Sibelius today gets the biggest upgrade I’ve seen from the tool in a long time, with major improvements to the way the notation package lays out musical objects on the score, and ReWire support so you can integrate it with your host of choice.

This is an especially meaningful upgrade to me, as I’ve spent a lot of time with Sibelius since its first Mac release about a decade ago, both composing and teaching with it. In case you missed it Friday, I just spoke about some tips that can help with working in both education and composing:

Five Sibelius 5 Notation Tips, for Education and Experimentation with Scores

A couple of the recent upgrades, while nice enough, were not necessarily “must-haves” – a natural part of any upgrade cycle. But this to me looks different.

Here’s what’s new in Sibelius 6:

• Magnetic Layout: Sibelius has always been “magnetic” in that it automatically reflows objects and page layout to keep everything looking “tidy” as its English creators would say. It’s also always been fast at the task. The problem is, a lot of objects have still required lots of manual tweaking. Sibelius users, you know what I’m talking about: hours spent fine-tuning dynamics and text indications, rehearsal marks, and the like. Basically, all the objects that we’ren’t magnetic now are. (see above)
• Magnetic Layout implementation: In addition to the more intelligent objects and space optimization, you’ll see clever collision avoidance, and red-colored collision highlighting when a collision is unavoidable. It also looks like there are nice new guides for, say, making a forte, piano, and hairpin descrescendo all line up, something that required painful manual tweaks previously.
• Versions and comments: Scores now track and manage revisions, and you can create comments on the score. Theoretically, this is for collaboration and teaching, though I imagine it’ll be useful even to a solo composer as a score is developed – enough so that you may start to haul your laptop to rehearsals instead of just paper.
• ReWire: Sibelius will now act as a ReWire client, so you can record the output of the notation software itself (see the new instruments), or simply sync Sibelius to an existing project. Avid is naturally talking all about Pro Tools, but because the integration is with ReWire and not just Pro Tools, Ableton Live, SONAR, Logic, DP, and the like all become possible, too. I’ve never much liked the notation facilities in standard DAWs, so that’s good news – and this should be huge for the composer just wanting to record a quick mock-up with virtual instruments as well as someone doing film score.
• Notation improvements: Slurs have always been reasonably elegant and automatic in Sibelius, but when it comes to manually overriding those controls, they’ve been more challenging. Sibelius 6 includes (appropriately enough) six handles for controlling slurs. There are also optional stemlets when beaming across rests (hugely helpful for people who write complex, cough, rhythms in their music), automatic feathered beams (instead of the hack we’ve been using), and smarter articulation placement. There are new jazz repeat bars, and cautionary accidentals are finally added automatically. These are minor things, but quite frankly, it’s little details like that that often make the biggest day-to-day difference. (The cautionary accidentals alone might be worth an upgrade.)
• New integrated instruments: Profiting from Sibelius’ acquisition by Avid (formerly its Digidesign unit), Sibelius now acquires the lovely virtual instruments from the AIR team who have been doing soft synths for Pro Tools. There’s a new player, plus M-Audio’s General MIDI sound player. This replaces a previous player from Native Instruments. I love NI, but the NI player in Sibelius often wasn’t quite plug-and-play, and this promises to be an improvement. (See additional notes below.)

There are other features, as well. Keyboard and Fretboard windows provide visual feedback to those just learning musical notation. (The guitar fretboard is handy, too, for keyboardists like me who need to think through what a guitarist would do with our music – it was an early feature of Sibelius’ entry-level guitar product G7.) Classroom Control allows educators to monitor students, send and receive scores, and monitor changes, which could help with file exchange or even administering exams in Sibelius.

One feature may be especially revolutionary for certain user applications. Live Tempo finally allows you to tap in a conductor track so you can control tempo fluctuations manually. This is more sophisticated than the (useful) similar feature in Finale – it integrates with Sibelius’ existing fluid tempo functionality, allows subdivision of beats and other musical possibilities, and can be recorded and played back and edited by section.

All in all, this is a very significant upgrade. I’m still disappointed that Sibelius – and mainstream notation in general – remains so inflexible for lots of alternative notations, and that seems not to improve in this release. But as I noted in my tips from last week, there are workarounds, and for sheer usability and saving time, these improvements all look welcome. I’m also pleased with the subtle notation changes – these are little things, but I think it refines the quality of score you can produce and saves time. We expect review copies soon, so stay tuned.

Q&A on Slurs, New Instruments

CDM asked Daniel Spreadbury of Sibelius to talk to us about some of the specifics of the new instruments from AIR and the slurs.

CDM: As I understand it, the sounds have been ported to the new instrument engine, built by AIR. What does this mean for bringing scores you’ve produced in earlier versions of Sibelius into Sibelius 6 for playback?

D S: When you open a score that was created in Sibelius 5 that used the old version of Sibelius Sounds Essentials played back by Kontakt Player 2, Sibelius 6 will silently update the score to use the new version of Sibelius Sounds Essentials played back by the Sibelius Player.

99 times out of 100 this will be an improvement on the playback you heard inSibelius 5. Although the updated Essentials library excludes a set of GM sounds (now provided by a separate virtual GM module, which can nevertheless be used simultaneously with the Sibelius Player if desired), and some sounds from old providers (e.g. recorder, handbells, piano, harp) have been replaced with alternatives from Garritan, Tapspace or AIR, there are many new and improved sounds that better complement each other than the sounds with Sibelius 5. For example, Essentials for Sibelius 5 contained only a solo violin sound from GPO and the other solo strings came from the GM set, so ensembles like e.g. string quartets didn’t sound great. In Sibelius 6, we have licensed further solo string sounds from GPO, so a string quartet will sound substantially better. And we’ve tried to do this across the board, for all the common genres of music.

For that one time in 100 when the original library would sound better, provided users still have Sibelius 5 installed, they will be able to choose to use the Kontakt Player 2 version of the library by choosing ‘Sibelius Essentials (32 sounds, Kontakt)’ from the Configuration menu in Play > Playback Devices.

CDM: Slurs with more manual control handles are something we had seen previously in Sibelius’ rival, Finale. Can you describe what’s different about Sibelius’ implementation?

Sibelius’s slurs have a number of advantages, including the power to copy and paste a tweaked slur and have its tweaks reliably reproduced when pasted elsewhere, the ability to tweak multiple selected slurs simultaneously via the Properties window, reliable keyboard editing of the position of each handle and control point, and so on. Sibelius 6 also implements the standard slur positioning rules (i.e. slur below when all stems point up, but slur above if any stem points down; in two voices, slurs go above stem up notes and below stem down notes, etc.) but retains the ability to simply flip slurs by hitting X. Slurs are also now properly editable on both sides of a system or page break.

