Could a piece of software make you think differently about sound? Could it reflect ideas, the culture of listening?

The developers of the SUFI series of plug-ins seem to think so. In place of screencasts showing which knob to turn which way, they head with a video crew to Morocco. The “instruction” might be about the value of reflection or call to prayer, about living as much as how to use a tool. You can see the first two examples: a meditation on the idea of daily interruptions in the soundscape coming from God, and a collection of electronic drones set to a beautifully-shot backdrop. The interfaces are rendered in graphics and (for the vast majority of us) a foreign language, and instead of reverting to the conventions of plug-in design, they assimilate ideas from another culture about tonality and function.

The plug-ins will be released for Max for Live on the 8th of May, and VST plug-ins later on. (Some version of the Max for Live plug-ins are available now – links at bottom.) The collection includes:

• DEVOTION, lowering your volume five times a day at the time of call to prayer
• A drone machine (in the second video, sounding quite nice)
• Four soft synths tuned to Arabic maqam scales. (They describe these as “North African maqams,” but I believe the tuning should be consistent with the use of maqam elsewhere around the Mediterranean and Arabic world.
• One drum machine amidst the synths, Palmas, with a hand-clapping UI (see screenshot).

You have a week to practice learning to read neo-Tifinaght Amazigh script.

Updated: There are in fact no references in the videos here to Sufism, but the creators respond to questions about why they selected this name on their FAQ. As with the videos above, collaborations and friendship inspired their thinking. They write:

The title is an homage to several Moroccan Sufi musicians we’ve worked with over the years who influenced our thinking about musicianship & sound itself, as well as a way of foregrounding the complex but largely unremarked relationship between faith and technology. We’re fascinated with how software and digital environments encode cultural values and beliefs by conditioning choices and framing possibilities. For example, If Apple is a secular religion, selling contemporary magic, then should that change the way we feel about – and engage with – its operating system? The spirit of Sufi aphorisms, we hope, is manifest in these plug-ins. At a literal level, many of the roll-over infotexts come from Sufi verse.

Apart from being an interesting “cross-cultural” exercise, though, these plug-ins can serve as a reminder of two things. First, design choices are constrained only by your imagination. Aside from any perceived cultural values, you can really make software do, theoretically, anything – and make any sound. Convention can be a useful tool, but it can also become a prison. Second, the creators consider VST compatibility as a way to reach users in the Middle East and Africa. Whether this particular effort is successful or not, those are massive and growing audiences. (To anyone reading there, by the way, hello from way up at this end of the Northern Hemisphere!) Of course, these plug-ins will be just as foreign to nearly all of that audience as it is to, say, producers in Melbourne or London, but as we watch the videos from Morocco, it’s worth considering just how small our Internet-connected planet is – and how wonderfully-vast the spaces between us, and the possibility contained there, remains.

Software can serve for a medium for collaboration, as in this case, which ties together a variety of backgrounds from traditional producer to Amazigh musician. The Amazigh people, tying together modern Arabic culture and language with Phoenician roots (much like my own Lebanese ancestry), represent a rich practice of music. Just as the remote, historical world of J.S. Bach might direct a modern software plug-in, these can, too – and in living fashion.

The work is led by Jace Clayton (DJ Rupture), with programmer Bill Bowen, designer Rosten Woo, Amazigh musician Hassan Wargui , and videographers Maggie Schmitt and Juan Alcón Durán. The creators report that “a physical Sufi Plug Ins Forever Box is expected for late 2012, and Clayton is currently preparing an installation version of the Sufi Plug Ins.”

Mark your calendar for next Tuesday, or join the mailing list at the site. More information:

http://www.beyond-digital.org/sufiplugins/

Thanks, Jesse Engel!

As seen on maxforlive.com (thanks, David):

Devotion: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1140/devotion
Drone: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1139/drone
Palmas: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1138/palmas
Hijaz: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1137/hijaz
Bayati: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1136/bayati
Saba: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1134/saba
Khomasi: http://www.maxforlive.com/library/device/1133/khomasi

Imagine working with sound design by painting with spectra, then applying those spectra to instruments you can play in real-time, and you’ve got the basic notion of iZotope Iris. The dream of combining graphics tools, a la Photoshop, with sonic ones has been in the minds of creative computer users for some time. Iris is a major landmark, though: instead of just being an editing tool, it turns sonic selection into something you can use in a synth. It lets you do your creative sound editing, but then play those sounds live, transforming the technique into an instrument.

