Some readers on this site — wisely, perhaps — cautioned last year against doing a second "Create Digital …" site for interactive visuals, live visuals, and VJing. But to us, the connection between musical performance and technology and visual performance and technology is really essential. I’m pleased to announce that now, following a two-week sojourn on the Australian content, we’re finally kicking createdigitalmotion.com into high gear and lining up what we want the mature site to be. If you haven’t been reading lately, here’s a bit of what you’ve missed:

• Video scratching with Serato: At long last, one of the leaders in digital control vinyl has added video scratching as well as audio via a new plug-in called VIDEO-SL, now in beta; we’re planning our own test but already have one hands-on.
• We’ve got a big list of video and visual goodies we like. Is it a practical holiday shopping guide? Erm … bits of it are. It’s all drool-worthy, at least. And you’ll really want vintage, gigantic planetarium projections. Lay out some cots, and play that four hour ambient electronic set you’ve been working up.
• Want to learn this stuff yourself? vade has some nice online workshops and tutorials for working with visuals in Pure Data (Pd) and Processing. Both also work well for music, so if you want to dabble in custom-programmed audiovisuals (I swear, anyone can do it with some dedication!) this could be a good place to start. We’ve also got tips for inexpensive high-speed photography and not one but two CDMo tutorials on the free Quartz Composer tool in OS X Tiger and Leopard. See Keith’s report on what’s new in the Leopard release of Quartz Composer, plus a beginner-friendly tutorial for driving 3D cubes with audio courtesy VJ Kung Fu’s momo the monster. The latter should be ideal for whipping up some quick sound-driven visuals for your band; you can even host those visuals in the live music host Rax. Incidentally, our CDMo New Years’ Resolution: make more work, post more tutorials.
• Open jamming for visualists: Just as with music, the best way to practice your chops and share your work is to get out of your bedroom/studio and out to an open jam. We’ve got a full report on the Perth, Australia Plug and Play, an ideal example of how such an event could work, as part of their Byte Me! Festival I attended earlier this month. See the video below, and watch for more video soon - Jaymis and I are editing hours of video footage now.

Plug N Play - ByteMe Festival - Perth from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

If you want to keep up-to-date on Create Digital Motion, you can add the feeds for the site:

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We’re also posting weekend inspiration each week, back next weekend post-holiday break.

From the whole CDM team, very happy holidays. (Yep, New Year’s Eve is among them — we’ll be cracking on 2007-in-review!)

As if we’re not normally fantasizing about strange gear, electronics, t-shirts, software, and general oddities throughout most of the year, now is a special time when our thoughts turn to even more intricate rationalizations for buying great stuff for ourselves and our loved ones. If you’re looking for a last-minute gift, or just waiting until after various holidays to expand your studio, here are a few ideas. They read not only as a gift guide, but as a "Really Wonderful Things We’re Into" guide. And naturally, we don’t believe in throwaway consumption — readers on this site still avidly use Commodore 64s, after all. We’ve asked our contributors to come up with stuff they’ll treasure forever. Here are their favorites

Mike Una

Michael Una is an informant and writer for CDM on bent circuits, sound art, and electronic goodness; check out his interview last week with Beatrix*Jar and the results of the Circuit Bending Challenge.

Hip fashion for music geeks:

Moogs Not Missiles T-shirt, $20 from Etsy.com (above)

Synthi Blue Green T-shirt, $21.99 from Gear Addict @ Cafe Press

Bootsy Collins T-Shirts, $20.99 from rocktshirtspunk.com

Fathers have played a big part in a lot of our lives — well, at the very least, they’re an irreplaceable 50% of the fact that you exist at all. My Dad inspired a love of music, letting me experience the musical power of a college basketball pep band (still the greatest orchestration ever), playing rock and roll riffs on a sax, helping support my often-irrational love of musical technological projects, and still voicing support for whatever crazy endeavor I’ve come up with most recently. He bought me my first computer, my first studio (hello, Casio!), and my first computer music studio (hello, Roland and Cakewalk!).

