Sound and light artist, guitarist, Max patcher, and all-around sonically-fascinating guy Christopher Willits has opened up his “Tiger Flower Circle Sun” record on Ghostly to remixing. Halfway through the project, we talk to Chris about what’s going on – and what the results so far sound like. And we share, from earlier this fall, a composition in which you can recharge.

The project begins not with stems, but with samples, the raw materials on which the album was based. Christopher walks CDM through the audio highlights, one sample at a time. Along the way – as with all these samples – you begin to appreciate the process by which Christopher makes his decisions, how he moves from samples like pieces of wood to the finished structure. And of course, by opening these up to remixing, you have an opportunity to hear the work differently in his finished, released form, as well as to find your own, distinct decision-making process. It’s perhaps obvious in a remix project, but what this does is to allow the sounds a life separate from the fixed set of decisions that produced the album.

And that can even change Christopher’s own view of the work, he says. He tells us:

I think it’s fun to play the set like an album. I’ve heard these pieces so many times that it’s really refreshing to me to hear them alone. Now I hear the pieces differently.

That was actually one of the thoughts behind sharing all of these sounds, so people can hear the layers, and if they wish, tune their ears to the subtleties and intention I wanted to create in the mixes.

You can find the remix project at:
http://willits-sample-library-vol1.herokuapp.com/

“The stuff i’ve heard so far is AMAZING,” Christopher tells us. “I can’t wait to feature the best of the best. We’ll be releasing a free comp on [Christopher's experimetal label] Overlap and Ghostly will feature my favorite remix on a free comp, too.” Winning remixes get Ableton and SoundCloud prizes.

Let’s hear a few words from Christopher about the sounds he’s produced.

A Tour of the Sounds

A lot of the samples are about variation of common materials, so there’s plenty to explore. Christopher tells us that just one sample – like this guitar solo – can take on very different meanings with different processing, heard in two variations.

Guitar process solo1-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

Guitar process solo2-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

This tone is created from a custom-made Big Muff > BOSS distortion > Fender Twin with a couple power tubes removed for low volume and max distortion. This is a trick that ted from Flipper showed me around that time, and it created the exact orange laser beam i was hearing in my imagination.

Guitar solo long noise-Sun Body-Willits-120 by Willits

Guitar solo-Plant Body-Willits-120 by Willits

The whole piece “Plant Body” came from this guitar improvisation. With releases like “Folding and the Tea” and “Seven Machines for Summer,”

I set the process to be only the guitar recordings. With this release, I gave myself a new set of constraints and permissions, allowing my imagination to add whatever comes up for me. No judgement on which one is better to me, they are just different. There are infinite possibilities within any process I determine, yet discerning the process that resonates with my true intention is what creates the shapes and forms and colors that feel like love.

Guitar process4 fold-Plant Body-Willits-120 by Willits

The drum samples come from:

…my great friend Jeff Pierre – one of the best drummer I’ve ever worked with, and the youngest, as well. All of Jeff’s takes were one take; this sample is shortened from the original length, but you get the idea.

Drum2-The Hands Connect To The Heart-Jeff Pierre-Willits-120 by Willits

Drums distorted1-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Jeff Pierre-Willits-120 by Willits

I just love the lightness and feel of this sound — like the funkiest insects in the jungle, getting down.

Perc1-The Hands Connect To The Heart-Willits-120 by Willits

Someone please make a disco track out of this.

Synth arp-The Heart Connects To The Head-Willits-120 by Willits

Me and my friend Reiko were messing with patterns; then we would find a loop. We were laughing so hard as we were playing this stuff.

Perc-Intend-Evolve-Willits-120 by Willits

Check your volume for this one — probably should have exported it at a lower volume for this set! The heat of this, the crushed distortion, is from a technique called input flipping on the SSL. This is an input flip with the preamps cranked, with odd harmonics.

Ryan (Ryan Kleeman) and I just about lost it when we first input flipped like this for a distorted sound. It became a theme in a sense that resonated with this orange laser beam electromagnetic sound that much of the work stems from.

Synth arp noise-The Heart Connects To The Head-Willits-120 by Willits

You can also hear it here- and a few other places on the record, to a less extreme degree. There is something about this texture that has a cleaning function to me. Washes things off, away, cleans the ears out. Resets your space.

