It’s simply stunning some of the terrific instrument and effect plug-ins available that are now free and open source – yes, free as in freedom, not just freeware. I had commented in the past something along the lines of, “boy, wouldn’t it be great if this now meant, say, a Linux port?” and then went on the business of my daily life, which tends not to include re-compiling plug-ins. But now, the folks of JUCETICE have been busy doing just that, serving up delicious instrument and effect goodness, running native on Linux.

Translation: fire up that netbook and make some music.

Following up on our tutorial on Ardour and netbook-optimized music competition with Renoise and Indamixx, here’s what you need to get rolling.

With Linux growing in popularity on netbooks – and an option like the pre-configured Indamixx solution saving you the work of optimizing and configuring it – it’s suddenly no longer a stretch to imagine yourself a Linux music user. Of course, what you don’t want is to wind up without the arsenal of plug-ins to which we’ve all become accustomed. There are various ways of hosting Windows VSTs under Linux as though they were native plug-ins; check out dssi-vst (which also enables 32-bit VSTs from Windows under 64-bit Linux hosts), in conjunction with WINE. That should probably be the subject of a separate tutorial. (Ardour 3 also promises Windows VST support.)

But here, let’s have a look at native Linux plug-ins. JUCETICE has some beautiful creations of their own – an elegant, 32-voice polyphonic drum synthesizer and a TB-303 clone – plus some familiar favorites ported from Windows, like the ingenious DiscoDSP sampler created by the late, great Arguru.

Here, we’ll use the native Linux version of a commercial host, energyXT. energyXT is proprietary, but it costs just EUR59, has a free demo to check out before you purchase, and – if you do like it – is really different than any of its competitors.

Patrick Shirkey of 64studio, the music-centric Linux distro, walks us through the steps necessary to get the JUCETICE plug-ins going under energyXT on Linux – all native, no WINE or Windows anywhere.

I’ll be doing this myself on my Indamixx test unit, and will let you know how that goes.

Developer note: yes, you should definitely check out the JUCE framework, which makes developing cross-platform C++ easy, efficient, and modern, and is free for open-source projects.

Patrick explains:

1. Download the jucetice linuxvst plugin : http://www.anticore.org/jucetice/?page_id=7

2. Make a folder called “plugins” in the home directory

3. Save or move the plugins to that folder and extract the plugins.

4. Open energyXT and add the “plugins” folder to the “Plugins” folder list. Choose File > Setup:

Select the “Browser” tab and set it to the “Plugins” section.

Now select the “plugins” folder and add it to the list of known folders.

[Here’s what it looks like in the path structure.]

5. To add the plugin to a project double click on the “Plugins” section on the left panel of the main window to show all the plugins and right click on the plugin you want to use. Click “Add as Send” from the popup menu.

6. Finally, open the “Window” menu and choose the plugin from the list to display the user interface and adjust the settings.

Ed.: Definitely let us know if this is helpful to you; we’ll have some more comprehensive, big-picture tutorials on this stuff soon – but in the meantime, I’m definitely checking out these instruments!

Renoise has already earned a passionate following among lovers of trackers. The once-forgotten alternative to conventional sequencers, these music editors were beloved for their quick workflow and vertical, atomic approach to assembling beats and patterns. But Renoise is increasingly poised to appeal to other kinds of music makers, too, not just tracker purists.

2.1 you can sum up pretty easily: now you can integrate Renoise with other stuff easily. There’s ReWire support (appropriately enough for a tool beginning with “Re” in the title). And if you’re on Linux, you can pipe control and audio through the ultra-elegant, ultra-powerful JACK. (If you’re not on Linux, you may have just gotten a good reason to give it a try.)

http://www.renoise.com/

This is on top of a rapidly-growing set of features like multi-core balancing, automatic delay compensation, audio recording (cough, Reason), and MIDI inputs and outputs. In other words, this is a tracker you can use without giving up modern luxuries. Maybe it’s like the difference between having a tent in gorgeous mountainous wilderness, and having a mansion with a hot tub and a T1 Internet line.

ReWire is the headline, but some of the live performance tools may make an even bigger difference. Live control tools and live pattern sequencing could make Renoise a lot more useful in performance, even without just ReWiring into Live and recording clips. The pattern triggering looks especially nice, because it brings a feature Game Boy trackers have often used live. (Add JACK on Linux, and you could add your own custom instruments.)

And, oh yeah, the whole program runs on every OS, has an incredibly responsive and involved community that impacts the direction of the tool, and is distributed on a shareware model rather than with painful copy protection.