Finding a way to put this into musical form is not always easy. So what better way than a chorus of beeping, blipping, glitching 8-bit chiptune instruments, singing in sweet harmony. Yes, following up last month’s Mother’s Day edition, here’s an MP3 EP release for Dear Old Dad. (Dear Old Dad probably knows what “EP” stands for and where it came from, as opposed to us crazy kids today with our Zunes and our Last.fm groups.)

2A03 DAD EP [Free music downloads]

Send it to your father and let us know what he thinks. And if you’ve got some other music you’d like to dedicate to your Dad or Dads everywhere, say so in comments.

8-bit musicians appreciate their moms, too. (I hear nearly all of them have mothers. One or two were forged out of spare C64 parts, which is pretty cool, as well.) That’s M0M with a zero in it. (M0th3r’s D4y?)

A group of chiptune musicians decided they wanted to honor their mothers this holiday with a full, free album of chippy music. Included: Lawrence Power, nonfinite, Eightecs, Agenflit, Peter Swimm, captainmarmalade, Baron Knoxburry, dotdUmmy, and Otto tsr. (Hope I spelled those right.)

The track titles are excellent: “Mothership” … “Gird of Your Loins” … “Super Diaper Rash.”

If anyone plays this for their mother, let us know what she thinks! It’s free, so I suggest making a nice case for it yourself.

2A03 M0M EP

If you haven’t spent every last penny you own on the latest playourwiibox, your strength hasn’t been taken away from coma-inducing leftovers and you’re in the mood for some jaw-dropping music tech bargains, well just read on dear CDMers because we have the best sales to help you start your new year of music-making off right.

One last minute addition to CDM’s wildly unrealistic and holiday gift guide that’s late enough to qualify as the post-holiday guide (that’s its unofficial name):

Legendary Artist Peter Max Paints Baldwin Piano for Gibson Foundation

Granted, not a digital instrument, but I still love acoustic pianos. Add a Moog PianoBar or a full-featured MIDI retrofit, and this is basically my dream instrument (and I’ve always been partial to Baldwins). And Peter Max remains a terrific visual visionary.

You can help realize someone’s holiday wishes by giving to a charitable organization like the Gibson Foundation. They do some really good work, including helping musicians recover from Hurricane Katrina. What worthier cause than helping give music to the world?

Five days before Christmas? Yes, that’s when I usually begin my holiday shopping. This year’s music technology has brought plenty for us materialist musicians to adore. There are some great gifts to give the budding musicians in your life — or to buy for yourself if the various December holidays didn’t give you what you want. So, in that spirit, here are the favorite choices from the CDM staff.

Big winners on all our lists: delicious hardware from Moog, Nintendo, and Apple. (Boy, there’s a list of three beloved brands!)

Warning: This list of toys has not been tested on any realistic budget. Nor do we have any idea how to wrap most of this stuff. I sure hope Santa Claus is real.

MacSanta has been making the Mac blog rounds by offering 20% off Mac shareware gems for the holidays. Look closely, and you’ll see a number of nice Mac music tools:

Rogue Amoeba Audio Hijack Pro: At first, you might think this app is just for ripping radio streams. Think again: with powerful effects, routing, recording, and other utilities, it’s a must have addition to your Mac sound toolkit. I use it for recording Max/MSP patches.

Rogue Amoeba Fission: Got an audio clip? Just need to slice it up, add a cross-fade, and some meta-data? This is the tool for you, and it can even edit MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless files with no loss in quality — meaning it should help you not only manage your music library, but recordings of gigs and podcasts, too. More on Fission here on CDM soon.

Clarion Interval Training: Okay, I’m really glad I’m not teaching ear training this year. If you want to avoid having me as your ear training teacher (I’m tough), use this instead.

Minim: Here’s why these deals are great: I’d never seen Minim before. It looks like a fantastic way to organize lyrics, sheet music, and audio clips of your own music. I’ll be trying this one out and hope to report back soon.

Not on the MacSanta list, but also well worth considering: