Updated: See http://createdigitalmusic.com/snowleopard for a running report.

Apple’s “Snow Leopard” 10.6 ships Friday, which means it’s time to start compiling information about the new OS flavor. Just don’t upgrade too fast, as always.

Want to push an operating system to the breaking point? Ask a musician. Between the demands of real-time performance and the complex ecosystem of mix-and-match hardware, software, and plug-ins, odds are your local audio geek will break an OS faster than anyone else. Not every operating system upgrade is going to have a big impact on music software, but keep in mind that even subtle changes can cause issues that may interfere with your work.

Of course, all of this means music users should treat any OS update with caution. :

• If you’ve got a critical, primary production machine, your best bet is often simply to wait. Confirm that software works before you upgrade rather than after.
• If you’ve got some time to invest in an upgrade or have more than one machine, be sure to do a full backup and system image so you can revert to the previous, known working OS.
• Best solution: Boot off an external hard drive. Don’t commit to installing internally until you’re sure everything is working. Once you are, go enjoy. (as noted in comments, and yes, I should have said this initially… still, the latest 10.5 build is still the preferred OS for now.)

So, sit back. Enjoy life. Go for a walk on a beach. Recline in your favorite chair with your MacBook running Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. Isn’t it great? Need to waste time? Plants vs. Zombies is out for Mac.

What? Still want to upgrade?

Fair enough. We’ll be tracking changes to Snow Leopard and which of them may impact audio.

The short version: Snow Leopard introduces only small changes, but if a developer hasn’t been on top of those changes, you could see issues. And as for the 64-bit mode that’s attracting most of the attention, the short answer is, you can’t use it for music yet.

Native Instruments and Plogue have each responded to CDM with information on their software.

Executive Summary

• NI and Plogue have tested their software as functioning on 10.6
• Neither NI nor Plogue recommends you upgrade your OS yet – Plogue uses stronger language to discourage you
• 64-bit support, expanded in Mac OS 10.6, is not yet relevant to music use because nothing (not even from Apple) supports it yet, but don’t worry – you can get more RAM through other methods
• Audio MIDI Setup gets a tune-up, and built-in audio support appears to be improved

Native Instruments

If you’re a Mac user who uses NI products on any version of the operating system, you should stay tuned to this URL:

http://www.native-instruments.com/en/support/compatibility/mac-os-x-compatibility/

NI tells CDM they’ve just updated it today with Snow Leopard information:

Native Instruments has conducted initial compatibility tests with Mac OS X 10.6, which have shown all current NI products to work without any specific issues under standard installations of this operating system.

However, users involved in professional audio production or live performance should be cautious about upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6 until compatibility with third-party audio software and hardware has been widely confirmed by the relevant manufacturers.

Native Instruments is currently conducting further systematic compatibility and performance tests with Snow Leopard, and will provide additional information on this page as it becomes available.

The second paragraph sounds like what I just wrote, huh?

Plogue

Plogue, an independent developer of a variety of software ranging from the awesome modular environment Bidule to sampling engines for Garritan’s orchestra and piano products and an upcoming library of vintage chip sounds have been doing their own work. Privately, I talked with them about some of the work they had to do after Apple rewrote underlying operating system plumbing with Objective-C (from C and Carbon). Here’s their official statement to CDM on Snow Leopard and, in the parallel Windows dimension, Windows 7:

10.6 and W7 each caused only minor modifications to our code base, however these mods are necessary for proper functioning of our products on those platforms. Most of our transition efforts as a company will be of a user support nature.

Any musician foolish enough to jump on new OSes without a hint of caution, inevitably makes me wish for a new kind of Darwin Award prize.

(Emphasis mine. Consider yourself warned.)

Ableton (Unofficial) and a Plug-in Warning

From the Ableton forums, via comments:

It’s currently being tested internally over here, so the current version is not officially compatible yet – on the other hand this does not mean that it doesn’t run.

We will release an update after the tests during the next weeks that will be officially compatible, but we don’t recommend upgrading yet if stability is your main concern.

It’s likely that a few new third party plugin problems will show up due to the changes under the hood in 10.6 and experiences show that the latest 10.5 versions now are the way to go after the gfx performance problems with earlier 10.5 and 10.4 versions.