Sibelius’s method of editing slurs (including multiple slurs simultaneously) and copying slurs while retaining these edits, together with the fact that creating, extending and retracting slurs is in general simpler in Sibelius, gives slurs inSibelius 6 the edge.

Ed. note: Based on my experience with previous releases of both programs, this sounds about right – now I just need to pick something to compose this summer so I can give Sibelius 6 a try! –PK

If you have more questions about the new release, ask them here, and we’ll have a look as the new release comes out or pass along technical specifics to the folks at Sibelius.

Creating digital music is about more than audio. Notation remains an essential way to communicate among musicians. Notation is deep and complex, so there’s plenty to talk about. As a long-time Sibelius user, though I want to discuss some core techniques that I find open up a lot of other possibilities, techniques to which I continually return. I happen to be sharing this at a discussion at the City University of New York Graduate Center today, so the timing seems right.

Teachers and experimental, avant-garde composers have something in common: you often need to convince notation software to behave in a way that’s contrary to the expected norm.

To save you time, notation software generally assumes that all music has bars, and that those bars go from left to right with everything visible. This is especially true in Sibelius, which is able to perform as quickly as it does because everything you see on a score is relative to a position in a bar, rather than being set up arbitrarily as you would in a page layout program.

That works much of the time, but what if you have music that isn’t in a time signature? What if you’re transcribing early music or world music that doesn’t operate in 4/4? What if you’re making a quiz in which you don’t need bars, or want to have a blank space for students to fill in answers?

Updated: Just days after this feature, Sibelius announces Sibelius 6. Relevant to this story, this means at least some of the manual hacks for things like beaming across bars and feathered beams will now be automatic! Neat! I’ll have to do new tips for Sibelius 6 when it arrives.

Technique 1: Staves and Instrument Types

Oddly enough, the answer to all of these questions is basically the same: change the way the staff is displayed. You’ll still need to account for bars behind the scenes, but once you learn how to handle Sibelius’ staff options, this isn’t so difficult. This step is a bit confusing for those of us (hand raised) who have been using Sibelius since 1.0, as Sibelius 5 changed the name of this option from Staff Type Change to Instrument Change. (The latter makes more sense in conventional music, even though the former will make more sense for this tip.) But the technique is basically the same.

To insert a new instrument type, right-click (or ctrl-click on Mac, or choose Create) and select Other > Instrument Change.

Select Choose from > All Instruments and Family > Others (for the most generic type).

You’ll see some useful options already. In addition to choosing different numbers of lines, there’s an option that entirely hides a staff — “No instrument(hidden)” – and options that show just barlines or just bar rests.

Try selecting the “No instrument (bar rests shown)” option, then click in the score where you want the change to happen. You’ll see a blue rectangle around the barline at which the change is inserted. Clicking this barline in the center will allow you to select the change itself. Once selected, you can drag it left and right to change the point at which the change occurs, or press Delete to remove it. (That’s important for hiding portions of staves, as you’ll need to be able to select them even when hidden!)

You can imagine lots of possibilities for using this simple technique. For quizzes, for instance, you might simply hide the portion in which you want a student to fill in an answer. Or you can use those hidden bars to help space out a quiz. Or you can use some hidden bars to provide space for a graphical notation in a contemporary / experimental score.

For all of those applications, though, you may need some different variations.

To create your own instrument type, choose House Style > Edit Instruments.

Choose Ensembles > All Instruments, then Families in ensemble > Others to get the generic types.

Let’s try creating a staff type that looks like a normal treble staff, but hides the barlines. Select “Unnamed (treble staff)” and choose New Instrument… to create a new instrument that will be based on that existing instrument. Sibelius will ask if you’re sure. (It can smell uncertainty. You’re sure.)

Under “Name in dialogs,” choose a useful name, like “Treble staff (barlines hidden).”

There are actually lots of powerful options here, but skip straight to “Edit Staff Type.”

Under General, you can choose the number of staff lines and what objects are shown.

Uncheck Initial barline and Barlines, and you’ll have a staff with hidden barlines.

Also make sure to uncheck “Used as default staff.”

Bar rests won’t make much sense if you don’t have bars, so click the Notes and Rests tab, and uncheck “Bar rests.” You’ll want to leave the Rhythms options, because you probably do want rhythms in this case, just not the barlines and bar rests. (Unchecking Rhythms could be useful, though, for things like plainchant.)

Again, to insert, you’ll right click, choose Other > Instrument Change, and use the blue arrow to click where you want the change to go. Here’s our result:

And yes, this can be handy for printing out blank notation paper if you’ve run out / forgot your manuscript notebook. (Been there.)

One last note: you may have noticed that you still have bar numbers. Check House Style > Engraving Rules > Bar Numbers. Other global score settings are found here, so you should get in the habit of a trip to the Engraving Rules any time you’re creating a new score or developing a new template.

Technique 2: Noteheads

Just about anything you can’t do with staff types, you can do with noteheads.

The most useful notehead, of course, is a dead notehead.

Okay, that sounded like some sort of anti-notehead bitterness. But seriously, by hiding noteheads, again, you can create all sorts of alternative notations, and because stems are still visible, musicians can more easily see where beats are. You’ll also need noteheads for percussion notations and the like.

To change notehead types, make sure the floating Properties window is visible (Window > Properties). This is useful for changing other settings, too, so it’s well worth exploring. In the dropdown, you’ll see headless noteheads (position 7).

You can also edit your own Notehead types, just as with instruments and staff types, by selecting House Style > Edit Noteheads.

One other neat trick using the Notes panel is that you can turn on and off tuplet brackets. That allows a little hack that gives you feathered beams. You’ll find instructions under Feathered beams in the manual (p. 79 in my edition).

Technique 3: Locking Layout

The problem with just hiding barlines and such is that you still have bars underneath, and they’ll continue to automatically flow as Sibelius adjusts the layout. With most scores, that’s a good thing, but with ametrical scores or quizzes or short example snippets you want to export, that’s obviously a bad thing.

The solution? It’s time to learn the keyboard shortcuts for locking your layout in place.

System breaks: Click a barline and hit the enter key. You can insert forced system breaks just like carriage returns (line breaks) in a word processor. You’ll see an icon above the score both in the line with the break, and the line immediately following.