In fact, Iris looks like just what I dreamed of having back in the 90s when I first played with U&I Software’s graphic sound manipulation tool MetaSynth. (Developer Eric Wenger, alongside his former colleague Kai Krause, was an advocate of novel graphical interfaces in place of the run-of-the-mill, cut-and-paste UI. MetaSynth remains an amazing tool, and since Iris can import sounds, using the two together could be mind-blowing.) Since MetaSynth, we’ve seen other efforts, like selection tools in Adobe’s own Soundbooth. iZotope bested those efforts with the most powerful graphical editing tool I’ve seen yet, in their RX product. Now, at last, you can use those same tools to create new sounds, not just restore old ones, and then jam with the results.

Here’s what you get:

• Extra spectra from a graphical view of the sound, using familiar graphical selection tools (even a handy Magic Wand)
• Layer spectra together
• Play the sounds from a MIDI controller
• Use standard synth tools: tuning, amplitude envelope, LFO, modulation.
• Send effects: distortion (tube, clipping, scream, etc.), chorus, delay, reverb.
• Multimode filters.
• Import your own sounds, or use one from a 4 GB library of sounds – either as the basis of your own sound designs, or using an existing preset. (iZotope promises recordings of insects, animals, machines, vintage synthesizers, musical instruments and so on. Of course, nice as those are, some of the fun will be using this tool as an excuse to go out field recording.)
• Key mapping, so you can set up a performance multi with various presets – ideal for live performance and experimentation.

For more high-quality sound libraries with accompanying preset content that uses them, iZotope will sell you add-on libraries beyond the 4 GB already in the tool, entitled Glass and Wood, at US$49 and US$29, respectively. (I’ll let you figure out what sound content those cover.)

In fact, the only thing missing here, really, is the ability to manipulate the spectral stuff itself live. The selection is mainly still an editing process, but once you do have your spectra selected, everything else is playable in real-time.

Iris available now. It’ll eventually cost US$249, or $299 with the Glass and Wood libraries bundled, but for now, those are reduced to $149 and $199 until May 4.

This video provides the best explanation of how the interface works:

And here are some of the sounds you might make:

I’m excited to begin working with this one; it looks like something really unique, entirely distinct from the various work-alike instruments out there. You could almost make a whole album with this one tool … and a lot of (very enjoyable) time. More on working with Iris hands-on soon.

A demo is available – including ten days unlimited use, followed by a demo mode.

Iris runs standalone, or as a VST, AU (on Mac), or RTAS on Mac/Windows.

http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/iris/

Design, and investigation in general, thrive on a challenge. So Bastus Trump, working with none other than Monolake co-founder and Ableton imagineer Robert Henke, took on the call to make the blank glass of an iPad behave more as an instrument might. The results, filling that screen with overlapping circles, are impressive, exploiting continuous touch movements to make pitch gestures that are more difficult on a piano-style keyboard. But it’s even nicer to see digital fuse with analog and timbral transformation as the app, Orphion, meets the more traditional Moog Moogerfooger effects.

Bastus writes CDM:

[Orphion's] interface was developed especially for a touch screen and allows very expressive — and also virtuosic — playing. You can choose between different layouts of tonally-tuned pads, which sound differently depending on the finger position when played, and can be modulated by further movements. The sound and the means of interaction is a mixture of string and percussion instruments and reaches from soft to plucked to a hard slap.

The concept of the Orphion results from my master thesis at UdK Berlin supervised by Robert Henke (aka monolake). The topic was to develop an interface for multi-touch screens that allows a maximum of expression.

So, you can see a quick demo of how it’s played. But just how would this fit into your studio? For the answer to that question, we turn to our friend Chris Stack and his excellent Experimental Synth series.

In this episode:

Playing the Orphion iPad app through a Moog MF-102 Ring Modulator and MF-104Z Analog Delay. Moogerfooger parameters are controlled with the Moog Voyager Touch Surface CV outputs.

experimentalsynth.com

Thanks for the great work, Bastus. We’ll be watching.

iPad only; download the app or provide your own review on our exclusive Apps section:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/orphion

[Oh, yeah. About that. Announcement coming shortly. Consider yourself with the scoop by virtue of having read to the end of this article.]

