside the [pd~] object will run on a separate core. This means you can have a heavy Pd patch spread across multiple cores or CPUs. Or for people who work with video and audio together, you can have one instance for video running at a normal priority, then another instance for audio running at a high priority to make sure there aren’t clicks in the audio caused by heavy video processing.

Autotips, generated from help patches

This release also provides a new “autotips” feature to provide instant information about objects and their inlets and outlets. It is one of the first new developments to showcase all of the meta data that is now included in all of the help patches. (Check out the [pd META] subpatches.) When you hover above an inlet or the object itself in Edit Mode, you’ll see a short text description pop up on the lower left corner. But, of course, using a GUI plugin, you could customize how they are displayed to make it how you want to see it. If you want to add autotips to your object, then just add a [pd META] subpatch to your objects’ help patches, and fill out the description, etc. Voila! They’ll have instant information.

What’s next?

The core pd process still handles a lot of the GUI stuff, but we are working on splitting that out for the 0.44 release. That is a big chunk of work, but it will also bring big gains. In particular, it means that it will be possible for people to write their own GUIs for Pd, covering not just the display of the patch, but also the editing, and everything else. You like OpenFrameworks, Python, iOS, JUCE, Qt, etc.? Write your own pd-gui using the toolkit of your choice. That’s the idea at least. That will take a solid chunk of work, so we are looking for people to join that effort.

Try it yourself:

http://puredata.info/downloads/pd-extended/releases/0.43.1
http://puredata.info/downloads/pd-extended

Where to learn Pd:

Resources to start learning

-Hans-Christoph Steiner for CDM

Technology may be about the next Big New Thing, but as with music making in general, making music with tech is for many of us a lifetime vocation. So, it’s welcome news to find that time-tested tools, maturing over decades rather than months, are enjoying greater use than ever before. We saw Pure Data (Pd) attracting new interest as the embeddable libpd version allows use in a range of development environments and mobile platforms. Now, it’s about to be Csound’s turn.

Of course, before we get to that, if you’ve got an iPad 2 or “3″ (aka “the new iPad”), you can more or less skip this entire article and start making wild new granular sounds on your tablet. (Sadly, the original iPad is excluded here because it’s a resource-intensive application, though owners of that tablet – and other mobile devices – have plenty more to anticipate in Csound world.)

csGrain is a multi-effects processor that works its sonic-mangling magic live on sound, making use of something called “SyncGrain,” a real-time granular synthesizer. You can record from a mic or import tracks from the iTunes library (including, of course, your own music), or even use an included sample loop. csGrain then processes those sounds via a rich set of sonic tools, either live or to a recording, with sharing via AudioCopy, AudioPaste, email, and Dropbox. You also get setting randomization and a range of live effects, too. If you’re unsatisfied by the “finger against bathroom mirror glass” feeling of the tablet, you can connect an external MIDI input.

And, of course, it sounds amazing:

All of that is nice enough, but the bigger news is how this is all possible – and what is yet in store. Think Csound running everywhere, including learning about the tool and coding with it directly on an iPad.

csGrain uses Csound, the composition and sound design language that traces its roots back to the first-ever digital synthesis languages developed by pioneer Max Mathews. (It’s worth noting that Max’s ideas inspired the work of Miller Puckette on Pd and Max/MSP, too, meaning these are “all in the family,” as it were. Some even argue the model had an indirect influence on modular synths.)

csGrain is the first of a series of apps using Csound, including a massive, promising, everything-you’d-ever-want-with-Csound-on-an-Ipad app, covering documentation and code. This isn’t just an attempt to “cash in” on a geeky sound tool in the midst of the App Gold Rush — far from it. The application is as much a teaching opportunity as product. You’ll be able to use the application and its documentation to learn more about the sound processing technique, and discover the Csound code that makes the app tick. For some, it could be a first introduction to Csound, without having to be enrolled in an academic class. And for developers and sound artists who do want to make their own Csound creations, an upcoming SDK will unlock the power of Csound on other platforms (iOS being just one). That brings the power of “run anywhere” portability to text-based language Csound much as libpd has done for the graphical-patching tool Pd.

This image of a developer build of Csound Touch should be enough to set Csound fans’ hearts racing. (Okay, not a huge segment of the population at large, but I’m fairly certain most of them read this site.)

Developer Dr. Richard Boulanger, who has been a driving force behind almost every element of Csound’s recent development from the stuff under the hood to the documentation and the community, is now taking that sonic energy and applying it here. (And I do mean energy: sonic whiz “Dr. B,” as he’s affectionately called by his students, practically bubbles with enthusiasm and ideas. I’ll have what he’s having.)

He tells us that even in its first day, csGrain has made a big impact – no small task for an App Store inundated with volume and an application most would consider to be pretty niche in appeal.

The launch of csGrain has been pretty exciting. At the App Store, on day one, in the Paid Music Apps Catagory, we reached the rank of #8 (out of 4000+ paid music apps). We had over 957 people view the csGrain video at the Boulanger Labs site, and we were contacted by Richard Devine and Jordan Rudess with praise, congratulations and advice. We got some pretty great reviews at the App Store such as this one…. (I have no idea who this is by the way… which makes it even cooler….