So, in other words, now is a great time to upgrade to 10.5!

More in the thread here:

Ableton Forums

Now, note, mostly what this extensive discussion reveals is that Snow Leopard is poorly understood, partly thanks to a very successful hype campaign on Apple’s part. (Ahem.)

There are not magical performance and speed improvements found by installing Snow Leopard – or, most likely, any OS. (Would that such things were true.) The presence of a set of multithreading tools, for instance, is specific only to developers for whom that set of tools is useful. Audio software already has finely-tuned multithreading implementations specific to real-time applications, and in the case of something like Ableton Live, it really needs to work across platforms.

If you install a new OS with the expectation that it’ll be “faster,” you’ll almost certainly be disappointed. If you install a new OS hoping you’ll “break things,” then you probably won’t be disappointed. I don’t mean to suggest don’t ever upgrade or live in fear of all software, just that you should imagine that, like redoing the plumbing in your basement, long-term advantages will come, but with significant effort and time.

PreSonus Hardware

See a separate post: at Snow Leopard launch, PreSonus audio interfaces are likely to be entirely incompatible.

About 64-bit (Nothing to see here…)

NI notes that the 10.6 offers significant changes to 64-bit support, including a new 64-bit kernel mode – this being the rough equivalent of the “x64” 64-bit versions of Windows (and Linux) that have been available for some time.

Here’s the bottom line: 64-bit support on Mac OS isn’t yet relevant to audio users, period. It’s not supported by Apple’s own Logic Studio, or any other major host at this time. This is a situation we’ll be watching, as it is something developers appear to be investigating.

But before we get too far into that issue, you should consider why you’re asking about 64-bit in the first place. 64-bit computing offers two potential advantage. First, running processor computation natively at 64 bits offers a marginal improvement. Second – the issue most people care about for music – 64-bit memory addressing offers access to massive amounts of memory, beyond the approximate 4 GB barrier that applies to 32-bit applications.

More memory is a very good thing. But you probably don’t want to sacrifice compatibility just to get it. Fortunately, you don’t need the 64-bit OS to get beyond that 4 GB barrier. On the Mac, some workarounds have extended the practical life of 32-bit memory addressing for music applications – thus avoiding the need to get a 64-bit native version of every driver and every piece of software you want to use.

On Windows and Linux, you can indeed get a number of audio applications (like SONAR on Windows, for instance) that have excellent 64-bit support, and a number of the drivers have followed suit. Even, then, though, many users choose to stick with 32-bit versions in order to have superior compatibility.

Note that processing “64-bit audio” – that is, digital audio represented using 64-bit data – is a completely different issues. A 32-bit processor and 32-bit operating system and 32-bit software can all do 64-bit audio processing. Whether you really need 64 bits for audio production is a whole other can of worms I won’t open here.

Getting More Memory – Without Any 64-bit Snow Leopards

When I spoke to Apple earlier this month, they downplayed the 64-bit issue and pointed out that their own EXS24 sampler in Logic Studio can access additional installed memory just fine with 32-bit – that means if you have Logic 8 or later, Pro or Express, Tiger or Leopard or Snow Leopard, you can use additional RAM. Each EXS24 sampler instance has its own memory space, so you can use as much memory as you want.

Apple even has a support doc on the subject:

Logic Pro/Express 8: How the EXS24 sampler addresses RAM in Logic 8

Last month, we looked at the situation for Native Instruments’ Kontakt. Again, using some of the flexibility of the memory architecture unique to the Mac, they’ve managed to access bigger amounts of RAM even on 32-bit OS.

Kontakt, Battery: Enhanced, More Compatible, 64-bit Memory

Kontakt is able to get up to a whopping 32 GB thanks to something called the Kontakt Memory Server. Again, you can get still more than 32 GB using 64-bit Windows, but for most users, that’s overkill.

All of this is to say, 64-bit is not a reason to upgrade to Snow Leopard for audio work – at least, not yet. Some of the built-in applications (like the Finder and Safari) get performance boosts from 64-bit optimization on 10.6, but none of that is critical to audio and music – and it’s certainly not worth upgrading too soon only to find some compatibility wrinkle we haven’t yet found.