For connecting music hardware from the 80s, 90s, 2000s, and today, you can’t beat MIDI and the standard MIDI connector (5-pin DIN). This week, both IK Multimedia and Line 6 announced adapters that support Core MIDI. Previously possible on iPad via the Camera Connection Kit, the new adapters support the 30-pin dock connector for the iPad (no additional adapter needed), iPhone, and iPod touch.

IK’s iRig MIDI has a number of features that set it apart from previously-available iOS adapters:

It’s got MIDI Thru. MIDI Thru means you can route MIDI into your iOS device, so an external keyboard can play an iPhone synth, for instance, and route that same signal “Thru” to another device – say, if you want to also record your playing, or layer another synth with the same notes an octave higher. (I can rant about the disappearance of Thru on other hardware some other time; it’s great to see it here.)

There’s a USB power port. This one’s huge, especially having tested Line6′s adapter. Normally, any hardware you plug into your iOS device takes over the jack you’d use for power – so you have to watch your battery life as you use it. By adding an additional USB jack for power, you can connect both MIDI and power – problem solved. That’s especially essential if you plan on using this a lot, or onstage.

A Gig of Sounds, to Go… IK Multimedia is also bundling a new SampleTank app for iOS so that anyone buying the adapter gets sounds straight out of the box. SampleTank has 1 GB of sounds (500 of them), 20 insert effects, and a master reverb-delay — yes, really on iOS, for free. (8 GB owners may not be thrilled about that, but those of you with more storage might.) You get acoustic, electric, and electronic instruments, and even orchestral and sampled Moog sounds.

Samples of those samples, via SoundCloud:
Two New Products Coming Soon by ikmultimedia

Other specs:
Detachable cables; “pocketable” (also true on the Line 6)

IK claims the hardware is “lightweight” so that you don’t hurt the fragile connector on the iOS gadgets

iRig Recorder for free MIDI recording and playback (there’s a similar feature on the Line 6 offering)

Pricing:
iRig MIDI, US$69.

SampleTank for iOS, price TBD.

iKlipMini is a little adapter for clipping an iPod touch or iPhone to a mic stand. US$39.

www.irigmidi.com
www.sampletank.com/ios
www.ikmultimedia.com/iklipmini

Moving beyond touching a screen as two-dimensional plane, Roger Linn’s concept music controller, the Linnstrument, adds tactile response and expression. Roger calls it “3D Note Expression,” but in lay terms, it means pushing harder on the controller makes it respond differently, as you’d expect from a physical instrument.

Roger this week posts an update on how his development is going and what he imagines – good timing, as this week we also saw another design on the same lines, the Soundplane. The sensing methods are different, enough so that I can easily see room for both, but the upshot is the same. Randy Jones in that story also reflects that, once these things are invented, what will really be essential is musicians to play the things and develop lots of interesting software that can use the controllers. See, previously:

A Glimpse of the Soundplane Controller, Innovative Tactile Multi-Touch, in the Lab; Call to Action

The major change in Roger’s latest update, apart from adjusting the form factor to something longer and more spacious, is the addition of different overlays, including traditional keyboard “manuals,” fret-style grids, and honeycomb-patterns hexagonal grids like the one at top.

It isn’t just a blank slate any more – certainly not in Roger’s mind, at least. Linn, a guitarist by training, has an extensive schema worked out for a grid that would function like the frets on a guitar neck. Movements in any direction can make an adjustment, impacting timbre (perpendicular to the front edge), pitch bends (parallel to that edge), and loudness (pressure).

It’s still all concept, with one working prototype; Roger’s professed style is to work in big-picture concepts. But I’d love to see some of these ideas reach fruition.

I’m still hopeful that a simple, inexpensive, open source option could evolve from this landscape. I hope for that not necessarily even because of a philosophical belief in open source so much as the sense that such an open field could lend itself to experimentation by, say, the people who read this site, not only in creating software but building the instruments. In the case of Roger’s design, unlike the more novel approach used by Randy, patent questions are less of an issue. And a community of people experimenting in such a way could simultaneously yield software that could be compatible with the proprietary and commercial projects.

Lots more ideas and reflections – including detailed notions of how you’d play this thing – on Roger’s site:
Preview: LinnStrument – A New Musical Instrument with 3D Note Expression

And here’s a new video, entitled, cheerily, “Gloomy Sunday” (the music of Rezső Seress):

For review, Roger’s original demo video:

Science and art alike demand inquisitive exploration and experimentation. So, it’s encouraging that a discussion of the future of the digital guitar here on CDM brings impassioned reader debate. There’s some consensus if you dig through our comments: guitarists are compelled by adventures in new technology, and there’s widespread hope that new tech could expand guitar technique and expression, rather than (as the “Auto-Tune” name has unfortunately come to mean) a replacement for musicianship. And yes, there’s excitement about what Antares is doing – just as it’s possible to go beyond the status quo applications of their vocal tech.

