From Berlin’s Melissa Taylor and Tailored Communication, for my money, just about the best publicist for electronic music out there, we get one epic playlist. If you’re lucky enough to get one holiday or another (Christmas? Boxing Day?) in the next few days, fire up this terrific playlist. You get a full range, from some favorites of mine in 2011 like best-of-toppers Sepalcure, Ghostly’s Mark E, mainstay Thomas Fehlmann, Four Tet, and many more.

It’s exceptional quality stuff, perfect to settle back and take your ears and musical mind on a much-needed vacation.

http://soundcloud.com/melissa/tailored-xmas-mega-mix-2011

Clocking in at one hour, forty five minutes, you can stream or download via SoundCloud. Just remember, as Melissa reminds us, “music is for life, not just for Christmas. Buy vinyl!”

(Or, uh, this being a site with ‘digital’ in its name, go lossless and make backups, too. Actually – do both.)

Tailored Xmas Mega-Mix 2011 by Melissa

1. Planetary Assault Systems – Movement 12 / Ostgut
2. Deadbeat – Fourth Quarter (Cala´s House) / BLKRTZ
3. Popol Vuh – Schnee (Flow edit) – Thomas Fehlmann Flow Mix / SPV
4. Jonsson / Alter – Acapellan / Kontra
5. Locussolus – Gunship / International Feel
6. Steffi – Yours feat. Virginia / Ostgut
7. SCB – Loss / Aus
8. Matilda – Protea / Exone
9. Mount Kimbie – Carbonated (Peter Van Hoesen Remix) / Hotflush
10. Lucy – Bein (James Ruskin Remix) / Stroboscopic Artefacts
11. Peverelist – Dance Til The Police Come / Hessle Audio
12. Drums Of Death – The Jerk / Civil Music
13. Mark E – Belvide Beat / Ghostly
14. Exercise One – Top Score (Stop Thinking!) / Cocoon
15. Boo Williams – Devil Music / Anotherday
16. VCMG – Spock (DVS1 Voyage Home Remix) / Mute
17. The Black Dog – Heavy Industry (Shifted Remix) / Dust Science
18. Four Tet – Locked / Text
19. Untold – Sweat / Hotflush
20. Sepalcure – Pencil Pimp /Hotflush
21. Roll The Dice – Cause And Effect / The Leaf Label

Tailored Xmas Mega-Mix 2011 – mixed by Exercise One

If you can find a spot in the rotation with your Mannheim Steamroller collection for something a bit different, CDM reader Leigh Walsh of Cork, Ireland sends in her work. She describes it as “punky gothy electronic … for Christmas,” with any proceeds benefiting Autism research. The single sounds crazy, but for me, things get good with the game world-like, shimmering “Secret Inside the Ice Level” and “Melody for the Sewn Princess” tracks.

I can find myself mentally wandering an 8-bit ice cave level right now…

Loving her work, hoping to here more, hoping not to get folks’ genders wrong next time… oops.

Heck, let’s take this playlist a little further out.

One darned trippy Christmas: HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF! By London-based artist Affie Yusuf, via SoundCloud:

HAPPY XMAS PEBBLES LAILA ROCKET YUSUF by AFFIE YUSUF

Thanks, Laila!

If that doesn’t cleanse your palette after hearing too many of the Christmas standards on repeat, I just can’t help you.

Now, go and use this to freak out your families and friends.

As Christmas revelers head out for last-minute shopping in the last surge of pre-holiday capitalism, they might catch over piped music the ouvre of one Mannheim Steamroller. For all the electronic artists we might imagine as representing the genre, this guy has sold one heck of a lot of Christmas records, in a strange brew of hyper-active electrified timbres and New Age. How many records? Well, enough that he is able to, from his Omaha home, raise wolves.

Not yet fully grown, they require a full-time trainer (they now respond to commands in German), walks up to three hours long, acres of space to roam and a professional meat grinder to create their diet of sushi-grade raw salmon and whole chickens ground up with their bones.

