The wait is over – and rumors that Melodyne’s bleeding-edge technologies to allow direct access to notes in polyphonic audio had failed to come to fruition turn out to be false. (I was skeptical about those rumors in April.) Melodyne DNA did take longer than expected to ship, but then, that isn’t exactly news in the software business. And now you can try this “note access” concept for yourself and see what you think (well, provided you’re an existing customer). Coupled with time-based manipulation of audio in the form of updated tools in Ableton Live 8, Cakewalk SONAR 8.5, Propellerhead Record, Logic Studio 9, and others, with Melodyne handling the pitch, audio today could be more fluid than ever.

Celemony Melodyne
(Note, since you are a bleeding-edge type — the software is also considered compatible with Snow Leopard, though host-by-host certification is still forthcoming.)

What Melodyne’s editor enables:

• Harmonies are accessible, note by note.
• Pitch, position, duration, and loudness and softness can be modified.
• Formant spectra, vibrato, and pitch drift are accessible.
• Pitch, amplitude, and formant transitions between notes can be edited.

Now, all of this is in a plug-in, but that plug-in is more capable than previous versions, with better multi-threading, an adjustable window size (sigh of relief), and the ability to audition and scrub as you edit. That’s not quite as good as having this functionality in your host, but it’s more than good enough to make this usable.

I’m especially interested in what unusual sound design possibilities can be harnessed using this technology – abusing it rather than using it as intended.

Here’s how to get it:
Registered Melodyne customers are able to participate in the beta.
Launch is planned for early November at US$349 / EUR349.

I’m testing a copy now, so if you’re not a Melodyne user, I will get to report back.

More videos:

(Part 3 of 3 appears to be temporarily missing; I’ll add it once it is re-posted!)

SONAR 8.5, I’m sure at some point, was to be SONAR 9. There’s an enormous amount of functionality in this release. But I think the surprise is some of the stuff that won’t necessarily appeal to the widest audio production audience. Here’s a DAW that’s adding unusual new features for arranging tracks, putting an integrated arpeggiator on every track, beefing up its step sequencer (really), and dumping a bunch of class LinnDrum samples into the package. Those are the kind of treats we like in these parts.

SONAR is really a “DAW” in the traditional sense. It does everything. It doesn’t hide features. Given a choice between taking something out and putting something in, it puts the thing in. It has a lot of knobs and buttons. There are positives and negatives to the approach – it’s the reason some readers of this site return to software on game machines that has more in common with early Amiga software. But if you like the feeling of a packed studio, a tool like SONAR can be terrific. As much as I love Ableton Live for sound design and live performance, I find myself returning to something like SONAR for arrangement.

Even with its competitors packing in features, SONAR 8.5 is a tool that really loves MIDI, just as other software focuses on audio. And it’s one of the best-performing tools around. Because it’s so well-tuned for Windows, that means you can drop it onto a wide variety of PC hardware without spending a lot of cash. Most importantly, it could be the first software on any platform that convinces you to try a 64-bit OS – just at about the time you may be doing a fresh install of Windows 7.

Here’s a first run-down of what’s new in 8.5 that I’m personally most interested in:

MIDI lovers, step sequence and arpeggiate away. Every single instrument loaded in SONAR now has a step sequencer, and every track an arpeggiator. The new step sequencer has a lovely pane for controllers, deep control over each step, and probability controls. It could be reason enough to give SONAR 8.5 a try on its own. And yes, this does indeed take SONAR into FL Studio territory – but with a more conventional DAW bringing those kind of features together. FL users probably won’t be impressed, but if you longed for FL-style pattern sequencing but wanted to maintain an existing DAW, this could be for you.

Drum sound goodies. Session Drummer 3 has long been a nice virtual drum tool, and now improves routing and mixing to come closer to what it feels like miking a new drum. But let’s skip the acoustic kits and get straight to the electronic ones: yes, there’s an 808 and 909, as you’d hope given Cakewalk is now “Cakewalk by Roland” but there’s also a 707, a 727, and a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks and Linn Electronics LinnDrum. Oddly, you still have to look at a picture of a photorealistic drum kit – I’d like to see a visual representation of that LinnDrum, please. But it’s nice to have these sounds, unless you have a really big budget for eBay. There’s 2.5 GB of content, but I’ll skip to these files if I can.

Easier-to-edit audio. I gave Apple deserved props, I think, for making Flex Time’s implementation in Logic 9 elegant and allowing squishing of audio materials around. But what frustrated me about their tool was that you couldn’t take your warped audio and do other stuff with it. AudioSnap 2 could blow it out of the water. SONAR had this going before, but I frankly found some of the selection tools and interface a little off-putting. The UI has now been cleaned up, the Transient Tool makes it easier to grab trasients in your audio, and selection looks better. You can do tempo detection, mapping, and syncing, so that this is useful not only for smooshing around your recorded audio but also mapping it to a tempo. And most interestingly, the transients you find in Audio Snap can be integrated with the new Step Sequencer. There are also audio fidelity improvements for working with vocal, reed, and brass instruments.

A Media Browser brings files together. MIDI patterns, audio loops, grooves, and such can now be dragged-and-dropped into one place. That’s not a new idea, of course, but having custom presets for different locations is a welcome improvement (and why is it so hard to get other browsers to do that)?