But wait — there’s more.

Reflections on conservatism and guitar tech adoption Rich of Way Music sends over an extended, thoughtful rant, inspired by the discussion and directed at his fellow guitarists:
Amongst the guitar players: conservative fetishization and its discontents ;^) [Way Music]

The payoff of guitar research: Adrian Freed of the University of California Berkeley’s CNMAT research center reminds us that the research work with Gibson continues – and fruits of that research appear in products:

Thanks Peter for the mention of our work at CNMAT, UC Berkeley.
Our interactions with Gibson are ongoing and we continue to appreciate their commitment to innovation.
I am regularly confused by the lens used to talk about our research work, i.e., “Where is the product? Where are the adopters?” Good research rarely results in particular products although products are sometimes good demonstration vehicles for new ideas. Our work (as with much of UC Berkeley’s research) is more likely to sneak up on you over decades as an enabling part of the infrastructure, e.g. the first audio plugin, OSC (used in TUIO), pressure-sensing multitouch (next gen. Kindle?), Ethernet EVB, RISC (in ARM), BSD UNIX (part of OS/X), RAID etc. Watch out for how our work at the PARLAB will enable multicore efficiency for audio and music applications. There are lots of acronyms becoming part of mainstream tools already in that project….

I was going to start hyperlinking those acronyms, but I’m afraid you’ll have to Google them.

Why digital guitars matter: The Auto-Tune teaser brought about concerns about automatic intonation. (I do hear from guitarists that they’re really fond of the new automatically-tuning Gibson “robot” guitar!)

But there’s another side to the ability to track guitar pitch, and that’s the ability to combine the guitar with the sonic powers of the computer. Keyboardists have had the lion’s share of the fun over the years with software synths; just as wind, breath, and vocal controllers open up new possibilities, so, too, do MIDI guitars. While possible with any guitar that can send control, Starr Labs have posted some intriguing demos to their blog; see top and below. (I talked about Starr back in January as they introduced new controllers and guitars.)

Starr blog: http://starrlabs.blogspot.com/

And yes, you can play the digital guitar and still win a best beard contest with your more folk-oriented colleagues.

I really enjoy the Ztar guitar playing techniques. I’d love to see this in action in a performance, so readers – whatever make of MIDI guitar you may be using – do send those in.

I’m not as concerned about the conservatism, real or perceived, of any one artist. I’ll say this: regardless of the instrument, there’s vast untapped potential in new instruments and controllers waiting for brave artists to try to tap. And all of this can still draw upon knowledge and skill in traditional instruments. With a few thousand years of instrumental history at our backs, I’d say there’s no rush.

We just need a better term than “alternative controllers” or “controllerism.”

Maybe … music?

Like a fresh ingredient in food, sometimes all you need is a good idea. And whether your work is digital or analog, acoustic or mechanical, compositional or improvisational, sound artist and musician Ranjit Bhatnagar can provide ample inspiration. His best idea: forcing himself to come up with one musical idea a day for a month. Of course, having mad chops in instrumental invention doesn’t hurt.

Ranjit’s creations are remarkable partly in that people can pick them up and play them as instruments, as with the 8-bit violin – a pixelated concoction of the lasercutter – seen at top in action with real fiddlers at the Thingamajigs DIY Instruments Tailgate Party.

Other creations are best seen as sound design etudes, one-off timbral amuse-bouche, and all the more delightful for it. This year’s installments, gathered in the (shorter) month of February, included a number of imaginative daily, reflective productions. A rotating corn cob became a score. A speaker cable became impromptu MIDI output. A set of gears became a mechanical sequencer – the ratios producing different tones.

I’ve collected some of my favorites below, but of course the best way to inject some Ranjit-style aural inspiration into your day is to follow moonmilk.com. True, I’m more than a bit behind as these projects were developed in February. On the other hand, only now, fiddlers are picking up the fruits of those labors – and the change of season and coming of summer (or winter, southern hemisphere dwellers) means the timing couldn’t be better.

http://www.moonmilk.com/

Now, some favorite videos – whether strictly “digital” or not being entirely immaterial:

Sampler? Synth? Workstation? Or just big bucket of sound? There are some impressive rabbit holes for sound designers out there, and Steinberg’s offering just got a big refresh.

