I’d be remiss if I didn’t note another significant DAW release: DP7 is shipping this week. The Mac-only Digital Performer still has a loyal following, especially among the scoring crowd, some of whom have stuck with DP since the Performer days – one of the Mac’s first sequencers. I have to say, this particular update seems to focus more on bundled effects than core functionality – and, in fairness, because it’s tough to change core features without upsetting the stuff that keeps your users loyal, this isn’t uncommon. But DP has uncommonly rich support for being a Pro Tools HD front end, it’s Mac-savvy and Snow Leopard compatible, and given its popularity in scoring, a little touch like the Marker Counter could be huge news for its major following.

Full disclosure: I haven’t found much reason to touch DP lately, with plenty of other tools to keep my attention, so if there is a loyal DP user who would like to send in their dispatch, I’d love to run it on CDM.

In the meantime, I’ll keep this compact to give you a birds-eye view. First, the effects stuff:

• Stompboxes: For the first time, you get a suite of guitar pedal effects, including emulations of Ibanez, BOSS, RXT, and Electro-Harmonix.
• Modeled amps: Simulations of the Fender Bassman, Marshall JTM45, and Marshall JCM800. So, sure, other suites offer more options – but these are three top picks.
• Physically-modeled guitar miking: The Live Room | G simulates a speaker cabinet and mic placement. Unlike the Logic 9 take on the same idea, you get a built-in EQ and four channels – but also unlike Logic, you get close / near / far rather rather free-form mic placement. That’s too bad, given the clever top-down view, though I suspect the default placements are typically all you need.
• Smarter strips: Access channel strips from a floating window, and see EQ and dynamics in-line on the mixing board. (Usually you get EQ, but not dynamics.) Plus, finally – unlike most other programs – your virtual rack of synths appears right on the mixing board. Mixer controls are also available in any edit window, not just the usual arrangement view.
• Better counters: A Large Counter resizes the counter to an arbitrary size – ideal for when you’ve rented an orchestra and are projecting counts (literally). And a Marker Counter displays markers and jumps to specific spots, which could be fantastic for backing tracks, recording, and scoring. It’s a simple thing – obvious, really – and yet I haven’t seen it done before.
• Real-time crossfades promise to speed editing.
• Automation by range.

There are also various notation improvements, including lead sheet generation – though I still think it’s touch to beat a dedicated scoring tool, or the recent inclusion of Sibelius in Pro Tools. More interesting, you get full support for running Pro Tools 8 on the back end, which is ideal for people who prefer DP (and that Marker Counter) as their front end. And there are also tweaks under the hood, including Wave64 support for massive broadcast files, side-chaining AU plug-ins, and a new sample rate conversion engine.

Guitar effects in this tool have to go up against Apple’s Logic Studio. I’d have to generally give the edge there to Apple, though, because the range of tools remains wider, and Apple also includes MainStage for rigging their effects into a performance-ready setup.

Guitar effects are nice, but I think enhancing the Counter, cleverly integrating some of the mixing controls, and making cross-fade editing faster could actually be more important. If you’re a DP user, do let us know what you think of the update.

New in DP7 [MOTU]

Apple has released Logic Studio 9 today. Banner features: “Flex Time” audio warping, new goodies for guitarists (plus integration with a new audio interface and pedalboard from Apogee), expanded support for working with video and outputting compression, and most interestingly, tools for making MainStage a feature you might actually take onstage.

I’m meeting with Apple next week, so if you think of any smart questions, do pass them along. I should receive my testing copy then, too, so expect more details. In the meantime, here’s how it looks “on paper,” in a nutshell.

Live Performance

This to me is the interesting one. I loved the idea of MainStage when it came out, but I had a number of complaints in regards to what musicians would actually want to do for live performance. Specifically:

• MainStage needs a way of playing backing tracks, particularly for bands and acoustic players and soloists.
• ReWire is a must, so people using tools like Ableton Live (or Reason, or the awesome tracker Renoise) can work with them in a MainStage rig.
• Better control mapping was needed for real performance – including grouping.
• Musicians need a way of recording their gigs.