Branches Into Flowers-Willits by Willits

“Could hear many more strings and horns in this piece.”

Guitar2-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“Love this floating feeling.”
Guitar lasers-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“This pattern makes me want to get down.”
Perc distorted1-You Are Always Surrounded By Stars-Willits-120 by Willits

“Love this kind of generative sound.”
Subconscious Transmission-Willits-120 by Willits

Two samples that were not used in “Light into Branches.” Made the baritone thing in one mode of listening, came back and asked myself, why did I put a baritone guitar solo in the middle of this song? Did I really think that’s what it needed, or did I just want to play my baritone along with this song for fun? The answer was the latter. But here it is anyway.

The ambient layers sample was to create more depth of field in the mix, have it floating behind at a low volume, but it was not doing was I wanted it to, so I cut it out.

Baritone solo unused-Light Into Branches-baritone-Willits-75ish by Willits

Guitar layers unused-Light Into Branches Willits-75ish by Willits

Videos

From the original record release:

More information:
http://ghostly.com/releases/tiger-flower-circle-sun

Soak in a Sound Bath

Another release from this year revealing Willits’ musical approach, “GOLD” is an ambient piece in you can inhabit, in which you can restore yourself, according to its maker:

GOLD is a 24 minute and 17 second sound bath / ambient piece to soak into. Listen, relax and recharge. This harmonic weaving of sound was created with the vibration of affinity, love.

Made with voice, processed guitar, and a low-frequency oscillation out of a Nord Lead synth, Christopher actually encourages people to share how they “used’ the piece and how they made it felt, a kind of design experiment for spiritual being in sound. Have a listen or pay-what-you-will on Bandcamp:

Read up on what he has to say about this release:
New Release – GOLD [Sound + Light - Chris' blog]

Infinite

It seems only appropriate to close with this reflection from Christopher:

After working on this project, I’m realizing so tangibly what I’ve always known — that any mix is a sonic photograph of vibrational affinity, and even with a grounded intention behind any mix, and a very clear outline for a process in which you allow that intention to emerge, there are infinite possibilities of expression. Infinite. It is so beautiful.

From behind the long-gone, so-called “iron curtain,” nearly-lost musical innovation is beginning to become available. But perhaps more than any geo-political change, the power of an Internet-based community hungry to share knowledge is making national borders that once isolated information melt away.

Earlier this week, I shared reflections I wrote up for Amsterdam’s STEIM on the significant of DIY Music. But one group of artists, the Standuino team from Brno, Czech Republic, really exemplified that spirit. First off, their hardware is utterly brilliant and eminently practical, an Arduino-based platform on which they’ve made it easy to create and modify designs, and share useful tools like the sampler they demonstrated for us in Amsterdam. Secondly, they’re international – the performance brought together a Brazilian, Czech, and Dutch artist in their presentation. Third, they took “DIY” straight to the transportation, hitchhiking all the way from Brno to Amsterdam to be part of our performance, for which we’re all incredibly grateful!

The Standuino crew emphasize that they also wish to make the innovation of the Czech people more visible to the rest of the world. You know Bob Moog or Morton Subotnick, for instance, but do you know the name Standa Filip?

You should. The maker of extensive DIY instruments, interactive work, robotic installations, and new media, Standa (hence Standuino) is inspiring a new generation of artists – first in the Czech Republic, eventually in the world. Those artists, led by Standuino, are recreating some of his work, as well as making new work that carries on his spirit.

Check out the videos here to see him talk about his history and play his instruments, then learn more – and find the Arduino-based hardware designs, which I’ll cover more next week – at the Standuino site:

http://www.standuino.eu/

But there you go – from Rio to Singapore, once I hit publish, just about anybody can learn what it was like to be a lone DIYer in Communist Czechoslovakia – then go find open source ideas with which they can make music from the new generation of creators in the Czech Republic, in a matter of seconds.

Yeah, we overhype the Internet. But that’s pretty damned awesome. I’m going out in the sunshine now for a bit, because that’s awesome, too, but I’m pretty happy that I get to make this my day job. And thanks to you for making that possible, because with you as a reader, none of this would be true.