Page breaks: Ctrl-Return / Cmd-Return breaks the page.

Special breaks: You’ll find other options in Properties > Bars, including a Special Page Break that inserts a blank page. Click a barline first, then choose from the drop-down menu in Bars.

Indentation: You can move a line left or right by clicking the left-hand side of a stave, then moving it right with the left and right arrow keys. Hold down ctrl (PC) or cmd (Mac) to move by larger increments.

Expand or contract bars: Invariably, you’ll find some of the automatic spacing doesn’t look quite right – especially in these special cases. Click a bar, then press shift-alt (shift-opt) and the left and right arrow keys to make a bar wider or narrower.

If you ever get lost with any of these steps, Layout > Reset Position restores the default.

Technique 4: Exporting Score Snippets

At a certain point, as a composer or a teacher, you don’t always want to do all of your page layout in Sibelius. Likewise, I’m surprised that people don’t more often use little snippets of scores to communicate ideas, whether it’s highlighting a specific comment on a bigger score, or using notation software to quickly communicate short bits of music. Obviously, this is useful for musical examples in essays and the like, too.

When you’re ready to export parts of a score, you have several methods in Sibelius:

The graphics-copying way. Choose Edit > Select > Select Graphic (Alt-G), and Sibelius gives you a bounding box that allows you to select a portion of your score. (If you select your bars before choosing this option, it will attempt to snap to the right area, from which you can adjust it further if you like.)

Once you have the area selected the way you like, use the standard copy shortcut (ctrl-C / cmd-C), then choose your word processing or layout app and paste. To cancel out of this mode, hit Esc.

Most of the time, this is really all you need to do, unless you’re concerned about higher-quality output. In that case…

The export way. If you need to fine-tune output options and DPI, you should instead use File > Export > Export Graphics. Here, you can select the format you like. OpenOffice isn’t listed, but choosing the Sun StarOffice(TIFF) method is your best bet. For Word, choose the explicit Word EPS setting for the highest-quality output.

The PDF way. If you’re on a Mac or have Adobe Acrobat Professional (or another PDF generator) installed, there’s an additional way, which is to export to PDF. I find that inserting PDFs is the best way to go for inserting later to software like InDesign. The default PDF creator on Mac is pretty good, but a full version of Acrobat is often preferable to other options.

Screencast: Sibelius has a screencast of these techniques, which you’ll find from the opening screen.

Technique 5: Making Teaching Materials

The other techniques all work for teachers and composers alike, but when you do need to teach…

Does all of this seem like a lot of work? Still not sure how you combine the layout techniques above to make something look like a quiz, flash cards, or the like? Need to teach something and running short on time?

A recent feature in Sibelius is a comprehensive, shared set of teaching materials. (If you want to share and share alike, you can also publish your own materials to the site and spread the love.)

You’ll find the site itself at:

http://www.sibeliuseducation.com/

When you open the program or choose File > Worksheet Creator, you can tap into these resources.

Choose Template, and you’ll find a number of blank templates set up by activity (manuscript paper, worksheets and handouts, matching different materials, and flashcards).

If you want still additional help, ideas, and starters, choose Type of Material > Teaching and learning materials. You’ll want to limit your search, or loading the possibilities will take a long time. But from there, you can find all kinds of additional examples. Many of these come from the UK, so be prepared for English terminology and even UK-specific projects, but they’re still quite useful even if you’re American and tend not to call things “breves.”

Pick a category, and you’ll find other layouts that can be the basis of your own work, as well as some relatively generic materials that are useful to everyone.

Here’s what you’ll see as you dig into worksheets:

Pull up an example, and you’ll find something that you may be able to use as-is, or at least a template that could be useful for adapting to your own coursework.

There’s even a Circle of Fifths ready to go. (The only change you might need to make, depending on the part of the world in which you live, is to call it the Circle of Fourths!)

Other ideas?

This is a bit of a departure for CDM, but I know lots of you out there are producing notation for various reasons. I hope this was helpful, and if anyone wants to do a similar story for Finale or another tool, I’m happy to have it. Let us know what other tips you like or if you have additional questions.

Addendum

Having just done this workshop, it’s worth noting a couple of things I discovered.

First, Sibelius I see now has an option in Preferences to account for laptops that don’t have numeric keypads, making entry much easier (though I still prefer the numeric keypad layout):

Next, I was reminded that a lot of tricks use the Beam line type, which you’ll find in the Line dialog. Any old line will do, but this will look like your other beams. This way, you can manually draw in notations that the software itself may not recognize.

And it’s worth noting that a lot of beaming tricks can be accessed in one of two places:

1. Beam display in the Staff Type House Style (there’s a checkbox buried in there for forcing “horizontal beams,” alongside the options for hiding rests and such above)

2. Beam groups and beaming rules (including the ability to beam across rests) in the Time Signature dialog.

For Finale users, most of these basic strategies will translate to your notation tool of choice. Generally, Sibelius lets you select objects directly, whereas Finale uses specialized tools, selected by toolbar icons, for each job. That also means that when you’re using Finale, you may need to select the tool before you’re presented with variables related to that type of object, whereas Sibelius consolidates those settings under House Styles.

For instance, Finale edits the staff types via an item, accessed from its staff tool, called Define Staff Types. That dialog is very similar to the Staff Type and Instrument dialog above.

Ultimately, in fact, both Sibelius and Finale have a lot of the same strengths and shortcomings once you learn them, because fundamentally they do treat scores according to regular bars and barlines. Interestingly, Finale has the abilty to have independent time signatures on different staves, but it’s almost useless, because it still puts the barlines in the same place. (That is, both tools are limited in this respect.)

Here’s the lineup:

Los Angeles May 9, Musician’s Institute, Hollywood. Bon Harris, Kevin Teasley, Gerry Basserman, Kurt Kurasaki

New York City May 9, Clinton Recording Studios. Ben Weinman, Aaron Albano, Chris Griffin, Chris Petti

Guildford, UK May 9, Academy of Contemporary Music, Guildford, Surrey A Guy Called Gerald, Alex Blanco, Gary Bromham.

Berlin, Germany May 9, Kulturbrauerei Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg Simon Grey, Philippe van Eecke, The Green Man.

Stockholm, Sweden May 9, Propellerhead Software HQ Eric Gadd, Pär Wiksten, Joachim Ekermann, Jonas Löfvenmark

There’s no question that GarageBand represents one of the better values in music software, especially since even Apple expect a lot of its users will simply acquire it with their Mac. It still ranks high on software you’d recommend to a beginner on a budget. Apple’s decision this year to add lessons, interactive lessons that introduce you to musical concepts, and to invite famous artists to play familiar songs, is a fantastic idea.