And thus begins the tale of how Mr. Steamroller – erm, Mr. Chip Davis, in fact – lives on the fortune of his musical output, one that might be described, fairly, as a bit eccentric. Hence, the Egyptian artefacts and replica sarcophagus, and crystal balls and cape (yes, he’s worn it while producing, at least on occasion), and apparently flown-in female companionship. Even the wolves get their own iPod speaker and framed pork chop artwork. (Come to think of it, actually, I could go for a picture of some pork in my living space, so maybe I’m not so unlike the wolves. I’m, meanwhile, learning to respond to words in German.)

A must-read article in The Wall Street Journal Real Estate section. (This will be the first and last time you ever hear me say that.)

A Wild Holiday Home: The eclectic Omaha property created by the founder of Christmas-music group Mannheim Steamroller

Eat your heart out, Skrillex. Here’s what a real crossover electronic artist looks like.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m suddenly craving salmon.

Have an uncommon yule with tools and music from the Commons.

That’s the pitch (so to speak) of the Ultimate Christmas Songbook, an iPad app built with 50 Christmas songs and a fully free and open source notation engine. Making use of public domain songs, the number of songs available continues to grow as the community contributes tunes. (Those contributors got the app for free.)

As notation proliferates on tablets, the app also suggests that “commercial” doesn’t have to mean “closed.” The scores themselves are available in open, cross-platform formats (MIDI, MusicXML, MuseScore, and PDF). But by generating revenues, the app can support further development – something that’s often been missing in open source music software projects.

And if you’re looking for a way to help family and friends play music, and they have iPads, the score reading features are quite reasonable. You get lovely display of scores, audio playback, tempo change, transpose, and the all-important font resize with reflow so you don’t have to squint.

The app is on iOS now, but other platforms are planned; an Android version is already in testing. And we hear lots more is coming from MuseScore, too, hot on the heals of a release that earned half a million downloads:
A Christmas update from MuseScore

More resources:
Open source code for mscore at SourceForge
Contributed scores to download
Ultimate Christmas Songbook, US$1.99 at iTunes
http://musescore.com/, software and community, including the desktop software for Mac, Windows, and Linux

For reference, here’s a look at how the desktop software works:

It’s that time of the year, when the halls echo with the sound of … horrible electronic synthesized Christmas tunes, playing on endless loops from strings of lights and other cheap electronics!

But wait – what if you could take those sounds and embrace their low-fidelity, chippy sounds to more inventive musical purposes?

Turn to our friend AfroDJ, who has gradually built up several dozen Ableton Live racks. The latest samples Christmas tree lights for a festive, chiptastic holiday timbre.

I just put up my Christmas tree and put on some lights that play Christmas songs. The songs are comprised of very simple monophonic melodies, coming out of a tiny little speaker, but as soon as I heard it I was transported back to my youth sitting around the tree late at night. Naturally I had to sample it. So I put my AKG C3000 right up to the speaker and let it play. I selected four different notes to use in the instrument.

With reverb and the wave shaper inside Ableton’s sampler, those samples get a bit more creative. (If you don’t have a copy of Live, you can use the samples and add your own effects chain.)

The results are good fun, and could be just the thing for an improvised track while fiddling with your laptop, the warm glow of Egg Nog spreading through your fingers. Enjoy! (And if you make a track with this, do send it our way!)

Want more inspiration? AfroDJ is selling packs at 50% off through January 1. So take that holiday, and make some music.

Ableton Live Rack #39: Christmas Tree Synth

Yes, it’s that gift-y time of year again, which naturally means among lovers of music technology, thoughts turn to gear wishes and dreams of new hardware. We’ve asked in the past what readers want in their stockings and presents – and, just as interestingly, what they’d give to others. And you’ve come up with fascinating ideas.

This year, I’ll frame the question a bit differently: what, beyond the usual suspects, would you love to have? Books or music collections? Handmade or boutique items? Unique tools and toys that’d help you be creative? And what would you give to others – perhaps out of the gifts you’ve given yourself this year? (Music lessons, for instance?)

We’ll again pull together those ideas for next week. And we’re also looking through the best music of the year. Given the lavish presentation music itself often now has – far from disposable digital downloads, gorgeous vinyl records and limited-edition prints and books and design objects – I imagine those two questions might well merge.

Nor does this has to be raw consumerism: the best gifts, to me, can start a life-long love of music or be an object that embodies a connection to another person. If ever we, the music tech press, may just encourage endless throwaway purchases, I think it’s also our obligation as journalists to find the tools (free or pricey) that will make you musically productive and that you’ll value over a long time. (If you think that we lack that motivation, by the way, you’ve never been buried under a stack of review hardware. Ahem.)