Full disclosure: I’m slightly biased by enjoying a couple of beers with Renoise’s Dac, and by the fact that I think this looks completely delicious.

Here’s the full changelog.

Full ReWire Slave & Master support (on Windows & OSX)

ReWire allows you to connect and synchronize multiple software applications, so that you can run them side by side while passing Audio/MIDI information between them.

For example, you could connect Renoise to Logic, program your drums in Renoise, while arranging the bulk of your song in Logic. Or you could connect both Reason and Ableton Live to Renoise, arrange your track in Renoise, control Reason’s built-in synthesizers, and play around with loops in Live. All it takes is some ReWire enabled software and you are good to go.

ReWire has two modes, both of which are fully supported by Renoise: *ReWire Master* (ReWire Mixer) and *ReWire Slave* (ReWire Synth)

Jack Transport Support (Linux only)

Similar to ReWire, Renoise now supports the Jack transport protocol. Jack transport allows Linux users to start, stop and reposition multiple audio programs, all connected/running through Jack. 

New Pattern Sequencer Features:

Decoupled Sequencer Playback Now Possible: This new feature allows the user to detach the current playback position from the edit position. This lets you edit a pattern while other patterns are playing.

Live Pattern Triggering:

Patterns can now be "scheduled" for playback via a new column in the Pattern Sequencer. Without stopping playback you can now trigger new sequences in the song "in real time". 

New meta devices (Modulation / Automation Device fun)

• Hydra Device: Automate/change/broadcast multiple FX parameters with a single parameter. Think of this as a magic slider, which connects itself to up to 9 other parameters – allowing you to change multiple settings with just one slider or automation.
• Keytracking Device: Modulates parameters depending on an instruments key (note) value. Like what the "*Velocity Device" does with Velocities, the Keytracking device does with Keys/Notes.  
• MIDI Control Device: This device replaces the old "MIDI-CC Device", finally offering Pitchbend, Channel Pressure, Program Change & regular controller (CC) in a single device.

I hope to check this out in June when I can sit down and get back to production.

Now that Macs run Intel processors, what was once unimaginable is suddenly possible. There’s certainly no shortage of plug-ins available on Mac OS, but users may still have Windows plug-ins they miss. Released as beta today from SM Pro Audio, VFX is an app that lets you host your PC plug-ins on your Mac:

VFX Mac Beta

The requirements are modest — a lowly Mac mini should work just fine, and you don’t even need 10.5. But some of the specifics get a little weird. You have to run VFX as its own host. And you actually can’t use Mac plug-ins on the VFX, which means there’s not much advantage here versus just running on a cheap PC. (Especially given that you can build a pretty decent PC for under $300 these days.) And there are various stability and reliability issues introduced, as well.

We saw the V-Machine from the same creator — a small hardware box running plug-ins on Linux — at the end of last year. But in this case, it appears you can may be able to the software minus the hardware, which would make sense. (Otherwise, the hardware becomes a rather large dongle.)
V-Machine: Dedicated Hardware for VSTs, for US$599?

Basically, what VFX is is a nicely-packaged rendition of a Windows host running inside the open source, multi-platform WINE translation layer. WINE is actually a ground-up “translation” of Win32 — it’s not emulation or a virtual machine; it actually runs Windows apps as if they were native. (Thank Microsoft for keeping its APIs relatively open, even if the OS itself is closed as Mac OS is.) The discussion of whether or not this could work has come up before, as recently in a thread on KVR. VFX is proof that it can work, and I could imagine it’s even good news for some people. You can read the manual addendum at the link above and decide if it’s for you.

Here’s the irony: Mac users arguably don’t have it as good as even Linux users, let alone people just running Windows (and, one might add, on cheaper PCs).

On Linux, there’s the superb dssi-vst, which also uses WINE but allows you to run 32-bit Windows plug-ins inside the host of your choice. Add the fact that Linux can take advantage of extreme low-latency performance using a low-latency kernel, a handful of rock-solid open-source audio drivers, and sophisticated inter-application routing of MIDI, audio, and sync that isn’t even possible on the Mac, and you have a pretty potent combination. See also solutions like the Muse Receptor, whose users use it as a hardware solution to run primarily Windows-native plug-ins. (Major advantage of the Receptor: it eschews a GUI, which is the major source of compatibility and stability problems.)

dssi-vst isn’t perfect, either: sync doesn’t work (oops), for one. And in all of these solutions, you can run into issues with copy protection schemes. (If you want to use the plug-ins legally and they use software authorization, it’s usually not such a big deal — though you do have to burn through one authorization.)