The Artist Lessons themselves, however, have been relatively few in number. I expect more are coming, but so far the only release since GarageBand came out was this week’s three episodes, featuring Sting and Sarah McLachlan.

Yes, that’s right, here’s Apple’s artist lineup: Sting, Sarah McLachlan, Fall Out Boy, Norah Jones, Colbie Caillat, Sara Bareilles, John Fogerty, OneRepublic, Ben Folds

So, at worst it feels a bit like the 1990s, and at best, like the tour schedule at Long Island’s Jones Beach. The issue here is, musical tastes are varied; part of what drives people to music in the first place is personal expression. There are a total of just 13 songs on the platform, all picked by Apple. Some of the lessons are pretty good, and the production values are slick, but there’s not enough quantity to satisfy people hungry to learn music and the choices overall are bland.

With all due respect to Apple, though, you can’t expect Apple to provide everything. Some artists and publishers have already built their own lessons. It’s time for others to step up, too.

The blog Synthtopia is pretty succinct in its headline:

Apple Garageband FAIL

I agree with Synthopia that the solution should be opening this up as a platform for people to make their own lessons:

“turn GarageBand into a video podcast store that lets you watch free and commercial educational music podcasts.”

The lessons in GarageBand are more than just video files; they include music files and some interactive features. Some sort of authoring tool wouldn’t be a bad idea.

Right now, you can build on the existing open standard of Apple’s podcast support in iTunes – which, in turn, works with a variety of players and mobile devices. In fact, a “podcast” is really just an RSS feed. There’s no reason you can’t add media to those files. Apple explicitly supports the use of PDF, which means you can create podcasts that include video and notation. There’s no way to charge for that, but advertising support is possible. It’s also feasible for some artists that such a feature could be used to promote other revenue streams.

At some point, a retail option could make sense, too. Believe it or not, basic tablature and Standard MIDI Files remain highly popular online. All that’s missing is for artists to start packaging this up and selling on its own.

Maybe Apple will figure out how to build a store for this. But there’s no reason to constantly be dependent on Apple to get it right – or anyone else, for that matter.

And in the meantime, I think lessons are a good enough idea that other people will run with this even when Apple doesn’t. Macworld’s review looked at some of the current alternatives.

Game Boy superstar Pixelh8 is releasing his fantastic 8-bit music software into the wild. And it’s even being picked up in music education. From True Chip Till Death:

Pixelh8 sez:

After lengthy consideration, I decided I would rather have my Game Boy / Game Boy Advance music software be used by everyone it can be used by, instead of just the few.

All of my software Music Tech V2.0, Pro Performer and more are all free for download at http://pixelh8.co.uk/software/ Enjoy! Please read the FAQ before emailing me questions about it, it’s pretty straight forward. I am doing a lot of work in music and music education, the software is now even being used in some UK schools for students to do their GCSE music composition on.

There are also new videos in his archives for your viewing pleasure. (Check out the BBC Radio 1 appearance on the Pixel8 site. And yes, that’s Radio One.)

Game Audio: Selected Student Works from Matt Ganucheau on Vimeo.

In the early days of game sound, musical soundtracks were all largely adaptive and interactive, fused with the sound effects of the game and the logic of gameplay. Scores were less Alfred Newman or John Williams, more Spike Jones. Today, game music has the potential to reinvent composition itself, to help us reimagine what makes a musical score as on-screen user action drives musical ideas. But with a few, notable exceptions, most modern titles have opted for big, Hollywood-style soundtracks – and the linear composition that goes with them, as though someone just took a film score CD and hit play.

It’s one thing to talk about that in theory. Better yet: give it a shot yourself. So why not teach game music as its own discipline?

Matt Ganucheau, a composer, sound designer, and interactive developer/artist, is teaching just that, working with students at Expression College in Emeryville, California. The accelerated course works with the elegant Unity game engine and a clone of the legendary Space Invaders arcade game, adding music built in Max/MSP. If Max seems an unlikely choice, its open source cousin Pure Data (Pd) is actually integrated with the game engine for Electronic Arts’ Spore, with music by Brian Eno working with EA’s Kent Jolly and contributor Aaron McLeran. So, this could be the wave of the future. The first problem: figuring out how to actually compose.

The results are astonishing, given that the students were just learning Max and had extremely limited amounts of time. I asked Matt to write up for CDM how the coursework evolved; he shares his process and what he learned as a teacher. We’re also working on open sourcing the coursework content and the patches, which we’ll soon provide both for Pd and Max/MSP. I’m doing some work on the game side so that you can play with game mechanics in Processing. Stay tuned for more on that.

We spoke a bit about this process – and interactive music in general – with Xeni Jardin and Boing Boing in their Game Developer Conference livecast a week ago Friday. Edited video of that coming soon.

Here’s Matt on the coursework itself:

When faced with the challenge of updating our Game Audio course at Expression College, we wanted to create a course that reflected the increase of interest in adaptive and interactive audio in the current game industry. To do this successfully, we had to make sure our students had an understanding of how audio engines have evolved in the past eight years. Since our terms are only five weeks and our student body is comprised of non-programmers, this seemed like quite a daunting task. But having carefully fine-tuned the details, we feel we have a good recipe.

First, we begin by having the students build simple environments and place audio emitters inside the Unreal 2k environment. This shows them the restrictions of audio functionality in a proprietary engine. After a few labs with Unreal, the students are then introduced to the concepts of a middleware platform, using Audiokinetic’s WWise connected to the game Cube. Here, they are able to explore more interactive audio such as real-time control parameters and dynamic music changes. Finally, the students are introduced to Max/MSP. Lead through labs comprised of synthesis, sampling, basic programming concepts and sound design, we are able to arm the students will all of the information needed to create their own generative audio engine inside Max/MSP. By hacking away at a recreation of Space Invaders posted to the Unity3d forums (thank you, Eric Haines), we are able to pipe all of the real-time game data to Max/MSP via the UDP transport (with help from Bjerre).

Inside Max/MSP, the game data is received in our Unity2Max patch. With this initial infrastructure in place, the students are able to use the real-time events to remix the classic arcade game with their own audio engine. Piece by piece, we recreate the original audio engine through tasks such as creating the alternating pitched footsteps for the invaders, and a UFO spaceship noise with a flanger and a sine-wave, as well as mapping invader’s proximity to the music’s speed. For their final project, the students are allowed to use these tools to go in any stylistic direction they wish, as long as the music is adaptive.

