It’s hard to assemble an April Fool’s Joke involving technology these days, because actual inventions keep proving stranger than fiction. When Google created a prank involving gestures for controlling email, it was only a matter of time before someone whipped up a prototype that actually did the job.

The Moog Music company, therefore, may be asking for trouble. Their highly-entertaining polyphonic Theremin is spot-on parody, down to the “Stairway to Heaven” solo. And part of the geekier joke for Theremin players is the knowledge that the technology behind this instrument makes what they’re describing safely impossible.

But what’s impossible with conventional Theremin technology could be very possible with computer vision – even the goofy gestures in Moog’s faked video. Artist, inventor, and musician Tim Thompson has been at the bleeding edge of new music instruments for some time. It wouldn’t be overstatement to say Tim was using multi-touch before multi-touch was cool. When I shared a booth with him at Maker Faire a few years ago, he had with him FingerWorks hardware, a now-discontinued tactile, multi-touch pad, and was using it to play visuals live. In a pattern too often repeated in technology, the independent niche tool was snapped up by a larger player. In this case, that larger player was Apple – and, apparently backed at least in part by FingerWorks’ know-how and patents, Apple made history.

In a new project filmed by the superb Modulate This!, Tim works instead with touch-less control, using the Kinect to track multiple areas of expression. (Tim is using the free environment Cinder, which joins tools like Processing and OpenFrameworks as well-liked options for Kinect hackers. In this case, the Kinect support itself comes from libfreenect, the open-source drivers for Mac, Windows, and Linux.)

What he’s built, in other words, is a true polyphonic Theremin – able to play more than one line and employ more than a monophonic gesture, all without touch. The joke may be on Moog.

Read the full story on Modulate This, Mark Mosher’s all-original repository for great writing on music making.
An Exclusive First Look at Tim Thompson’s Kinect-Based Instrument: MultiMultiTouchTouch
(Thanks to Tim and Roger Linn for sending this my way!)

Part of the value of trying extreme ideas is to demonstrate not only advantages, but disadvantages. And I still find some reason to express healthy skepticism. The similarity to the Theremin isn’t accidental in the Kinect experiments. These projects also inherit the Theremin’s weaknesses. A lack of tactile feedback means it’s difficult to orient pitch or achieve precise control, without the resistance a physical object provides. Reliance on gestural control also opens the opportunity for accidental input and calibration challenges. (The Kinect fares better than the Theremin, but it’s not immune to similar problems, if for different reasons.) Taking a page from the Theremin, Tim’s physical frame makes a big difference – while it doesn’t provide tactile resistance, it at least creates a point of reference in physical space.

The Kinect also adds a new problem the Theremin didn’t face: latency. All of this means if you still like knobs, keys, strings, or even physical multi-touch (which can in certain variations provide excellent tactile feedback via deformable meshes), you needn’t worry. Your revolution may not be Kinect-ified.

But if there were one perfect design for musical instruments, we’d all play just one instrument. Instead, the history of instrument design across the world is an evolutionary explosion of different tradeoffs, different playing styles, and resulting different musical idioms. Any joke can become an instrument, just as any instrument – to someone – can seem like a joke. And that means if you’re looking for something new, you might just celebrate every day as if it’s April Fool’s Day. No kidding.

Updated: Tim offers some comments. He says what other musicians experimenting with Kinect have told me – that while it has certain restrictions as a solo instrumental controller, there’s tremendous potential for multi-user scenarios like installations. And that is itself significant (back to the question of choosing tradeoffs in order to accomplish goals). Tim writes:

Folks whose goal is to replace conventional instruments are sure to be disappointed, as you describe. You could add more detail on other goals:

Goal: using it for art installations at events like Burning Man, creating new and “casual” instruments which are unusual yet inviting and easy to play. Matt Bell ran an experiment related to that goal: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQiyKFDvzkU

Goal: creating controllers which have a much larger visual appeal to an audience, who deserve performers more interesting to look at than someone hunched over buttons and sliders. That’s the reason why musicians like Mark Mosher are interested, in the same way he’s interested in the Percussa Audiocubes, for their visual appeal in performances.

Goal: provide an instrument that dancers can use in performances. I’ll be exploring this in the fall, with a choreographer friend.

Good food for thought; feel free to discuss more in comments.

From comments (thanks, Charlie Cowper!), here’s a live performance by Japanese electronic artist Rei Harakami on nothing more than a 1990s-vintage multitrack digital workstation, Roland’s VS-880. (The VS-880 was introduced at NAMM in January 1996.) Harakami is a virtuoso on this machine, not simply playing back tracks but dancing through menus and settings and adding live mixing and effects. It’s a mix performance, yes – but it’s a seriously impressive one. And it shows how much this now-”vintage” machine can do, even with some simple parameters.

I’m almost afraid to mention the VS-880, lest we get an arbitrary direct translation of this device as a Roland iPad app. But perhaps the real point here is that choosing limitations, practicing with a tool over an extended period of time, and finding a working and performance method that matters to you is what really makes a difference. It’s not endless parades of iPad apps, not endless parades of VST plug-ins, not endless parades of hardware buys… the list goes on. (And to anyone who bugs you about whether you’ve seen the Gorillaz produce an album entirely with an iPad, I suggest you snarkily refer them back to the VS-880. Ironically, the VS faced the kinds of complaints about quality that mobile devices now face. Then, as now, one might refer instead to the quality of the musical input being recorded, not just the technical restrictions of the gear. Ahem.)