Bad as this may sound, I have to admit, when I have run some of these solutions, I’ve been really impressed. Kore and Reaktor, for instance, both run beautifully inside Linux. If you didn’t see the standard title bar, you’d think you were on XP — except that, under the right setup, you can sometimes get better performance. Plus, if you’re running the host under WINE, the sync problem is erased.

Bottom line? Native always wins. But there are nonetheless interesting times ahead. I’d love to get more compatibility reports, which is more than I could take on alone. If you’re interested in contributing on Linux or Mac, I’d be glad to hear it. And if, on the other hand, you’re perfectly happy on Windows running natively, more power to you. (There’s certainly nothing wrong with the easiest solution to this problem.)

Disclaimer: I still need to try out VFX, and the compatibility picture in general is complex and technically involved – in other words, your mileage may vary. But then, part of why I write this site is to get corrected on stuff and learn, so please, those of you with some WINE experience, we’d love to hear from you!

Let’s start out with the easy part: energyXT is awesome. This wildly underrated host runs on Linux as well as Windows and Mac, has an elegant, simplified interface that hides some powerful sequencing and semi-modular features, and runs incredibly fast. Think ridiculously quick load times and working methods. I’m doing a lot more work in energyXT this year, so expect to hear about it.

The other nice news: energyXT will run from a USB key in its latest version. This isn’t just a dongle — it’s actually a way of moving from machine to machine more easily when you’re on the road. (It’ll still run without the USB key, too.)

I want to talk more about energyXT, but I did have to include the latest promotional video. In it, we learn that in Europe people work in beautiful, light-filled offices with clean desks. (I, uh… better actually clean my workspace this weekend.) And we don’t learn a whole heck of a lot about energyXT. But that’s okay – stay tuned here. I can even put on my best suit if you like, though I sadly don’t have a very cool accent. (I grew up as a kid listening to American public radio, so basically I sound like that.)

New in 2.5:

• Project templates, welcome screen
• New mixer view has collapsible EQ, effects sections, graphical EQ, “quick add” for inserts, sends
• Quick add in the sequencer for new tracks
• MP3 import + export via LAME
• Normalize, delete, trim, fade in/out, reverse audio processing
• Beatslice, autoslice audio (really? have to see how that works…), cross-fade 2 audio clips
• New preset browser for the synth/sampler
• Drum sampler gets new easy view with drumspads, full implementation of EQ, Insert and Send effects for individual drums
• New audio effects: bit crusher, multi-mode filter, compressor and high quality guitar amp

So, nothing earthshaking, but that’s the point. energyXT manages to add a lot of this functionality but actually cut straight to what you really need, and somehow the resulting tool doesn’t feel as heavyweight as some of its rivals.

We’ve obviously talked a lot about the forthcoming Ableton Live 8, and deservedly so. But the great thing about what’s available now is that you have some really strong tools for production, each of which has a unique approach to production. Instead of leapfrogging DAWs that duplicate the same functionality, these tools actually work in different ways. So expect to hear more about that through the course of this year.

http://www.energy-xt.com/

Addendum: Consider this a teaser. I wrote this on my way out the door this morning to go teach. We will talk more about the “why this is awesome” bits soon. And, you know, I’m glad people don’t love marketing videos, because then there’s a place for CDM.

Updated: Rewrite. We in fact had several users successfully upgrade from Live 6 to 7 overnight, for free. That seems to have been either some extremely particular circumstance or a server glitch. (Pointing to the latter, Ableton took their shop down for maintenance Friday afternoon Berlin time.)

I could try to explain what different upgrades cost and how much it costs to buy them when, but frankly a) I don’t understand and b) this goes well beyond the realm of “things interesting enough for me to spend time on.” Suffice to say, Ableton has some rather complex pricing in play based on whether you’re an academic customer, whether you upgraded from a hardware bundle (like Live Lite), what older version you had, whether you buy Live 7 now or whether you just bought it, whether you’re buying a full version or an upgrade, whether you have Live or Live Suite, whether the upgrade is discounted versus the previous upgrade price or free and for 7 or 8 or maybe 8 is free or maybe 8 is cheaper and 7 is cheaper but you still need to buy 7 … plus whether you’re buying a boxed copy or download…

I assume this is the work of accountants or something. I can’t personally see how having pricing this complex is a good thing, but it’s Ableton’s business, of course, and I’m not an accountant.

One important thing I can tell you is that owning Max or Live won’t get you Max for Live free.