But before I open my own mouth, I’d love to hear what you’re thinking – or what gap we might fill. Fire away.

And if this seems like “filler,” on the contrary, I know from past experience sometimes it’s what gets written in comments that I enjoy the most.

But whether you’re in the US or in one of the many other parts of the world where we count readers, let’s pause to consider what makes us thankful.

I’m immensely thankful to have the opportunity to make music. I find it’s always worth reminding myself of that, and reminding to fight for the time to do it, to keep myself sane. Highlights for me so far in 2011: playing a friend’s grand piano in Brooklyn on a wintry-feeling March day (the samples of which make up the performance Saturday), spending Hurricane Irene jamming on a Mono/Poly with King Britt and Rucyl Mills, firing up Pd and getting lost in granular samples on a gray day in Berlin, assembling a track in Reason or Ableton in a hotel room… these are the sort of moments where, all at once, you find under almost any circumstances you can reclaim your sense of center and happiness, and give everything else clarity.

I’m also, and I don’t get to say this enough, unbelievably thankful for the readers of this site and some of the print projects I do. As a professional writer, writing is not a claimed right, but a privilege granted at the pleasure of your readership. Then, on this site, I get the gift of being able to see the inventions and expressions of people around the world. And yes, even getting criticisms and hearing people argue with what I say is a terrific motivator, one I don’t take for granted, especially when print writing remains largely without feedback. For me as a musician, it’s come to be part of who I am – not only my personal output, but all this input, having the chance to write about what’s happening. It doesn’t conflict with being a musician; it’s an essential element of that process for me.

I’m so grateful, in fact, for these two things, that I feel I can always do more.

And more is coming. I’m thankful that after a lot of work behind the scenes, there are new possibilities that lie ahead to expand upon what CDM does. And yes, as some readers or residents of Berlin have worked out, I’ve personally for the last few weeks been in the capital of Germany and not the city of New York. You may also have met Marsha Vdovin, who came onboard earlier this year as Business Development Manager and who has already moved forward what CDM can do and how it can grow.

Also, as of this morning, delays suffered by our open source MeeBlip project are at last coming to a close, beginning with new shipments of the MeeBlip micro and all-new firmware for all models, available now on GitHub. (We’ll have a full update on the MeeBlip project next week, as everyone gets back from the holiday.)

Most importantly, I’m working now on plans to completely rebuild Create Digital Noise and give readers and like-minded artists the community they deserved, instead of the failed experiment we got. If you’re interested in being part of that conversation, get in touch; otherwise, more on that very soon.

But it’s those things for which I’m thankful that motivate all of this. And I’m thankful, as always, not so much for what lies in the past or somewhere off in the future, but what is halfway-done and in process, partway through the story, which is where I find the really good stuff lies. In that spirit, here’s a documentary that deals with the notion of delivering in beta, and getting things out the door – something that goes as much for music as it does for inventions, I think. (As it happens, director Gabriel Shalom and photo editor/titler Patrizia Kommerell are sitting next to me in a hotel lobby as I write this.)

What are you thankful for? Let us know – or have a look at ten music technologies I gave thanks for last year.

Instruments like the Theremin may be trying to shake off their association with fear, dread, and the unnatural. But the synthesizer has no such concern: after all, the Moog is pretty much a rock star, literally. So, for anyone fiddling around with the Animoog – hopefully including iPad owners who are newer to synthesis – you can now grab a bunch of presets to provide the perfect sonic accompaniment to this Halloween. The sounds are the work of synthesist/sound designers Drew Neumann and Kevin Lamb.

And as if the app, currently on sale for $.99, weren’t already a steal for people who already have the iPad, the presets are free. Just move quickly: the price jumps to US$29.99 on November 18.

An email registration is required.
Halloween Sound Set Download
Animoog product page

Of course, what would also be a lot of fun would be some sort of proximity sensor for your app, for use at a party… okay, we have a few hours left if anyone can wire up the Arduino hardware link on Android or the camera on the iPhone or the motion sensor or … something. Go!

Got other Halloweeny news for us? Let us know!