Roland’s GR-55 guitar synth is one powerful accessory for guitarists – maybe a little too powerful. With its various modeling, effects, and synthesis powers hidden in layers of menus, navigating all those sonic capabilities can be a chore. Enter one user from the GR-55′s dedicated community of guitar synthesists. Marc Benigni used TouchOSC control software for the iPad and set up a template that makes all of that functionality touchable, direct, and accessible.

But wait — there’s more! There’s also a dedicated, free and open source editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. (There’s even a fresh Lion build for Mac users.) So, score one for the Roland user community stepping in and doing more than the actual manufacturer (and I haven’t yet seen any maker do a Linux version, or, for that matter, release their editor as open source). Thanks to Marty Cutler for the tip!

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “it’s open source software. Probably looks totally ugly and primitive.”

Nope. Looks damned slick, actually:

And all this means you’ve got a powerful editor without the need for an iPad.
http://grfloorboard.sourceforge.net/
Project information

If you’ve got an iPad…

Marc writes and describes that project:

I recently developed a TouchOSC layout that serves as a patch editor for Roland’s GR-55. The GR-55 is an impressive guitar synth and guitar preamp, but it’s UI leaves *much* to be desired, and Roland has stated that they will not be releasing a PC-based editor for it. With this layout, an OSC interface, and of course a copy of TouchOSC, the user can easily and intuitively edit patches, or modify GR-55 settings in real-time during performance.

Details concerning development can be found in this thread on the VGuitar forums, with photos of the interface on more recent pages:
http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3205.msg30263#msg30263

The mind still boggles at all those controls, but now it looks far more usable. You can bet that iPad apps may soon be a trend for manufacturers, too, though sometimes – freed from any commercial aspirations – what the users come up with works pretty well on its own. I’m eager to try some layouts out for both iOS and Android touch devices; just because it’s fun as a developer, I’m toying a bit with the latter.

Of course, this tool is a great head start on iOS:
http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

There’s a new analog Moog effect in town. So who better to tell us about it and get us some hands-on time than Moog Music’s Chief Engineer?

Moog’s next Moogerfooger, the Cluster Flux or “MF-108M” if you want to sound more serious, promises to be a versatile analog effect processor. It’s a flanger / chorus / vibrato unit with loads of modulation, meaning you can either go the classic chorus/flange route or go further out with your sound sculpting. Mono in, stereo out, all-analog signal path, coming soon at US$599 list (street should be lower).

That’s the unit. But I often find it’s most interesting to talk to the people who actually design the gear. At our Handmade Music event, presented with Moog and curated by myself and Wilco’s lead keyboardist Mikael Jorgensen, we had gathered a bunch of makers of musical devices, from independent one-off production to, well, Moog. Getting to talk to each other was a real gift; makers confessed what attracted them to electronic music instrument making, and the trial and error necessary to make something. (Yes, there are even trials with experienced engineers at mighty Moog.) Videos of all of that will be appearing in the coming days.

Cyril Lance is Chief Engineer at Moog. He’s the guy who’s led a lot of the work behind the MF-108M and many other recent Moog Music inventions. When he talks about the Cluster Flux, it seems he can barely contain a certain glee at why he’s excited to produce it, and what he believes makes it special. And we had a blast with him, not only talking Moog but playing with everything else in our Handmade Music Lounge.

This isn’t a review; it’s a chance to listen to one of the makers of the box talk directly about why it makes him happy. I look forward to getting a Cluster Flux when it’s ready. Our impromptu sound is, not surprisingly, less-than stellar. So, I asked Moog Music to record for CDM some exclusive audio snippets of the Moogerfooger in action – totally dry, just a Moog guitar, the MF-108M, and an amp. Sounds included via the CDM SoundCloud account below:

Moogerfooger Cluster Flux MF-108 – Exclusive Demo Sounds by cdm

Otherwise, you’ll have to take my word for it: whether this box is for you or not, I have to say, it sounds really brilliant. I spent a big chunk of the afternoon with our MeeBlip open source synth hooked up to the Cluster Flux, and I could get used to the combination. (Glad we could share the MeeBlip with Moog, too!)

Coming soon: videos of some of the other folks we shot at Mass MOCA, conversations about making, and a broader chat with Cyril about what it’s like running engineering for Moog (and, incidentally, why he’s excited about the DIY movement, even if it might make things that compete with Moog’s own offerings).