Well, guess what? Apple says they’ve added all of that to MainStage 2. ReWire support should make this particularly interesting, as solutions like a Logic-Live rig now become practical. And this is the first DAW to really try to do backing tracks in a way bands can use, even including Ableton Live.

Grouped controls allow you to drag and drop layouts of controls as macros. It’s a nice implementation, and different from what’s currently out there.

There’s also a live loop recorder, tape style. My first impression of this is that this doesn’t appear to match things like the new looper in Ableton Live 8, which can set an entire project tempo – it’s more like a basic stompbox effect, as we’ve seen previously in Native Instruments’ Guitar Rig. Still, that matches the simplicity of some of the other tools here.

Augh… and yes, that is Apple’s now-ubiquitous album art view as the browser mechanism for templates, proving they really don’t know where to stop. At least it seems they haven’t used that for the entire UI.

Of course, performance is everything in these implementations, so it’ll be fun to torture test MainStage 2 and see how it stands up.

And for anyone who wanted Live clips and Sculpture in one session, this could be interesting.

Flex Time Audio Manipulation

The music software market is already crowded with tools that promise to let you manipulate audio independent of its original tempo – but this implementation is more interesting than you might first think. You actually drag the mouse on the waveform itself, turning the sound into a Silly Putty-like, warpable view. Very much like Ableton Live, Logic also adds modes based on material (rhythmic, polyphonic, slicing), and an audio quantize mode that applies the feel of one track to another.

There’s also a slightly gimmicky record start/stop effect, which I’m sure will be a boon to anyone doing editing for MTV.

But make no mistake about it: Flex Time could heat things up.

Side note: Does Sibelius – now owned by industry titan and major Apple rival Avid – really not care that Apple lifted the name of its “FlexTime” technology, which I thought was trademarked? Did Apple pay off Avid to grab that name? (Especially funny after MainStage had a similarity to Plasq’s OnStage from Rax, a virtually identical feature.)

For Guitarists

• A new pedalboard full of effects
• An “Amp Designer” for combining 25 amps, 25 speaker cabinets, and 3 mics, plus a library of new presets
• Integration with Apogee’s new GiO interface in both Logic and MainStage

Apple is obviously committed to providing a one box solution, so you never have to buy anything for music making that doesn’t have an Apple logo on it – something I’m sure doesn’t make Native Instruments, Waves, IK Multimedia, and other competitors exactly thrilled. Those solutions are already really good, but I have heard Apple’s implementation is quite nice, and I’ve heard it from people who are actual guitarists.

Notation Enhancements

Ornaments have been expanded with a broader notation library, and a set of some 4000 chord grids beef up tab capabilities for guitars.

I still think you’d be nuts to use Logic in place of something like Sibelius for major notation editing, just because I find the dedicated tool much quicker to use. On the other hand, Logic was born as “Notator,” so it has notation in its blood.

Other Improvements

• Turn tracks into sampler tracks (again, the first time I’ve seen a good implementation like this outside Ableton Live)
• Drum replacement
• Improved editing inside take folders – so you can adjust recordings while keeping your takes
• Better bouncing, track import
• More bizarre warp effects for Space Designer (okay, I have to admit, I’ve gotten addicted to using convolution reverbs for special effects, so curious what they put in there)
• A Vocal Jam Pack

There’s also a new browser for instruments, it appears, apparently to make this more accessible to new users. On the other hand, that’s a bit like holding a toddler’s hand before putting him in the seat of your Ferrari, when it comes to interfaces like Ultrabeat. (See what I mean on Apple’s site.) But I suppose it can’t hurt – and meanwhile, the market for educational products remains.

Soundtrack Pro 3

Soundtrack Pro is the oft-overlooked audio editor bundled with Logic. Part of the promise of Soundtrack is working well with Final Cut, so it’s nice to see some new features that help distinguish this tool. (I have to say, on the Mac I do prefer working in Soundtrack to working in Peak — call me crazy.)