“csGrain is a must-have effects powerhouse for the iPad. The sounds, usability, and musicality of the instrument are at least on par with the Moog apps, but the the potential for extension and customization far surpasses anything else. If you want to blow your mind in two seconds flat with this app, just press and hold any of the parameters (esp the sync grain ones) and a randomization window pops up, change the parameters and get instantly out of this world sounds. I really like the integration with Dropbox and AudioPaste functionality. And while you don’t need it at first, the manual is very well written for when you want to dig deeper. My only complaint is that the app is not yet in Retina-display, but I am sure that will be coming soon. Another nice feature improvement would be to augment the midi capability, which is already awesome, to allow for automatic learning of cc messages based on input like the way Ableton Live works. All in all, this is most powerful effects application on the iPad. Good job!”

I should also direct owners of the first-generation iPad to Richard’s explanation of why you can’t have the app:

It really doesn’t work on iPad1. It’s optimized for iPad2 and the new iPad. In particular, the stereo granular processing is both efficient and amazing, but… it’s also pretty heavy for the iPad1 and we would get some
breakUps in the audio on that platform – so we just made if for the 2 and the new.

But let’s get to what’s coming next. Dr. Boulanger gives us the full scoop. I imagine him sounding like Vince, the Slap Chop guy (and with good reason):

[Last week] was the release of csGrain (one of Boulanger Labs’ focused/targeted “spin-off” apps) and there are others coming over the next few months. But Csound Touch – which is coming in about 1 month – is ALL of Csound on the iPad…

The Csound for iOS API and SDK will be offered in the next day or two with all sorts of working models…
It will blow you away… how “easy” it is to develop audio apps with Csound as the DSP engine.

our .csd files are all offered with the apps.

One will be able to incorporate Csound into their own apps, games, whatever.

csGrain is just ONE huge .csd file – running under the hood… and there is a button there to see the code and it’s in the manual that is included too.

- we are sharing many tricks right there. But there are also tons of tricks shown in all the models that come with the SDK

Csound Touch IS Csound – all of Csound – for the iPad.

It is built upon and synchronized with the latest version of Csound5

It supports the realtime “rendering” of any Csound “.csd” file.

It can render .csd files from within the Csound Touch App or from the Internet.

It includes realTime “Console Output” (for diagnostics and progress monitoring) and supports “OFFline Rendering” for the realization of the most complex and demanding of “orchestras and compositions.” (For instance, if you wanted to create a sound with ten thousand oscillators and five hundred reverbs and two thousands filters it’s not a problem. This is Csound… all of Csound… and with Csound the only limitation is your imagination!)

Csound Touch supports Realtime MIDI control of any Csound-based MIDI instrument.

Csound Touch supports Realtime iPad/GUI Control of Csound Instruments via custom OnScreen Sliders, Knobs, XY controls and a Piano Keyboard.

One can Save to Disk or Render to the speaker or any pro audio interface in RealTime or once can do both Simultaneously! Jam and Capture! Remix and Record.

Csound Touch supports Interapplication File Transfer on the iPad Import/Export via DropBox, Email and AudioCopy.

To get you started with Csound; to inspire your creative spirit; and to support your study and exploration of Computer Music Composition, Software Synthesis, Signal Processing, Algorithmic Composition, Physical Modeling, and so much more…
the Csound Touch App includes:

Chapter 1 of Boulanger’s “foundational text” published by MIT Press – The Csound Book

The “classic” Boulanger Csound “Toots” from the Csound Manual

Boulanger’s “Mastering Csound” Tutorials

and there’s more!

We include the latest Csound FLOSS Manual (and all the Floss Instruments)
We include the Canonical Csound Reference Manual (and all the Manual Instruments)

and even more….

Selections from Boulanger’s Csound Instrument Catalog (30 years of Csound Instruments)
Selected Csound Compositions from the Boulanger Collection and The Csound Mailing List

Selected Algorithmic/Generative Compositions

A diverse and useful assortment of Dr.B’s favorite DSP Instruments
A varied collection of Dr.B’s favorite MIDI Instruments

A collection of OpenSource Audio Samples from the OLPC Sound Sample Archive.

Of course, this isn’t just about iOS: Csound is now in one form another either available or coming soon to Android, Ableton Live (via Max for Live), Max/MSP, standalone desktop applications, and the Mac AudioUnit plug-in format. I agree when Richard calls it “The Csound Renaissance of 2012.”

By the way, I think Richard has given those of us working on Pd, too, a real sense of what we could do with that tool (as well as an excuse to play with Csound anew). He tells us:

PS…. The Pd Rennaissance is also very very wonderful – the new book, the new code, the new possibilities…. all extremely exciting. After reading your blog on bit ago, I ordered the book and am very inspired by this initiative as well. So…. all cool and extremely important.

I couldn’t agree more.

So, once again, the timeline for the Revolution:

Coming soon (in a month)

Csound Touch – all of Csound on the iPad! Run any opcode, run any orchestra, run any composition. Run the entire Csound Book, Csound Catalog, Csound Manual. It all works and it’s all there!

and the a few weeks after that….

More Csound Apps such as:

csSpectral – Realtime vocoding, convolution, and spectral processing.

csFuzz – a rack of guitar effects.

csVoice – a vocal synthesizer, harmonizer, processor.

csGen – algorithmic, probabilistic, and generative composition systems.

csModel – a collection of Physical and Physically Inspired Models.

csClassics – a collection of synths based on the classic techniques – FM/AM/RM/WaveShaping/Granular/Additive/Etc.