Updates to Audio MIDI Setup

A reader tips us off to some small changes to Apple’s centralized Core Audio settings panel, Audio MIDI Setup. Audio and MIDI are now separated into separate windows, and Audio gets some nice improvements.

Note the per-app settings and adjustments for sample rate, bit depth, and Format. As in previous recent versions of Mac OS, you can also aggregate multiple physical audio interfaces into one – one of a number of reasons we really love Core Audio as a sound system.

The reader also notes that the update seems to improve support for his built-in hardware:

It’s now possible to choose a higher sample rate and resolution for all inputs/outputs on the built-in sound card of my MacBook Pro early ‘08, which is pretty cool. Before there was clearly hearable, annoying digital fragments when playing back any sounds, especially on low volume – all magically gone, i don’t hear anymore noise.

Got More Information?

Help us continue our “More Than You Wanted to Know,” obsessive series of coverage on CDM and tip us off!

Corrections and clarifications are welcome, too – that’s why I enjoy the maleable nature of the Web.

Should sounds be part of a closed format that may not last? What happens if the format and platform that once were trusted by musicians and sound designers ceased to be? That’s the hard lesson learned by users of a popular sampling “standard” – but for once, the news is good.

GigaSampler has been a huge part of the sampling landscape since its introduction a decade ago, and users have massive investments in Giga sound libraries. As I noted over the summer, however, Tascam ceased development on the aging Giga platform, leaving users without an important tool – and some powerful technologies without a home.

Today, news has leaked out that Garritan, developer of some popular sample libraries and (with Plogue) the sophisticated, cross-platform ARIA Engine, has purchased all of the technology assets related to Giga from Tascam (TEAC). That includes GigaStudio, Gigasampler, GVI, Gigapulse, and everything that goes with it.

This is huge news for compatibility, interoperability, and the future evolution of sampling. I spoke with Garritan chief Gary Garritan himself to chat about some of the possibilities.

The most obvious potential benefit is native file compatibility with Giga sample libraries, so that that sound content isn’t stranded in an abandoned, closed format. Gary says native file reading and writing is high on the priority list – which should also be a big coup, I think, for his ARIA platform.

There are some technologies worth saving in Giga, too, though, not just the sample format. Some of the jewels in Giga include the DEF high-quality filtering algorithms, spectral morphing, and convolution capabilities.

“There’s a treasure trove of great technology and we want to make it available to as many musicians as possible,” says Garritan. “We just have our work cut out for us.”

The process of assimilating Giga’s technology is likely to take time, Garritan says:

What this means is that we have this great technology and we can do stuff with it. But we don’t have the original Giga team – and we have two million lines of source code to go through. Some of that code is fifteen years old. I want to examine the code … and I want to consult with the user base, and chart a direction.

There’s potential to merge technologies, so that future versions of ARIA benefit from Giga technology. “We have a really efficient engine ourselves,” says Garritan. “It’ll probably be using the best of both ARIA and Giga.”

Gary emphasized that this process is really open to input: “We need to consult with the user base and ask the users what they want – ask our users what they want.”

We’ve certainly seen how not to acquire technologies in the past. I’ll bet money that someone brings up the acquisition of music software developer Opcode by Gibson, which turned an entire platform into abandonware.

Far from that, what Gary is describing is really the opposite: an opportunity to embrace open standards, and perhaps to even avoid the kind of closed platform Giga originally represented. Ironically, the open source Linux Sampler Project, while its own codebase is entirely open source, relies on the closed Giga format for storing samples.

“On our ARIA Player we use an open source format, SFZ,” says Garritan. “We’re for promoting open standards.” Working with Cakewalk, Plogue, and others, Garritan says he hopes to encourage more openness. SFZ could even become the kind of common format that Giga (and other proprietary formats) have been in the past – only without being the sole domain of one vendor. “I think sampling technologies and formats should be open – they shouldn’t be closed and proprietary.”

This is also, incidentally, good news for Linux. I know there’s talk of SFZ in Linux Sampler, as well. And for those who want a friendlier interface, ARIA already works in WINE, with a native version in the works. Gary says ARIA works beautifully on netbooks. That means you could have a sampler running on the netbook, then do your production in, say, SONAR on your Windows machine at home.