But I’m rambling. The video really says it all. And it’s a reminder that whatever you’re using, you’d better leave some time to practice. On that note…

(PS – how did we get on this topic in the first place? This workstation got our friend Ben Long started on a career path that would lead him to successful music and sound design work in gaming. There’s always a special place in your heart for that first real piece of gear…)

But wait, there’s more… Okay, I was asking for it, I suppose. We’ve already got a submission for an Akai MPC3000, as suggested by Hernan Gonzalez. Unlike most of the countless MPC jams you can find online, though, this one includes a projected screen. Bonus points to Atom Heart TM.

Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools from Stephen Ramsay on Vimeo.

In an extended video that begins with Radio City’s Rockettes and kettle drum players, Stephen Ramsay explains a litany of technology’s most elusive topics, in terms anyone could understand — no, really. I dare you to ask anyone to watch a few clips of this video, regardless of whether they’re regular readers of this site. Secrets such as why the programming language Lisp inspires religious devotion, or how someone in their right mind would ever consider programming onstage as a form of musical performance, represent the sort of geekery that would seem to be the domain of an elite. But in the dry deadpan of this Professor of English, those mysteries actually begin to dissolve.

I love the title: “Algorithms are Thoughts, Chainsaws are Tools.”

I doubt very seriously that live coding is the right performance medium for all computer musicians. (I expect I’ve occasionally made people wince with a couple of lines of code in a workshop example; I shudder to think of scripting in front of an audience. I’d probably be less disastrous at stand-up comedy.) But Ramsay reveals what live coding music is. It’s compositional improvisation, and code simply lays bare the workings of the compositional mind as that process unfolds. Not everyone will understand the precise meaning of what they see, but there’s an intuitive intimacy to the odd sight of watching someone type code. It’s honest; there’s no curtain between you and the wizard.

That should be a revelation about other computer music performance instruments, even the MPC. They, too, bring in elements that are as compositional as they are about performance (though the MPC has the unique power to be both at the same time). And sometimes, it’s seeing the naked skeleton of that process that allows audiences back into the performance.

The live-coding composer in question is Andrew Sorensen, who has live-coded an orchestra and does, indeed, also use samplers in the tradition of Akai. Whether you do it in front of an audience or not, you can try his gorgeous Impromptu music language, among other tools.

If you’re messing with code at all, even just to make an occasional bleep in Csound or picture in Processing, it’s worth watching Stephen’s videos. In fact, if you compose at all, it might be worth watching. (See also his reflections on writing, programming, and algorithm.) After all, even someone strumming out a tune on an acoustic guitar and scratching the results on paper is using some sorts of algorithms.

This video has been out for a few months, but I sometimes wonder how we got into the business with blogs of posting stories with expiration dates in the hours. It’s like buying milk in Manhattan.

Thanks to Philip Age for the tip.

The name gives it away: Record is a product based on a feature Reason users have long requested — audio recording. The surprise is, that need has led to an entirely new tool. Instead of just adding a requested feature, the company has revealed that they built a new application, re-examining in the process what recording really means. Internet rumors have been predicting something along these lines. The problem is, rumors can sometimes create distorted expectations. In this case, I think it’s worth taking a closer look, which we’ll be doing over the coming days.

Today, the first audiences of Reason users learned of the tool’s existence at the Producers Conferences events staged around the world. We’ll be able to talk about the details on Monday, but having spoken to Propellerhead co-founder Ernst Nathorst-Böös, I want to at least say that this really is shaping up to be something different.

Record is an audio recording program, says Ernst, but "This program has nothing to do with audio. It’s all about music… We wanted this to be about music making." Record is a piece of software designed around the musical possibilities of recording audio, he explains, emphasizing the actual act of recording and working with sound in ways that are always connected to musical time, beats and bars, and a fluid approach to tempo and tempo changes. It focuses on a single task rather than bundling together lots of tasks.

Most importantly, I am already convinced that Record is not intended to be a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation – that is, a tool defined by bundling together different functionalities. This sometimes-muddled product category has been created after the fact to describe a certain breed of software, applications like Pro Tools and Logic. DAWs are defined by the way in which they combine a lot of different features, from audio and MIDI to plug-in hosting, mixing, and even video and notation. They’re useful and powerful for many tasks, which accounts for their popularity and staying power. But regular readers of this site are always up for new ideas, and attempts – in all varying degrees of success – to try new directions.

There are many new ideas in musical instruments and effects, but you don’t get entirely new ideas about how to put together a commercial music application very often. Actually changing the mold is a big challenge. Propellerhead’s own Reason and ReBirth, Ableton Live, Image-Line’s Fruity Loops (now FL Studio), and Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Acid all had a big impact on a wide group of computer music makers by effectively changing the mold. (And, of course, with or without big user bases, readers of this site are fans of many lesser-known tools that have done the same.)
We’ll have a number of months to begin to see what Record’s contribution might be. But whether it’s successful or not, the good news today was that, after all this time, Propellerhead isn’t using anyone else’s mold. Tune in Monday for our first look at some of those results, and then be sure to let us know what you think and what you’d like to know down the road.