But let’s talk about the version of Live that’s actually shipping.

Back to seven…

Yep, you read that right, Live seven. Some time in the second quarter, Live 8 will be upon us, but in the meantime, Live 7 offers stability and goodness like the delicious Drum Rack and slice to Drum Rack features. And this means you’ve got a bit more time to learn what you missed in 7 before you dive into 8. (On that note, be sure to pick up our exclusive CDM slicing pack, which requires 7, and read up in the CDM winter guide how to take advantage of what I think was 7’s best feature.)

In the world of music technology news, of course, everyone upgrades every fifteen minutes to the shiny, new version of … everything. In the real world, that’s rare. Our friend Dave Dri offers some thoughts:

News of Live 8 has bounced around the internet, emails, IM’s and our group of friends, producers and collaborators. Only recently were we discussing desire for groove templates and the ability to group faders. Despite being an Ableton user from version 3, and exclusively as primary DAW from version 4, i had held off of upgrading to Live 7 for some time. Yes, I have been humbly ignoring things like native multiband compression and Drum Racks due to the realties of working with a number of other artists across a number of platforms and bits of computing hardware. My own live act had a pair of Asus M6R’s which ran noticeably slower under Live 7, so we deemed it financially responsible to wait until our originally planned upgrade of the hardware before we switched to 7 full time. In recent time we have all done just that, taking a razor to our setups and cramming as many gigabizzles and megaboots into our gear. Having meant to purchase the Live 7 upgrades before i went on an overseas trip last year, and ultimately forgetting it in the rush of preparation, one can easily imagine my surprise when scouting for the Live 8 upgrade costs and seeing the Live 7 upgrade offered for free. I can’t think of too many large scale software companies offering free upgrades to old users even as a means to massage them towards an impending product launch. Certainly it doesn’t seem likely that Sony or Adobe would take this path too often, yet Ableton continue working with their customers, rather than against. So now as i finally implement all those Live 7 features that some of my colleagues have enjoyed for quite some time, i drool towards 8 and, maybe, get some new music finished.

Getting music finished sounds great. And on that note, I’m off to spend the rest of the day in Live 7 myself.

Update: Ableton’s word

Via the just-released Ableton newsletter, here’s the “Can’t wait for 8” promotion:

http://www.ableton.com/nl199-cantwaitfor8

Live 7 upgrades are discounted, and the awesome Operator and Drum Machines get thrown in free. Oddly, though, you have to pay again to upgrade to Live 8 – not sure what the thinking is there – but at a discounted US$59-99.

If you buy the suite now, the Live 8 Suite upgrade is actually free when it comes out – and the suite is US$150 off its previous price.

Educational products are disqualified, as are older full versions.

This is all quite complex … if we get anything clearer, I’ll let you know.

Proof we weren’t making this up

Someone did send us screenshots. If it happens again, let us know. Try kneeling and praying to the Ableton gods? Meditating on the number 7? (Hope the server glitch … returns?)

If you could have an ideal drum machine and sample-slicing workstation, taking the physical control of hardware but the flexibility of software, what would it look like? We talk a lot about hardware control of software, but hardware usually comes second – software gets designed first, and then either you have to figure out how to map hardware to it, or someone else comes along and designs gear. That means there’s usually a disconnect in the design and workflow of the two, and most of the time, you have to reach for the mouse to make up the difference.

Maschine (pronounced as the German, mah-SCHEE-neh) was developed at Native Instruments with the goal to design the hardware and software simultaneously, not separately. That’s not an easy goal, and I don’t expect Maschine to be perfect or please everyone. But I got to visit the prototype at NI while I was in Berlin in October and see it in action, and I can say at the very least, the folks who created feel the way many of us do – they love software, they love hardware drum machines like the Elektron, and this is an attempt to be a real hybrid.

So, while contrary to rumors, NI does not have a box that does any audio generation in the hardware, this is a real attempt to fuse the controller and software in terms of design and workflow. The idea is to use the screen for visual feedback (you do have this big, pretty monitor on your desk or notebook), but to be able to work without a mouse.

Maschine can also work as a plug-in as well as a standalone app, depending on how you like to work (or how you want to play live). That means if you’re already in love with something like Ableton Live, you ought to theoretically be able to put the two together. Unfortunately, you can’t yet use it as a sequencer to drive other software, which would be an ideal next step; sequencing is as big a part of what Maschine does as sampling and sample manipulation. (No official statement on MIDI output has been made yet.)