I should clarify that ARIA itself is a proprietary player – and, honestly, I expect commercial developers to continue to develop proprietary technology and use that to sell their wares; it’s a system that works. But on the other hand, with a common, open standard file format, you could benefit from both the commercial-proprietary and open/free ecosystems. For many of us, we might even use both on the same machine. Right now, you have the opposite: a common file format that had been closed and proprietary (and not entirely supported), an open source sampler built on that proprietary format, and limited cross-platform support. It looks to me like we’re moving toward resolving all of those issues.

Composers and sound designers are deeply connected to sound libraries, investing time and money into purchasing or designing libraries, and in using them in their work. Happily, the days in which that investment could be gone forever because a vendor lost interest may finally be coming to a close. As I noted in July, simply open sourcing Giga wasn’t a real option: there’s too much work to do to navigate the code base and modernize the format, and we’d still be stuck with a dated, closed format. So to me, this is about the best thing that could happen: get Giga into knowledgeable hands, and really try to move the best of it into modern, open formats.

That is, open source alone is never a panacea. In this case, you need a commercial developer that can put work into maintaining the technologies, but you also need a common format for commercial and free software developers alike – because, really, it’s what the musicians, composers, and sound designers need.

Because this is sure to be a long process, we’ll be watching as it unfolds. But in the meantime, Gary has posted some FAQs and invites Giga and Garritan users to talk about what they need and want. So, don’t be silent: this is a chance to have someone actually listen and respond, rather than just “wishing” for something to happen.

Northern Sounds Forum [Garritan community]

http://gigastudio.com/ [New Garritan Giga site with press release, FAQ]

Okay, so you’ve seen the painful demo video for Microsoft Research’s Songsmith software – it was intended to me tongue-in-cheek, I think, but the self-parody didn’t quite work. But the idea of auto-accompaniment software that interprets your recorded singing remains impressive. And I’ve gotten some tips that it is possible to make Songsmith sound good. Naturally, the biggest variable will be the quality of your own singing. But to make the software side of the equation more interesting, it is possible to extend the tool.

Garritan, maker of the samples in the tool, has two add-ons. There’s an orchestral pack with the usuals, and Garritan’s sampled orchestras do sound very, very good. Better yet, there are some analog synths to add, including some bass, J-60, Jupiter, and other action. These don’t come with styles, but they do give you some new sounds. Whether you use them for more evil and cheese is up to you. US$9.99 each.

Band-in-a-Box maker PG Music also has Style PAKs that are compatible with Songsmith, too. The key with these is adjusting variables in the accompaniment, and tweaking chord progressions.

I can’t say I’m entirely sold yet because I’ve never been a fan of auto-accompaniment – though, okay, I did pass some enjoyable hours messing around with electronic organ and Casio keyboard presets as a youngster, so I take that back.

Here’s my challenge to you, if you are a Windows user and give Songsmith a try. Go. Make something really great. Maybe it takes this in a new direction — sample Hatebeak’s heavy metal parrot screeches. Maybe you just happen to be a brilliant singer. Report back. The world’s ears thank you in advance.

Image: roadsidepictures.

Breaking News: If you were David Lee Roth, and you decided to use Songsmith, you would sound something like this. (Thanks, Neal Johnson! Actually, what’s a word that means not so much “thanks” but “please, never, ever send anything like this again, for the love of all that is good?”)

Warning: The following link may cause permanent hearing loss, after you gouge out your ears.

Runnin’ With The Songsmith [Metafilter Music]

In a surprise announcement (well, surprising me, at least), the experimental MySong shown by Microsoft Research earlier this year will be available for sale. US$29.95 will buy you a downloadable auto-accompaniment tool. Windows-only, but it sounds as though a Mac release is in store (seriously). It’s a bit like Band-in-a-Box for singers: sing in a line, and the software will generate accompaniment to your singing with styles of your own choosing. There are thirty styles included, and apparently Microsoft focused on the content end in bringing this product to market: there’s a 1 GB space requirement and partnerships announced with PG Music and sample house Garritan.