A new way of improvising arrangements, “Matrix View.” A cell-based interface for non-linear triggering of audio and MIDI clips sounds like Ableton Live. But think of this more as an alternative way of trying out arrangement ideas. Because it loads from RAM only and not from the hard disk, and because SONAR is built more as a studio tool than a live tool, I don’t expect it to be a Live killer. But if you’re happy with the SONAR workflow and want to try out ideas in its environment, it could still be useful. (Cakewalk’s Project5 went a similar route, with similar results.) It’s just about the only copy I’ve seen of Ableton’s Session View, and it really does feel like a copy, so for that reason it’s probably the change I’m least interested in in SONAR. I do think there are other features here that are far more original, though.

You get strips for working with vocals and drums. For vocals, the VX-64 is a combination tube-emulation mic pre + de-esser + compressor/expander + tube EQ + doubler + delay + output strip, which I already loved after seeing it bundled with the VS-100 hardware. For drums, the PX-64 is a combination pre + transient shaper + compressor + expander + contour EQ + delay + output strip – so, roughly the same thing, with some drum-specific tweaks. Cakewalk has done a lovely job with these strips, and they could be the sort of thing that justifies SONAR’s investment. I can’t imagine not liking the PX-64 having enjoyed the VX-64, both for its audio quality and the ease of drag-and-drop routings.

Why you may finally go 64-bit. The BitBridge XR plug-in not only lets your 32-bit plug-ins work on the 64-bit operating system, but gives each of them 4 GB of RAM for up to 128 GB of RAM. That’s possible on the Mac side with Apple’s Logic – but only with its sampler, not with third-party plug-ins. And SONAR ships with a lot of 64-bit plug-ins in the box, not to mention that major vendors like Native Instruments are providing support.

Improved performance, Windows 7 ready. You can now hotswap audio and MIDI interfaces without restarting, and audio and stability are improved. And when you do get the Windows 7 upgrade – which, based on my research so far, you will want to do from either XP or Vista – SONAR has been rigorously tested. I don’t want to just repeat that without supporting evidence, though, so stay tuned for a separate story.

I still don’t think SONAR is for everyone – though, of course, I don’t really think anything is for everyone. (That’s the marketing people’s job, to claim that one product solves everyone’s problems.) Sitting in front of SONAR’s interface can still feel like getting into a jumbo jet cockpit. The Matrix View is not – and is apparently not intended to be – a replacement for Ableton Live’s live performance features. Open as SONAR is, I think it has new competition from the extensible architecture of Reaper. And, of course, all of this is meaningless to Mac users – though I hasten to add, while the Mac faces a tough 64-bit transition ahead, Windows users can grab SONAR, clean install 64-bit Windows 7, and possibly barely notice anything at all aside from a whole bunch of gobs of memory.

But I’ll say this: it’s funny how a few subtle changes can change how you think, but the combination of brilliant effects, this ridiculously-powerful step sequencer, and the possibility that AudioSnap really nails audio manipulation has me taking a second look at SONAR. Expect more details later this fall. (I’ll be writing this up for CDM and not Macworld for obvious reasons.)

Upgrades for existing SONAR 8 users are US$79 (Studio) – US$99 (Producer). If you purchased SONAR after July 1, the upgrade is free. For new users, SONAR is $499 for the Producer edition with the extra effects and instruments, or $299 for Studio without them. (But, really, I think you want the Z3TA+ synth; you’ll just have to trust me on that.)

“Fruity Loops” has long proven that not all music making apps have to look the same way. FL is quirky and different. Its editing interface is built as much around step sequencers and pattern sequencing as the conventional, mixer and audio-tape-derived views. But perhaps some of its real draw is that it packs, in its mid-level-and-higher packages, it’s packed with fascinating and unusual sonic toys. FL 9 looks to continue that tradition.

And because it’s FL, if you’ve ever bought FL, you get a free lifetime upgrade to this version. (Seriously, if you’re pirating FL, stop. You have absolutely no excuse.)

New toys in this version:

• Autogun Derived from the excellent sounds of the Ogun synth, this instrument has “more than four billion presets.” (Wait… what?) I do agree with Image-Line’s description of “rich metallic and shimmering timbres” in Ogun; that’s exactly what it sounds like.
• Vocodex vocoder, the “last word in Vocoders.” (I thought the last word was, “No one needs a vocoder,” but I could be wrong.) Automatic speech enhancement plus up to 100 “variable-width, multi-parameter” bands does give this some interesting twists.
• Stereo Shaper.

I think that improved performance and editing may be bigger news, however:

• Multi-core CPU support, multithreaded generator, and multithreaded effects processing. This is the one that I expect most excites you crazy, synth-and-effects-routing mad scientists who have been pegging your CPU.
• Improved effects: sidechaining in the limiter, mid-side processing in the reverb, export and noise reduction in the awesome Edison and Slicex audio-editing instruments.
• Improved Playlists with “Clip Track” features
• A “Riff Machine” for automatically generating sequences in the Piano Roll
• Multiple controller support for defining different instrument channels. (Okay, FL experts – did I miss something? That wasn’t present before?)

What comes in the box has been expanded, too. In all the editions, you get the new stereo shaper and Autogun. In “Fruity Edition” and higher, you get SimSynth Live, DrumSynth Live, the DX-10 FM synth, and cool-sounding WASP and WASP-XT. In Producer Edition, you get the Vocodex vocoder.

Unfortunately, Image-Line still continues some confusing a la carte options, and actually eliminates its XXL edition that gave you everything. So, there’s a new Gross Beat that manipulates pitch, position, and volume in real-time, but you only get the demo with FL 9. I can’t really complain about this because FL has so much in it, but it can all get a little hard to follow sometimes.

On the other hand, if you’re an FL fan, I think you could do some serious damage with the vocoder and new sequence generating features.

I’ve always wanted to do a better job of covering FL on this site, so FL users, get in touch!

FL Studio product page
Download the demo

For people looking to get into music recording and production on a computer, for the first time, there’s a bundle that says “Pro Tools” on the box that costs correction: as little as just $99. It really is Pro Tools software; it’s certainly streamlined (some basic track limits, no multitrack recording), but still with a serious complement of recording, mixing, and effects, and even some nice virtual instruments. Beyond that, your choice is which hardware you’d like in your “value meal”:

For vocalists: The Vocal Studio has a cardoid condenser mic – that’s a USB mic you can connect directly – plus a stand and a case.

For “recording:” The Recording Studio gives you a simple 2-in/2-out audio interface so you can connect your own mic/line/instrument input.

For keyboardists: The KeyStudio is a 49-key synth-action keyboard with mod and pitch bend, plus and an audio interface (the 1-in, 1-out M-Audio USB Micro).

Correction: $99 is the price for the keyboard and vocal bundles, $129 for the recording bundle with Fast Track. (I had an early press release that said pricing was $129 for all three.)

The target readership for CDM may not be in the market for this bundle — though it is a ridiculously cheap way to add Pro Tools compatibility to your rig, if you just need to trade session files. But I know we also have a lot of readers who offer expertise to other folks. Do let us know what they think – if they’re turned on, or turned off.

See additional analysis on what the larger implications of Avid’s strategic shift may be.

If you’re a beginning user, I don’t doubt that this software will get you started. You get over 5 GB of instruments and loops, 60 virtual instrument sounds, reverb / chorus / delay / flanger / phaser / compression / EQ effects, reasonable track counts (16 audio, 8 instrument, 8 MIDI), 3 insert slots per track for “up to 3 simultaneous effects,” buses and send/return routing, and 2 simultaneous audio inputs and outputs. So you can’t do simultaneous multitrack input or surround hardware, but you’d need a different audio interface for that, anyway.

Actually, so that you can email this story to your nephew or niece who’s just starting out and considering options, let me translate to English:

This is a well-priced package that gives you the hardware and software you’d need to record podcasts, voice-over, and vocals for music (Vocal Studio), play some synths and instruments (KeyStudio), and input your guitar or instrument (Studio), and in each of them, record, edit, and produce musical arrangements. You get some virtual instruments to play with, some pre-stocked sounds, and all the editing and arrangement you’ll probably need.

It’ll run on Mac and Windows machines with modest specs (see the product page for the full details), though you will need these audio interfaces connected for the software to start. (You can’t simply use the headphone out jack on your MacBook or PC laptop, for instance, which is possible in some competitive software. The interface is effectively used as copy protection for the software.)

-Peter, speaking English

I believe that there are other ways to put together a good studio for this price, of course. There are some terrific “bargain-priced” music apps out there, actually more than I have time to use. It’s time to refresh CDM’s own budget recommendations for a variety of different kinds of users. But I actually think the presence of this option, with the “Pro Tools” name, could raise the visibility of the whole area. And since ultimately comfort with musical tools comes down to preference, the big question is whether a new user likes the Pro Tools interface and the package here.

More photos of the included gear below – nothing glamorous, but certainly not bad for the price, let alone with the software bundle.

As you may know, the creators of games like Grand Theft Auto have collaborated with Timbaland to bring a mobile music studio to Sony’s PSP (and later, the iPhone), based on an ambitious free Flash experiment on their Website. Now, it’s my impassioned belief that you shouldn’t need lots of canned loops or celebrity endorsements to make music fun, so normally I might actually run the opposite direction of any story starting with that line. But here’s the surprise: underneath, the app is more powerful than I expected.

I’ve gotten an early preview of the title in person at Rockstar’s offices here in New York, and was also able to grill their developers on geeky details of how the sound engine is put together. A test copy isn’t yet available so I can’t properly review the app, but I am at least able to talk about some of what lies beneath the PSP screens and marketing.

For some time, a select few have known that the Sony PSP’s secret is that it’s a powerful handheld computer, ideal for mobile music. Brilliant-but-underground apps like PSPSEQ and PSP Rhythm capitalized on this potential, but required you hack your PSP in order to run them, because Sony restricts launching non-authorized applications from memory.

Beaterator is the first full-featured app that can be run directly on the PSP. Some people may not look past the fact that it comes from a game company, past its (admittedly) thick layer of marketing glitz and celebrity endorsement. But based on a first look, I believe Beaterator is the most powerful music app ever released through game channels, surpassing in functionality even the recent cult hit Korg DS-10 for the Nintendo DS.

In the interest of disclosure, I have a confession: I didn’t expect to have any interest in Beaterator at all. I was concerned that the musical experience would be watered down (though more on what I actually discovered below). The fact that this game had one artist – Timbaland – literally dancing around the screen talking about how it’s his game I thought would be a deal killer. And, of course, it’ll be impossible to talk about this game without the shadow of the “Acidjazzed Evening” controversy, which aleges Timbaland plagiarized music by Finnish composer Janne Suni – made worse by a lawsuit and a glib interview in which the artist responded, “It’s from a video game, idiot.” Timbaland is by no means the first artist to get into trouble with an uncleared sample, but the fact that it was a much lesser-known artist and that the situation was handled less than gracefully certainly created a credibility issue in the enthusiast community.