The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be at:
http://boulangerlabs.com

You can find csGrain on our exclusive, multi-platform Apps section:
csGrain @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

An, as always, don’t miss the central repository for all things Csound:
http://www.csounds.com/

We’ll have an interview with Dr. Boulanger later this week, so if you’ve got questions for him, ask away!

Who says every music production tool has to be either a traditional DAW or Ableton Live?

Not Renoise, for one. I’m running out of things to call it. Modernized tracker? Tracker on steroids? Music production tool from an alternate history in which conventional DAWs were ignored and everybody just kept on using trackers? How about this: a gem that a tiny development team somehow keeps making more awesome with regular updates with misleading names like “point 8.”

So, what does “2.8″ give you? A couple of OS compatibility fixes and one new delay effect? Wrong. New in this release is a massive set of improvements. 64-bit is in there, but in terms of day-to-day use, the workflow improvements may be what really matters. (Okay, I usually cringe when I see “workflow improvements” in a press release, and here I’ve gone and used the same phrase. Let’s just say it’s “more awesome to use.”)

The new Renoise Pattern Matrix aliasing means powerful arrangement and compositional tools.

Highlights, condensed:

• 64-bit for everybody (Mac and Windows in addition to existing Linux support), so you can access more than 4 GB RAM. A bridge plug-in lets you use 32-bit instruments and effects, and there’s 64-bit ReWire support.
• Pattern Matrix now lets you alias and clone pattern slots. It’s a powerful arrangement feature that’s a bit different than similar block arrangement or clip launching features in other tools (both because of Renoise’s approach to patterns and clips, and this ability to use those aliases to create structure). Expect some follow-up.
• Collapse tracks and groups (see image below), giving Renoise some of the screen economy that made trackers famous. Route those grouped tracks, and use pattern effects across grouped tracks (also something relatively technique).
• DSP multitap delay. (Yes, there’s that, but also…)
• DSP repeater (“stutter”) effect.
• DSP Exciter.
• New pattern effects: Tremolo, Auto Pan, Set Envelope Position. (That last one sounds like it could be pushed into some insane places.)
• Meta Mixer lets you combine modulation signals. (It’s really a meta device – imagine combining what Ableton does with Devices and Reason does with Combinator and CV devices.) Improvements to other modules, as well, both aesthetically and in parameters.
• Improved editing in Sample Editor, including destructively rendering slices to individual samples, and editing features typically associated with waveform editors rather than tools like this. My favorite: cross-fading loop creation, which previously required jumping out to another tool (Peak, SoundForge, etc.)
• More performance: Hyper-threading on new Intel chips.
• More spectral views and editing, more envelope editing views, Favorites for devices.

And there’s a lot more, as well.

http://www.renoise.com/new

You've got to love the ultra-compact track collapse feature - ideal for 11" MacBook Airs or Linux netbooks.

You also get features like this: “up to 34 DSP devices can be addressed via pattern commands 1xyy-Yxyy.” Power users know instantly what that means musically. The rest of you – well, don’t worry, other parts of Renoise will gradually level you up to that kind of ninja insanity. And Renoise is humanizing things, as well: “Logical mnemonics for pattern effects from A to Z instead of cryptic numbers.”

Will everyone drop everything and use Renoise? Odds are, no: this tool remains an acquired taste (though don’t dismiss until you’ve given its unique workflow a try). But, then, that’s part of the joy of this: it’s not an “industry standard.” It’s just an incredibly terrific music making tool that proves that not all music making tools need to look identical.

Now that I share the same home city as the developers, I think I owe you more information from the inside. Stay tuned.

Renoise 2.8 is a free update for current users, and an insanely-low 58 € new.

http://www.renoise.com/

By the 1990s, the notion that computer software could be a means of delivering interactive digital art more personally was enjoying a Renaissance. This was the age of the Voyager CD-ROM, which catered to new multimedia PCs and Macs with titles from the likes of Laurie Anderson and Morton Subotnick, the decade in which Brian Eno released Generative Music as software and Monolake – before Ableton – included a Max/MSP patch with an album. But the reach of these experiments was doomed to be relatively limited.

Now, of course, things are different. First, we saw some widely-available audiovisual toys, coinciding in particular with the debut of the iTunes App Store. But now, those fairly one-dimensional experiments are beginning to blossom into something else. When these particular gadgets and app stores are forgotten, the question is whether those aesthetic adventures, the personalization of the digital art experience, will endure.

Joshue Ott, co-creator of Thicket for iOS, points to a review of that application on Apple’s App Store. “I always want to touch the masterpieces in museums,” a user says in that review. “I’ll use Thicket instead of getting arrested!”

“It’s the democratization of our own performance works,” muses Ott. “It’s a way people can play along with us,” he says. “We’re constantly creating processes to create sound and music; it’s what we’ve done for ten years or so,” chimes in Ott’s creative partner, Morgan Packard. “Now people can own the processes, not just the results.”

Ott and creative partner Packard have long each been visual and music performers, respectively. That meant what it has traditionally meant: the artist gets up in front of an audience, the real work hidden behind an onstage laptop. With Thicket, by contrast, the raw materials of that performance became embodied in the software itself, and thus in the hands of the audience, who can double as performer. At first, this software included only a simple mode or two, each with a specific sound, musical ambience, and visual look. Even in those versions, Thicket made some appearances in an occasional gallery show or performance – the app you download could also be the art.

