To all of our readers here at Create Digital Music, thank you for 2007. It’s been fantastic to sit at the helm of CDM and get to hear from all of you, from news tips to musical and technological projects, and get to meet you out in the world (at Macworld San Francisco, Maker Faire San Mateo, Handmade Music events here in New York with Etsy and Make, in Chicago at a demo swap, and even in Australia at a coffee shop).

I’m wrapping our own 2007 in review story, but which stories did Webizens choose as the most significant? Here’s 2007 by the numbers, according to our server. First, the most visited stories of the year:

Top Ten Stories By Visit

The top ten start out with Yamaha’s unveiling of the long-awaited TENORI-ON instrument, a tool for mobile recording, a terrific free tool for Windows, and an unusual DJ take on mobile music players. Apple’s Logic Studio manages not to sneak into the top ten, I suspect because it can’t compete with apps that run on two platforms instead of one. But Reason 4 falls just short of matching CDM reader favorite Ableton Live:

Some readers on this site — wisely, perhaps — cautioned last year against doing a second "Create Digital …" site for interactive visuals, live visuals, and VJing. But to us, the connection between musical performance and technology and visual performance and technology is really essential. I’m pleased to announce that now, following a two-week sojourn on the Australian content, we’re finally kicking createdigitalmotion.com into high gear and lining up what we want the mature site to be. If you haven’t been reading lately, here’s a bit of what you’ve missed:

• Video scratching with Serato: At long last, one of the leaders in digital control vinyl has added video scratching as well as audio via a new plug-in called VIDEO-SL, now in beta; we’re planning our own test but already have one hands-on.
• We’ve got a big list of video and visual goodies we like. Is it a practical holiday shopping guide? Erm … bits of it are. It’s all drool-worthy, at least. And you’ll really want vintage, gigantic planetarium projections. Lay out some cots, and play that four hour ambient electronic set you’ve been working up.
• Want to learn this stuff yourself? vade has some nice online workshops and tutorials for working with visuals in Pure Data (Pd) and Processing. Both also work well for music, so if you want to dabble in custom-programmed audiovisuals (I swear, anyone can do it with some dedication!) this could be a good place to start. We’ve also got tips for inexpensive high-speed photography and not one but two CDMo tutorials on the free Quartz Composer tool in OS X Tiger and Leopard. See Keith’s report on what’s new in the Leopard release of Quartz Composer, plus a beginner-friendly tutorial for driving 3D cubes with audio courtesy VJ Kung Fu’s momo the monster. The latter should be ideal for whipping up some quick sound-driven visuals for your band; you can even host those visuals in the live music host Rax. Incidentally, our CDMo New Years’ Resolution: make more work, post more tutorials.
• Open jamming for visualists: Just as with music, the best way to practice your chops and share your work is to get out of your bedroom/studio and out to an open jam. We’ve got a full report on the Perth, Australia Plug and Play, an ideal example of how such an event could work, as part of their Byte Me! Festival I attended earlier this month. See the video below, and watch for more video soon - Jaymis and I are editing hours of video footage now.

Plug N Play - ByteMe Festival - Perth from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

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We’re also posting weekend inspiration each week, back next weekend post-holiday break.

From the whole CDM team, very happy holidays. (Yep, New Year’s Eve is among them — we’ll be cracking on 2007-in-review!)

It was 20 years ago today …

It’s easy to take for granted the mature tools available for music creation, and forget their history and the folks who made them real. While today it’s one of the biggest music software developers in the world, Cakewalk’s first sequencer of the same name started as a college project for a Philosophy major. Cakewalk founder, CEO, and original author of the Cakewalk sequencer Greg Hendershott was that student. For the twentieth anniversary year of the founding of his company (then known as 12 Tone Systems), Greg sat down with me in their Boston headquarters.

This was a personally meaningful meeting for me, as Cakewalk 4.0 for DOS (pictured above) was the first software sequencer I ever used — and remained my favorite some time after going to Windows. In those days, programmer’s names were front-and-center more than they are now, and so Greg’s name popped up every time I sat down to work. Greg also studied with Gary Lee Nelson, who was my first electronic music instructor (albeit for me at a summer camp). Of course, part of the reason it’s meaningful is that I’m far from alone — over 1,000,000 users have used Cakewalk’s software. A look at Cakewalk is also a look at the computer music software industry’s brief but fast-moving development, and the design of the tools that have evolved alongside it.

This winds up being a huge interview — you’ll believe me when I say this is basically a transcript of what Greg said. But it’s also a genuine slice of history, and also a glimpse into what the industry’s next 20 years might be like, so we’ll have at it.