I bring those issues up front, because I know readers will bring them up. But what intrigues me about Beaterator is that it has an essentially split personality. At one moment, Beaterator is an animated Timbaland talking to you while you trigger canned loops with game buttons, neither game nor, really, a music creation app. At another moment, though, it’s a full-blown music sequencer you can carry around on your PSP, with some retro design and sound features that might actually make it appealing. And I think it’d be unfair to cover one side without the other.

The marketing for Beaterator focuses on the thousands of loops assembled by Timbaland and Rockstar. But Beaterator isn’t limited to those loops. What you likely won’t see emphasized in the gaming press:

• Sampling: You can make your own samples using the mic (or, if you can find it, you can add a PSP microphone)
• Audio import: You can import WAV files from a computer, as easily as dropping them onto a MemoryStick.
• Audio export: You can save your work as an audio file. Rockstar will have its own site for exchanging your music with other users, but that will be limited to the built-in effects (I’m guessing so they don’t have to police piracy). But that won’t stop you from exporting audio on your MemoryStick and using it however you like.
• MIDI import and export: While even many serious iPhone games lack this functionality, you can use Beaterator as a mobile MIDI editing workstation.
• Grown-up interface and effects: Beaterator has real audio effects, with real labels. The Compressor has labels like Gain and Ratio, instead of, you know, “Phatness” or “AMPMEUP.” It’s a clue that this really is a tool and not a game.
• It’s-a-me … not! Game cartoon character heads never appear in the interface – though I do have to admit, those Mario Paint Mario noteheads were cute. (For the PSP, might I suggest semidemiquavers with the face of Kratos?)

I love my desktop sequencers, but having these kinds of features in a comfortable-to-hold mobile device you take anywhere, being able to fly through settings with the PSP buttons, and lots of little details added by the Rockstar developers like confining pattern editing to scales and keys make Beaterator look like something that’ll be fun to use. After a couple of minutes, I was ready to charge up my PSP and fire up Beaterator alongside PSPSEQ.

Inside Beaterator’s Engine

Beaterator began several years ago on Rockstar’s website. Before making full-blown music production tools with Flash was popular, before the idea of “cloud editing” had become a buzzword, a side project at Rockstar yielded a free Flash game, which you can still play. The interface is loop-based and reminiscent of tools like ACID, GarageBand, and Fruity Loops. But it’s surprisingly minimal, capable of full-blown pattern and loop editing, includes real-time effects, and comes with a selection of loops from some of my all-time favorite producers – A.VEE & 3D, Juan Atkins, King Britt, Matthew Dear, and Steinski. Side note: please, Rockstar, can we have a custom version of Beaterator with those producers?

http://beaterator.rockstargames.com/beaterator.html

Having talked to mobile developers both big and indie, I was curious about the technical details of Beaterator’s implementation – especially after being impressed in a short demo by capabilities that went beyond what I had expected. Rockstar replied with some very particular details from the developers. I think the answers say a lot about what’s possible on the PSP – even with that iPhone version in the works – and how a handheld sequencer on mobile hardware can be put together.

PK: So, I see eight tracks, some effects – what are the capabilities of the underlying audio engine in Beaterator?

Rockstar: Our engine runs at 16-bit stereo, 22.05kHz throughout. As you say, there are 8 tracks, each of which each can have up to two insert effects* summed into a stereo mix. Each track also has a stereo pre-fader Send to a dedicated reverb buss which runs a global reverb unit which is also added into the output. The channel level, pans, aux send and all effects parameters can be automated to 1-bar resolution, as can the final mix output level, pan, and the global reverb parameters. At any given time, each of the 8 tracks can be playing either a sample-based Melody/Drum loop (with 8 channel polyphony), a monophonic synth melody loop, or a mono/stereo timestretched audio loop.

Our sequencer also supports 8 channels, at 4ppqn. The maximum song length is 240 bars, and we are fixed to 4/4 time. BPM ranges from 60-300, and there is a simple 16th-note swing control as well.

The insert effects we support are: Compressor, Chorus, Delay, Distortion, 3-band EQ, Multimode Resonant Filter, Flanger, Noise Gate, Phaser & Tremolo.

A lot of the editing (aside from vocals, really) appears to be in MIDI pattern editing. Is this always triggering a sampled instrument, or is there live synthesis / DSP going on under the hood at all? (I know the PSP is capable of such things.) Do you have any control over the timbre of the instruments, or just the musical patterns?

We trigger either our pitched sample playback code or our own DSP synthesiser on a channel. The sample playback code is a fairly simple 8-voice (which means a theoretical maximum polyphony of 64 if you are playing 8 samples on each of the 8 channels) pitchshifter (no multisampling), with no real control of timbre (no filters). But it does support velocity sensitivity (although this has to be sequenced as the PSP buttons aren’t velocity sensitive) and a full ADSR amplitude envelope.

The inbuilt synth is monophonic (but you can run one per channel, so up to 8 in theory). It’s a simple 3-oscillator Virtual Analog design. Each oscillator has a smoothly-morphable waveshape from Sine, through Triangle, Sawtooth, Square and finally to 10% Pulse) and has independent +/-2 octave pitch and +/-1 semitone detune controls. There is also a separate white-noise generator. The synth also has its own multimode resonant filter (24dB/octave Low Pass, 12dB/octave Low Pass, 12dB/octave Band Pass, 12dB/octave High Pass and 24dB/octave Low Pass modes) with controllable keyboard tracking. There are two ADSR envelope generators, one locked to amplitude controls, and the other freely assignable to the modulation matrix. There are also two LFOs with multiple shapes and speeds. These three modulation sources can be freely assigned to any of the 14 modulation destinations, which amounts to 42 modulation slots. Unfortunately, none of the parameters of the synth can be automated.