As Thicket has added modes, though, it has evolved in a kind of platform of its own. Ott and Packard produce new works that can be distributed as in-app purchases (more on how they contend with that in a bit). The sum total of those modes has created a massive audiovisual playground, a compendium of ideas and aesthetic.

A new version released this week adds three new modes, seen in the video at top here, building atop modes added in late December. For the first time, you can use Thicket on an iPhone and not just an iPad; it’s a Universal app. Screenshot sharing is available, too. But the addition of all these modes, unveiled with a “reboot” of the app at the end of last year, represents a shift in thinking as these artists and developers reevaluated what it was they were doing.

“We found that the modes were becoming so different, so much deeper,” says Ott:

We were having such fun using it as a big sketchbook that we decided to ditch the ‘rotate to change modes’ system so that we could handle lots of modes, rather than just four or five. The modes in Thicket reboot are completely new, and each one is a lot more complex than the older modes. They’re all very different, and each have separate methodologies behind how you control them. We’re playing with different concepts in user interaction design, searching for the right intuitive feel to make a true audiovisual instrument (among quite a few other things).

In other words, if you haven’t played with Thicket lately, it’s a different animal. It’s a Long Play album to the first version’s single cut. The work is immersive, too; you can transmit video output via HDMI or VGA on the iPad, and get up to 1920×1200 HD output, with no menu intervening. (One of the many significant current drawbacks of Android for the moment for artists: the move to a soft menu on Android tablets means menu detritus that never goes away. Artists were intensely relieved this week when Apple’s new iPad kept its signature, dedicated hardware menu button.)

Morgan Packard says he has some strong feelings about why this kind of experience has value in his work:

I’d say where we both overlap is our shared interest in how abstract sound and picture, plus interactivity, all can work together. Thicket is a bit of a research sketchbook for us. There’s something very magical about just twiddling your fingers and having sound and visuals spring to life. Frankly, we don’t entirely understand this medium yet. But we like not knowing, trying to understand it in different ways.

The gestural thing is huge with us, and is at the core of what thicket is. It’s partly why I’m a bit resistant to the idea of layering features on to Thicket. Of all the different people who give us feedback, I get the most gratification from parents of special needs kids.The non-fiddly, large-motor interaction style is very accessible to a huge range of minds and hands. I want to explore this more, to give people new ways of feeling expressive and creative with movement and gesture. In my mind, that’s what’s really special about what we’re doing.

The duo did get a chance to try the app with people with different user needs. Ott explains:

Morgan and I actually toured a special needs school earlier this year and observed autistic kids using Thicket. A very special music teacher is using Thicket (among a couple of other technologies) to teach the kids music, and had found that it seemed to really empower them. He offered to let us visit and we happily agreed… really really amazing experience.

As Subotnick hoped years ago in “All My Hummingbirds Have Alibis” for Voyager, the distribution of art as software can create a new kind of “chamber” art, in which the work is personal, enjoyed by a few people. It can be a family or a couple of friends on a couch.

Of course, somewhere in all of this, these artists are looking for revenue in order to be able to devote the massive amounts of development and testing time the application demands. (Neither has quit day jobs, which means finding a way to devote resources to development.) Thicket easily climbed in download counts, but only after the application was made free. In-app purchases have been a tough mountain to climb, but have at least allowed some revenue to trickle in; the challenge was finding a way to make them appealing to users, says Ott:

I think in general people hate In-App Purchasing (IAP), because, in general, I think IAP is usually not handled so well. We have thought a lot about how to show people exactly what they are buying before they buy it, and I’m really pleased with what we’ve come up with. Every mode in the new Thicket has a pre-recorded “demo” of one of us playing the mode. Before you buy a mode you can watch this demo, learn what the mode can do, watch someone use it in an interesting way, and decide if that’s something you’re interested in or not. You can of course watch the demos even after you’ve purchased the mode (and the free Sinemorph mode also includes a demo as well). The demos are a great way for us to show users different tricks and techniques.

So the reboot is really about making Thicket a platform rather than just a single art piece. Something that we can keep adding to (with a financial structure that makes sense for us to keep adding to). Something that we can start collaborating with other artists on – we are talking to a couple of different people about releasing modes within the Thicket system. So yeah, that’s what the platform part is. We’re really excited about it, and what it will become in the future.

But these concerns aside, the developers aren’t just creating Thicket for users; they’re building something they use themselves. As Josh explains:

I’ve performed with Thicket now a couple of times, once at the excellent SONiC festival, and another at Issue Project Room in a program curated by Ryan Lott (AKA Son Lux), and have started to really feel like it has the potential to be a new form of audiovisual instrument. I want to see more stuff like it- things that generate graphics and audio intertwined, and I want to continue to explore these relationships in different ways. I’m actually pretty excited about performing with Thicket more, and I think doing so will push it even further in that direction.

“That’s really what an audiovisual instrument is to me,” says Ott. “It’s something that you can bang on and make something interesting, but you can touch it subtly, as well, to shape it, to express with it. That’s what I want to make. We’re right at the beginning of that exploration, and I think we have something that is a promising vehicle for it.”