Note that this is my own personal take. I did run it by Propellerhead, however, so this is not a rumor or leak. Embargo is lifted on the details on Monday, when we’ll be able to actually show images of the software.

Are you sick of the death of dynamic range? Are you mad as hell at squashed audio that means to be “loud” and only wind up with the actual sounds smooshed out? Alternatively, are you guilty of some detail-squishing dynamic abuse yourself?

A campaign is on to get the dynamic war out of comment threads and forums and onto the streets. Taking a positive tack, the Pleasurize Music Foundation isn’t simply attacking overcompression and dynamic distortion: they’re suggesting an alternative path, in which restored dynamic ranges bring back joy to your life. There are opportunities to sign up as listeners, labels, producers, mixing and mastering engineers, even the consumer electronics and music tech industries.

There’s also a free (Windows-only) plug-in for checking the dynamic range of your mix. There are plenty of other tools that do the same thing, but the idea is nice.

pleasurize music!

Thanks to Mormo at Basement Hum for the additional heads-up.

Now, the idea of crushed dynamic range is nothing new. But via comments, mastering engineer Tobias Anderson points out that it’s not always the mastering that’s to blame — some people are actually distorting at the digital conversion stage. (That’s, incidentally, not the fault of digital recording, either – to screw that up, you have to be really careless, which evidently people are.)

Tobias’ comments below. Now, obviously, this is an issue that can generate some controversy. But start talking about simply preserving dynamic range? I think just about everyone can get behind that. The idea of “quality” can often be loaded, but talking about dynamics as pleasure is as universal as hearing.

As a mastering engineer, it has become increasingly disconcerting to both work on and listen back to much of todays’ music. Distorted, compressed & messy sounding to say the least! However, 2 points I must make:

Firstly, compression and brick-wall limiting are NOT the only factors involved in making a record loud and / or distorted. The clipping of the ME’s ADC (analogue-to-digital-converter) is the most aggressive form of distortion you will hear on todays’ loud records. Digital limiters are generally (hopefully) not cranked too much (between 1-3db), but rather the load should be spread across more than 1 unit, making the effect less obvious than if the same amount of gain reduction had been employed with a single unit. The signal is then fed back to the ADC, and ‘clipped’ to achieve the final loudness increase. The maximum peak level of digital audio is 0dbfs, however when clipped, the incoming audio exceeds this value (up to 6db, maybe more in ridiculous cases!) and the loudest peaks of the music are literally shaved, or ‘squared’ off. With the upper end ADC’s, this process can be fairly transparent, if used ‘sensibly’ (if that is possible..) however when abused, it sounds truly awful as you all can hear. One example (many are available that springs to mind is the Foo Fighters’ Nothing Left To Lose album. Every time the snare is hit, the digital distortion is unbearable, the high frequencies sound grainy and harsh ect ect. However, audibly, the effect of clipping differs greatly from the effect of brick wall limiting, which can, as previously mentioned, and subjectively speaking, benefit or compliment a particular style or genre of music. Dance, hip-hop & drum n bass coming to mind especially. This processing DOES impart a certain sense of power to the sound which is very different than simply using compression alone on the mix buss or on the individual elements in the mix.

Secondly, music is never ‘cut’ or HPF’d (high-pass filtered) at 80hz. 40-45hz maybe, a gradual roll-off from 80hz-20-30hz probable, but there is still a lot of important musical information below 80hz that is needed in modern music, even if it can’t be reproduced by poor consumer listening equipment. The 60hz(ish) peak in a hip-hop kick for example, would sound completely wrong and hollow if the fundamental frequency lived in the 100hz range for example. I can’t think of a commercially released modern record that has been released with very little or no musical information below 80hz, not impossible, but certainly not the norm by any stretch. Lastly, having a ‘pre -mastering’ chain is really not a good idea, and will probably do more harm than good in most situations, unless: the listening environment is very good and the engineer is very skilled. Using a particular compressor for a desired character on the mix buss prior to mastering, is a very valid ‘mix’ technique, but again the engineer must be very competent for this to be worthwhile.

I hope this has shed some additional light on the loudness war for you all.

If you would like to express your dislike for the practice, in hope of eventually stopping it, please visit and register for free at

www.dynamicrange.de

Toby Anderson

Here in the US, Congressional Democrats have reversed not one but both bad decisions on the role of the arts in the economic stimulus package. Provisions that would have blocked any stimulus funds from reaching arts centers, museums, and theaters have been dropped. (Golf courses and casinos are still in the ban. Maybe this time, someone read the actual legislation.) And the US$50 million (out of some $800 billion) that would go to the National Endowment for the Arts, dropped from a Senate version, has been restored to the bill. It appears both of those changes not only cleared the House but are part of the Senate version that’s in votes as I write this.