Pattern editing in Beaterator does not use MIDI internally – The game is locked to 4ppqn on a five-octave keyboard, and the melody notes use a unique pitch bend/portamento technique which doesn’t map directly onto MIDI pitch bend events. However, we can import and export MIDI files with a reasonable degree of accuracy, which is a feature we think will be particularly useful.

I’m already impressed by some of the editing capabilities – I was surprised to see a brief glimpse of envelope rubber-banding. Any other specifics you want to talk about in terms of editing possibilities?

As explained above, we have ADSR envelope control throughout, and we are particularly proud of our Synthesizer. Our sound waveform editor supports most of the normal editing tools you would expect (trim, insert silence, normalisation), and also allows you to set up sustain regions for the sample playback engine, timestretch and slice the waveform.

Okay, so let’s imagine I’ve got a bunch of audio loops on my drive and want to do, effectively, what Timbaland did with his loops. Do you have as much control over authoring loops for Beaterator as Rockstar? Are there limitations on this feature?

You can freely import and edit any 44.1kHz or 22.05kHz mono or stereo uncompressed 16-bit WAV into Beaterator (we have 9MB of sample memory available in any one song). You can edit these however you like (indeed we use these tools ourselves to generate content).

Do you need to prepare your loops at a fixed bpm? If I bring in a 120 bpm loop and change the tempo to 144, does my loop stretch? (If it’s doing stretching, the audio warping engine sounds really fantastic!)

We do timestretch loops to match the songs tempo (but this can be disabled if desired). You can also over-stretch sounds for that early-90s “granular timestretch” effect. Thanks for the compliments on our warping engine too!

I’ve got a soft spot for 90s digital, I think. What was the emphasis of the Rockstar team in terms of their samples and musical genres?

The focus was on loops that could work well with most genres. We like to think you can create songs from Rock to Rap with the selection we present.

Is it (You) Live, or is it Timbaland?

Beaterator gets at the heart of what’s happening with the way music creation is packaged in a digital age. Rockstar contrasted their title with things that are “games,” like the Rock Band/Guitar Hero mold that was refined by Harmonix. Rockstar emphasizes creative music creation and deemphasizes gaming. At the same time, they pack the title with pre-made loops and are concerned about whether what you do will easily sound good, or whether you’ll be overwhelmed by the genuinely powerful tools underneath. Beaterator, unlike Rock Band, is not about playing along with your favorite artists – but clearly Rockstar is betting that Timbaland is a favorite artist of prospective buyers, and that you will try to sound like him and use his loops. Rock Band makes no such attempt to be creative. The Beatles, coming out next week, is about playing along with the Beatles. (I recall singing along with my sister when we were kids, and I was someone who grew up taking weekly piano lessons.) Yet the “game” in this case does just the opposite – instead of trying to be easier, the whole selling point is a ramped difficulty curve. Maybe the reason studies are showing people graduating from Rock Band to real instruments is that, eventually, if you seek out difficulty, you need to go beyond the game. (Actual instruments: they’re the ultimate expansion pack.)

It’s a paradox, but it’s not a paradox restricted to gaming. You can take the conflict above and apply it to the way all music technology is marketed. On one hand, you have software that’s almost comically complex – sometimes offering so many options that it’s hard even for people with doctoral-level training in digital signal processing to make actual music. On the other, from many of the same vendors, you have pre-built loop libraries and presets with push-button simplicity, requiring less musical coordination or rhythm than, well, Rock Band on Easy mode.

All of us, like our technology, have a split personality when we use digital tech. But maybe the ultimate question is a simple one: can you make something?

I’ll reserve that question in regards to Beaterator until I get a final version. I was set to take a development build home with me, but I do have to wait until the final release. I do think these are interesting questions, though.

Oh, and say what you will about Timbaland, but animated Timbaland has some sort of nuclear control panel that he uses to DJ from. I want a real one. Surplus shopping, anyone?

Stay tuned for a look at the finished product. If fans of mobile game music were willing to use Mario Paint to get an extremely basic song editor, I think Beaterator could be a revelation. And in addition to looking at music production in Beaterator well beyond what might qualify as “Rock” or “Rap,” I think it’s long overdue for a guide to the other independent apps for the PSP. (In fact, I just got a new one in my inbox), so watch for that, too, in a separate story.

Videos from Rockstar (all images and videos are of the PSP version, not the iPhone)…

Now, I talk too much. The best way to make my argument? Listen to the kids. Their favorite feature: recording their own voice.

I rest my case.

Given the passion of the debate, it’s easy to forget that Propellerheads’ Record has been firing up discussion from many people who haven’t actually seen it. Record is to audio recording, mixing, and mastering what Reason is to synthesized sound, and for Reason lovers, it finally delivers that holy grail – multiple racks. Record is a bit like Reason Studio, taking those instruments and giving them a full production context.

Since its release, Propellerhead has amplified polarized opinions about this tool. It doesn’t support plug-ins (though you can use other ReWire clients), it doesn’t do things like film scoring, and thus its singular focus on recording means I think it’s fair for Propellerhead to say it’s not a DAW. Of course, going so far as tell blogs they can’t label it as such is going a bit far, and it only made some people protest more. And the focus on those features hasn’t pleased users who want everything and a kitchen sink on their feature list. Users were divided over the Ignition Key and online authorization scheme (see full explanation), of course.