You can try out the new Thicket now, as seen in CDM Apps:

Thicket @ CDM Apps
[Says iPad, is actually now Universal. PS - music and beauty flow from my fingers all the time - no app needed - but I'm glad now the rest of you get the chance.]

Universal Audio has long had a successful business selling hardware DSP effects, many of them carefully-modeling classic analog gear. These products use dedicated DSP hardware for number-crunching, requiring that you connect an extra box to your computer. UA has certainly had their loyalists, and for fans of the products, the dedicated gear is simply a convenient way to get all of these sound-processing goodies. But it’s fair to ask the question, as many producers have who read this site, what’s the advantage? Why not simply use native processing on your computer?

Apollo, UA’s new hardware, answers that question more emphatically. By integrating the processing prowess of the UA platform into a high-quality audio interface, you can now add UA effects live, as you record and mix, with extreme low latencies. UA reports latencies below a couple of milliseconds. That’s possible, theoretically, on a desktop computer, but not generally on a laptop and very often not with any real reliability. You can do it in a lab, but it’s not something typical users see.

So, in one box, you effectively get your whole studio: the audio interface, the DSP power, and real low-latency sound processing. It’s not the first audio interface with DSP, but it might be the most compelling case yet for why that combination make sense.

And here’s where things get interesting: via Thunderbolt, a single MacBook Air, costing just around $1000, could be your whole studio machine. And while Apollo runs a couple grand above that, that means the total price tag is stunningly low compared to what you’d pay just a short time ago.

UA briefed me earlier this week on the technology. Even as NAMM raves about iPads, you begin to see the real power of conventional computers. Steve Jobs once compared those computers to “trucks” – while quietly leading a company that profits on how cool trucks are, too. With an Air, adding only slightly to the weight of an iPad and at only twice the cost, you can connect to vastly greater native processing power, greater outboard processing power, and greater I/O. And now with Thunderbolt, you could connect a high-res display or two, a big, fast hard drive, and the audio interface, all without running out of power or impacting performance. (No, seriously – you can. The reason you haven’t seen this in action is that we haven’t had the hardware to show it off. Apollo will be a compelling case for that.)

All of this is academic until you actually have something to do with sound. So, UA is also expanding their developer platform to additional outside development; more on that soon.

Apollo isn’t for everyone; obviously, some people won’t like being tied to hardware, and native plug-ins do work for a lot of people. But it does solve problems for many potential producer customers by making something reliable, predictable, low-latency, extensible with lots of excellent processing tools, and all in one single-box solution.

Apollo will initially be Mac-only, but will come to Windows, too – and with more PCs supporting Thunderbolt in 2012, that means the MacBook is far from your only choice. So, you’ve got one add-on that’s your interface, your pres, and your mix/master/effect toolbox.

More specs:

• 18 x 24 FireWire/Thunderbolt-ready audio interface, 24-bit/192 kHz
• “Premium” mic pres – UA stresses that they’re also building on their mic pre reputation, and they claim the “lowest THD and highest dynamic range” in their class
• Dedicated front-panel controls: preamp gain, channel selection, mic pad, +48V phantom power, low cut, monitor level, and dual headphone controls.
• 4 digitally-controlled analog mic preamps, 8 balanced line inputs and outputs, dual front-panel JFET DIs, digitally-controlled analog monitor outputs, 8 channels of ADAT, 2 channels of S/PDIF, word clock I/O, FireWire 800 (standard), and a Thunderbolt expansion bay — making it a well-equipped centerpiece for the modern project studio.
• Core Audio drivers; ASIO coming, so you can use this with your DAW of choice
• Console application and plug-in for recalling all your interface and plug-in settings at once
• UAD-2 acceleration
• Analog emulation plug-ins from Ampex, Lexicon, Manley, Neve, Roland, SSL, Studer, etc.
• Thunderbolt will be available on a sold-separately Option Card; UA says it reduces latency and audio buffer sizes, improves high sample-rate performance, and allows greater UAD plug-in instances over FireWire.

Of course, because Thunderbolt also connects to FireWire devices, you don’t lose your FireWire investment. The only bad news is that you only get Thunderbolt here as an Option Card; I imagine we’ll eventually see UA ship Thunderbolt connections standard.

There are both two-core and four-core versions, powered by Analog Devices SHARC processors, running an estimated street of US$1999 and $2499, respectively. Apollo’s Thunderbolt Option Card will be shipping in the first half of 2012, with pricing TBD.

www.uaudio.com/apollo

Videos are available on the UA blog: http://www.uaudio.com/blog/apollo-intro-video

Windows 7 summer; 10.6 and 10.7 Mac OS X when it ships.

Software Images

Let’s get straight to it: Ozone has already established itself as a do-everything mastering tool. It’s a suite of interconnected modules handling frequency and dynamics, designed to work together in an integrated interface. It does so much, in fact, that it’s hard for an upgrade to do more, but Ozone 5 promises new sound and visual feedback that could further entrench this popular tool.

And that could explain how Ozone 5 stole the Audio Engineering Society trade show in New York. AES is a flurry of knobs, dials, and faders, but some of the major buzz we heard was just this single upgrade to the software. (CDM’s Marsha Vdovin was out on the floor, and the word “Ozone” kept cropping up.)

Ozone is eminently visual software, so a lot of what’s new you can glean just by looking through the screenshots. But there are sound improvements, as well, both in the standard Ozone and the spendier “Advanced” edition.