If you believe artists shouldn’t rely exclusively on government funding, you can still celebrate. The arts will receive far less of a handout than a lot of other industries — and do more with it. Arts advocacy groups estimate that for every dollar of the NEA money, another seven dollars will come from public and private supporters. What the tiny amount of federal spending does is make up for shortfalls in lean times, protecting an arts sphere that depends on a variety of sources for revenue. Nearly 15,000 real jobs could be saved by those same estimates. That means an arts infrastructure in the US that can remain healthy and independent.

But the important story here has nothing to do with the stimulus bill, or even the US. It’s that public outcry from people like you rescued this legislation. And if public support can do that, it can do a lot more for the arts, not only in federal spending but other key areas.

Americans for the Arts says supporters from its organization alone sent some 100,000 messages and letters to their Members of Congress. That’s not counting the many more letters and phone calls from constituents, not to mention letters to the editor and press attention.

Here’s one example from CDM comments, by Dartanyan Brown:

I heard the congressman from Nashville (!) talking down the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. I immediately called his office and let his staffers know that (blue dog democrat Cooper) was full of hot air on this issue. As a synthesist, jazz musician and former NEA artist-in-residence I had the facts and anecdotes to make my points clear.
If Rush Limbaugh can get his folks to call, we can at least counteract them with some facts and persistence.
Call them, they listen, they respond to numbers.

More background on today’s developments:
House passes stimulus bill with $50 million for artists [Los Angeles Times]
U.S. Senate Begins Voting on Obama’s $787 Billion Stimulus Plan [Bloomberg, including various other details]

To all of you who were active, and to our elected representatives who got this right, thanks.

Targeting the arts in this way may have backfired for those elements seeking to vilify it. Instead, it caused thousands of people to rally to the cause. Here’s an example of organizing meetings in Chicago – and a renewed sense that the arts could be part of the economic solution, not the “costly distraction” so many try to make it out to be.
Organizing around art [Chicago Tribune]

Folks, we have a lot of work ahead of us.

To wrap up the thread I started, the plot in US politics, in the space of a few short weeks, has gone something like this:

1. A new Administration could bring new vision to making the arts part of the economy.
2. Arts spending is wasteful.
3. Any spending on anything should be specifically prohibited from reaching the arts, as that would be wasteful and evil, and the arts are the best symbol of Waste itself.

I live on Wall Street (technically, on the corner of Pine). I guess we’ve now forgotten about them.

As digital musicians and visualists, relevancy to the rest of the people around us is important. What we do can be meaningful to people, and it can pay for our health care and our loved ones and our kids. It’s often not a life or death thing – but then, neither are many jobs. It’s a gig. Heck, even if it’s a hobby, it supports someone else’s gig.

So that raises some really deep questions about what’s going on with our society when arts-related jobs are singled out above nearly every other sector as meaningless or “wasteful” or not “real jobs.” This stimulus bill will pass, but that fundamental misunderstanding isn’t going anywhere – and it’s time to recognize there’s a problem, and start to work to set it right.

Roughly half of one one hundredth of one percent of the US economic stimulus plan was slated to support job protection in the arts — US$50 million. Meanwhile, we’ve just passed one trillion-dollar bailout of finance and are told another trillion is needed.

You might expect anger to be directed at finance, given their industry was at the heart of the problem. Instead, legislators single out — the arts?

In last-minute negotiations in the US Senate, legislators — including key liberal Democrats — have gone still further to ban any use of stimulus funds for the arts (“museums,” “theaters,” and “arts centers” get singled out). The move was largely symbolically-motivated, not fiscally-motivated. Adding insult to injury, arts institutions are lumped together with casinos and golf courses – literally.

U.S. Senate votes against arts [Chicago Examiner]

Arts Bashing [Center for American Progress]

Some of those Democrats, incidentally, are now pleading ignorance – including my own Senator Schumer:
UPDATE: Senator Charles Schumer in Hot Water With Local Arts Organizations [New York Magazine]

I had really hoped to leave this issue rest, but I want to be clear: this ban would cover appropriations for Labor, Education, and Transportation that could also give funds to arts organizations. It doesn’t just strip the $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts — it locks out any arts activity from the nearly trillion dollars in the rest of the plan. If you make roads, you count – if you make art, you don’t. Senator Coburn, who introduced the amendment, didn’t even vote for the final bill, meaning this wasn’t even a concession to get the bill passed.

This ceases to be a legislative issue. It’s now a cultural war — one that’s being waged by both parties on a target that lacks powerful, rich advocates. That’ll be — you. And we know from CDM readers around the planet that this is an issue in other countries, too.

You may not believe in lots of government funding for the arts — I’d tend to agree with you, in that it’s not a panacea. But these were a small amount of funds intended to support jobs in arts organizations, which receive lots of their funding from you and from private interests. If you believe in public and private (and not government) funding for the arts, this is exactly the kind of targeted stimulus you want, and it could save thousands of real jobs.

Ironically, it’s in the US that we have the strongest private funding for the arts, which is a good thing. American Institutes for the Arts, the advocacy group supporting greater government funding, isn’t looking for handouts; they point out that every $1 spent by the federal agency would be matched from $7 in public and private funds. That means a $50 million NEA stimulus could have saved or created 14,422 jobs by their estimate.