We did not give students access to all of the game events because we didn’t want them to become overwhelmed with options. To our surprise, these restrictions created the opposite reaction. Students were frustrated by not having a message saying that the “UFO was destroyed”, so they hacked their own ways to find this out by deducing the change in points. In another example a student wanted the missile explosion to sound when the bunker was hit, so he placed a threshold on the missile flight time to be able to see if a bunker was hit. Hacks like these began to appear all over the students projects. This may seem like basic programming techniques to some, but to see this development come from a class of audio engineers is quite amazing.

Although this new course design has only been active for 4 months, we have seen a dramatic increase of interest from our students. Once a cultural standard like Space Invaders is deconstructed, the students become extremely excited to explore a new direction for the classic game. It still amazes me just how far students can go with only 3 weeks of Max/MSP instruction.

Unity Game Engine (recently updated to 2.5, and now both on Mac and Windows)

Cycling ‘74, Makers of Max/MSP

Expression College for Digital Arts

And the bits for this game, specifically:

Unity Invaders on the Unity Community Forum (the Space Invaders game used in the class)
Unity Invaders Site with downloadable, playable versions of the game
Discussion of UDP communication between Max and Unity, with the patch solution by Bjerre

Also, don’t miss the fantastic Pd-based book Designing Sound (well worth a read for Max users, as well). It’s an entire textbook built on the idea of doing interactive sound design in Pd, useful for games but other live and interactive sound, too – and while the emphasis is sound design rather than music per se, it remains a great reference on learning to patch and learning about audio synthesis.

Andy Farnell

You may have heard about Pure Data (Pd), the open-source cousin to Max/MSP and a powerful tool for visual programming or “patching” music and multimedia. Pd has even appeared in the iPhone app RjDj and creating generative music for EA’s hit game Spore. But actually learning how to use the thing? Or learning some of the more advanced possible techniques in sound synthesis and processing? That’s another matter.

Johannes Kreidler writes to let us know about his new book for people wanting to learn Pd. It starts at the beginning and teaches you not only the ins and outs of the Pd environment, but all of the advanced music processing techniques, as well. (Given the similarity of Pd and Max/MSP, that should make this just about as useful for Max devotees, too.)

The book is available for reading free online, or in paperback format from Wolke Publishing House. It’s available in both English and German. Johannes writes:

This tutorial is designed for self-study, principally for composers. It begins with explanations of basic programming and acoustic principles then gradually builds up to the most advanced electronic music processing techniques. The book’s teaching approach is focused primarily on hearing, which we consider a faster and more enjoyable way to absorb new concepts than through abstract formulas.

The patches described are available for download.

He notes that because Pd is free and open source rather than commercial software, there isn’t a company behind it that can focus on documentation for new users. That’s been a common complaint about Pd, and this book does a lot to fill it — as well as a lot to fill the need for better documentation of sound techniques, as well, for users of any environment. Some of the juicy topics covered:

• Additive, subtractive synthesis
• Sampling
• Waveshaping, modulation synthesis
• Granular synthesis (something I try to eat a bowl of every day, seriously)
• Fourier analysis
• Sequencers
• Connecting to hardware, network transmission and OSC
• Basics of visuals

It’s a really elegantly-organized set of topics, and absolutely of interest to users of Max/MSP and other environments, as well. With this and a new SuperCollider book coming out this spring, we’re really getting some wonderful resources for learning greater ninja skills. Stay tuned, as I hope to create a forum for folks working on learning this stuff.

Resources

Book site, including downloadable patches and online reading:

http://www.pd-tutorial.com

Direct link to downloading all the patches as one zip (thanks, mic, in comments!):

http://www.kreidler-net.de/pd/patches/patches.zip

More info, including the paperback version:

http://www.wolke-verlag.de/musik_u_t/loadbang.html

http://www.buecher-zur-musik.de/assets/s2dmain.html?http://www.buecher-zur-musik.de/53108697370a2cb3f/5310869bc400a7a02.html

Author’s site:
www.kreidler-net.de

The authorship of the book was aided by a grant by the Music University of Freiburg / Germany.

Previous appearances by the author:

A song made from 70,2000 samples

The stock market declines, as a song

More Pd Books

bang | pure data Free, online

Creator Miller Puckette’s own The Theory and Technique of Electronic Music, free online in various formats and also in print

We get the “where do I go to learn this stuff” question a lot in the inbox. With Max for Live coming later this year, bringing the powers of Max to Ableton Live, I imagine the hunger for knowledge on that tool will be all the greater. (At the same time, I think the growing popularity of DIY tools means that it won’t make alternative tools like SuperCollider, Pd, Csound and the like less popular — I think we’ll see a growing trend toward all of these tools, provided we can show folks how to use them and get better at them ourselves!)

I know one route that has been successful for many people is the coursework at Harvestworks, the storied research and study center in New York. I can heartily endorse this one and say that, while I know and am friends with all the faculty, I have absolutely no investment in this. Dafna Naphtali, Hans Tammen, and Zach Seldess will all be teaching week-long intensives at Harvestworks in Manhattan. They’re not cheap – $1275 for the whole week – but I know some people have even flown to New York from other parts of the world to study up.

And what does all this mean? Well, it means you can turn Street Fighter, the game, into an improvisational ballet as instructor Zachary Seldess has done (above). Among other things, of course.

If it’s all out of your budget, don’t worry; we’ll have some other learning resources for you soon. But for those of you who can take the plunge, here are some details:

(apologies for copy-and-paste, which I always smugly say I don’t do, but I’m in a rush)

HARVESTWORKS DIGITAL MEDIA ARTS CENTER, NEW YORK

—–> MAX/MSP/JITTER FULL WEEK INTENSIVE COURSE

Dafna Naphtali / Zachary Seldess / Hans Tammen
Mondays through Fridays 10am to 6pm
Section A: March 23 through 27
Section B: August 31 through September 4

Cost: $1275 (incl. Harvestworks Membership)

Location: Harvestworks (http://www.harvestworks.org)
596 Broadway #602
New York City, NY 10012 (at Houston St)
Subway: F/V Broadway/Lafayette, 6 Bleecker, W/R Prince

From its central SoHo location in New York City, Harvestworks brings together innovative practitioners from all branches of the digital arts, and provides a vital context and catalyst for creativity in the field. For the last thirty years we have offered artists on-site recording studios, programming services, workshops, classes and one-on-one tutorials in emerging technologies supporting the pioneers of computer music with equipment and instruction. As a tool for artists, Max has been a central part of the Harvestworks program for almost 20 years. We offer regularly scheduled year-round classes and workshops on a wide variety of topics relating to Max/MSP and Jitter; as well as our Certificate Program, a flexible course of one-on-one instruction.

