It’s iPhones being used by cute babies! And if that doesn’t sum up the ways in which Apple’s mobile is divisive, I don’t know what does. It’s time for our Monday round-up of the latest from the Apple iStuff world.

I’ve never been an advocate of the iPhone and iPod touch; the idea is to cover all digital music platforms on CDM, and as regular readers know, I have no love of Apple’s strict NDA and restrictive developer policies. But I did find this reader comment by PLP amusing:

I was getting annoyed with the amount of iphone info on CDM as well…then I broke down and bought one today :) i really like itouch midi. little XY pad perfect.

If you’ve found yourself in that boat, today’s round-up of iPhone and iPod touch news brings some very good news: BtBx, the PSP Rhythm creators’ wonderful beat machine, in action, iDrum working with round-trip workflows and operated by babies, and a multi-touch OpenSoundControl app on the app store.

Sound design secrets have traditionally been closely-guarded secret sauce. But in the age of the Web, the opposite is happening: people can actually enjoy sharing what they’re doing, just as passionate cooks chat about recipes on food blogs. Case in point: reader John Keston writes to tell us about AudioCookbook.org, on which he’s blogging a new sound each day. Not only is this a nice way to talk about techniques with fellow enthusiasts, but it’s a great example of how you can use blogging to encourage you to get things accomplished, rather than just distracting you.

John writes:

I’m a big fan of createdigitalmusic.com and wanted to let you know about my “One Sound Every Day” project. I am posting a sound every day on a non-profit resource for experimental sound design that I founded called AudioCookbook.org. Every post has a sound attached along with a brief description of how it was produced. I feel that the content there is something that your readers might appreciate. Please check it out and let me know if you’d consider a story or cross post, etc.

Audio Cookbook

It’s Creative Commons, so perhaps someday we’ll have a massive, open source sourcebook of music techniques from various writers.

Have a look, and let us know if you have favorite techniques of your own!

Previously:
Demystifying Sound Design: 15 Online Learning Resources for Film, Games, and More

And for an example of the same spirit of sharing for visual coders, on Create Digital Motion this week:
Code as Art: Generative Visual Inspiration and Sharing

The Bob Moog Foundation is still urgently seeking support so it can work to preserve not only Bob Moog’s legacy, but his massive archives pertaining to the history of music technology in general. Propellerhead is donating money and came up with the lovely idea of sharing a free ReFill for Reason 4 for the occasion. Reason 4 users, have a go and enjoy, and to everyone, the foundation really could use your support.

The ReFill sounds like nice stuff. Vintage synth gurus Mark Vail (Keyboard), Craig Anderton (EQ), and Gordon Reid (Sound on Sound) contributed 20 patches in Reason 4’s Thor synth. Propellerhead explain — as though they have to explain who Bob Moog was — that “each time you use a sawtooth waveform in Thor” you’re experiencing his legacy. I’d say it’s in quite a lot more than just that sawtooth. Moog’s archives are some of the only documentation we have of those heady days, not only of his work but all the composers, musicians, and technologists around him.

Propellerhead and the Moog Foundation
Free ReFill Download
Official Moog Foundation Website, including online donations (which, nicely enough, come with free swag!)

Reason 4 users, let us know what you think, and if you have some Moog-inspired patches of your own you’d like to share, by all means, send them our way!

Previously, we spoke with Craig Anderton about Moog’s influence on the way he thinks about sound, about the Foundation’s work, and a sound set along these lines for Cakewalk’s Rapture:
Craig Anderton’s Tribute to Moog: Rapture Presets, and a Call to Save History

If you’re interested in generative and algorithmic music – music that evolves organically rather than being pre-composed in start-to-finish linear fashion – you won’t want to miss this site. Nodal is a free (for non-commercial use) app for developing generative musical systems and transmitting MIDI. You’ll need a Mac (PowerPC/Intel) to run the software, but even if you’re on Windows or Linux, you’ll find a number of interesting research papers on the site. vinayk writes:

The program is called Nodal - osx only, BEAUTIFUL interface, and FREE, it does a bit more sophisticated things but I basically plugged the output into sculpture - and it sounded amazing… well worth a look! And if anyone can tell me how to sync this to live or logic then i’d be much obliged!

Since it sends MIDI, it’d also be interesting to use this hooked up to visuals or triggering clips in Ableton Live.

Nodal Project Page, Tutorials, Examples, Research [Monash University]

I’ll be giving this a try soon. If you know of other generative software and research we should be checking out, perhaps we can put together a full round-up.

See also Noatikl / Mixtikl, from Intermorphic – developers who built the ground-breaking Koan generative system for Brian Eno. And we’re getting close to the release of the game Spore, which will feature a new generative engine and Eno’s composition.

noatikl: New Generative Music Engine, So You Can Rock Out Like Eno

Generative iPod? Deep Modular, Generative Music System Bound for iPhone, Phones, Windows, Mac

(Note that we learned this week that Mixtikl is not coming to iPhone in the immediate future. It’s available on plenty of other platforms, however, and if you’ve got a Mac for both, let the generative music making commence!)

The last few days have brought still more Live tutorials to help hone your Live ninja skills. This time, both focus on racks.

Vocal manipulation with Ableton Simplers. from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

Oliver Chesler of the currently on-fire wire to the ear shares this tutorial using Live’s Device Groups and built-in Simpler. Basically, the idea is to rack Simplers together so you have easy access to different slices. Because these racks can easily map MIDI to different rack slots, there’s quite a lot you could do with this technique.