• Vocal Level Match applies a vocal level from one clip to another clip – fantastic for podcasting and production for video, if it works as advertised
• Editing by frequency (’bout time — I’m hoping this means we can work directly in the frequency view, as you should be able to do)
• Advanced Time Stretch
• Compressor output workflows

Breakfast of Champions

Apple has also added greater emphasis to artists, mirroring what they’re doing with GarageBand — though any hopes for Pro Artist Lessons with Logic are sadly thwarted so far. What they are doing is “Pro Sessions,” in which you can download actual session files. (I’m guessing that doesn’t include some third-party plug-ins they used, and it’s no match for, say, remix stems, but…)

Logic Studio in Action

(Yep, people use Logic)

Artist Sessions (one nice gem in there — a Santigold remix… but was Santigold herself not a user of Logic?)

What’s Not in this Upgrade

As near as I can tell, Logic will not support 64-bit memory addressing or 64-bit mixing. The former is extremely unfortunate for users of big sample libraries, although third-party tools do fill some of that gap. (Even so, native 64-bit memory support would be welcome.) It’s possible we may see this in an update, however; if it’s “in the future,” we just won’t know because Apple makes a policy of commenting only once things are released.

Also, it appears that Logic’s increasingly long-in-the-tooth library of effects and synths — once part of the core appeal of the tool — are left as-is in this release, which would be unfortunate. On the other hand, with options like Native Instruments’ Komplete to fill that need, and a price of US$499, it’ll be hard to fault Apple on this.

Many folks expected some sort of iPhone / iPod touch app, given that third parties have built them for control and the like. They were wrong, but I’m not surprised — Apple likes to keep its consumer and pro features fairly separate.

Any other omissions you notice, or things you’d like me to ask about? Let me know.

At least I have a fairly decent working list for what I’m likely to be hard at work testing when this arrives in the mail.

And Logic has some intense competition, too, with even a new entry on the scene this year (Propellerhead’s Record).

Let the games begin…

Apple Logic Studio

All images Courtesy of Apple.

AudioMulch 2.0 live patching screencast from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Wonderful things come from Australia. Developer Ross Bencina has released AudioMulch 2.0, the audio patching environment, now on both Mac and Windows.

Audiomulch is all pretty in black now with a new UI. But why is it special? AudioMulch has always been distinguished in its quick workflow, its ready-to-use objects that allow sophisticated patches with relatively simple structures, and its idiosyncratic soundmakers. The Metasurface multi-parameter controller is also a favorite.

The price is higher, which may scare away some – US$189, or $89 upgrade. There’s a 60-day trial that you can try out.

But the best part of this launch is that, instead of releasing a flashy demo with pans over girls in bikinis or booming drum beats and type flying through that says something like “THE FUTURE OF MUSIC IS NOW … HOLD THE SOUND IN YOUR FIST … BE THE MUSIC … WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?”, they just released a video showing someone making a piece of music. (What a concept!)

The video at top is a live-patching video, and it really reveals how, powerful as many interactive music environments may be, having some objects that get straight to what you want musically makes a real difference. (That’s something to keep in mind even as you create macros or code in other environments, too, I think.)

I like the idea of other people doing live-patching videos that work as music and not just tech demos, not only in AudioMulch but whatever your tool of choice may be.

If you give AudioMulch 2 a try, let us know what you think.

http://www.audiomulch.com

Gibson, the guitar company, has been on an utterly absurd campaign against music games, bringing lawsuits against the developers of both Guitar Hero and Rock Band and even against retailers. In the latest illustration of how screwed up patent law is, and just how over-litigious it has made technology in this country, the patent was based on a Gibson patent for a “System and method for generating and controlling a simulated musical concert experience.” Never mind that Gibson’s patent looks nothing like Guitar Hero, or that if interpreted that loosely, Gibson could theoretically sue any music software maker.