While looking at the latest flagship from a music hardware giant (Roland’s Jupiter-80), it’s revealing to compare the software side of the fence. Computer software instruments may not be directly equivalent to all-in-one keyboards, but they do each embody the latest thinking in how to build expressive instruments and new sounds. German maker Steinberg is at home at this week’s giant Messe trade show, and they’ve taken the wraps off the upcoming landmark release of their own flagship synthesizer sampler workstation. It does … a lot.

HALion is really two instruments combined, both a virtual analog synthesizer and a sampler and sample playback workstation. The new version has dockable, movable, and resizable windows, function tabs, and screen sets – UI features generally associated with hosts, but necessary here to navigate HALion’s complex interface. There’s even a full-blown mixer desk inside.

The big change, though, is an expected one, bringing HALion in line with Steinberg’s latest ideas on what to do with VST plug-ins and sequencing. I looked at these features in my preview of Cubase 6′s note-by-note expression editing and VST 3.5. New features for adding expression to individual musical notes and sequences require updates to the associated plug-in software and sound content, so that’s where HALion comes in. Put the two together, and you have a better way of coupling stored sequence information with musical-style expression, whether modeling real instruments or storing transformations of sound parameters with synth sounds. The idea is to give sequenced music the same sorts of information about how sounds change across a note that a musical score might.

With or without those features, HALion 4 is full of sound design tools:

• A mixing engine with unlimited buses per program and layer and free routing – think DAW-like mixing inside each sound patch. Then route those to 32 stereo output channels or 6-channel surround. (Ow! My head!)
• Some 44 effect processors – this is before you drop HALion inside a DAW and add effects – including convolution reverbs, studio EQs, rotary cabinet emulation, morphing filters.
• Internal phrase arpeggiator.
• A new version of MegaTrig, which allows you to create series of conditions for triggers – basically, a graphical interface in place of the textual scripting in tools like rival sampler Kontakt.
• “Quick Controls” for mapping parameters to macro knobs, as we’ve seen in … well, many places. Your brain can keep track of 8 things more easily than it can 80.
• 15 GB of sound content.
• 32-bit and 64-bit versions for both Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6.

More images (click any of these for larger versions), all courtesy Steinberg:

And all of this costs you EUR349/GBP295, including VAT. US$329.99 retail in the US. (It’s cheaper because we’re less tax-y, folks.)

And that’s, really, kind of ridiculously cheap for a synth, a sampler, a mixer, a sound design toolset, and gigs of sounds, if you think about it. Lots more HALion here:
http://www.steinberg.net/en/products/vst/preview_halion_4.htm

Updated: Here’s a photo of MegaTrig – think Kontakt’s KSP scripting environment as a GUI. Which is more powerful? We’ll find out when HALion ships.

FL Studio, aka Fruity Loops, has always been like opening a toybox of sound goodies for sound nerds – up to 30 instruments and 40+ effects in the latest edition. Just about every tool offers deep control for serious sound programmers, but there’s also a sense that those tools can be fun and immediate. And oddly, while developer Image-Line does introduce some instruments and effects as add-ons, all the functionality in the core program is covered by their lifetime free updates program. This isn’t feature bloat intended to entice you to upgrade; it’s more like what happens when you let the oompa-loompas run Willy Wonka and make whatever they want.

Or just forget all of that and think “FL Studio, the music app that makes you glad you’re running Windows.” (Don’t worry: fullscreen mode means you can actually even hide the fact that Windows is there at all.)

FL Studio 10 adds countless improvements to editing, from shortcuts to editing tools to display zoom, and gets smarter about working with 64-bit plug-ins and memory, as well as introducing new tools for manipulating audio pitch, time, harmony, and rhythm.