What’s new:

• Updated modules. iZotope says they’ve “refined” their DSP algorithms. (Let’s see, carry the one…) The idea is, existing modules should sound better. There’s a detailed list on the iZotope site – aside from more subtle changes, you’ll find very specific adjustments to how parameters are controlled and how they impact the sound. To give one example, there’s a …
• New Limiter. The latest version of iZotope’s “psychoacoustics-based” limiter in the Advanced edition has a new stereo link control for handling left and right separately or together, and new intelligent transient handling algorithms, among other improvements.
• Enhanced EQ. Analog-matching EQ models analog shelf modes and frequency response, matching is easier than before, as with other modules, you can use left/right separately, and now zoom and display stereo info in your spectrum. There’s also new variable-phase functionality.
• New Reverb. Yes, sometimes you use reverb when mastering. (A little light reverb can do wonders.) A new modeled reverb algorithm adds new models and spaces and gives you unique early reflection control, as well as “cross-mix” for stereo imaging.
• New UI, workflow. I’ll let you just see what this looks like, but suffice to say parameters and labels are better-organized to be friendlier to advanced and beginning users alike. Past versions of Ozone were sometimes pretty-but-counterintuitive; this looks a bit clearer. Of course, you might not notice while dazzled by the…
• Slick visual feedback. In the standard version, metering has been enhanced. In the Advanced version, you get slick 2D and 3D plots of your sound spectrum for the Meter Bridge and Meter Taps modules. They look awesome, yes, but I also think these kind of “alien world mountainscape” views can help you better visualize what’s happening in a sound, so there is a practical use, too.

And, of course, all of this means you can easily wow clients when mastering by showing them visualizations that look like Geordi LaForge is studying abnormal quasar activity from the deck of the Enterprise. Just try to avoid opening up a cosmic string-related time wrinkle while mastering.

(And yes, when you’re all alone and no one is looking over your shoulder, you can do something useful with it.)

Pricing: US$249 (€195); US$999 (€799) Advanced.

Why is Advanced so expensive? Well, each module is also an independent plug-in you can use in your host. With that in mind, this starts to look like a better deal – some terrific reverb, EQ, and dynamics you can use anywhere. You also get the Meter Bridge and Meter Tap for analysis, fancier 2D and 3D spectrographs, and more advanced loudness meters. On the other hand, the basic version will also work with your host and gives you the sound-processing functionality minus all those more sophisticated meters you might need.

This month, there’s also steeply discounted intro pricing: US$599 for Advanced, US$199 for the standard edition. Expires December 1.

Ozone 5 was announced last month, but is now shipping. An OpenGL 2-capable video card is required for the 3D visualizations, but nearly all machines now provide that (including most integrated chipsets, too).

Ozone 5 Product Page @iZotope

For a look at what this tool can do, here’s our friend and experienced mastering and mix engineer Danny Wyatt, talking about how he works with limiting. The new UI and meters are actually a lot clearer than what you see in the video, and offer some nice, new functionality. I can tell you, Danny is a fully-converted Ozone lover, having worked with him in the studio as he mastered my own album. He’s got a big toolset of other stuff, but Ozone is very often what the real work comes down to, and — I think I can say this, Danny — he’ll be happy to evangelize the tool if you talk to him.

This isn’t a review, mind – in fact, my only significant reservation is that Ozone is so slick, it could distract from the reality that good mastering probably doesn’t need it. A great mastering engineer can do wonders with a fairly simple tool and their ear – no wild visualizations required. (“Great mastering engineer,” also known as, “not me.”) But that same person may well appreciate the level of precision iZotope, working with algorithms they’ve developed entirely in-house, can provide.

We want your feedback, as always. Ozone users – what do you think?

Users of rival products – what’s your all-in-one mastering tool of choice, and why?

At the AES show in New York, Avid as expected updated their flagship Pro Tools DAW to version 10, and unveiled a next-generation version of their higher-end HD line. Since it’s Friday, and perhaps not the best day for processing loads of information about new DAWs, let’s see if we can’t boil down the major points.

Pro Tools 10

Clip Gain helps you to set gain levels before you get to the mixer.
More flexible use of files: mix formats, and in a departure for Pro Tools, record and master natively in 32-bit floating points
Better performance on slow disk drives
Low-latency recording and direct monitoring at last added to third-party interfaces
New Avid Channel Strip plugs (based on the former Euphonix)
SoundCloud export (a bit surprised to see Avid beat some of its rivals to this… though, of course, you probably already know how to uplaod)

There’s also EUCON controller support, projects that now have a 24-hour timeline, and enhanced responsiveness.

This is really a Pro Tools upgrade for Pro Tools users – no splashy features, necessarily, so much as stuff their loyal user base is likely to appreciate. But I know Pro Tools users have a pretty long wish list, so PT die-hards, let us know what you think of the update, especially as you begin using it.

Pro Tools HDX

HDX is basically HD super-sized – and that makes sense, as it keeps pace with advances in technology (and particularly the vastly-expanded native processing capabilities we’ve seen over the past decade).

You get five times the DSP power per card versus the previous HD Accel, more tracks, and the new floating-point architecture.