At the 1985 Grammies, Thomas Dolby played alongside Stevie Wonder, Herbie Hancock, and Howard Jones. It was the golden age of synths and keyboard-driven pop. (Yeah, I know, some of us kinda miss those days.) But Thomas Dolby is significant, as well, as one of the pioneers of the computer-driven one-man band. Almost a decade into the age of soft synths, at a time when Logic Pro’s most punishing physical-modeling synths and convolution reverbs run just fine on a $1000 laptop and Ableton Live is becoming commonplace, musicians still struggle with some of the technical details of how to actually make the one-man band work onstage.

Here’s the comforting news: it’s not easy for Thomas Dolby, either. Normally when you write a print interview, invariably there’s a point where you get way off talking about technicalities and they don’t all fit. But because this is online, I’ve decided to reprint most of what Thomas had to say about making the tech work in its original form. These are just the technical details — gear stuff rather than art — but the important thing is that they have to support his performance. Part of why he’s able to bring such great presence to the stage is the gear in back is largely working — and he’s the one in control, rather than backstage techs. Here are all the gritty details:

We’re pleased to announce a new series on CDM, in which we get the chance to talk — and learn from — some of the people who inspire us. CDM Gurus features artists who push the envelope of technology and expression.

Song writer. Synth builder. Amateur meteorologist? Thomas Dolby’s uncanny ability to reinvent technology and predict the direction of the music business makes this equally talented songwriter one to watch, as much in 2007 as 1996 and 1982.

Want a glimpse at how the business of being a creative musician is evolving? Ask Thomas Dolby. He’s the master of Music Industry 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 … you name it. He certainly danced with the pre-Internet industry hitmaking machine. The cheeky, warm-hearted “She Blinded Me With Science” exploded to mega-popularity — and could easily blind the uninitiated to a string of other terrific songs that somehow failed to make it on MTV’s hit parade. In the early days of the dot-com boom, Dolby’s surprise second act was shaping the cellphone as a market for music. His start-up Beatnik introduced technologies for polyphonic MIDI ringtones, and odds are, each time you hear a modern ringtone, you’re either hearing Beatnik tech or technology impacted by it.

Now, the test for Thomas Dolby is what can happen to a gifted songwriter and music technologist when he guides his own destiny, without the mechanisms of the industry behind his back. The new Dolby plan started about a year ago, with a tour co-headlining with dance music idol BT. “I could play these gigs and fill it with die-hard fans and I could sort of sneeze and they would be happy,” Dolby says. “I felt the need to expand.” The new tour and album reintroduce the best of Dolby’s songwriting to a new audience — and yes, audiences cheer for “Science” just as passionately as ever. (The difference: many weren’t born in 1982, and they shout along with the enthusiasm of a generation originally deprived of this kind of music.) But as the crowd is equally rapt from tune to tune, it’s clear something new is happening. “It definitely doesn’t feel like a sort of eighties nostalgia trip,” says Dolby. “If anything, the frame of reference is more late 70s underground electronic, which is where I started out.” And Dolby himself is still a one-man band, but he’s got the tools of the Web behind him: forums, blogs, YouTube, MySpace. Unlike many successful artists, who talk about the empowering effect of these tools for other, less-fortunate artists, Dolby is actually re-making his own career using the new technology.

But enough about 2007. What’s really remarkable is the promo bio from The Golden Age of Wireless In May 1982, it reads like a manifesto for where live performance with computers could go today:

DOLBY’S ONE-MAN STAGESHOW IS A BIZARRE HYBRID OF COMPUTER-GENERATED MUSIC. VIDEO MONTAGE AND SLIDE AND FILM PROJECTIONS, BORDERING ON PERFORMANCE ART THEATER. WILL TOUR MAJOR CITIES AROUND THE WORLD. CONCENTRATING ON ALTERNATIVE VENUES AND PUBLIC PLACES.

When I met up with Thomas Dolby on Christmas Eve of last year, I was struck by how elegantly this vision of technologically-aided performance was coming to fruition. The promise glimpsed in 1982 — the digital one-man band — seemed to just now be having its real moment.

Now comes the interesting part. Next week, Thomas will release a new EP, backed by brass (and, if we’re really lucky, heralding a new renaissance of computers-with-live-brass combos). Thomas Dolby and the Jazz Mafia Horns Live is the latest of a string of releases converting the vibrant stage shows into commercial products, from albums to EPs to DVDs to blog entries and videos. It’s also intended to be the end of an era. Thomas writes on his blog:

I expect these to be the last ‘legacy’ releases before I transition into my new musical era. With them out of the way I’ll be focusing 100% on new material. I’m very excited about several songs I’m working on already, and I’ll be going to England this summer to start recording them. One day they may show up in the form of an all-new studio album. When will that be ready you ask? WHEN IT’S READY!

This is not your father’s Thomas Dolby. We got to chat about the technology of music performance, the technology of music business, and how to make sure all of that disappears and the songs re-emerge.