I’m guessing PG Music, the makers of aforementioned Band in a Box, have helped smooth out the slightly unmusical arrangements generated by the first version. Now, okay, admittedly I was skeptical of the output I heard of the first version. Maybe I’m scarred because I had a high school jazz teacher who player trumpet, not piano, and therefore insisted on running Band-in-a-Box over top of me while I tried to comp on keys. But there are reasons this is cool:

• Garritan’s sample content sounds great.
• PG Music has made its auto-accompaniment a lot more musical over the years.
• The thing could be a decent sketchpad for people who find this helps them imagine musical ideas – realizing there’s no substitute for the real thing.
• Most importantly, bringing research to market is a great thing.

And let me emphasize that last point. I love that Microsoft has made this available. Too often, R&D achievements get one demo, a patent filing, and then languish in some dark closet, never to be seen again. Sure, some of them probably were never meant for the light of day, but very often people love the demo and want to give the thing a chance – and why not let you decide?

Songsmith at Microsoft Store, via istartedsomething

So a big congrats to the Microsoft R&D team. And here’s to more research seeing that light of day, whether through open source availability or commercial release (or, where appropriate, both).

So Songsmith will accompany your vocals, Apple will get Sting to teach you to play and explain how he wrote Roxanne – okay, as if this week, you really have no excuse not to graduate from Rock Band, ye casual musicians!

Updated: Oh, wait. (*&(*&$#&*. The promo video is … ?

(*&(*&$#&*. Can Microsoft just let Sparrow do all the promotion from now on, please?

Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Who need them? The entire month of December seems to be on sale when it comes to music tech.

Christmas (and Hanukkah, for that matter) are nearly here. Whether it’s economic pressure or just some aggressive holiday pricing, there are some big deals out there that could make excellent gifts – or might just give you a nice list for shopping for yourself before or after the holidays. (Yes, it’s true: most of what readers suggested in our “gift guide” for the CDM Winter 08 special wasn’t really all that practical. But it does make a nice list of things you love.)

Here’s some of what’s on our radar screen:

Big Ticket Items Get a Break

$999 Tenori-On. In the US, at least, the Yamaha Tenori-On – the Lite Brite-style instrument tablet from innovator Toshio Iwai – gets a $200 discount. Based on reader feedback, that hardly moves it into impulse buy territory, but if you’ve been on the fence, your timing is right. Yamaha has also rolled out some very practical accessories (like a case and “survival kit” with stand), so if you know someone who owns one of these, accessories could make a nice last-minute gift.

And for the rest of us, there’s the US$20 t-shirt. You could mod that with LEDs and sensors and just let people play your chest. See the US store (curious to hear reports from The Rest of the World):

Tenori-On Store US

Moog bundles, Little Phatty break: The Moog Little Phatty is now available in Stage II Edition. (mmm, black!) It seems to have a slight street price break, down below US$1300 from a $1395 list. And to further sweeten the deal, the Moogs are presently bundled with a CP-251 control processor for feeding some analog control into your new synth. (See the video above. Really, an excuse to post this video is worth it.) In very much not a Recession Special, Moog also re-introduced the Taurus Bass Pedals.

Or, more fitting my budget at the moment, you can just get DVDs, books, and tasty apparel. Or perhaps a tattoo gift certificate; I hear the Moog fans love those.

Komplete, More Komplete – Komplete + Kore: For a limited time, AudioMIDI have bundled Kore 2 – Native Instruments’ software and controller – with the Komplete pack (basically everything NI makes on the producer/instrument side). US$895 for the total, which is what you’d normally pay for Komplete alone. You don’t need much justification here as Kore 2 doesn’t add any cost, but to me, having the physical controller and the ability to easily navigate all the NI sounds makes Komplete more manageable. (And we’re big fans of using Reaktor inside Kore, because you can easily assign controls to all your custom Reaktor creations.)

I just stumbled across AudioMIDI’s deal; we’ve heard other folks find bundles like this in stores. So it could be worth shopping around in your neck of the woods.

Cakewalk Holiday Bundles: Cakewalk is bundling extras with their software, including video tutorials and a download of pyro Audio Creator, an audio recording, editing, CD burning utility (which can itself make a nice software stocking stuffer for your Windows-using friends at $40). You can get a pretty full-blown version of their SONAR DAW for about US$299 (even though that looks more like the upgrade pricing of Pro Tools), and I see they also offer the E-MU Proteus Pack for lovers of the old E-MU racks.