But it is something about which everyone seems to have an opinion, and for that alone, I love it. That’d be a little more fair if you’ve actually gotten to use it, however. So, now’s your chance to try Record for yourself:

http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/

The beta is a full-featured, open-and-save-capable version, through its expiration date on September 9.

If you’re impatient, we can get you the beta key right now. Just leave a comment, say something intelligent, say “+1 beta,” and be sure to leave your real email address. (Emails are not published on the site; I’ll just see them in my inbox.) If you’d like to be on the CDM Notes mailing list (no other marketing or spam), say “+1 email.”

All out! Thanks to everyone; hopefully we’ve gotten everyone a code who wanted one. Follow comments for some little glitches with their Website…

Once you’ve got a reply from me, download Record by entering your code at http://recordyou.com. You’ll also get two codes to pass along to friends.

Update on registration: I talked to Propellerhead’s web developer – when you get the confirmation email for recordyou.com, go ahead and log in! You’ll be confirmed automatically. Some people saw this login page following the confirmation email and thought something was wrong. Don’t worry, log in, and everything will be fine.

We’ll give out keys until we run out. Propellerhead shared some with us, but then composer Josh Mobley, whose work is featured in Record and has been an advocate of the software from the beginning, reached out. Josh gave us half his stash of keys to share with CDM readers, because he’s devoted to Propellerhead’s stuff. How devoted? He has a Reason tattoo. And it’s nice to hear that Record is pleasing a Reason fan, as that to me remains the big test. Josh has done some significant commercial work, ranging from NBC’s The Office to Ford Motors to the US Department of Defense, with scoring, music, sound design, remix, and environmental projects.

http://www.joshmobley.com/

And he’s a superfan in the best way. I asked him why Record matters in his work:

I love me some Reason. In fact, I love it so much, I got a tattoo on my wrist of the Reason logo. Most people thought I was out of my mind but I love it. Why? Things really didn’t start taking off for me until I started using Reason. I took one look at the program and thought, they made this for me. I started busting out tunes faster than I ever had before. And people were snatching them right up. It dawned on me right then and there that this self-contained environment had freed me up and allowed me to be creative without scrolling through a bunch of plug-ins and whatnot. The distractions of making music were gone. A limited tool set that can be routed and combined in an infinite number of ways. One needs only to look at the patches and music that [Reason user] peff is making to see that reason is the most powerful music instrument in the world.

And now, we have Record: Audio+Reason+SSL Mixer. Having used it since the early alphas, I can honestly say that Record is every bit as musical and easy to use as Reason. The time stretching is, frankly, jaw-dropping. The new mixer sounds like the SSL at my old studio. You can easily do a whole song in Record without any other software. However, Record+Reason is a lethal Combination.

I could go on and on, but at the end of the day, you really need to spend some time with this program and see what’s possible. I can almost certainly guarantee that you will be making music faster than you ever did.

Now, a superfan is not a fanboy. Fanboys, as we know, are the folks who get defensive even in the face of some obvious shortcoming, who spend lots of their time talking down other people’s choices. The superfans I’m guessing are generally too busy actually using their software – in this case, making music.

And if you do find software you love enough to tattoo on your wrist (see also our friend Jo with Reaktor), you don’t need any reviewer or forum commenter or expert or anyone else to tell you what to think. You’ll know.

Do tell us what you think of Record as you use it, and good luck snagging a code.

Previously:
Propellerhead Record In-Depth Preview: Recording, Reason-Style; Beta Test Now
Propellerhead Record: New Getting Started Video Tutorial, Blog
How Propellerhead’s New “Ignition Key” Authorization for Record Works

Segue – Reset (Live at Big Day Out 2008 Two-up Edit) from Jaymis on Vimeo.

How do you make live performance documentation that doesn’t suck? You’ve been there: you’re trying to shoot footage, you’re trying to edit footage someone else shot, or you’re trying to tell someone shooting footage how to take material you can actually use. Jaymis from Create Digital Motion talks a bit about a recent experience working on footage of Segue – or skip to the end for some tips, either for you or to give that young, eager videographer you hope can make you look cool. Got more thoughts? We’d love to hear them. -Ed.

I’ve posted about this on CDMo, but the topic is applicable to musicians as much as visualists, so I think it’s worth repeating here.

I’m currently editing some video of a gig and interview, taken at an album launch party here in Brisbane. The promoter supplied me with a DVD containing about 10 minutes of interview, and about 45 minutes of “party” footage. If you’re in to documenting your work you’ve probably shot some just like it yourself: Crowd dancing. Shot of the artist. Over the shoulder of the artist tweaking his Lemur. Cute girls dancing. Repeat.

Of that 45 minutes of party action, I was able to extract only about 40 seconds of usable footage. It wasn’t badly shot, just homogenous. There was no shot variation, so it wasn’t interesting to watch, and there was no way to edit for continuity, to give an overall, consistent feel for what was going on.

The missing ingredient, which would allow me as an editor to glue it all together, was closeups.

Last year my collaborators Segue had a high profile gig at the Big Day Out. At the last minute the festival organizers said we couldn’t provide our own visuals, so I took my camera along instead, with a view to shooting footage which could be used for a live video. As there was just a single camera, I tried to cover as much ground as possible, shooting from the front and back of the stage, out in the audience, getting wide shots of the crowd and zooming up close on details of the rig and artists. I’m not a very good cameraman, but I knew that with enough details, enough cutaways, enough different shots, I’d be able to tie everything together at the end.