Installation instructions from Moog (by popular demand):

1. Download the Halloween Sound Set and un-zip the file.
2. Connect your iPad (with Animoog installed) to your computer.
3. Launch iTunes and select the iPad in the devices list.
4. Select the “Apps” tab for the iPad.
5. Scroll down to “Animoog File Sharing,” and click “Add.”
6. Select all the files in the Animoog Halloween folder you just un-zipped.
7. Launch Animoog and select “Import Presets” from the settings tab.

That also demonstrates how you could share other presets.

For a very different aesthetic take on the United States’ Independence Day celebrations, here’s electronic producer Steve Nalepa joining visualist superstar Johnny de Kam for a collaboration. I find it makes for some nice, chilled-out Monday, July 4 inspiration, wherever you are – no marching-band bombast required. Nalepa has been sharing his Ableton skills with the Dubspot school, online and off, and Johnny de Kam, if you don’t know his work, is one of the leading visualists on the planet, a skilled craftsman of motion and live visual performance, as well as a founder of visual software maker Vidvox.

See, what has America accomplished if not send a man to Jupiter and put human civilians on a permanent space station served by daily commercial Pan Am flights? Wait a second here…

For an alternate take, here’s a second video, also by Johnny for the same track — thanks, ChuckEye!

Now that I’ve opened that can of worms, by posting a 4th of July video — or, erm, box of firecrackers — it’s worth saying that symbolic holidays can be a time for reflection on how we relate to our civil societies.

For all the more troubled parts of America’s history, there are reasons to celebrate, too, as an international community of artists, the sequence of events that would eventually enshrine in US law protections for freedom of expression, religious practice, separation of church and state, and a free press – institutions that around the globe are closely interconnected with our freedom to create digital music and motion. (I can say that, doubly, too, because I’m not actually in America at the moment, and the US is cutting those patriotic fireworks shows to make a gesture toward budget cutting – take that to mean what you like.) But as I talk to artists from Moscow to Sao Paolo, I find common themes in fighting to build free communities of artmakers, that transcend history and borders. These may not involve fighting the British Army, to be sure, but there are legal and civil policy decisions, philosophical ideas, that are part of these historical events, too.

There, in case someone were to decide to go on a flame war about US holidays given the video’s theme, I’ve gotten my word in and can leave you to it. Now, I’m off to celebrate my Fourth of July with the awesome people of the Netherlands. (Neth-er-lands! Neth-er-lands!) And yes, to my home nation, I hope as always for a bright future.

Oh, and if you’re mostly celebrating the Nation of Ableton Live, here’s one of those Nalepa videos I mean… as a tasty, watermelon dessert on this post.

Desmond Dodecahedron has the craziest way of celebrating the season I’ve seen this year: just build a giant Christmas tree from LEGOs, then use visual programming environment Max/MSP and some custom electronics to trigger tunes. Desmond writes:

Once I discovered that the word “advent” was actually an abbreviation of “audio event” and the fact that we have had lots of snow in London – I decided to create this Christmas Carol note filtering tree. (in this case it is actually a midi event tree – but you get the general idea). Each pitch class of a Carol i.e. all the Ds or all the Fs are allocated to a Lego door. When the door is opened, a midi file is played and the notes are sent to a vst synth in a Max Patch. The doors have small magnets which trigger a reed switch. I built a couple of resistor ladder multiplexers so that I could use nine doors with just 3 analogue ins of a Make Controller. This device could be used as a sophisticated “Name that Tune” device – fun for all the family – if that’s what your family considers to be fun – unlike my own. Keep up the good work with CDM – and a festive maximum to all your readers – Des

So, spread the love to someone you know and care about who hasn’t heard of Max/MSP or physical computing – they won’t be hard to find. I’m sure some of them will find it fully fun and festive! (“Do they know Max/MSP at all?”)

Hmmm… I hear some faux Band Aid lyrics coming on.

It’s visual programming, there’s no need to be afraid
At holiday times, we banish light and we patch in the shade

And in our world of plenty, we can spread a smile of joy!
Throw your arms around the world; it’s geekster time

Geek the world
Let them know how to code and patch and program synths and
Geek the world

Sorry, I’m going to blame the decongestant I’m on; my family’s dog is looking at me funny so I’ll take that as a cue to stop.