It’s big news that Pro Tools has finally gone to a 32-bit floating-point architecture … well, anyway, if you’re into numbers. I’ll be curious to know if people can tell the difference. Sounds like we need a very controlled double-blind test, and comparing Pro Tools to Pro Tools would be perfect for the job.

Obligatory promo video. Hyperbole/marketing glasses at the ready!

And here’s a look at that new channel strip. Mmmm… channel strippy.

http://www.avid.com/US/products/Pro-Tools-Software

http://www.avid.com/US/products/pro-tools-hdx

With great power comes great learning curves – or maybe not. Csound for Live, just announced this weekend and shipping on Tuesday, brings one of the great sound design tools into the Ableton Live environment. You can use it without any actual knowledge of Csound, without a single line of code — or, for those with the skills, it could transform how you use Csound.

For anyone who thinks music creation software has to be disposable, you’ve never seen Csound. With a lineage going literally to the dawn of digital synthesis and Max Mathews, Csound has managed to stay compatible without being dated, host to a continuous stream of composition and sonic imagination that has kept it at the bleeding edge of what computers can do with audio.

Csound for Live does two things. First, it makes Csound run in real-time in ways that are more performative and, well, “live” than ever before, inside the Live environment. Second, its release marks a kind of “greatest hits” of Csound, pulling some of the platform’s best creators into building new and updated work that’s more usable.

If you’re not a Csound user, you just dial up their work and see what your music can do. If you are, of course, you can go deeper. And if you’re somewhere in between, you can dabble first before modifying, hacking, or making your own code. And that means for everybody, you get:

• Spectral processors
• Phase vocoders
• Granular processors
• Physical models
• Classic instruments

More description:

It looks great. It works great. It sounds… beyond great.

CsoundForLive is a collection of over 120 real time audio-plugins that brings the complexity and sound quality of Csound to the fingertips of ANY Ableton Live user – without ANY prior Csound knowledge.

Capitalizing on the design power of Max For Live, what once took pages of text in Csound can now be accomplished in a few clicks of your mouse.

Move a slider on your APC40 and deconstruct your audio through professional quality granular synthesis…

Touch a square of your Launchpad and warp pitch and time with real time FFT processing…

Press letters on your keyboard and create sonically intricate melodies through wave terrain synthesis…

And Dr. Richard Boulanger, unofficial Jedi Master of the Csound movement, instigator of this project, and Berklee School of Music sound and music wizard, posts a bit more:

With my former student, and now partner, Colman O’Reilly, I have been working around the clock for months to collect, adapt, create, wrap, and simplify a huge collection of Csound instruments and make them all work simultaneously and interchangeably in Ableton Live. In this guise, I am able to “hot-swap” the most complex Csound instruments in and out of an arrangement or composition – on the fly. This is something Csound could never do (and still can’t!), but CsoundForLive can, and it makes a huge difference in the playability and the usability of Csound.

Two weeks ago, I played a solo concert in Hanover Germany, at the first International Csound Conference. There, all of my compositions, from 20 years ago to 20 minutes ago, were performed in real-time using CsoundForLive. Tonight, at the Cycling ’74 Expo in Brooklyn, NY, I will be demonstrating the program; and next week, I will be releasing this huge collection (on Tuesday, October 17th, at 12:01am).

A huge part of the complete collection is FREE, and I hope it will make the creative difference in your (and your student’s) lives that it is making in mine. This is a serious game changer for Csound. Check it out. Dr. B.

If you’re at Expo ’74, do say hello to Dr. B for us (and I think you’ll get some nice surprises with this project).

I’ve got a copy in for testing, so stay tuned. And I’ll be doing some follow-ups with Dr. Boulanger and company.

The only bad news here, of course, is that both a supported version of Ableton Live and Max for Live are required to be able to run Csound in this way. In fact, sounds like we have a nice four-horse race going. Max 6 overhauls how multiple patches work (on top of Max for Live), SuperCollider has its own possibilities for multiple real-time patch loading, someone suggested in comments using pd~ inside Pd to manage multiple Pd creations (something fairly new even to most experienced Pd users), and now we have Csound in Live.

But overall, Csound for Live looks like a no-brainer for Max for Live owners, no question, and an exciting taste of the ongoing convergence of cutting-edge creative sound and code with live music making for everybody. As I hinted at in the Max 6 post, I think it’s suddenly a Renaissance for all these platforms.

http://www.csoundforlive.com/

Silly geeky footnote: With pd~ for Max, I know it’s possible to run Pd for Max. And via another external, Pd can also run Csound. So we could theoretically run Csound in Pd in Max in Live. But let’s not get carried away.

More Videos

Max 6 in Public Beta; For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet

Just because a music tool fills your screen with tools and options doesn’t necessarily make it easier to realize your ideas. From the beginning, the appeal of Max – as with other tools that let you roll your own musical tools from a set of pre-built building blocks – has been the blank canvas.

Max 6 would appear to aim to make the gap between your ideas and those tools still narrower, and to make the results more sonically-pleasing. The reveal: it could also change how you work with patches in performance and production. I was surprised when early teasers failed to impress some users, perhaps owing to scant information. Now, Max 6 is available in public beta, and the details are far clearer. Even if Max 5 was the biggest user interface overhaul in many years, Max 6 appears to be the biggest leap in actual functionality.

It’s what I’d describe as a kitchen-sink approach, adding to every aspect of the tool, so there’s almost certain to be some things here you won’t use. What could appeal to new users, though, are I think two major changes.