OPEN FORUM: Economic stimulus should invest in creativity [San Francisco Chronicle]

I’m certainly not in line for a government handout. But am I angry when I hear “real jobs” as the talking point? Am I angry when people in the arts are considered lower than condoms? Heck, yeah.

From a Republican campaign ad airing on the radio next week:

Democrats said they would fight for fiscal responsibility in Washington, but went back on their promise by voting for $335 million in STD prevention, $75 million for smoking cessation and even $50 million for the National Endowment of the Arts.

(emphasis mine)

GOP radio ads to target House Dems who supported stimulus [USA Today On Politics]

Or as Representative Jack Kingston, R-Georgia put it:

“We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that’s going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous.”

Congressman Blasts Arts Jobs [Volume One]
Arts jobs are real jobs [Los Angeles Times]

The arts are the punchline – and the punching bag. I’m all for fiscal responsibility, but given the current banking crisis, is it really money for the arts that’s fiscally irresponsible?

Look, policy is one thing. The battle over economic stimulus was bound to be contentious, and the dangers facing the US and world economy have put immense pressure on the process. I think in a way, just getting defensive on this issue is exactly what anti-arts advocates want artists to have to do.

My question is fundamental: why can’t the arts and “entertainment” be considered part of the economy? And what do we have to do, exactly, to convince people that there are real jobs that don’t involve building roads?

Side note: so many people are complaining about this issue (try a Google or Technorati search) that I’m hopeful the final bill will nix this nonsense and protect arts funding, or even the NEA. But as I say, it’s really the fundamental debate that needs fixing more than any one bill.

When should you tune in tomorrow to get the news? Thanks to the fact that some folks do send CDM press releases under embargo, some big announcements should happen at:

• Thursday, 1:00pm Eastern Time: This is the opening of the NAMM show, so it’s when many embargoes are lifted. Any really big stories that deserve it will get immediately published then.
• Thursday, 3:30pm Eastern Time: I have some specific stories that are held for this specific time that will definitely be published then.
• Over the weekend and later: Because I want to actually cover less but do it in more detail, expect other news and analysis over the coming days.
• The rest of 2009: Some announcements simply don’t make NAMM. We expect some news to come out of this year’s Messe conference in Germany. I expect in the near future trade shows in China will start breaking news. And most importantly, a lot of news doesn’t happen at trade shows. I’m personally excited by the stuff we’ll be seeing at things like our Handmade Music event coming from DIYers.

Some NAMM news is already leaking out today, and on top of that I’m watching as sites are posting press releases that are clearly under embargo. Now, that might seem a good way to get a jump on the news, except it’s not.

• Some big stories aren’t leaking. This is pretty absurd – I’m seeing forums leaking information and then assuming that they know all there is to know. They don’t. Forums will always do this, and that’s fine – but you can still be realistic. Also, some of the websites that are breaking embargoes on press releases clearly don’t have all the press releases – maybe because press folks aren’t sending them out because they know they’ll get published immediately.
• Press releases don’t tell you what you need to know. To be able to really cover a story, you need to understand what a press release says, not simply copy and paste. I love the 24-hour news cycle in the blogosphere, but we also need to be able to investigate and ask questions. So, you can either see stuff the minute it’s announced, or wait a little longer and get some analysis. And as you know, I always get everything totally right often get corrected by smart readers who know more than I do, which is the real point of Web publishing.
• If we don’t break embargoes, we get advance information. CDM doesn’t break embargoes or leak stories – that’s the policy. For one thing, there’s not really much point. If Steinberg had assembled a puppy farm and was experimenting on them to create the next version of Cubase, that would be something that would require journalism that reported on the story immediately. But with new tools, we actually want to have more time with them, so that means respecting embargoes and privacy so that we can talk in more detail later and really understand the technology.

Incidentally, that’s not to say I don’t comment on rumors – I just only do it when I don’t know anything, and I label it as such.

Okay, enough of the rant.

Let us know if you hear anything you think we should care about, as we really do rely on you. And do stay tuned.

The FL Studio community was rocked earlier this month as producer Deadmau5 claimed the use of his samples was “stealing,” even though these samples were bundled with the software and assumed by most to be licensed royalty-free. FL Studio developer Image-Line has not responded to a CDM request for comment, but they did talk to MusicRadar.com. Managing Director Jean-Marie Cannie told that site:

We’ll remove all melodic loops from FL Studio to avoid this kind of stuff in the future but that won’t change a lot I’m afraid. Our demo material has been stolen 1000s of times in the more than 10 years we have been doing this. The difference here is that this time it was stolen from a user that made it big.

I’m going to ignore for a moment the question of how “that won’t change a lot” – people will be able to steal demo content even when it’s not there? That aside, there are two odd things about this story:

1. Image-Line seems to helped create the problem by shipping sample content in software without being clear which license covered that content and which is which, then responded with the inexplicable argument that that sample content was supposed to be for “demo” purposes only (with nothing that I can see to back up that statement, and evidence that precisely the opposite was the case). No one is angry enough to dump FL, because it’s an excellent tool, but I sure hope Image-Line learns from the experience.