More on the Moogerfooger:
Moogerfooger Cluster Flux: Flanger + Chorus + Vibrato + LFO; Pricing and Availability Details [CDM]

Coming Soon: The Moogerfooger MF-108M Cluster Flux [Moog Music News]

And some specs/features (most illustrated in the video above):

LFO waveforms: Sine, Triangle, Square, Saw, Ramp and Random

MIDI in, for control of Delay Time, Range, Feedback, Output Level, LFO Waveform, LFO Rate, LFO Amount and Mix

CV control of Delay Time, LFO Rate, Feedback, LFO Amount, Mix

LFO sync to MIDI Clock or Tap Tempo

Send/Return Insert for external processing of BBD feedback loop

Configurable Stereo Out

Spillover mode, for “drones and other feedback effects” (actually, didn’t get to play with this one, so we’ll have to do that in the review … I love me some drones.)

Delay Time, Mix, and Feedback configurable in Chorus

Wide-ranging LFO rate (yeah, this bit is a lot of fun)

Bi-polar feedback for flanging, even or odd harmonic emphasis (again, lots of fun, got to play a little but hope to play more)

Full details on the Moog site; more to come.

“Bi-polar feedback” sounds a little bit like Web comments, so it’s worth saying this: I heard the feedback loud and clear that you’d like to see a wider variety of coverage of this kind of gear. We’re on it. It takes some time, but I’d absolutely love to see this kind of coverage — looking in-depth at the gear and talking to the maker — of more devices. And whatever our name may or may not imply, that includes hardware as well as software, analog as well as digital. (Analog and digital circuitry coexist in most gear these days in some sense – certainly, you can find something digital in almost anything analog since the year I was born, so our name lets us do whatever we want.)

When musical traditions meet, handled by people with real mastery of their technique, wonderful things can happen. That can be true of master instrument builders, for one. I got a chance to hear the sounds of the Moog Lap Steel Guitar in June while meeting with the folks from Moog Music. It’s an incredibly-delicious instrument, both in terms of how it’s engineered as a guitar and in bringing the filter from the Moog synth, now itself a tradition.

And you thought bluegrass and synthesis had nothing to do with one another. Think again. -Ed.

The history of musical instruments and of music itself is a story of the search for ever-greater tools for expression, and of an ever-deepening well of ideas to express. Combining innovations by instrument makers from around the globe (and across decades and centuries) with musicians who take a similar approach to their art is bound to produce music that displays a welcome hybrid vigor.

A prime example of this is Billy Cardine and the Moog Lap Steel. A bluegrass virtuoso who has performed everywhere from Carnegie Hall and the Kennedy Center to the Ryman Auditorium and Bonnaroo, he also studied in India and will perform at the upcoming Bangalore International Music Fest with chitravina master Ravikiran. [Ed.: the chitravina is an ancient Indian instrument dating back at least two millennia. It's a fretless string instrument, and can itself be seen as a precursor to slide instruments in places like Hawaii - it's played in the same way, with a slide. Just dig those 21 strings. -PK

Billy was instrumental (pardon the pun) in the development of the Moog Lap Steel and played a prototype at its debut at Moogfest 2010 (see video, below). Combining the unique expressive qualities of the lap steel with the innovative string control abilities of the Moog Guitar – adding an onboard Moog filter – results in an instrument with incredible expressive potential.

And since there is a CV (control voltage) input for external control of the Moog filter, why not bring some modular synthesis into the mix? Against a backdrop of synth drones and arpeggiations, with a sweep of a pedal the MakeNoise René sequencer can be brought in to modulate the Lap Steel’s filter cutoff frequency. The René has two independent clock inputs. In this video (top), only one of them is synced to MIDI clock, resulting in some nice, subtle glitchyness.

Bring this to life with Billy’s unique style… the results… the expressive vigor of hybrids.

And More Sonic Experimentation – With a Fiddle

In another example of electronic expression in unexpected genres… Casey Driessen, violinist with Bela Fleck, the Sparrow Quartet and others visits the ExperimentalSynth Studio to check out some Moogerfooger effects processors.