Maschine’s hardware also works as a controller. So, for those keeping score, you could put Maschine next to the just-announced Akai APC40 and use them both to control Live – or Maschine could compete with the APC for your Live-controlling dollar – even before you touch the Maschine drum machine software.

Here’s NI’s intro video, which gives you a sense of how this stuff ties together (and we are officially the first to post it).

We’ll naturally be looking more closely at Maschine soon (I’m going to buy a new espresso maker and not sleep for the next few months). Here’s a quick overview:

• 16 pressure-sensitive pads, which light up for visual feedback
• Step sequencing
• Polyphonic recording (so it is a real sequencer, too)
• All software features are available quickly “on the surface,” so not only do you not need the mouse, but unlike a lot of hardware and even controllers, you don’t have a bunch of submenus and buttons to press to do stuff. That includes tasks like automation editing and even sound editing
• Automatic sample mapping, beat slicing, note repeat
• Real-time audio recording and resampling – so you can not only record, but resample what you’re working on, MPC style
• Effects sends “from conventional to experimental” (basically, you can enjoy the kind of sound mangling goodness we’ve had on Kore and Reaktor lately)
• Kore-style sound browsing, with a multi-gig library to get you started

Availability: April 1

Pricing: US$669 list (EUR 599)

The hardware has a top-notch feel and metal casing; at least from what I could judge from the prototype, this should look and feel absolutely fantastic. My only real disappointment was that there’s no synth engine, but that’s just because I love drum synths. Then again, I love the simplicity of Maschine, so perhaps the best fix would be to add the ability to either host plug-ins, as Kore does, or to provide MIDI output capability to other software, so that you could drive synths and other creations. (Heck, you could even sequence visuals in that case.)

What’s unique to me about Maschine is that it isn’t simply an emulation of an MPC; it still takes a software approach to sequencing, it still supports plug-ins and the things you like about software, and it still has NI-style effects. By virtue of being software, in fact, you can really change how you use it relative to hardware. You can drop it in Live or even in a tracker like Renoise. You can use it not as a drum machine but a pattern-based effects unit and insert it after your voice or an instrument. Then you can switch to a VJ set, ignore the Maschine software, and use it as an intelligent plug-in for running live visuals for your friend’s band. None of this is nearly as practical with a conventional hardware drum machine – and this is a whole lot cheaper.

Also, unlike some attempts to unify hardware and software in the past, the visual relationship isn’t slavish. You see something that looks like it makes sense on a screen when you’re editing; it looks like software, but you can easily control it with hardware and not the mouse. (Nothing against the mouse – it’s fantastic for many jobs; sample slicing and music editing just happens not to be one of them.) When you’re ready to perform, the displays on the device mean you don’t have to look at the screen at all.

It’s also worth noting that this is very different from today’s Akai APC announcement. The Akai is clearly better suited to mixing and clip triggering, but the Maschine has velocity-sensitive pads the Akai lacks, and is better suited to hardware control of beat slicing and editing operations. (That said, someone may decide to use Max for Live to turn Maschine into a hybrid machine that also controls and edits Live itself, so everything is suddenly wide open.) And the APC is all about a host (Live), whereas Maschine is all about adding a drum machine / workstation to a host (which could be Live, or Renoise, or Pro Tools, or something else altogether).

In fact, to me, the real competition is Ableton Live’s Drum Racks, groove extract, and slice to rack features. It’s mouse-based, but it also integrates with a host and can host plug-ins itself. I’m personally excited about using both, so it’ll be interested to see which I wind up preferring for which tasks. And you can meanwhile bend your brain around the idea of Maschine instances running inside Ableton Live Drum Racks and other odd combinations.

If there’s any criticism of Maschine, my guess it that it’s likely to be criticized for over-simplicity: as opposed to the first release of Kore, the approach here is really minimalism; NI did less in the hopes that you’d get more out of hardware integration, and the rest you can make up by working with your favorite existing tools and plug-ins. That’s not to say it’s dumbed-down, from what I can see, though I just have to use it.

Whether NI has nailed this one is another question, of course, and one I’ll want to test vigorously. But I love the idea. Mainly, I just want to get my hands on one so we can try this out. You’ll definitely want to stay tuned.

http://www.native-instruments.com/maschine.info

Corrections: In the first draft of this story, I suggested that Maschine could output MIDI to other software instruments or host plug-ins; at least as of version 1.0, the software can’t. You can use it as a controller, though, and output MIDI to other hardware (so you could sequence hardware synths or even other drum machines). The thing I’d like to see there is MIDI output to other software; we certainly have enough hosts (NI’s Kore being one of those hosts). I also overstated the connection to Kore (which is why I was confused about plug-ins). Like Kore, Maschine is integrated hardware and software, it shares the Kore browser, and it shares some of the other design features of the current generation of NI software. But Maschine is its own creature – and honestly, that’s a good thing. Stay tuned for more details.