Now, Harvestworks is offering a full-week, 40hr crash course in the basics of Max/MSP and Jitter, run by veteran Max programmer Dafna Naphtali, Harvestworks engineer and teacher Zachary Seldess, and Harvestworks’ Deputy Director Hans Tammen. The course is designed for beginners who want to get a head start with this software package. The course may be especially appealing to artists living outside of New York City who don’t have the opportunity to learn Max in their own hometown and who would enjoy a week in New York City.

The cost of the course is $1200, plus $75 for the annual Harvestworks membership that is required to take the course. The courses are Mondays through Fridays 10am to 6pm. Working in our computer lab after 6pm can also be arranged. Lecture demonstrations will alternate with practice time, and some of our Max-savvy interns can be available to assist during practice time. Workstations with Max/MSP/Jitter will be available, but it is also recommended that you bring your own laptop. The course will provide lots of practice and sample patches. Students enrolled in Max/MSP/Jitter related classes at Harvestworks are eligible for Cycling 74’s educational discount when purchasing the software. The course is limited to 10 students.

We will not provide meals or snacks for the course, but can point to lots of cheap dining places in the neighborhood. We also cannot provide accommodations, but can help with posting requests or bringing you in contact with other artists who might be able to help.

To sign up for the course, or if you have further questions, please call Hans Tammen at 212-431-1130 ext 13, or go to our webstore at
http://www.harvestworks.org/cms/index.php/Classes/Classes-new.html
In his interview on Cycling74’s website, Hans Tammen gives a few insights into Max teaching at Harvestworks: http://www.cycling74.com/story/2008/9/15/113650/347

MAX CRASH COURSE OUTLINE:

Day 1 – The Basics: Objects vs. messages vs. comments; ordering of operations; math in Max; scaling and mapping ranges of numbers; playing sound files.
Day 2 – Basics of modular programming; live audio input; recording sound files; simple data storage.
Day 3 – Controlled chaos; useful GUI objects; more data storage; basics of synthesis.
Day 4: Interfacing with the outside world. Overview of MIDI, the HI object (game controllers), Wii controller, the Harvestworks Sensor Station, using a Wacom tablet. Wireless Miditron. Data storage.
Day 5: Introduction to Jitter: Jitter matrix; basic matrix processing; playing and basic manipulation of QuickTime movies; basics of Open GL.

INSTRUCTOR BIOS:

DAFNA NAPHTALI has been a Max teacher and programmer at Harvestworks since 1995. She earned a degree in Music Technology at NYU. She was Chief Engineer of the NYU Music Technology Studios until 1998, and has taught Max there as an adjunct instructor since 1996. Naphtali is also an academic advisor for both undergraduate and graduate students in NYU’s Music Technology program. She was a programmer for two years for many artists and her own projects at multi-channel sound gallery Engine 27. As a composer, writing custom Max/MSP programs since 1992 has enabled her to perform and compose using her laptop-based noise/audio processing “instrument” to alter the sound of her singing, vocalisms, personalized recordings as well as the sound of any musician playing with her. She has received commissions and awards from New York Foundation for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, Experimental TV Center, American Composers Forum, Brecht Forum, and has held residencies at STEIM (Holland), Music OMI and iEAR at Rensselaer Polytechnical Institute. http://www.dafna.info

ZACHARY SELDESS currently works at Harvestworks as a resident Programmer/Teacher, and at Brooklyn College CUNY as adjunct faculty. He also works at The CUNY Graduate Center’s New media Lab creating interactive virtual sound environments in 3D Game Space using the Torque Game Engine and Max/MSP. He is currently pursuing a PhD in composition at The Graduate Center CUNY where his primary teachers are Amnon Wolman and Morton Subotnick. Previously he worked as a performer, composer, private teacher and adjunct professor at Wilbur Wright College and Harold Washington College in Chicago. As a composer, Zachary has collaborated with artists in many mediums including theater, dance, film, and poetry. He spends much of his time these days creating interactive media artwork, particularly within the Max/MSP/Jitter programming environment. Programming projects include work with Jane Rigler on Manhattan New Music Project’s “Music Cre8tor”, a sensor/software music-creating interface for developmentally challenged children.
http://www.zacharyseldess.com/

HANS TAMMEN is currently Deputy Director at Harvestworks, and is responsible for the oversight of all projects related to Max/MSP/Jitter and Physical Computing, as well as managing the education program and the studios. In this position he encounters the projects of approx. 250 clients, students and Artist In Residence per year. After an initial degree in Adult Education in 1988 he taught as an adjunct at Kassel University, and as part of his works as a union technology consultant from 1992 to 2000 he held about 120 one to five-day seminars using modern seminar techniques like metaplan, role-plays, and others. As a composer/guitarist he is best known for his “Endangered Guitar” works, interfacing his guitar with Max/MSP. Signal To Noise called his works “…a killer tour de force of post-everything guitar damage”, All Music Guide recommended him: “…clearly one of the best experimental guitarists to come forward during the 1990s.” http://www.tammen.org.

American citizens have turned their eyes to the incoming Obama Administration for all kinds of change. It wouldn’t be overstatement to say that just about every possible hope is being pinned to the new government – practical or not. But there’s good reason to believe some significant changes may be in store for both the areas of arts and technology, in ways that are not only relevant to CDM readers in the US, but could impact the global climate for these areas.

The federal government in the US can’t do everything, particularly when economic pressures are likely to make budgets tight. But they can do something to set the tone. Even more importantly, there should be opportunities for people who want change to become active and vocal, and to learn from each other, wherever we are in the world.

The agenda I think we’ll want as tech-using artists and makers:

• Defend innovation, commercial or common, from patent abuse (see: White House)
• Embrace open source – something that could benefit, again, commercial and community endeavors alike (see: BBC, OSI)
• Make the arts a priority, and one that via technology connects to renewed interest in math and science (see: NYT)

As you can see, regardless of your party affiliations or even country of citizenship, these are things we can work on together. For a start, I’ve already talked about personal changes – not simply governmental or political changes – that can make a difference in our communities:

Your Own Times of Change: Greetings, “Makers of Things”

Here are some additional issues that may well interface with the incoming US government, with impacts on the US and around the world.