See my previous break-down of the patent and the twisted logic of the case:
Gibson Guitar to Guitar Hero Maker: We Own All Digital Musical Reality

And following development:
Gibson Guitar Loses Mind, Sues Entire Planet

Our friend Nilay Patel gets the scoop at Engadget that Gibson has lost its Guitar Hero case in California US District Court. Engadget also has a PDF of the decision:

Gibson loses Guitar Hero patent lawsuit, gets booed off stage

You can read juicy bits in the final ruling (PDF):

• Gibson’s own counsel withdrew from the case after the guitar maker refused their request for information. That’s right: Gibson wasn’t cooperating with their own lawyers. (Gibson later was represented by different counsel.)
• Gibson’s own corporate general counsel didn’t respond to requests from the court.
• Gibson started trying to force third-party Activision system providers to provide short-notice depositions, much to the dismay of the court and ACtivision, given Gibson’s own lack of cooperation.
• Gibson tried to use a YouTube video of a Guitar Hero hacker on the record, which the court found irrelevant (and, I think, laughable.)
• Gibson variously tried, unsuccessfully, legal gymnastics by which it could redefine musical instruments to enforce its ultimately irrelevant patent.

It’s also fun reading lawyers try to define what a musical instrument is in the context of this case. Ultimately, the determining factor in this case appears to be whether the musical instrument itself produces some kind of audio signal, not control signal. Yep, that’s right: it sounds like Gibson lost out because the Guitar Hero controller was defined as a controller but not an instrument. The court decision, showing unusual technical savvy, notes that the “Musical Instrument Digital Interface” (which they incorrectly call “device interface”) has been used for non-musical purposes, despite its name. In a fit of extreme hubris, Gibson at one point seems to have claimed ownership of MIDI for guitar controllers, despite prior art.

I’m certainly not qualified to interpret the judgment, but we can say this: Gibson lost. And they lost on almost every single point, from apparently abusing the court process to losing just about every detail they tried to prove. The court even says the Gibson arguments “border on the frivolous.”

The extent of their loss says to me the other cases have about a snowball’s chance, which raises the question of what Gibson was trying to accomplish in the first place. You have to wonder if they hoped intimidating legal action could help them win contract terms. But it’s nice to see the law win out — and raises hopes that, in the long run, legal remedies could eventually fix frivolous abuses of the patent system.

Oh, yeah – and we can all be relieved that Gibson neither owns the idea of making things look like guitars, nor musical simulation. Phew.

Following GarageBand has long been a good way to follow what improvements might be in store for Apple’s flagship Logic. And many Logic users use GarageBand as a sketchpad for bigger sets – Apple, of course, hope that GarageBand is a gateway drug to their delicious higher-end studio. GarageBand ‘09 is no exception.

New Models

Lessons may be the feature about which you’ve been hearing the most in GarageBand ‘09, but the major improvement in the software itself is the new guitar amp and effect modeling. I’ve confirmed with Apple that this is a new engine from the ground up, not what you’ve been hearing in previous versions or even in Logic Studio 8. It’s clear a lot of work went into the modeling; the models sound absolutely terrific, and I’ve heard from at least one very talented guitarist that the results will stand up to high standards. Whether that makes Apple’s models a Guitar Rig or AmpliTube “killer” remains to be seen – my sense is that, at some point, that’s about taste in models and features, as all of these models are getting pretty darned good. But given that the guitar models in Logic in the past have been slightly lacking, this is one to watch.

Amp models: Marshall, Mesa Boogie, Vox, Fender Combo and Tweed
Effects: Sustain, Delay, Phaser, Overdrive, Fuzz, Chorus, Flanger, Vibrato, Filter

If you want to open GarageBand ‘09 projects in Logic, you can. Logic will read the whole project, and the only feature that won’t work is the guitar amp models and effects. Your project will open, but any tracks using those effects will have the effects disabled. (Again, I’ve confirmed this with Apple.) That presumably means that you’ll want to export those tracks to audio, then import, if you really need to go in this direction.