Getting the footage back to my studio, I took over 9 hours to edit that 45 minutes of footage into a single 7 minute live video. At the time the band were wondering why it was such an intensive job, so I exported a two-up edit of the video to show them how I was able to use closeups, crowd shots, and details to take that single-camera shoot and make it look like there had been a team of ninja cameramen swarming the stage.

The two-up edit shows the final mix on top, and the original continuous camera feed underneath.

This edit took so long because I was very careful with the continuity of shots. If I was cutting from a wide shot of an artist drinking, the following closeup should show him putting the bottle back down. If he had headphones on, then subsequent shots should have them as well. It didn’t matter if those clips were dragged in from 20 minutes earlier in the set, because close shots don’t show enough of the stage detail for the viewer’s brain to realise that things are happening out of order.

I’m sure many CDMu readers have been lumped with the task of capturing video of your own performances, or those of your peers. You may have edited the video yourself, or given it to a handy visualist to have a crack. Even if you have someone else shooting video of your show, it’s worth giving them some direction on what you’d like to to see. Hence:

Jaymis’ Tips for Great, Editor-Friendly Gig Shooting

Leave the camera(s) running constantly: Even if there’s only one, you won’t miss anything. If there’s more than one camera, continuous tape makes multi-camera editing exponentially easier.
Closeups are your friends: Close, detail shots allow you to tie disparate pieces of footage together and to cover camera moves. They also add variety, and show some intimate details of what’s happening on stage. Closeups of the crowd and venue are also great for adding context, without having the distraction of a full human body unrelated to the action.
Keep the camera moving: If you just want to document your set for posterity, having it up the back on a tripod is fine. But if you want to produce some thing visually interesting, then get that camera moving around the space. Remember to hold it still in between moves so you don’t get stabbed by your editor. Take your cues for the music. Move a couple of beats, hold focus for a phrase. Make your moves in between sections of music. Wide shots for builds, close shots in the middle of a section.
Don’t be scared of manual focus: Out of focus shots can be a great transition device. For fast, exciting music, hunting focus reinforces the frenetic nature of the action.

All of the other standard photography rules apply of course, so find someone to tell you about white balance, aperture, shutter speed, exposure etc. If you stuff those up though, there’s a lot which can be done in the edit, but we can’t make up interesting footage in post-production. That has to happen on the night.

Ah, Internet rumors: so adorable, so not actually true. But this one does demonstrate that people eagerly await the ability to edit audio with more flexibility. Something about Melodyne fires up the imagination.

Celemony caused a big stir last year with a video demonstrating Melodyne DNA technology – Direct Note Access. The YouTube video itself went semi-viral, demonstrating a kind of holy grail in computer audio: the ability to seamlessly edit audio note-by-note, even in a polyphonic texture, as easily as you can MIDI patterns.

Then, this month, a rumor started spreading through the forums that Celmony was “in a panic.” An alleged copy of a magazine I’ve never heard of, “Real Music,” claimed the mad scientist behind the technology had failed. The copy:

Celemony in trouble over DNA promise
"The technology demoed in Celemony’s upcoming Melodyne Editor used prefabricated loops and edits to illustrate a ‘what if’ scenario.
An insider told us: Everyone’s panicing behind the scenes at Celemony. Peter used a mock-up of proposed technology for live demos. In reality, producing a fully working version is proving to be impossible. When he produces a mini demo for one sampled phrase the whole thing breaks for other phrases. He’s panicing because very soon he expects Celemony to retract the promise of the holy grail DNA feature and apologize to the userbase. Peter has taken a month off work after a row with Editor’s project manager over his persistent failure to make the feature a reality."

Now, I find this all strangely alluring: Peter Neubaecker, the mad genius behind Melodyne, locked in a basement cursing his audio algorithms, perhaps with a computer hooked up to a giant lightning rod. His elongated beard only helps him fit this role. Betrayed by his assistant, Melodyne DNA becomes an utter failure. (“Are you saying that I put an abnormal brain into a seven and a half foot long, fifty-four inch wide GORILLA?”) You know, something like this:

Strangely alluring – just not terribly plausible, and, according to Melodyne, entirely made up. A representative for Celemony points me to this quote from forum host and site webmaster Claudio d’Allere, who tries to dispel the speculation:

Nobody is panicking at Celemony. We know we are late, and that may have raised some speculations. However, DNA still works as intended, and we are happy to invite you to our public beta test that we expect to start in late May or early June. Feel free to try this beta with your own audio files and not just "prefabricated loops"."

So, yes, the story – sit down for this one – is that the software is late. Let me explain something: late is much, much, much better than early. Early means that someone has shipped software before it’s entirely baked. I know this comes as a shock, of course. Just as we know it’s utterly unheard of that software or other technology be delayed (the horror!), we certainly have a hard time imagining anyone shipping any music technology with some features missing or lingering bugs or anything like that. Jeez.

Anyway, all my sources say Melodyne DNA is very much on track, and still looks fantastic to me. I’m sure, as with any audio algorithm, you’ll find audio that doesn’t work perfectly, but that’s true even of simple things like a Compressor.

The good news is, if you don’t have enough to do or have extra time on your hands, you can use the affordable Melodyne Uno to have fun right now, by recreating the spooky voice of the GLaDOS computer from the video game Portal. Behold:

Lately, I’ve had a number of conversations with audio and music tech industry figures in which they complained about the untamed wilderness of the Internet. These chats didn’t necessarily start with “You crazy kids and your…,” though I suspect that may have been implied. I’m sure that odd twists like this rumor were what they had in mind.