More visual patching feedback and discoverability. First, building upon what we saw in Max 5, Max’s approach is to provide as much visual information as possible about what you’re doing. It’s probably the polar opposite of what we saw earlier this week in something like the live-coding environment Overtone: Max’s UI is actively involved with you as you patch. There are visual tools for finding the objects you want, then visual feedback to tell you what those objects do, plus an always-visible reference bar and rewritten help. This more-active UI should make Max more accessible to people who like this sort of visual reference as they work. No approach will appeal to everyone – some people will find all that UI a bit more than they like – but Max’s developers appear to be exploiting as much as they can with interactive visual patching.

Multiple patches at once. New objects for filters and data, a 64-bit audio engine, and low-level programming are all well and good. But the change that may more profoundly impact users and workflow is be the way Max 6 handles multiple patches. Max – and by extension Pd – have in the past made each patch operate independently. Sound may stop when you open a patch, and there’s no easy or fully reliable way to use multiple patches at once. (Compare, for example, SuperCollider, which uses a server/client model that lacks this limitation.) That changes with Max 6: you can now operate multiple patches at the same time, mix them together with independent volume, mute, and solo controls, and open and close them without interrupting your audio flow. (At least one reader notes via Twitter that you can open more than one patch at once – I’d just say this makes it better, with more reliable sound and essential mixing capabilities.) Update: since I mentioned Pd, Seppo notes that the pd~ object provides similar functionality in regards to multiple patches and multi-core operation. This has been an ongoing discussion in the libpd group, so I think we’ll revisit that separately!

One upshot of this change: some users have turned to Ableton Live just to host multiple patches. For users whose live performance set involves Ableton, that’s a good thing. But it could be overkill if all you want to do is bring up a few nifty patches and play with them. Now, I think we’ll start to see more people onstage with only Max again. (Check back in a few months to see if I’m right.)

Here’s an overview of what’s new:

• Discoverability: A “wheel” makes the mysterious functions of different objects immediately visible; Object Explorer makes them easier to find, and new help and reference sidebar keep documentation close at hand.

• 64-bit audio engine

• Open multiple patches, solo and mute them, open and close them without stopping audio, mix audio between them with independent volume, and take advantage of multiple processors with multiple patches.

• Low level building blocks: You don’t get new synth objects, but you could build them yourself. New low-level data-crunching goodness work with MSP audio, Jitter Matrix, and OpenGL textures

• More JavaScript: An overhauled JavaScript engine makes JS scripting faster and more flexible, and there’s a proper text editor with syntax highlighting (though, of course, you may still prefer your own).

• New visuals: Vector graphics and “HTML5 Canvas-like” UI scripting (though to me it’s a shame this isn’t just the HTML5 Canvas). There are also massively-expanded Jitter powers, but those are best left to our sister site Create Digital Motion.

• Filters: New filter-visualizing tools for audio filter construction and manipulation.

• Dictionary data type and associated objects let you describe information in a more structured way (all kinds of potential here from control to composition)

• Projects now let you organize data, media, and scripts in the manner more associated with conventional development environments

• What about Ableton? No news on that front, but I expect more soon. Max for Live users will at the very least get the advantages above, since Max for Live is really Max inside Live.

Looking over all that Max does, I have to say, I’m really amazed. I wonder if computer musicians ever pause to consider how fortunate we are. Even if this isn’t the tool for you, its availability – compounded by the availability of a range of other tools – is itself worth reflection.

Max is a program that shouldn’t exist, doing a number of things it shouldn’t do, for a user base that shouldn’t exist, doing things they shouldn’t be doing.

It doesn’t make sense that you could maintain a commercial project for this kind of audience, that you’d wind up with something this mature and powerful that had a continuous lineage stretching back to the 1980s. It doesn’t make sense that musicians would embrace such a tool and produce invention. The only explanation is sheer love.

Then, even as Max reaches new heights, some of the alternatives you have for making your own music tools are simultaneously growing by leaps and bounds. They provide very different approaches to music making (compare Overtone and SuperCollider, or Pd and libpd, or AudioMulch, or new Web audio tools). There really aren’t many fields that have this kind of choice, free and commercial, in their medium. In science and engineering, there’s private and public funding, producing some amazing tools but nothing with this kind of meeting of power and accesibility. There’s just something about music.

The fact that Cycling ‘74 can maintain a business model – just as open source projects maintain volunteer contributions – is a testament to sheer passion and love for music, and a commitment to perpetually re-imagining how that music is made from an atomic level up. There was a wonderful piece on C creator and UNIX co-creator Dennis Ritchie, whom I remembered yesterday, that observed that what he did was to do what others said couldn’t be done. From Max itself to what people make with it, I think that fits nicely.

So, have a look at the public beta, and let us know what you think. The release of Max 6 has caused more people to ask what this means for Pd and other tools, or even whether to patch things from scratch at all, but I’ll leave that question to a bit later. (I do have my own opinion about which tool fits which circumstance and user, but that’s best left to a separate discussion.) For now, you can try Max yourself and see what the fuss is about. If it doesn’t fit your means of music-making, know that you have a wide array of other options – pre-built to low-level code to old-fashioned tape-and-mic approaches, and everything in between. Go out and listen and see what you discover.

http://cycling74.com/downloads/max-6-public-beta/