Oliver ultimately works his magic by manipulating the patterns in Arrange View. You have a couple of options here if you want to work live. You could simply bounce some of those manipulations that would be hard to play back into a slot in Session View. Or, if you want to stay in Session View (the one with the clips), you could try doing more extensive MIDI mappings with the Rack, and use patterns in clips in place of Arrange View.

Need to brush up on the basics of slicing and drum racks first? The good folks of Infrasonik are back with another 101 tutorial:

Kent Williams writes us to share his new, free TR-727 sample pack, based on the Latin-slanted Roland TR-727. Kent explains the hardware:  “The TR-727 is, of course, the ‘Latin’ version of the TR-707 — same hardware, but Latin percussion samples instead of a trap set.”

Also seen on the Ableton Live forums and on Oliver Chesler’s wire to the ear; Oliver evidently owned one of these bad boys! (I miss having gear like this, though I wonder if an open source drum machine for this sort of simple sound could be next.)

So we don’t hose Kent’ bandwidth, here’s a mirror on CDM of the files:

727Samples.zip

He was inspired by GoldBaby’s recordings of unusual equipment, including the German Vermona drum machine and 606 and 808 sample packs as recorded on a cassette recorder. Accordingly, you get some different variations on the recording, rather than simply making everything “pure” and boring.

4 versions of each sound:

• Original - direct to RME Hammerfall DSP/Multiface.
• TubeEQ - recorded through a Behrenger Tube Ultra-
• TubeAmp-Clean & TubeAmp-Dirty - played through a Peavey Classic 20 Tube guitar amp, and recorded with a Shure Beta 87-A microphone and ART Tube Pre.

More Free Samples:

Here are the sounds that got Kent going. We really need a user sample library up on CDM! Any tips on how you’d like us to do that, let me know.

Free Soundware Round-up: Vintage Drum Machine, Nerdy IDM Samples

Free Tape-Recorded Samples of Roland TR-606, 808

Image by Roland Corp, via a terrific Japanese site full of scans.

A big surprise announcement from Livid, the VJ software / boutique A/V controller maker: Livid Looper is a new, free audio looping tool, built in Max 5.

Click through for the full image; it’s quite lovely with … um, butterflies and such. (Strap that solar panel to your MacBook and take it camping!)

Built around the Ohm hardware controller from Livid, but certainly adaptable to the interface of your choice, the Max 5-based software has some very nifty features for live performance:

• Audio looping, slicing, dicing, and scrambling
• Built-in audio effects, plus VST support – and a built-in Granulator for time-shift / scrambling effects
• Instant audio recording
• Interactive waveform display for selecting loops (or chop them up automatically)
• Beat-synced, sequenced gesture recording – meaning effects can be added in performance and locked to the loop
• MIDI learn (in case you don’t have an Ohm)
• OpenSoundControl support, for easy networking of data to other laptops, or multiple apps / VJ apps on one laptop

As you can see below, it is Ohm centric – making that already very sweet controller this much sweeter – but is likewise generic enough that you own preferred controller should work just fine. Livid also promises that this could work well with a cheap laptop like the Eee (though for now you will need Windows or, at the very least, Linux + WINE).

You’ll need the full version of Max 5 to edit it, but once you do the patch is fully open source, so you can hack it do your own thing. (Max 5 is great, but I wonder if anyone will port to Pd for an end-to-end open source experience? Or perhaps there are some similar Pd patches to consider, dear Pd community? Pd would also give you instant Linux compatibility – at least until Max is available on Linux, ahem, Cycling ‘74.)

It’s too bad Ableton Live doesn’t support OSC, as these two would go together quite nicely linked via OSC (though you should be able to sync them via MIDI, I’d imagine).

Available now for Mac and Windows, fully free as in beer and freedom and beer freedom:

Livid Looper

Let us know how you like it when you give it a try!

Mixxx is an impressive-looking, fully free and open source DJ package for Mac (Intel only), Windows, and Linux. (It’s also the featured DJ tool on the Indamixx, Linux-based ultra mobile PC – mine just arrived, so hands-on is coming soon.)

Adam Davison from the Mixxx development team points out some juicy features in the new 1.6.0 release, out yesterday:

We now support vinyl control with Serato, Traktor, and FinalScratch vinyl, as well as Serato CD. This means that you can use vinyl control to drive your mixes without having to buy expensive software or branded soundcards. We also have greatly improved support for MIDI controllers such as the Hercules Mk2 and RMX.

Other features:

• MP3, OGG, WAV, FLAC support
• The usual DJ stuff: dual waveform display, pitch-independent time stretch (key lock), BPM detection
• Crossfader curve control
• Adjustable EQ shapes
• Wave recording
• Multichannel playback and capture support
• Multi-core CPU support, GPU-accelerated OpenGL graphics display

And unlike some open source music tools, it’s got a polished website with lots of documentation. High performance could be a big draw, particularly on Linux. I’ll let you know how it works coupled with a custom Linux distribution, mobile device, and touchscreen on the Indamixx. (Personally, I like the idea of keeping a DJ mix ready to go on a portable or older machine, alongside the usual live laptop set.)

Stay tuned.

Mixxx: Free DJ Software

Mixxx blog

[Note: as reader bliss kindly pointed out, Mixxx has three X’s, Indamixx has two X’s; quit with all these extra letters, already!]