Of course, this is really unfortunate, because as Macworld’s review notes, you can’t actually control these effects with anything other than the mouse. Apple hopes you’ll upgrade to Logic, but for now, you won’t get these models there, either. That means the IK’s, WAVES, and NI’s of the world are very much safe for the time being.

GB09 and Logic

Will Logic get these amp models? Well, of course it will. Apple won’t comment on future releases, but even Apple has said that their upgrade policy is to introduce improvements to Logic and GarageBand/iLife on an ongoing basis, then migrate those improvements. So, the question is, will we get a Logic “8.1″ with new guitar effects, or do we have to wait for “Logic 9″? I’m guessing we’ll get a point-one release for $29.99 or something, but, um, that’s an easy prediction — I’ve got roughly 50/50 odds.

What’s somewhat disappointing is that Apple seems not to have just implemented these as Audio Units, which would have meant you could drop them in Ableton Live or Rax or Kore or whatever you want – which could have convinced more musos to upgrade to iLife ‘09.

GarageBand Hacks? By the way, I think there may be a way to hack control of GarageBand’s effects. They support automation. And GarageBand has in the past responded to Mackie Control, I believe — correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t that how M-Audio’s iControl GarageBand controller worked? (That controller appears to be defunct. Anyone still got one?) It’d be fun, just for the heck of it, to find some way to control these effects with hardware.

My guess is, whatever Apple has decided about “beginning” users, the guitarist just discovering software is even more likely to wonder why he/she can’t stomp something to enable or disable effects. Or you could just leave that fuzz on … all the time.

So, the guitar with the Korg KAOSS Pad KP3 built-in wasn’t enough for you, huh? Here’s an axe with two iPod touch units attached. The sounds that result, with Ableton Live, the Eno/Chilvers app Bloom, and bowed guitar, are quite lovely. That shows some of the power of these apps: playing along with the generative/interactive music app Bloom is a bit like having an intelligent composition to work with. If these devices were more open and allowed easy creation of your own musical toys, you could built generative machines to play along with you. And it also demonstrates how touch and smart devices can extend the performance possibilities of a traditional instrument, in a way a rig of effects pedals and stomboxes – no matter how sophisticated – never could. (Thanks, nostromo!)

My favorite part: because Bloom uses the accelerometer, shaking the guitar clears patterns in Bloom. That demonstrates how a gesture that’s gimmicky on its own could be really useful in a particular performance situation.

Creator Brian William Green has some notes on his creation. And he cautions that this is just a quick, informal jam; it’ll be interesting to see how this evolves as he practices.

This video is a quick demonstration of my guitar with 2 itouch ipods mounted onto the body of the guitar.

The ipod closest to the guitar pick ups is running Itouch Midi’s Matrix app which I’m using to send midi to Ableton Live on my Macbook via wifi.

And the itouch near the bottom is running Bloom designed by Brian Eno and Peter Chilvers, Bloom is a generative music application.

Note: in this video bloom is just being run through my mixer when i play live it is run through various patches to alter it a bit.

The reason i shake the guitar is to clear bloom and start a new pattern, each time i shake it, it clears the boards and lets you start again.

Note: this video is just me messing around with a quick live set i through together just for the video its nothing real special but it shows kinda what im doing for my live sets, one thing that im not using in the video that is in my live setup is various Pd(puredata) patches.

More Videos Soon.
Thanks
-Brian Green

Other guitarists using similar rigs? Let us know!

Okay, getting a bit off-topic here. The big news is, Zoybar is a whole platform for creating your own superguitars. Here’s what the creator had to tell CDM about his vision – and there’s yet another contest in it, too:

Zoybar is a modular hardware platform for creating custom electric string instruments and effects.
The basic Zoybar kits enable you to assemble a variety of electric string instruments that could be mounted with different sound effects.