Above: Remixing history, through the ears of the UK.
Obama’s Inauguration as Reaktor Mash-Up: Tim Exile

Technology: Patents

You can read the Obama technology agenda on the new White House site (itself a subject of discussion and hopes for new transparency).

http://www.whitehouse.gov/agenda/technology/

A lot here reads like campaign language, so it’s tough to say what the actual policy will be. But this bullet should be especially interesting to digital musicians and visualists:

Reform the Patent System: Ensure that our patent laws protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration. Give the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) the resources to improve patent quality and open up the patent process to citizen review to help foster an environment that encourages innovation. Reduce uncertainty and wasteful litigation that is currently a significant drag on innovation.

I think flawed patents may be the single biggest to new creative technologies. It impacts both hardware and software, and everyone from DIY makers to useful research in big corporations. (And yes, even big corporations can do research that’s useful to the rest of us. For one thing, even some of that corporate research is open source.)

Patents in the US in particular have been wildly abused. Companies who don’t make anything have effectively “squatted” on ideas that might someday turn into products. Those patents are defined so broadly that by the time a genuine innovator invents something real that works, they often find they’re in “violation” of a nonsense patent. Large businesses, acting defensively, have added to the problem by over-patenting their own research. Clearly, we need some common sense rules so that patents cover people actually making stuff.

There are few political issues more directly relevant to the music and visual technology covered on CDM. I’ve seen patents stifle innovation countless times on this site, and when that hasn’t happened, fear about patents has often been a factor in preventing people from more aggressively pursuing their inventions. It’d be unrealistic to expect the Obama Administration alone to magically solve these problems. But a friendly Administration could invigorate debate, meaning now is the time to get active on this issue. I’m no expert in patent law, but I’ll certainly welcome people who are to become involved.

I’d also like to see the open source community begin to formulate a way of responding to patent issues. Open source has almost exclusively dealt with licenses in copyright terms. Certainly, the community is sensitive to the issue, but just sitting around worrying about patents does nothing: open source inventors need to start formulating a concrete strategy. They’ll need help, not only from the government but experts in the field. But the timing is right.

Whether people want to open-source their inventions or not, I think DIYers and researchers and even businesses who actually create stuff have a common need here. So it will be equally important for that open source community not to just blindly rail against patents, but find policies that work for everyone. “Makers of things,” not just open source advocates, have an opportunity to come together.

Technology: Open Source

The Obamas clearly have the power and popularity to popularize trends and ideas. Sometimes, that borders on the absurd: when it was revealed the Obama children wore J. Crew, the clothing company’s site crashed. It’s little wonder, then, that open source advocates would hope the new Administration would champion their cause. BBC News’ Maggie Shiels has a great story on those possibilities:

Calls for open source government [BBC News, via Slashdot]

One figure behind the rallying cry for open source is Sun co-founder Scott McNealy. That’s interesting, as Sun was actually quite late to the open source party. Sun didn’t open its flagship Java technology until after McNealy’s tenure. The fact that he has been won over I think is telling – McNealy created one of the world’s biggest tech vendors. The rationale for his appeal is simple: open source is cheaper.

I think the case should actually be broader. If the US – and, indeed, the economically-weak planet – want to advocate new growth in education, science, and technological innovation, it’s a no-brainer to have at least some technologies common and shared. That could ultimately lead to benefits for big vendors and individuals and the economically challenged alike.

And if you want to push open technology, artists should be among your first stops. We push the real-time capabilities of computers harder than anyone. For instance, when researchers wanted to demonstrate real-time Java, they chose a Bach performance. Why? Playing Bach turns out to be more timing-critical than one of the other applications – controlling a nuclear submarine. (The Army phrase “Be all you can be” comes to mind.) The drive of self-expression can be a powerful way of to realize technology’s full potential.

Direct quote on that, by the way:

Music synthesis is, in fact, more stringent in its real-time needs than many other hard real-time systems. For instance, avionics typically operate at a period of 20 milliseconds, or about 10 times longer than the synthesizer.

Harmonicon research at IBM

Open source needs music and visuals – and we often need open source. In music and visuals, the lack of interest in basic, open frameworks has often stifled the success and expressivity of the tools we use. I was impressed by the new stuff at this year’s NAMM. But many of the leading technologies – Novation Automap and M-Audio HyperTransport for controllers and Akai’s APC and Native Instruments Maschine among the hardware announcements – were limited by aging standards and proprietary implementations of control. Those same vendors struggle with drivers for proprietary computer operating systems owned and controlled by someone else. The result: music technology is often hard to configure and unreliable, limiting its appeal and reducing the number of customers. The solutions there aren’t all easy, and open source is no panacea, but I don’t think I’m overstating the problem – or the lost potential that could be coming from the open source world.

Of course, the Obama Administration is unlikely to do anything of practical use to artists or musicians when it comes to open source. But it could set a tone – and I’d argue, it already has. The Open Source Initiative’s Michael Tiemann noted just after the election that the Obama campaign had benefited from running open source tools. Whether or not Obama mandates federal offices run OpenOffice or something like that, I’d say the proof of open source’s utility is already out there:

Barack Obama proves the power of Open Source [Open Source Administration blog]

And that should be the main interest of arts technologists and creative tech vendors – politics aside, open source can pay.

Arts

We have mixed blessings in the US. On one hand, government arts funding has often been scant. On the other, we have an artist community that has vigorously defended its own value against the harshest critics, a uniquely-generous private funding climate, and a bootstrap, DIY approach by artists to supporting themselves. Arts advocacy groups are nonetheless eager to use the Obama Administration as an opportunity to get more badly-needed support – and they’re using the economic stimulus as a new angle:

Arts Leaders Urge Role for Culture in Economic Recovery [Robin Pogrebin for The New York Times]

Don’t believe them? Here’s a number for you: US$167 billion. That’s the amount Americans for the Arts says nonprofits contribute to the US economy. (They also employ some 6 million people.) And that’s just nonprofit groups; the impact of the arts and music are of course far bigger than that. As evidenced by this site, that cultural economy is increasingly globalized, meaning the entire business of making things could grow around the planet.

Much of the actual policy here would be more symbolic than practical. The additional US$50 million advocates want for the National Endowment for the Arts would have little meaning to an individual artist, though I’m sure the agency would love to have it. But “reframing” culture as an important part of the business of America is something that’s badly-needed.