Ed.: For a change of pace, I have to also embed here a preview Chris shot for the workshop he was teaching for the Moog Foundation. You get some computers here. And actually, I’m impressed by the sense that, in some sense, it doesn’t matter – this Mac laptop could easily jam with the violin, with the banjo, with the slide guitar… That’s important. Working solo in the dark hours of the night is terrific. But it means you can also play – really play, not just get lost in some chaotic soundscape – with friends from a range of musical traditions. -PK

More Experimental Synth:
http://www.experimentalsynth.com/

Electric guitar pioneer Les Paul is one of the all-time greats in music instrument invention, so the guy clearly deserves an animated Google Doodle of his creation that you can play. Strum chords, pluck with the mouse, and even record phrases on Google’s homepage. (See video, above.) Since Google Doodles are archived – and since you can look at the code by choosing a View Source feature in your browser – these little novelties also have a life beyond their one day of glory. (Note, you may need to visit the US site if you’re in a part of the world that doesn’t have this Doodle, since they’re localized.)

Here’s where things get a little geekier:

Using the free and open source tool SuperCollider (Mac, Windows, Linux), composer and coder Nick Inhofe scripts Google’s interface, using the ability of SuperCollider to talk to keystrokes. You can download SuperCollider for free and try it out – it’s an insanely powerful real-time synth and processing engine – or just hit the Google shortcuts to hear the results. Full details:

Google Doodles with SC [SuperCollider mailing list]

Good, clean fun.

Check out Nick’s SoundCloud account, too, for some good listening:
http://soundcloud.com/exit_only

There are plenty of reasons to consider free software tools as part of your toolchain for music making. They might fit your budget, give you needed flexibility, allow you to use a tool driven more by development needs than commercial ones, give you tools that would otherwise lack proprietary commercial niches, allow you to run (via Linux) on a wider variety of hardware or with greater low-latency performance, or allow you to contribute more directly to a project, from documentation to actual development. And increasingly, they don’t mandate some sort of philosophical choice, either – I routinely use free software tools on the proprietary Mac OS, and use commercial, proprietary projects (Renoise) on Linux or (Harrison Mixbus) to make free projects more powerful.

What usually holds people back from free software projects is, simply, not knowing where to begin. Software in general can overwhelm with choice; free software, often, doubly so.

Fortunately, some software gurus have jumped into the legwork so you don’t have to. I have some of my own thoughts on how to put this together, but first I wanted to share the input of these esteemed colleagues. These aren’t all Linux-only – many run on Windows and Mac, too – but if you are looking for a way to put together a robust studio on Linux, they’re a great start.

Webcast, Software Picks, Knowledge Databases

If you like real-time feedback, today, you can join Red Hat’s Adam Drew in a live webcast for “Open Your World,” entitled “Making Music with FOSS.” [Free and Open Source Software] It runs at 11:00a Pacific / 2:00p Eastern, and will be archived. (I’ll update that link here.)

Learn to make open source music–Register now for a webcast with Adam Drew

Warning: I just discovered that this thing pops up an annoying survey that assumes you use JBoss. (And, heck, CDM is indirectly a Red Hat customer – the whole site runs on RHEL.) Trying to tell it you don’t use JBoss makes the whole survey fail. I’m going to try to schedule something separately, as this is … more than a little ridiculous for a music-making survey, and sadly shows Red Hat’s blind spot in regards to end users.

Day job in tech, night job in music making – yup, that’s the M.O. of quite a few people around this community.

I asked Adam for his top picks, and he explained he would demo:

• JACK / qjackctl (the GUI for JACK), the tool for interconnecting audio, MIDI, and sync between applications
• Hydrogen Drum Machine
• Ardour, the terrific, all-free DAW
• Rakarrack, a free guitar effects tool set for Linux (one new to me, in fact!)
• ZynAddSubFX, probably the most capable free standalone soft synth – ugly, but very powerful, and a candidate for a “desert island” synth.

For additional resources, there’s a superb guide on the Fedora site (one that Ubuntu actually might mirror). It’s Fedora-focused, but the advice often applies to other distributions:
Fedora 14 Musician’s Guide

Adam himself operates the FOSS Audio KBase, full of articles on configuration and individual software programs. It’s about the most productive guide I’ve seen:
FOSS Audio KBase

Adam has some more philosophical thoughts:
Webcast preview: Free and open source software for music production [opensource.com]

And you can check out Adam’s music (CC-BY-NC-ND) and Linux-oriented personal blog. I tend to be more pragmatic about some of these issues, so I’m not endorsing all the opinions on Adam’s blog, but it’s a compelling read, and often comes with useful practical advice. (Mainly – I disagree with two points, one, I don’t think it’s entirely fair to say that proprietary DAWs lack interoperability, and two, I’m far more pragmatic about the future of Android as a platform, mainly because I think it’s currently the best bet for the distribution of free software on mobile. Oh, I don’t trust Google, either, though – that’d be silly.)

