It’s either the last chance to rush delivery on gifts, or the first chance to start thinking about picking up some music tech projects for yourself to keep up with musical New Years’ Resolutions. Either way, it’s time to give a shout out to some of the great gift guides that have been going up around the Interwebs.

And nicely enough, there’s a strong emphasis on cheap and DIY projects, meaning these can be ideal even in tough economic times.

SX-150 button mod from Collin Cunningham on Vimeo.

MAKE: Blog > Music Makers’s Gift Guide

Assembled by our friend (and Handmade Music regular) Collin Cunningham, these are the geekiest DIY treasures you can find. I got hands-on with a couple of these recently. The plastic Theremin kit is fun, although you won’t get fantastic results out of it. My favorites: the awesome SX-150 synth kit (above), previously seen only in Japan, and the Thingamakit (which also got mentioned in our holiday guide). They’re both affordable and make some lovely sounds the moment you start using them, with hacks possible later.

For fans of the Arduino electronics/microcontroller platform, see Collin’s separate guide.

The monome didn’t make the guide this year, though it topped our list, but given that you have to basically preorder the moment a run is announced, that’s not exactly a slight.

wire to the ear > Five inexpensive Chistmas gifts for musicians

This small but neat selection is just perfect, I think, from the Moog schematic on a t-shirt (above) to flash memory earrings to Live sound packs from Puremagnetik.

Digital LoFi > The 2nd Annual Digital LoFi Holiday Gift Guide for the Disenfranchised

Digital LoFi has some fantastic selections: buy one, get-one-free offerings from Soniccouture (makers of fantastic Kontakt scripts, by the way), a pay-what-you-will EQ, and wonderful donationware plug-ins. The site also calls out CDM’s own Winter Guide print-on-demand – thanks!

Pt. I
Pt. II
Pt. III
Pt. IV

Honorable mention: The wacky scientists in residence at New York’s Eyebeam research center have introduced Hack Me Elmo. (Thanks, Chris Hahn!) That’s right: it’s a blockbuster holiday toy from years past, hacked into something very odd. Check out our own Mike Una’s how-to on circuit bending if you want to transform a toy into something musical and wonderful, also in our Winter ‘08 guide.

And yes, the rest is here:

Having been published the old-fashioned way, I’m really interested to see what on-demand printing will make possible in publishing and content – and, particularly, what it will mean for Web entities like CDM. (We need a new term: Web Treeware?)

On-demand isn’t as fast as a retail outlet with a book in stock, but they’re getting faster. Lulu can turn around our new CDM Winter 2008 guide in time for Christmas Eve. If you order by tomorrow, you’ll get the book custom-printed, bound (in a lovely, publisher-style) “Perfect Binding”, and shipped by 12/24:

Order deadline: Saturday 12/13 (note: US East Coast time)

US: Choose US Postal Priority, FedEx Ground

Canada, Latin America, European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, rest of the world: Choose standard shipping

(faster shipping options are available, too)

Print Edition + Free PDF Download @ Lulu.com

And, of course, you get a DRM-free, Creative Commons-licensed PDF with your order, free. (For people charging for ebooks, I’m hoping Lulu adds the option to sell the bundle; CDM of course is giving away our PDF.)

This is just a first experiment for us, but I’m interested not only for CDM and Lulu but what this sort of thing means for content makers in general. (You’ll see a lot of self-published sheet music on Lulu, for instance.) It could make new things possible in publishing.

I’ve rush-ordered my print copy; I’ll take some photos when it gets here.

Also, we’ve just gotten a volunteer for a Spanish-language edition. (Imponente!)

Priority Mail Photo (CC) Harold Neal.

“What if, instead of targeting Web content to a single day, you turned it into an object that would last a season? What would you want to save and savor?”

That’s the question I ask at the beginning of the Create Digital Music Winter 08 guide. We’ve filled it with good stuff we love, plus good stuff we hear that you love (via our survey of hundreds of readers for the holiday guide). Via Creative Commons-licensed images, you’ve shared your world of music, and so we share the whole guide as fully free work (it’s got a CC Attribution / ShareAlike license).

Here’s some of what’s inside – we wanted stories that you’d want to live with the whole winter season:

• Circuit bending 101 with Michael Una
• Imagining synths: reflections on the design of electronic instruments with Dan McPharlin, creator of wonderful miniature synths handmade from cardboard
• Tutorial on slicing audio to MIDI in Ableton Live 7, with tips from Live guru Francis Preve plus a free accompanying CDM pack designed by Covert Operators at http://covops.org/cdm
• Holiday Guide, with your favorite gear and software of the year, listening and reading suggestions, and ideas on open hardware from monome creator Brian Crabtree
• Creative tips for surviving winter in Berlin, courtesy monolake (Robert Henke)
• Images from the CDM community and beyond

With the help of graphic editor Nathanael Jeanneret, the results are designed to be an object on paper or read on high-resolution displays. The PDF is available free, with an on-demand print version from Lulu available worldwide (US$19.99 before shipping). I just ordered my print copy rush, so I’ll let you know what it looks like as this is the first time we’ve tried this.

Print Edition + Free PDF Download @ Lulu.com

A big thanks to our sponsors for making this possible:

Ableton Live, our premiere sponsor; now with an unlimited 14-day trial

Audiofile Engineering, makers of Wave Editor for Mac

Highly Liquid DIY MIDI electronics maker

Covert Operators, creators of Live Packs and video tutorials for Ableton Live

I’m really eager to hear what you think.

I’m busy working on putting the finishing touches on the CDM Winter 08 publication. You’ll be able to get this as a readable e-publication online or even print-on-demand via lulu. What’s special to me about is is that it’s evolving into a different kind of entity. It’s a print layout, but it’s really an extension of the site — what some are calling “blog books.” We have an extraordinary amount coming from the community; it’s a sort of handbook that grows out of your knowledge, interests, and images. And, of course, it’ll be in turn Creative Commons-licensed.

Here’s a glimpse at some of what’s in it:

• Guides to some of your favorite tools, music, and reading
• Thoughts on openness and process from the co-creator of the monome
• Getting started with circuit bending
• A special free download for use with Ableton Live and other tools, plus tips on using it
• A how-to on surviving Berlin’s winters with music, from a special guest writer (to be revealed at launch)

It’s the first go at it, so I’m feeling out how to make it work, but I think you’ll like the results. Most of all, the results come in no small part from you.

Okay, enough. Now I’m back to finishing it. Stay tuned; launch is imminent.