Ableton’s site is now live with all the Live 8 information. But let’s cut straight to which bits are likely to be really significant in the new version of Live (aside from the new Akai controller and Max for Live support coming later this year, of course).

In no particular order, here are my top 8 new features:

1. Extract grooves: Take an audio or MIDI source. Extract a groove. Build a groove library, then apply it to anything you want, in real-time. Yeah, you can pretty much stop reading here. There’s also a built-in library of groove patterns for people who can’t figure out how to make their own. (Count on extensive third-party support here, too.)

2. Real-time, non-destructive, groove-ready quantize: This was a huge deficiency of Live since the beginning. Now it’s not.

3. A new Warp Drive: Finally, you can drag warp markers directly (far more intuitive), and slice by transient analysis, too. You’ll also find new warp modes (Enhanced Beats, Complex) for better-quality warping, meaning fewer trips to (ahem) other tools.

4. Looper: A lot of you have been waiting for this. There’s finally a tool that lets you record a loop, then set the tempo for your whole project based on the length based on that loop. The Looper has other nifty features, too, like drag-and-drop support, multiple Looper sync (like having various loop pedals going at once), overdubs, and remote operation with a footswitch.

5. Vocoder: With an adjustable number of bands, formant controls, and easy audio assignments, no less. What makes this even sweeter is, of course, the fact that Ableton’s co-founder told you you didn’t need one, got caught on tape, and got his own dance remix. I think it’ll really shine for synth and percussion timbres, and sound design has always been an attraction of the Live world.

6. More effects – included without buying the Suite: Not only do you get the Vocoder in Live, but a new Overdrive, brick-wall Limiter (which, admittedly, can be good for live performance), and a Frequency Shifter. The sleeper hit, though, may be Multiband Effects.

7. Real-time Arrangement Crossfades – and it looks like, finally, this same feature means you get real curves. If this supports the crossfade curves of Live’s Session View crossfades, it means you get nice curves without needing fancy curve editing tools – a very good thing.

8. Use Plug-ins Beyond the 128 Parameter Limit: Frequent plug-in users ran into big control and automation problems when they found Live choked on plug-ins with too many parameters. You still can’t access every parameter beyond a certain point, but you can choose whichever parameters you need, which is just as good if not better.

And there’s more. You can scrub and view waveforms from the Browser, which makes previewing them – well, actually practical. There’s a zoom option, though I’ll have to try it in practice to see if it’s really practical to glance at the screen from across the room (and I hope it’s possible to hide more stuff to make this work). You can group tracks, do step recording, use an insert marker, and select multiple parameters at once across different tracks. All those little things make a big difference, I know.

There’s also a “Share Live Set” feature that lets you collaborate on the Web with permission features, collaboration management tools, and “no issues with external plug-ins and instruments” (so presumably it incorporates some freezing where needed). More on this as we find out … more about it.

New in the Suite

• The library has been reorganized. The library is easier to navigate, includes new sounds, and new tools. This almost deserves its own story – the sound library in the Suite was, to me, one of the weakest points in Live in terms of consistency, and it looks like Ableton is working really hard to make it quite the opposite. There’s also a Latin Percussion module.
• There’s a new Collision instrument for physically-modeled percussion sounds. This is another creation of the good folks at AAS. I love Electric and Strike – they’re idiosyncratic, but can sound really organic, and their unpredictable nature makes them even more fun for sound designers. Expect some unusual-sounding drum tracks.
• Operator has new filters, waveforms, modulation. All the things you wanted in Operator, you now get. You can draw waveforms directly for additive-style synthesis, which previously required a separate tool. You get modulation options for LFO and pitch envelope (something I asked for when I first reviewed it.) And you get the adjustable slopes for envelopes that Sampler has.

Also important: the price is lower. Live starts at US$449; the whole suite is now US$699. That helps make Live more competitive with stuff like Apple Logic Studio, which overshadowed the announcement of Suite by bundling everything at a relatively low price.

So, when do you get your hands on this? If you buy Live now, you’ll get a free upgrade – so that tells you something. Ableton promises second quarter, with a beta coming soon. (We’ll have it.)