Picks from Dave Phillips of Linux Journal

Last weekend, I had the pleasure to meet Dave Phillips for the first time. Dave, an Ohio-based musician and teacher, is bar none the most invaluable writer when it comes to free software and music-making on Linux. His series for Linux Journal in particular is a must-read.

Dave and I joined Columbia’s Brad Garton at Virginia Tech to do a bit of teaching, a bit of playing, and to enjoy the hard work of the Linux Laptop Orchestra. I’ll cover more of that soon, but in the meantime, I took some notes as Dave walked through a current take on the software for Linux that most excited him.

His picks:

• Ardour, naturally
• Ardour 3, the next-generation update to Ardour that at last adds MIDI support (and beautifully executed). Dave noted that you can and should install Ardour 3 alongside the stable Ardour, so you can test both. There are even pre-built alpha binaries, so there’s really no excuse: you could be up and running in less than the time it took to read this. (See a much earlier story from Dave on testing 3.)
• Harrison Mixbus: It’s not free software, but it is now Linux-native and supports Linux plug-ins, and it’s built on Ardour (and, in turn, contributes back to Ardour). As Dave put it, Mixbus is a mind-boggling value “from a company that thinks of a budget console as costing $100,000.”
• IR: LV2 convolution reverb. The work of Tom Szilagyi, IR is a brilliant, no-nonsense plug-in for powerful convolution effects; LV2 support means it runs beautifully in hosts like Ardour 2.8.x and higher and Renoise. I’m really grateful to Dave for turning me on to this one. woo, tangent has a nice blog entry on the plug.
• LV2, generally. Dave credits the evolving state of LV2, and the work of its principle developer, David Robillard, for a lot of innovation in free software and Linux audio. I’m surprised LV2 hasn’t gained more attention, in fact – it might be the best bet yet to finally help plug-in developers escape the shadow of formats like VST. But that’s probably a topic for another article.
• RubberBand Audio Processor Powerful time stretching tool, now on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. Available as a library, too, if you’re a developer – or just use it to mangle your audio files as an end user. Someone has already ported it to Renoise.

The focus of Dave’s presentation, though, was one tool so deep, it could easily be your only tool, for the rest of time. AVSynthesis couples visual output in OpenGL with the veritable Csound sound and composition engine. It includes built-in sequencing capabilities, basic sound generators (themselves written in Csound), envelopes and modulation, the powerful MatrixSynthMod instrument, MIDI control, and effects (phasers, choruses, filter, waveguide filter, and so on). There’s shader support on the graphics side, too. The result: based on built-in building blocks or, if you’re adventurous, your own code, you can produce 3D audiovisual musical-eye candy performances. I hope we’ll take more look at this soon; the one question that came up repeatedly – and that Dave couldn’t answer yet – was what the workflow might be for adding your own Csound creations. (The package itself is built in Java.)

More information:
http://www.avsynthesis.net/
AVSynthesis: Blending Light and Sound with OpenGL and Csound5 [Dave in Linux Journal]

AVSynthesis Tour 1

Composing With Csound In AVSynthesis [Dave in Csound Journal]

Lest you think we’re all a bunch of “neckbeard” Marxist free software revolutionaries, though, Dave – who’s had drinks with Stallman on occasion – was also full of questions about Mac OS and curious about it for his own music making. I think largely we’re all technologically curious; if anything, the only people I’ve met who have gotten really emotional are the people who mistrust free software, perhaps because they just need to loosen up and accept that something really can be free.

But as with proprietary software, I think the biggest danger with Linux and free software is that you can become overwhelmed with choices rather than focusing on music. That’s part of why I find these choices so appealing: deep, capable, well-designed, and rock-solid, I’ve found them to be eminently musical. Some of the best demonstrate that free software can provide choice – not, as many believe, only compromise. And I see absolutely no reason that they can’t coexist with other popular proprietary options in your studio. You may not be ready to leap into Linux, but especially given that by now you’ve likely accumulated either extra machines or machines that can easily dual-boot, there’s no reason not to add these free tools to your arsenal.