Bundle pricing is different in different parts of the world, so if you’re interested in this offer, best to check your local store:

http://store.cakewalk.com/

Applied Acoustics Modeling Collection: AAS is having a sale on their lovely psychically-modeled products, so Tassman (modular environment) + Lounge Lizard (the electric piano) + Ultra Analog + String Studio (the terrific modeled string instrument) + Strum Acoustic = US$349. Check out the Modeling Collection in their store. Ableton users got treated to a couple of these instruments in Ableton-styled remakes, but if you haven’t bought those yet or don’t exclusively use Ableton or want the whole suite, this is worth a look.

Native Instruments sale: Native is offering upgrades 50% off, software bundles (including a free synth with their Audio Kontrol 1 audio interface), and other holiday deals through 12/31.

Bargain Buys

Steinway? Never heard of ‘em. The Steinway piano, photo (CC) madabandon.

Gary Garritan has a bunch of his sampled instruments on sale for US$99.99: Personal Orchestra, Jazz Big Band, and Marching Band. The sale ends 12/21, so you’ll want to get on this quick. The nice thing about these instrument packs is that they’re fairly well-focused and lightweight, so you don’t need a massive hard drive and sample-playing machine to get them running. They’re ideal, for instance, if you’re working on a score and want a quick rendition. Garritan also has the lighter “Basic Edition” of the Steinway-authorized Virtual Concert Grand. It’s 1.3GB uncompressed, so you can download it, making a perfect last-minute gift for someone (or yourself). I’ve just grabbed it myself and hope to have a review for you next week. You don’t get all the multisamples, it’s 16-bit only, and you only get the classic audience view, but I imagine this is how a lot of people use their sampled piano a lot of the time anyway. It only officially comes out Wednesday, but that gives you time for a Christmas Eve install.

Garritan Order Page [includes Christmas special]

Steinway Comparison Chart

As always, the Garritan community has done a free Christmas album:

http://garritan.com/Xmas.html

And perhaps there’s a deal on a real Steinway somewhere, too, though that doesn’t quite fit into our budget category.

Costco Meg-bundle with Snowball Mic: Costco (the US-based discount club) is generally not a place to go buy music tech gear. But they have a pretty terrific deal running right now, if you can find it. Blue Microphones’ Snowball USB mic, a convention basic dual-capsule condenser with 16-bit digital converter, is bundled with some other extras. You get Koss UR40 headphones, and Mackie’s underrated music editing workstation Tracktion 3. Given that the mic and Tracktion usually sell for $100 or more on their own, US$99 for the three is quite nice.

Snowball Mic Bundle

It’s hard to beat this as a $100 gift for newcomers you know. The Snowball isn’t the best condenser mic around by any stretch, and lacks fully-adjustable gain, but it’s a nice little mic to toss in a backpack and plug in via USB.

[Update] Fantastic Image-Line sale: Whoops, meant to mention this and didn’t in the first draft of the story! Image-Line’s software always makes a fantastic discount buy (which is why it topped our software list in the CDM Holiday Guide). But it’s an even better deal now, thanks to discounts and a free time-manipulation effect. Adrian Anders writes in comments:

Maximus & Morphine – $99 each

Every order of $99 or more comes with their new upgrade to WaveTraveler, one of those plugs in FLStudio that made Mac-heads question their loyalty. It hasn’t been announced but there’s a good chance an OS X version is in the works :D

More deals to follow.

Image-Line Sale

Peak Pro 6 Sale

The Mac-only audio editor has gotten some major upgrades to its playlist, RAM-based editing, new DSP goodies, dither modeling, another UI upgrade, and additional delivery and dynamics processing. Correction: only the upgrade pricing gets you as low as US$99. But there is a DDP export extension and free mastering plug-in with Peak Pro 6, an upgrade sale, plus other discounts:

Peak Pro 6 sale

Of course, that still leaves the “everyday low price” of Wave Editor from Audiofile Engineering at US$79, which has earned big fans like CDM contributor and game sound designer W. Brent Latta. Wave Editor has added some delivery options of its own, meaning you could easily choose either one. That makes two terrific choices on the Mac, which had traditionally been a bit behind on straight-up audio editors when compared to Windows’ Sound Forge and Audition.