Check out the videos and full feature descriptions at ableton.com.

Bonus! Today’s contradictory statement of the day: “Randomize audio and MIDI timing for a more human feel.” Okay, that’s not actually true since (for the most part) humans aren’t mathematically random (or at least not humans you’d want to play music with), but a little randomization is nice to have nonetheless.

Ever feel music creation apps are too similar? Imagine an alternative universe in which music making software evolved along different lines. In this universe, the “tracker” isn’t some arcane novelty, but the detailed, bottom-up music editing approach that becomes the basis of music construction tools for any genre. Now imagine a breakthrough software release in that alternate universe.

Maybe it’s the Large Hadron Collider, but the release of Renoise 2 means that this is actually our universe: we have a cheap, community driven, unique app that runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And it’s getting a big update Thursday – almost in time for my birthday (Tuesday).

If you have no idea what I’m talking about, you picked the right moment to tune in. Renoise always had potential as a unique tool for music making, and with the shipment of Renoise 2, some very key pieces are falling into place. I’ve just gotten an exclusive look at what’s coming in the final release. Dac Chartrand has shared some details that weren’t previously public.

You heard it here first:

• Renoise 2.0 FINAL launches January 15, 2009, “8 years in the making, 4 months of beta testing.”
• Launch details on January 15 will be at http://www.renoise.com/launch/
• It’ll work with netbooks. Dac tells us: “Renoise can now be resized to fit on small Netbook screens. Here’s an interesting thread where a user reviews Renoise on his new MSI Wind U100:” http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=19175"
• Additional tweaks and bug fixes made it in, including Universal Audio UAD2 DSP support and latency compensation.
• Renoise 2 will support fraction BPMs, like 127.56.
• It’ll have new demo songs. “Two of the songs were selected from submissions by the Renoise community in a competition called "Beta Battle, Round 1 & Round 2". The developers chose their favorites and have included them in the final release of Renoise 2.0. More info here:” http://www.renoise.com/indepth/category/competitions/
• New native DSP effects: RingMod, Scream Filter

Read on for more details, plus tips on making this work with the tools you already use…

Renoise 2.0 New Features

Here’s the rest of what’s new in Renoise:

• Automatic plug-in delay compensation for everything – effects and instruments
• Latency compensation and fixing when recording
• Improved audio performance, lower-latencies on multiple CPUs on Mac and Linux
• Channel and polyphonic aftertouch
• Note quantize options, real-time quantize on record, nudge, and keyboard shortcuts

Plug-in improvements, including one big one:

• Mac AU support, removing the big obstacle for Mac users
• Multi-output VSTi/AU (that’s good news for Kore users, among others)
• Send notes to VST/AU effects (instead of just instruments
• Plug-in management improvements, including info, custom sorts, sort by manufacturer, hide, move, rename (and that was listed under “minor features”)

A lot of the best features are related to timing improvements. You will need to update old songs, but for new songs, there’s a lot of power. And this really gets into the significance of Renoise as a tracker, something I hope we’ll cover this year:

• Custom track delays for audio and MIDI to offset an entire track
• You can now set time via “Lines Per Beat” – how many lines in the pattern make up a musical beat. (That’ll make sense to tracker users and not to anyone else, but until we whip up a demo, just trust me that that’s a good thing.)
• There’s a delay column for fine-tuning specific grooves at up to 4096 parts per quarter (PPQ).
• You can set pitch and volume glides, independent of the “tick” of the sampler.
• In the future, Renoise will support “zoomable patterns,” piano roll for those who want it, greater timing accuracy, and other new improvements.

There are also tons of other improvements, performance tweaks, shortcuts, and other little features:

New in 2.0: Complete Feature List

Integration and Tips

Of course, the hype that usually accompanies software launches at NAMM and elsewhere usually has to do with convincing you the tool is the One True Tool you need, replacing everything else. That’s nonsense, of course. Just as in the pre-computer days, what made a studio productive was the right combination of gear and easy ways of connecting it, software lovers find combining software to be what makes them happiest and most expressive.