You can learn more about the project at my blog post http://www.zoybar.net/profiles/blogs/from-the-begining

I was inspired [by] the open source movement. In the virtual world of software production, every individual programmer can be a powerful autonomous production unit (provided with a web connection and a computer) whereas in the physical world materials, energy, production lines, storage and marketing takes much more time, money and risks to become a reality.

The Zoybar components provide research and development tools as a sustainable, playable prototype platform.

The same modular parts can be assembled as different instruments, can be change during the performance and also be mounted with numerous special effects, just by adding and changing their position across the profile groves.

My vision is to found an open music instruments hardware community. Every new effect or feature that would be created by an independent developer could become relevant to the whole Zoybar users and community.

Almost any application can be easily attached to the Zoybar platform, just by adding and changing its position across the profile groves with common bolts and screws.

One last thing – we are giving Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits.

The project is scheduled to be launched at December 2008 with a contest for music instruments and sound effect developers. Entrants shall submit a video clip performance of their new instrument to demonstrate its musicality, design, and engineering features. Performances may include new self made sound effects, synthesizer or electronic instruments.

Three First Edition Zoybar Hardware Kits will be given to the three videos with the highest number of views received through the video interaction at Zoybar.net.
http://www.zoybar.net/contest

So, modular builders, let us know what you make of the site, and if there’s useful stuff there for you. We’ll be watching.

An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:

• A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
• using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording

** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…

The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:

• 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
• $80 Toneport GX
• old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)

**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.

(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)

If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful – starting with album art, but going beyond that.

Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.

Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.

drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies

Updated: Plug-in List

Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)

Mac

• Studio Devil BVC (for my guitar needs)
• Togu Audio Line TAL Tube (to “tubify” guitar or other sounds, or “overdrive” them more)
• Togu TAL Dub (for my delay needs)

PC

• BTE Audio Juicy77 (for most of my guitar distortion needs)
• BTE Audio TSS (tube screamer stompbox simulation)
• Audio Damage Pulse Modulator (for crazy sounds)
• E-phonic Retrodelay (for mild delay needs)

ALL of my plug-ins are freeware coz i’m cheap! ; )

Elijah B Torn was introduced to me at the Warper Party. Apologies to Elijah, but the gimmick was a microcontroller-manipulated light bulb. “Hey, come downstairs, you’ve got to see this guy — he’s got a lightbulb that flashes in time to the music!” Actually, maybe that’s perfectly appropriate: crowded on our feet in front of Elijah on his laptop, everyone stared into his bright, blinking lightbulb, like a uniquely retro rave. Elijah’s music can lend itself to that.

If there are any doubts about this connection we like to talk about between handmade music and handmade other things, here’s Elijah’s work used as the soundtrack to British artist Julia Pott for one of Etsy’s Handmade Portraits. (Warning: Julia has an animation of animals talking about their crushes; my guess is that you, man, woman, straight, or gay, may be crushing on Ms. Pott by the time you’re done with the video.) It’s funny to hear Julia talk about introducing the human hand into her art as Elijah’s electronic sounds echo in the background, but by coincidence, I think some of what Elijah’s doing is about keeping an organic element in sounds.

Elijah has just assembled a video showing off the techniques he’s put together for his new album, “You Are Lucky I am Not a Vigilante.” As seen at top, Elijah narrates it as though he’s a malfunctioning android. There are plenty of weird and wonderful sounds in there, partly through some abuse of Live clips. I asked him to share some more details of what he was doing, and got this semi-cheeky response. Some techniques will be very familiar to long-time Live users, but may have a twist on them that fits Elijah’s personal style; others may be new (click images for larger versions):

Since I have been performing electronic music live a great deal, I wanted to write songs that had a more natural flow. Working in what I felt was a less visual way of composing instead sequencing in the computer in the hopes the songs would lend themselves to being performed live more easily and have less of the “let’s put the drum brick here and then the bass brick comes in here” style writing. A great deal of “Vigilante” was created out of improvizations with the bass guitar and laptop recorded to 4-track cassette. From these “experiments”, most of these songs were both written “to tape” and were then sampled back into the Ableton Live and reprogrammed either with Ableton features, NI Battery, Kontakt, or the Akai MPC 3000 (see theycontrol.us’s “How To Making Beats” video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnjb0xuuGQ ) and combined with various 8bit drum machines, sid emulators, air organs and other things. This included (but was not limited to) running everything through external filters, boomboxes, aged tape delays and spring reverbs.