Along the same lines, calls for WPA-style support for artists as part of economic recovery:

Will Act for Food [Newsweek]

More practical, I think, is the need for US policy that makes healthcare more affordable and accessible to the self-employed, a significant group of American readers of the site. If individual musicians or visual artists or freelancing coders and visualists and the like didn’t have to worry about spiraling health care costs, they could contribute in other ways a lot more easily.

Globally, we need a climate that’s friendlier to artists in general. The recent struggle of music tech research centers like STEIM in Amsterdam and IRCAM in Paris – places Americans might have assumed would be safe – is solid evidence of that.

Connecting this to the material and business of this site sure isn’t hard. Musicians and visualists increasingly sell to fans and one another, build their own businesses from scratch, innovate technologically, share open source research, teach others, volunteer, and add DIY tech businesses to their portfolio as they make their own hardware and software.

One thing missing from the traditional arts advocacy approach is the ability to use music, movement, and motion to aid in innovating in and teaching math and science. With technology (or even without it), expressive media are a fantastic way of demonstrating math and science concepts and making them creative and personal. I know I would have had a much easier time in school with topics like physics and Calculus if I could have connected them to music and animation, and I don’t think I’m alone.

That’s the philosophical framework, anyway. Given that tone matters for all of these issues, it’ll be interesting to see whom Obama makes NEA chief and what steps that agency and the Obama Administration take in arts policy.

So, thus concludes the post-Inauguration edition of this story. But you can expect to see a lot more on all three of these issues as they directly relate to the subject matter(s) of these sites – and expect more than just the President making some of the headlines.

What’s the biggest obstacle in music making? For most people, it’s basic musicianship. I’m not at the Macworld keynote, but the well-done TUAW liveblog tells me that Apple has in fact offered a product hoping to solve that. GarageBand ‘09 will come with built-in musical training, with add-on “celebrity” training packs for US$4.99 each. It’s great news, but it also makes me hopeful that the music education end of music technology will develop and flourish more than it has – along with music education in general.

As far as Apple’s new offerin, if I’m understanding this correctly, you’ll first need GarageBand ‘09 via iLife ‘09: that’s US$79 to upgrade, US$99 new, or free on a new Mac. You’ll then get nine lessons on the basics. (It’s actually not clear that there’s much else improved in this release of GarageBand; given Apple’s focus on incremental, specific feature improvements, this may be it.)

To get additional tutorials, you pay $4.99 a lesson. The pay-off is lovely, though: on-screen frets and keys show you what to do if you’re an absolute beginner, and the likes of John Fogerty, Colbie Callat, Sting, and Sarah McLachlan are the teachers.

There’s no question about it: this is a great way to get casual musicians hooked on music and music learning, and even if you’re not a Sarah McLachlan fan, that’s good news for all of us. But it’s also just the beginning.

Mac users are already assuming this will sell a lot of Macs, but that was the assumption with GarageBand. Not to burst the bubble here, but I think you’d probably be a little silly to invest in an entire Mac for a few minutes of video training; I’m not even sure if it’s worth $100 if you don’t have much other use for iLife. But it is a significant offering, and I think the smartest idea here is offering $5 lessons. It’s so smart, in fact, that it’s too bad that GarageBand is apparently a prerequisite. So you ought to be smelling an opportunity if you’re in the training business: inexpensive, on-demand training could be addictive, even if traditionally this sort of lesson has been sold in a bundled or subscription form.

Apple is doing informal, video-based learning in a new way. It should be great for casual users. But for real music lovers wanting to go deeper, there are already other products, and this should be an impetus for them to both step up the quality of their delivery and capture GarageBand graduates in a new way.

Three tools immediately spring to mind.

One is SmartMusic, which is an enormous, in-depth set of Mac/Windows software tools for really learning to play. Band, orchestra, jazz, method, classical, solo, the whole enchilada is in there. The concept of the tool is that you get a set of repertoire and exercises and work through them, with intelligent accompaniment following along with you as you work. I actually hope CDM can spend some time looking at how SmartMusic is being used; while it’s not exactly a household brand for music software, in education this tool has been huge. Apple’s offering isn’t really comparable, so the lesson to SmartMusic maker MakeMusic ought to be that they have a real chance to start thinking about consumer channels as well as schools.

Another good example: Alexander Publishing. In addition to music tech offerings (that bit being more common), they have titles like founder Peter Alexander’s own Professional Orchestration Home Study Program. These are available as digital downloads, and if Fall Out Boy isn’t quite heady enough for you, they analyze Ravel, Mozart, and Stravinsky string writing. Taking advantage of the online medium, you get downloadable lessons, QuickTime videos demonstrating string bowings, a booklet showing string positions, study scores, live recordings, and online library access. These sorts of things were really hard to follow in the old days unless you got to hang around an orchestra, which not all composers can – certainly not all the time, and not at their own pace. (In fact, the ones that could had an unmistakable advantage).

The other, more conventional offering is Jamey Aebersold Jazz. The soul of the Aebersold approach is a set of recordings of really brilliant musicians playing rhythm section so even something as simple as practicing scales makes you feel like a be-bop jazz star. Aebersold sells tons of other stuff, but it’s the Play-A-Longs that rightfully made them famous. The human element makes it all meaningful. I actually got to go to a couple of Aebersold summer workshops as a young student, and it was life-changing, even though I ultimately didn’t decide to pursue jazz technique. The events and the recordings both are enormous confidence boosters for young musicians, because they put people in the kind of inspiring creative environment that’s the reason we all get into music in the first place. You begin to see technique as do-able, as something you can get by practicing, and you find new respect for what’s expressive in your own music. The bad news about Aebersold is that it’s still largely sold as books and recordings. Those media work well for some things, but there really ought to be an iTunes for Aebersold, or Abersold on iTunes. (How many of you would go impulse buy a Play-A-Long right now? And I’d rather play along with Coltrane than Sting, somehow.)

Apple’s offering, yet again, reaches a big audience in a way that’s important. And make no mistake: Apple just stole the spotlight in music education in a big way. But that could be good for everyone, provided deeper tools step up to the plate. There’s no reason an Aebersold Play-A-Long – or equivalents for other musical styles – couldn’t be just as successful. We’re living in an age in which music education in general faces major challenges. Technology alone certainly won’t solve that – but it can be a part of that solution, and since we’ve got it, we can use it in smarter ways.

And if anything, it’s worth any reminder that practicing and learning music has to be coupled with music making. It’s what allows players, no matter how casual, to really feel musically expressive. I hope we can look forward to more.

This story will be updated with GarageBand info as it is published.