Cash Back on Live

Ableton has a Holiday Special with up to $150 cash back on Live 7, Live LE, and Ableton Suite. There are some other promotions on, so well worth checking.

No promotional fees were collected in the making of this article. I do accept candy canes from readers if you happen to run into me. 

Deals by You

I’m sure I’m just scratching the surface here. Seen any great deals / discounts yourself? Picked up anything you want to share?

If you haven’t yet, do check out all we stuck in our Holiday Guide:

On Demand: CDM Winter 2008, with Gift Guide, Bending and Slicing Tutorials, More

The Garritan Personal Orchestra forum has become more than a place for users of this sampled orchestra library to troubleshoot and ask questions — it really is a community in its own right. From sharing new compositions to assembling an orchestration guide, the GPO users are busy. Their latest creation is an 18-track album of (mostly traditional) holiday music, arranged for the sampled virtual orchestra of GPO. Download the music, or Garritan will even send you a CD. While you’re there, scroll down for a rendering of the Nutcracker in GPO — even if we might start to prefer it on bike parts. Now in its third year:

Garritan Christmas Music Player

That’s all fine and well, of course, but where’s the Reaktor Christmas Album, featuring all your holiday favorites rendered completely unrecognizable on far-out synths? (Finally, “This Christmas” made bearable — by re-arranging it for a microtonal granular synth that completely obliterates the horribly annoying melody? Native Instruments forum users, can you deliver?)

Moving on to a somewhat naughtier Christmas mix, our favorite mash-up DJ has cooked up yet another X-mas music stew:

DJ Riko Christmas Music Mixes

I never feel in a holiday mood until I hear Boris Karloff’s voice. And nothing makes my guests start to chug the Egg Nog like the dulcet tones of The Partridge Family singing Jingle Bells. And, while the Garritan effort is admirable, it doesn’t feature “the best drum-and-bass Christmas song you’ll ever hear and also features what just might be the best use of sleigh bells ever.” All of Riko’s holiday back catalog is there, too, so the insanity never has to run out.

Sorry for the slowdown, incidentally, folks — more “hard news” from CDM next week; we’ve got a lot of stories in the pipeline. Well, and more frivolousness, as always. That can’t only come but once a year.

Sample designers Garritan Library, the folks behind the popular orchestral library Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO), have begun releasing portions of their free guide to orchestration (see my previous story). The full text and examples are straight out of the classic Rimsky-Korsakov orchestration text, the landmark guide to orchestration that has taught many master composers. The Rimsky-Korsakov is a must-read for composers, but it’s still one perspective and hardly perfect, so it’s even better to discover the text has been fully annotated in this version.

The result is a community-driven guide to orchestration that’s really unlike anything I’ve seen before. The whole course is designed for self-study, with plenty of examples and illustrations. The professors who edited and annotated the text are discussing the results, turning the Garritan forums into a kind of interactive classroom. When the whole set of lessons are done, they’re even holding an orchestration contest. (Now that’s something I never got in my orchestration classes — not just grades, but genuine competition.)

The examples have been fully rendered in Garritan Personal Orchestra, so the project also shows what a virtuostic GPO orchestrator can do. It’s admittedly not quite the same as healing the excerpts played on a real orchestra, which is potentially problematic for someone learning orchestration. But it’s still interesting to follow the scores interactively, and if you’re a composer trying to learn GPO orchestration so you can make better demo recordings so you can convince real orchestras to play your scores, don’t miss the power tips interspersed with the lessons. (And, hey, the GPO sounds are good enough for U2!) The people on the GPO forums really know this product inside and out, including how to make it work with notation software.

It’s exciting to see something new in music learning. The first four lessons are out now, with many more coming. I’ll keep you posted — now, go practice so you can win the orchestration contest!

Principles of Orchestration Online

Garritan update: Gary Garritan reports that there are more products in the pipeline, if you’re waiting on new Garritan libraries like the first-ever Steinway-authorized piano. He says he’s just waiting on the 2.0 release of Kontakt Player. Stay tuned here.