This also led to my streamlining my Ableton Live set to be more utilitarian. One of the main things I incorporated into my set was a “dummy” master track. All tracks are set to “Send Only” and sent to a designated Send which functions as a master track but allows me send all of the tracks to an external effect and be rerouted into an audio track input in the same set (then going to the main real Master track) without causing (the bad kind of) horrifying feedback. This more or less allows me to process everything through external effects and making new loops of the whole track with the flip of a switch.

some of the bizarre techniques from my video in further detail-

For the interference with Electromagnetic Scalar waves in “Gun Music 1″ sound-
I am running my bass guitar into an audio track in Ableton Live 7.
The audio track is set to “Monitor In”. I have various “dummy” clips (or clips containing no audio information) but that contain a lot of clip envelope information. (For more on Dummy Clips check out the CovertOPerators) This allows me to automate modulation of anything from FX plugin in my audio fx chain to individual plugin parameters to control over the mixer including volume and panning information on the live input, in this case the bass guitar. This can be used to create anything from step sequencers to hands-free tempo synced filter freakouts. I also use Dummy clips to switch between different fx plugins as well as changing midi instruments when playing live.

For the echolocation of dolphins sounds in “Dangerous”-
I am a instance of Simpler on a instrument track. Sorry, I HAVE an instance of Simpler.
Simpler has the loop setting on with a very very short length (in this case 0.40%)
The start of the Loop has been midi mapped to a fader so that what is being played back and triggered can be within the piece of audio.
There is also a delay set to a momentary switch on the output of that instrument as well as having control of routing the instrument to an external delay (that is then run back into Live intro another audio track with the monitor set to input. I usually place a sweep-able filter on this track).

more information soon, I’ve already said too much!

01001011 01101001 01100011 01101011 01000001 01110011 01110011

For something somewhat … trippy, here’s an animated GIF of what Elijah’s Live set looks like:
Elijah B Torn, Animated

I think it’s nice seeing artists sharing what they’re doing rather than treating digital techniques as trade secrets — there’s genuine pride in technique, for one thing. And there’s also the suggestion that just using the same techniques doesn’t have to yield the same results. Maybe computer-generated art doesn’t have to be as anti-human as Julia suggests above. Let us know what you think.

And certainly, it’s worth acknowledging that Elijah is one of an army of Live users who, rather than complaining about its limitations, decided to hack in what they wanted. For a great series on Dummy Clips, here’s the awesomely-powerful Bjorn Vayner:

Dummy Clips Revisited

CDM regular Kyle McDonald keeps cranking out wonderful projects. Following up on a tangible music sequencer powered by Skittles (taste the rainbow of fruity beats), and last week’s cheap-but-effective DIY 3D interface, he’s now put the popular DIY electronics platform Arduino to work as a lo-fi effect. He writes:

There have been a bunch of projects bent on getting audio out of the Arduino, using them as synths — even Lady Ada’s more recent Wave Shield (http://www.ladyada.net/make/waveshield/). A friend of mine was looking for a sample rate reducing/bit crushing pedal, and I thought "I could probably do that with an Arduino". It turns out the audio isn’t as terrible as you’d expect (except when you want it to sound terrible!) so I put together an instructable for anyone interested in making their own.

http://vimeo.com/1460684

http://www.instructables.com/id/Lo_fi_Arduino_Guitar_Pedal/

Kyle’s site, complete with lots of other projects

Great stuff! Of course, the advanctage of these lo-fi digital effects is just that – they’re cheap digital effects to achieve. But this makes me wonder, will anyone be able to hack these effects for some twists of their own?