2. Many users are nonetheless responding “good riddance” to the loss of sample content.” For a lot of people, the bigger question here really is artistic, and maybe it’s time for computer musicians to draw a line.

“Demo” Samples – or Sample Content?

Let’s go back in time to the samples themselves, before the user DirtyCircuit produced a song with these samples and before Deadmau5’s response. If we give Image-Line the benefit of the doubt, there are two ways they could have avoided trouble. One would be to label what they call “demo material” so that it’s clear it’s not supposed to be used. The other would be to include an explicit license prohibiting certain kinds of use – I’m no fan of legalese, but then they’d be legally covered.

The problem is, they did neither. Image-Line and Deadmau5 seem to have entire fabricated the idea that this is “demo content,” as many FL users and CDM readers have noted.

(highlight mine)

The content is listed under a section called “Packs” in the default content included with FL, in sections called “Loops > Drum Loops” and “Loops > Melody Loops.” Claiming this is “demo” content is downright disingenuous, because the same section includes individual notes of samples of drums and instruments for keymapping and even synth and plug-in presets. To say it was “stolen” has to be one of the oddest comments ever made by a software developer. It almost implies that making any use of default parameters is intellectual property theft, which, while I suppose it’s ideologically pure, would be absurd. Image-Line almost went out of their way to make this content accessible to its users.

These sample packs aren’t mentioned in the documentation, but downloadable sample packs are one of the selling points of the program, and that is in the marketing materials. As near as I can figure, Image-Line actually made up the idea that these were demo samples because they wanted to make Deadmau5 happy.

What Rights You Get with FL

Updated: if this were demo content, it would be covered under the End User License Agreement for FL Studio. The license is explicit in that case:

“The Software and the Demo Songs, in its entirety and each part of it, are protected by Belgian copyright laws, international treaty provisions (Convention of Bern) and European Directives.

You acknowledge and agree that the Software, including but not limited to the source code, the structure and organization, and the Demo Songs in its entirety and each part of it, are proprietary to IL and/or its partners and that IL and/or its partners retain exclusive ownership of all right, title and interest in and to the Software, Demo Songs, documentation and trademarks. As producer(s) of the databases contained in the Software and the product package of the Software IL and/or its partners retain all sui generis rights in the content.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, IL shall in no event claim ownership rights to new and original music made by using the Software.”

EULA for FL Studio

Furthermore, that has been communicated in plain English by Image-Line support:

* You can not use or sell any of the songs/loops that come included with FL Studio. If you want to use parts of it, you can contact the original creator and discuss this issue further with him.

* You can not license, copyright, sell or distribute in any way the individual samples & sounds, or make samples packs out of it.

http://support.image-line.com/knowledgebase/base.php?id=36&ans=41

Of course, you’ll notice an inconsistency here:

1. Image-Line never does make any included sample content royalty-free, which is unprecedented in music software. (The loops that come with programs like GarageBand, Ableton Live, and every other app I can think of are explicitly made royalty-free.)

2. The EULA says only “demo songs,” and is entirely mum on the question of sample packs.

3. The support FAQ says “loops,” but that’s never made clear by the EULA.

It would be correct to say that the Deadmau5 samples would be off-limits if they were part of a demo song. The problem is, what are they doing in the “Packs” section, where it appears to be among other royalty-free samples? Unlike the demo songs and samples, those are free to use in your own songs – you just can’t resell them on a sample disc, for instance.

Here’s what Image-Line says about the samples they provide free when you buy the product. They’re available as a separate download, but then, that doesn’t make this make much more sense.

All samples are royalty-free, which means you can use the samples in your own compositions and songs without paying any further royalties. You are not allowed, however, to resell or redistribute any or all of the samples as a sample pack or sample CD.

The thing is, the demo songs are a completely different part of what ships with FL. You can find various demo songs in a folder called “Cool Stuff.” (You can try all of this out with the FL8 demo.) “Faxing Berlin” is indeed a Deadmau5 song, but the loops from the song just show up in the Packs. There is a Deadmau5 demo song included with FL, but it’s a different song (“That’s not true,” which is oddly appropriate for this situation.)

It’s obvious, then, that Image-Line fumbled the way these samples were distributed and labeled, the way the license was expressed in the user agreement and support, and in their reaction to the whole affair after the case. It’s possible Image-Line didn’t communicate adequately with the artist, that the artist signed away rights without examining the consequences, that the samples actually got put in the wrong folder, or some combination of all of the above. We haven’t gotten clear communication from I-L, though, explaining what the heck happened.

Obviously, the fix is pretty easy:

1. Artists, be careful with your samples, or assume your fans will be able to differentiate. (In fairness, the actual Deadmau5 track is to me obviously superior to the DirtyCircuit “remix.”)

2. Developers, be explicit, both in legal documentation and in communicating to your users.

In the meantime, I’d like to see future versions of FL that are clearly labeled and clearly licensed, and I don’t think there’s anyway to argue in this case that they were. I’d also like to see a clarification from Image-Line of what, in the current EULA and software, actually is licensed to the users, because this isn’t typical of competing packages.

Artistic Response: Presets, Begone!

Some people are, predictably, upset by the whole affair – and I think they have the right to be frustrated with Image-Line for being apparently incapable of handling content that ships with their own software.