The Web does indeed give the power to transmit inaccurate information quickly – but it’s equally quick at correcting it. And it does gives us things like this awesome GLaDOS tutorial, so to me, it all balances out.

I am a crazy kid, though. Guilty as charged.

Stay tuned for that beta.

Sonic scientist Peter Neubäcker of Melodyne has been wowing Internet audiences for some time with the automagical powers of the company’s Direct Note Access (DNA). The vision: manipulate individual pitches as easily as MIDI notes, even in polyphonic passages of a single instrument. At NAMM last month, the company showed the first product, Melodyne editor, due to ship in the spring for US/EUR 349.

There’s just one little catch: a solo developer has beaten them to the punch, at least prior to them shipping their DNA flagship editor tool. And if you want it right now, it’s yours for 25 Euros. (The final version will cost 99 Euros.)

Jonathan Schmid-Burgk, sole developer and a student at Harvard, announces:

The time has come to announce the release of the world’s first published polyphonic tone manipulation software. The dream of musicians to isolate single notes out of chords and so to manipulate most forms of recorded audio has come true on the 20th of January 2009.

Shell out EUR25, and you get a Mac VST plug-in that can manipulate audio easily. With monophonic audio, you can create polyphonic harmonizations. You can isolate and manipulate individual harmonics – meaning not only can you do pitch manipulations, but presumably sound design, as well. You can change individual notes or chords in recorded audio, to fix mistakes or (more interesting) actively recompose audio.

I feel about this the same way I do about Celemony: this gets really interesting when you use it for sound design. For some inspiration, skip this post and head straight for the sound samples on the site:

VisualVox polyphonic 0.9 [improvisator.de]

Via the awesome rekkerd.org

Also check out his Harmony Improvisator which creatively generates harmonies from MIDI input – an interesting thing to mess around with even for those of us who know / have taught (ahem) classical harmonic theory

Now, VisualVox Polyphonic isn’t without some catches, as you’d expect from the solo-student cheap alternative:

• It’s Mac-only and VST-only for now. (Just keep in mind, though, that means not only Cubase works but things like Ableton Live on the Mac, as well.)
• Jonathan warns that there are still some bugs, there are big temporary files, there are occasional glitches in the algorithm, and it doesn’t quite sync properly with hosts, requiring exports.
• The interface isn’t as slick or fancy as Celemony, and may be slightly less convenient for editing.
• Update – people are having some significant hosting issues with this. (Your mileage may vary, though the fact that this was tested in Cubase tells me those folks may have better luck.) So stay away if you don’t like bugs – this isn’t a final release. We’ll have more as this evolves, okay?

But here’s why I’m anxious to test it, nonetheless:

• It’s cheap – meaning it might be more open to people just curious to experiment. (I actually wonder if he shouldn’t keep the EUR25 price and make up for it on volume.)
• No iLok dongle, as required for Celemony. Correction: Celemony also allows challenge/response — so you have a choice.
• There are some interesting fine-tuning options for the algorithm and manipulation parameters. That could make this more interesting for sound design – and something even Celemony users might want to run alongside the more polished tool.

In other words, none of this is likely to dampen enthusiasm for Celemony, but that’s a good thing: more is more better. Could this mean the floodgates are about to open for creative sound design tools that mess with audio in new ways? Hey, I hope so.

If anyone tests this, we’d love your report – and sound examples.

Don’t toss that Windows Mobile gadget yet. In fact, you might want to keep glued to Craig’s List for a used unit, if you like the idea of road warrior music production on the cheap, sans laptop.

Amidst all the hype around the iPhone and iPod Touch, Windows Mobile devices could actually win on power apps for on-the-go music making. Maybe that’s because of the similarity to developing Windows desktop apps, maybe it’s because of fewer restrictions compared to Apple’s SDK, or maybe some combination of that and fortune. Nonetheless, during this Summer of iPhone, the makers of powerful Windows Mobile sequencer/sampler studio Griff note on their new blog that Windows Mobile just got a new music app.

Yes, you read that right: a new app for Windows Mobile.

Wildly enough, MeTeoR is basically a pocket-able miniature DAW, boasting:

• 12 tracks of audio with stereo mixdown
• Audio waveform editing with cut, copy, paste, and processing (fade, normalize, reverse, etc.)
• Various effects (delay, chorus, reverb, phaser, filters, pitch shift, noise gate, graphic EQ, and more), with routable aux sends
• Metronome with live recording
• A mixer with full automation envelopes for each tracks (for the mixer lanes and effects)

The whole thing is basically reminiscent of an old version of Cakewalk for Windows, only running in your pocket. I could see it as fairly useful for doing some quick processing or pre-processing on a big project – load those extra files on the subway and keep working on that project, even if you’re up against a deadline.

Not only that, but because the system requirements are fairly flexible and used Windows Mobile devices are fairly worthless, you could easily rescue someone’s unused PDA and press it into service as a music device. They’ll thank you. The environment will thank you.

US$29.95, but unlike Apple’s iTunes store, you can download a demo version. (Imagine that.)

All of this is on paper (erm, pixels); no promises, as I haven’t used it yet. I have to brush off my Dell PDA and give this a try. I know there’s a charger here somewhere…

MeTeoR @ 4pockets.com [Demo download and purchase links, detailed features]