Dac passed along a few ideas for integrating Renoise. These immediately make me think of other possibilities, but here are a few gems to get you started:

Guide To Connecting Reason To Renoise: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=15683

A workaround for sending SYSEX to your synth: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=11777

GarageBand in conjunction with Renoise: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=12590

Convert Renoise files to MIDI files using PHP: http://xrns-php.sourceforge.net/xrns2midi.html

How to use Windows VST on Linux: http://www.renoise.com/board/index.php?showtopic=15347

If you can’t wait until next week, there’s a release candidate available for download in demo mode right now:

See also:

Renoise + FM8 Drum Kit, Free Download: FM Meets Tracker [our own kore.noisepages.com]

Renoise 2.0 Public Beta Amps Up Popular Tracker for Windows, Mac, Linux

Wallace clued us in back in summer 207 that this would be big

And for pure, absurd fun:

Renoise Tracker Made Into Animation

Sequencing – the collection of techniques that actually assemble events in our music – seems to get far less attention than it deserves. After all, there are fairly accepted ways of synthesizing sound, but as many ways of thinking about musical events as there are ways of thinking about composition. Among the big DAWs, you’ll often see pitches to upgrade based on new effects plug-ins or magical audio-processing abilities, but rarely MIDI sequencing improvements. (When there are, of course, I applaud.)

That makes this week’s pre-Christmas announcement of Numerology 2.0 all that more special. Numerology is a modular sequencer and that alone. It brings some of the modular capabilities usually found in synths to sequencing, with component sequencers and modulation for manipulating sequence evens the way you’d usually transform sound signal.

The upshot of all of this: you can play with musical patterns with the freedom usually reserved for synths. Features:

• Sequencing modules, including MonoNote (monophonic sequencer), polyphonic PolyNote (duh) and MatrixSeq, eight-track DrumSeq
• Component sequencers for modular-style sequencing, plus LFOs, envelopes, CV mixers, MIDI generators, MIDI processors
• Stacks: virtual equipment racks for easier composing / performance, and an integrated audio mixer
• Add software plug-ins (AU) or route to external hardware gear (yep, the computer is still awesome when it comes to sequencing outboard synths, even in 2008/9!)
• New, simple sound-generating modules for easy integration with the environment, including synthesis, polyphonic AudioSample and eight-part DrumKit
• MIDI remote control of parameters, plus custom CV, audio, and MIDI routing
• Timeline playlist arrangement
• Sync via MIDI clock, MTC, or ReWire
• Mac-only, 10.4.11 and later; US$99 until 1/4/09 (then $119)

System requirements are pretty tame (this is a sequencer, after all), so this could be a great application for an older Mac, provided it has a 1GHz or greater CPU. (PowerPCs included.)

How does it all work? Here are some videos to give you an idea. Hope to add this to my scary but delicious testing pile (New Years’ Resolution: more useful hands-on content).

A demo:

Getting started:

Any passionate Numerology users out there? We’d love to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the new version, and how do you use the tool in your music?

It’s a bit trippy as you make your way through the opening of this video, which features a spooky song and, awesomely, a hooded man who has replaced his face with a certain hit open source controller. (“Darling, wake up, you’re shouting the names of Max/MSP patches again in your sleep!” / “I was dreaming – and I saw that man again. The man with the Monome for a face! He said – he said there’s something I must do. Where’s my MacBook?”)

Ahem. Get past that bit, and your reward is some deliciously sharp Monome virtuosity from Primus Luta:

For the pilot episode of the PEMF (Personal Electro-Magnetic Field) Sessions I go to work on The Roots "Criminal" Remix called "Break the Law." It’s a more dub than step take on the song featuring a firsthand look at the process of creation using the Heads Instruments. Specifically looking at the nsMpLR, strgs and prcs.

It’s a remix here, but naturally you could apply this to any production technique. It’s amazing how freeing the simple process of mapping musical elements to a grid of buttons can be. That would tend to confirm my suspicion that, somewhere at its soul, the Monome is a HyperMPC – an MPC with a lot more buttons, extended by everything a computer can do.

Tool of choice in this case: the wildly underrated modular patching environment / music host, Plogue Bidule.

Good stuff. If this is just the pilot episode, I can’t wait to see what’s coming. (But does Primus Luta get off the island? And is he one of the final Cylons?)

Primus Luta’s site: http://avanturb.com/

Monome official site (yep, CDM aka me will be heading to welcome them to their new Catskills barn!)

Along similar lines, a New Yorker story this week looks at Monome user Flying Lotus, and “Steven Ellison’s atomization of hip-hop.” What better to work on your atomization than the ultimate minimalist digital grid of pads? (Interestingly, he uses a lowly M-Audio Trigger Finger alongside for more conventional pads. Saying this “brings back the physical gesture of the drum” seems a stretch. I’d say it brings back the physical gesture of the Poke, recalling a time when primitive Man sat around poking his significant other – ah, yes, in fact, that’s a tradition I generally keep alive.)

Previous Monoming on CDM