The surprise is, a lot of people are actually glad to see the “Loops” out of the Fruity. You can read endless responses from forum members who say this kind of sampling is bad for the perception of the tool, because it overshadows the genuinely creative work a lot of people are doing with it. Once you get out of the legal and developer-specific issues, you really do get into the question of the artistic merit of the sample use. In my view, using a sample – any sample, regardless of license – as the basis of a song without significant modification amounts to plagiarism. It may be perfectly legal, but if you aren’t placing that sample in a new context, and you’re claiming it’s “your” work, you’re doing something dishonest. Now, we can debate all day about where to draw the line, but the problem isn’t sampling, it’s, say, taking a couple of samples, looping them endlessly, and calling it a song. Odds are, you won’t even have to have a debate about that, because a lot of people will simply lose interest musically.

Among many users of a program with “Loops” in its name, and among readers of this site who are themselves often fond of sampling, a lot of people would like to be done with sample content in general. On a simple, practical level, samples you don’t need from other people’s songs can get in the way of your work. A number of readers of CDM said they’d be happy to be done with this sample content and demo songs just to save room on their hard drive. (Happily, some installers give you a choice; I know Cakewalk’s SONAR 8 allows you to uncheck the sample projects on install, only because I just installed it.)

You can read the extensive comments on the previous story, but these two lines from wi_ngo pretty much sum it up:

I LOVE the Grey Album.

I HATE factory patches/loops/presets.

In other words, sampling is fine. Preset content is boring. Sampling without doing anything with those samples is playing a track, not really sampling.

So, most of the frustration at the moment seems to be that Image-Line not only botched the release of these samples in the first place, but isn’t communicating clearly in the aftermath. (I think the latter is the real problem, even more than the former.)

But all fruit, no loops? That sounds just fine to most. And none of this seems to be dampening enthusiasm for Image-Line’s flagship music tool.

Final score:

Deadmau5: 1. More publicity for Faxing Berlin.

DirtyCircuit: 0. The original is better.

Image-Line: 0. Totally muddled the situation before, during, and afterward.

FL Studio: 1. Happily, people still like your software.

Preset content: 0. You’re gone. No one will miss you.

Samples, unmodified, as the core of a song that’s not a “remix”: 0.

Community policing: 10. See also: Crystal Castles. Forget the license, forget the law – in the Web age, music fans have become the final arbiters of what matters – and artistic value matters.

Xfer Sample CD, Anyone?

I had almost forgotten – on top of this comes the oddly-timed news that Deadmau5 will be releasing his own sample CD – yours for a hundred bucks (US). Friend Steve Duda hand-coded some DSP, as well.

Stranger and stranger – Duda says:

“we saw a niche for one geared towards building blocks of EDM with a twist – this one is royalty-free, so it can be used in original productions with no fear of legal repercussions from the original artists who often are sampled on other CD libraries”

Well, unless I missed something, the only legal repercussions I’ve seen from sample libraries are the Deadmau5 FL Studio libraries. I don’t know of any other sample libraries that have uncleared samples on them, as that’d indeed make them worthless. So, no chance this is related to the separate FL issue, is there?

I’m also trying to wrap my head around this one:

One thing for certain, the sounds of the XFER Sample CD will be featured on dance tracks for decades to come.

I enjoy Deadmau5’s music, but to me the idea that this particular sample library will be featured in dance tracks in 2040 is not “for certain.”

(I imagine I’ll still be getting bizarre spam comments on posts I’m writing now on CDM after I’m dead, but that’s another matter.)

In case you’re planning your dance tracks for when you’re 64:

Deadmau5 Xfer Sample CD-ROM presale

One of the things that attracts me to computers: choice. So it’s worth noting that you do have choices when looking to laptops, PCs included. (This sounds like those lame “We know you have a choice in your travel plans” announcements you get on airplanes. Unlike those choices, though, these are genuinely different – thankfully.)

So let’s cut straight to the chase: there is a choice between Mac and PC, and there are choices on PC that keep it competitive (to say nothing of Linux). If you’re looking for a rig that runs PC-only tools like FL Studio, and you want more hardware choice to get there without being locked into a Mac, Boot Camp, and an extra Windows license, you have options.

Rain Recording has just introduced a revised pro laptop offering. You may have seen the announcement around, but I did get to talk to them while they were developing this, so I want to offer my own, semi-biased reflections. Rain is a custom system builder focused on music and audio applications. They and a handful of vendors like them do test their configurations with actual audio software, which isn’t generally the case with bigger PC laptop makers. And they offer music and audio-specific support, beyond even what Apple can offer.

Now, that said, I have to say I haven’t actually been that blown away by what custom builders have been able to do in the laptop space. The problem is, builders don’t have the kinds of options with laptops that they do with desktops; traditionally, you’ve needed huge manufacturing scale to get many choices. Even a lot of big brands get someone else to make their machines, so custom builders really face an uphill battle with limited barebones systems. Rain and others have put together some interesting systems, but at a price premium and generally lagging some of the hardware options on the mainstream laptops. For that reason, many PC users have chosen to stick it out with “commodity” machines and try to navigate to the ones that do music well.