Got favorites of your own? Let us know; I’ll continue to feature this stuff in coming days.

Speaking of goodies for Ableton Live, NYC-based electronic artist and songwriter AfroDJMac has been creating some unusual, nicely quirky Device Racks for Ableton Live. Unlike a Max for Live patch, these are accessible to anyone with a copy of Ableton Live – and may be easier to edit for those of you not comfortable tinkering around with Max patches.

Each creation begins with a sample, then twists it into playable instruments in virtual device racks. AfroDjMac has been releasing these racks on a weekly basis; weeks two and three are already looking good. At top, a 1960s Gibson acoustic guitar meets an Ebow for some lovely string timbres.

The Ebow itself is a pretty terrific invention:
http://www.ebow.com/home.php
Battery-powered and handheld-sized, it’s a shortcut to ethereal sounds.

Another example, seen below, is a reversed piano. That sounds not terribly interesting, but he’s loaded it up with clever delays and programming and created something pretty deep. The piano itself is worth mentioning, too – a 1913 Kranich and Bach upright piano.

All you need is a recent copy of Live, and you can open the sets directly. In fact, this is a reminder that sets and racks remain the best way to distribute simple creations for Ableton Live, even if Max for Live is a good choice for much fancier tricks. It still makes me wonder what the best way to distribute samples may be, with various competing formats; I’m open to ideas beyond the obvious “big ‘ol folder full of files” technique.

Read up more on the artist’s blog:
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #2 – “AfroDjMac Gibson Ebow Pad” and Live Video Performance from Brooklyn
Free Weekly Ableton Live Rack #3 – “AfroDjMac Reversed Piano”

Below, you can see what AfroDjMac’s live set is like – and yes, apparently rock clubs do allow laptops these days, if you bring a mic:

As a guitar, the Rock Band 3 Mustang is a bit unusual – there are strings, but an array of buttons replaces the frets, and it is intended as a game controller. But with all those buttons, strings, and sensors, it makes a remarkably flexible, surprisingly inexpensive controller. Our friend nay-seven puts it to good use with Sensomusic Usine. And talk about a budget-minded setup – one that could put platforms like the iPad to shame. Usine costs just EUR90 for a full license, with discounted educational pricing and a version you can try for free. The Mustang runs just over US$100, which could put it in the category of must-buy for anyone who loves experimenting with alternative controllers – guitarist or not. Add an inexpensive Windows laptop and audio interface, and you’ve got a pretty terrific setup.

Previously, with the help of Harmonix engineers, we documented how the MIDI spec works:
Exclusive Details: How the Rock Band 3 Fender Mustang Works as a MIDI Guitar

nay-seven writes:

I’ve discover this guitar with this article Peter, so thanks for this ! it’s a quiet cool guitar and cheap for the possibilities . I’ve made a little patch in Usine to add some features like open tuning, x/y visualization, and you can also use most of the buttons to run effects or samples.

Your mileage may vary, but it sure looks promising. Keep in mind, this is the cheaper Rock Band controller with buttons. As such, it’s a good choice for people wanting some cheap experimentation and people who aren’t guitarists. As for the real guitar controller for Rock Band 3, the Fender Squier Rock Band Controller, I have a writer working on documenting its more advanced MIDI features. It’s more complicated, and I can’t endorse it just yet – wait for the full review and details.

Speaking of tablets, can the flat surface of a touchscreen really emulate guitar expression? One developer thinks so.

Toyo Bunko of Amidio, makers of soft synths for iOS, writes to share their latest project. OMGuitar is a “guitar synth.” While it’s entirely touch-based, they’ve found ways of adjusting the tone, including using the speed of a strum to impact timbre and techniques for bends and mutes. You choose chords via an interface of their own design (rather than on conventional frets), and onboard effects make this an all-in-one solution. 300 chords are available, and there’s a dedicated arpeggio interface.

It’s no replacement for an acoustic guitar, but as a design problem alone, it’s fascinating. OMGuitar is coming this month, say the makers.

http://amidio.com/