The current LiveBook, though, is the first that I think really makes a custom builder competitive – and it’s the first I’ve started to covet for my own desk. It’s pricier than some mass-market machines out there, but it is competitive, and with far more of a guarantee for audio performance and reliability.

• Processors are now available up to 3.06GHz on the Centrino 2 “Montevina” – so it’s about as current as you can get architecturally
• Prices start at US$1999 – and that’s already a pretty fully-loaded machine
• The body is all-aluminum and offers a laser-etched case
• The GPU is no slouch: NVIDIA 9600M GT 512M standard, with a healthy 1680×1050 resolution on the 15.4” monitor (which I think is about perfect – any higher is hard to see, any lower cuts down on real estate)
• Lots of ports: three FireWire 400 ports (with the standard ExpressCard plugged in), one eSATA, a card reader, HDMI and VGA out, and two USB 2.0 ports
• Fast, audio-ready drives: up to 320GB 7200RPM (there’s also now a solid-state option, but I prefer conventional hard drives for their price/performance/capacity ratio)

This issue of specs has already started a debate, even among Mac users. And that’s the world we live in: PC buyers are considering Macs, and at least a handful of Mac users are seriously considering PCs. (At the very least, it’s not uncommon to find people with both.)

From the angry thread about FireWire missing in the (non-Pro) MacBooks, one MacRumors reader points to this very Rain LiveBook. Here’s what I’d put in the pros column:

• eSATA is very useful for high-speed storage (you could add it to the MacBook Pro, admittedly)
• The Rain has a TI chipset for its ExpressCard-provided FireWire, which has been more stable for audio performance – even on Mac OS
• Rain has up to 8 GB RAM, and with 64-bit Windows you can use it
• Blu-ray is an option
• You get a dedicated numeric keypad, which is a big boon for shortcuts – think Sibelius on the road, for instance (the notation editor relies on the numeric keypad for quick input)
• For some, Mac OS is the big draw – but for others, Windows is, depending I think largely on the apps you want to run if not everything you use is cross-platform

Don’t get me wrong: I think the Apple machines stay really competitive. The I/O gripes aside, the new machines are pretty remarkable. And you lose a lot going to Windows from Mac OS – Core Audio and built-in inter-app and over-network MIDI, for instance. On the other hand, I’m perfectly happy running FL Studio, SynthMaker, SONAR, Vegas, and Sound Forge on my Windows laptop and not having to use Boot Camp on a Mac to get there, and with solid ASIO drivers, I can get terrific performance from Windows. I don’t personally agree with the conventional wisdom that makes people just “default” to either choice – I think the choices are interesting.

Specs aside, Rain really does test every configuration with audio software, and they think about the impact of specific drivers and components. That’s not so much of an issue on the Mac, but part of the variability of quality on the PC has absolutely been about certain configurations and driver issues causing problems. You can get audio software pre-installed from Rain, you can call Rain about audio questions, and they’ll even install Windows XP for you, if you like. (I’ve been to New Jersey and seen Rain’s facility and talked to their testers. Another vendor offering similar services is California-based PCAudioLabs – they’re also worth checking out; I’ve heard nothing but good things from people using machines from both makers, which says something, too.)

This comes back to the question of what your ideal configuration would be. If I had my dream machine on this LiveBook, I’d have a couple more USB2 ports on the LiveBook, and DVI or mini-DisplayPort plus TV out for video. But it is a nice-looking system. Rain will certainly be hearing my feedback, and they do offer a fair number of custom options.

Interestingly, ASUS and Intel have teamed up to do a site where they get communities voting on what they want from a laptop, called WePC.com. It’s the opposite of Apple’s design process – though I suppose, arguably, it could result in The Homer Effect. (Episode of the Simpsons in which Homer designs a car and gets something … well, overdesigned. But Homer didn’t know anything about cars. Odds are, as a computer musician, you actually do know what you want and need.) Anyway, just so we’re heard, do go vote for audio stuff.

The bottom line for me: I don’t think we always benefit from someone else choosing what we need.

It’s really not worth debating which laptop choice is better, because there’s not an answer to that question. Laptops – even Macs – are bundles of literally thousands of detailed hardware decisions, and I’ve never seen two users doing exactly the same thing with their machines. That means it’s almost impossible to get a machine that’s absolutely perfect, anyway; it’s more about finding the right compromise. And OS arguments tend to devolve into meaningless debates. The actual internals of what makes operating systems work is so technical and involved, it would take a lot more than a few lines to talk about with any accuracy.

But it’s not about which is better; it’s which is better for you. So, instead, I’ll ask: got a laptop you love, Mac or PC? In the market for a new machine, economic downturn be damned? Which one are you thinking? And what would your perfect machine look like – within the realm of possibility?

Disclosure: I recently bought a cheap ASUS (pronounced ah-SOOS) laptop to replace a sudden failure of a machine. (I got an M51Sn-C1; more on that later.) I own a MacBook which I use pretty heavily, too. I’m writing stories for Rain. Heck, I just generally like computers – and I’ve got some gripes for every OS and hardware maker out there. So, like you, I’m biased about everything because I live and create on these machines – more hours than I sleep, I think.