Among many new features in this version:

• More 64-bit: Automatic 64-bit plug-in support
• Smarter Memory Management, Audio Settings. Even on 32-bit Windows, you can get up to 2 GB of memory for plug-ins, with up to 192 GB for 64-bit Windows, and separate memory allocation for samples. There are also tweaks to ASIO audio performance.
• Better Mixer: Improved mixer views (with wide strips, at last), metering, and automatic delay compensation.
• Notation-ready, Smarter Piano Roll. It’s easier to edit with the piano roll view, thanks to new zoom, shortcuts, stretch handles (finally), display sync, and a “magic lasso.” It’s not just editing that’s better, though: you can also export directly to a PDF score by choosing Export.
• Better Playlist: The Playlist feature now has loop, pause, and skip options for more dynamic live backing tracks, plus new shortcuts for editing and previewing.
• File autosave and backup.
• A new Patcher that lets you save instrument and effect chains as single presets, visually. (Not SynthEdit – it’s a new way of patching together instruments and effects.)
• Optional add-ons for Celemony Melodyne-like pitch and time manipulation (Newtone) and pitch-correction, manipulation, and harmonization (Pitcher).

The addition of Pitcher is interesting, I think, because rival Propellerhead added their own take on this to Record in the form of Neptune.

If there were any comparison to make to FL Studio these days, Propellerhead’s software would be an obvious choice. But the two tools remain differentiated. Unlike Propellerhead’s dual Record/Reason offering, FL Studio is an all-in-one package, and it works as a plug-in and not just via ReWire. Record has more conventional mixing and arrangement tools than FL Studio, and the open signal patching interface in Reason and Record is unlike anything else available. And… actually, this list is so long as to not really fit in this article. But what I like about both is that you get a self-contained, unusual box of tools. Each has more of the sense of walking into a fully-stocked studio with some personality to it rather than a generic tool. (The generic approach has advantages, too, but the sense is different.)

FL’s capabilities remain:

• Flexibility: use it as a VST plug-in or connect via ReWire.
• Host anything: VST 32-bit and 64-bit, DX, and FL-native plugs.
• Multi-track audio and MIDI, with unique, tracker-like and step sequencer interfaces in addition to traditional piano roll and audio views.
• Unique built-in tools for manipulating audio, slicing and beat detection, warping, and now increasingly pitch and harmonization. (Yes, other tools do this, too, but FL has some unusual instruments and effects integrated with the workflow.)

FL Studio itself is really beyond comparison, a bundle of some of the best editing and instrument and effect tools out there. And that’s before you get to the stunningly-affordable pricing, which runs US$49 – $299 for download editions (up to $399 boxed, but I recommend the download version), all with free lifetime upgrades.

There’s just not a more affordable package in the long run, taking into account the breadth of the software and the endless upgrades.

You know where to go:
FL Studio 10

FL users, as always, I’d love to hear both what you think about the new release and how you use FL’s tools (new or old) in your work.

Update: yes, you can win things linking to FL, as Synthtopia notes. I’m not in love with this sort of marketing gimmick – I’m happy to write about FL purely based on its merits, personally – but it’ll certainly be awesome for you to win the prize, and if I for some reason do (which would be amusing), I’ll put the cash toward doing some free FL tutorials on CDM.

Full rules, if you want to enter:
$1010 competition

Of course, if you also link to CDM, I might just buy you a beer or two next time I see you. Odds of winning: 1 in 1. Beat that.

Sure, we spend a lot of time looking at far-out gear and high technology, but you have to tip your hat to practicality. Tascam’s TC-1S is a compact, portable tuner that you can take anywhere. Solar and USB power mean you never have to worry about powering it, either.

Features:

• 12-tone equal-tempered chromatic tuner.
• Input via 1/4″ jack or mic
• Note/sharp-flat/bargraph pitch indication readout on the LCD. Display via “bar,” “fine,” “strobe animation,” or “needle.”
• Protective silicone case included
• 51 grams.

Shipping this month, street price “under US$40.”

It’s a cute little design, and with the economic squeeze continuing, I think smart design wins out. Tascam is being a little loose with the term “environmentally-friendly,” however. The press release I received called this “planet-friendly tuning” and claimed “every planet-conscious musician” will need one.

I can’t verify whether this is indeed the “world’s first solar-powered tuner” – if anyone knows for sure, let us know. But nothing about this design suggests that it’s especially ecological, beyond the solar panel. Avoiding battery waste is a very good thing, so in that sense, sure, this is environmentally friendly. But you have to then weigh that against power draw from conventional tuners and the impact of manufacturing the panel.

More info: Solar panels are definitely nothing to sneeze at. Check out this 2007 report comparing rechargeable to disposable alkalines — and alkaline batteries are far less harmful than the kinds of batteries found in, say, your laptop.

Presumably, the major environmental impact of all the gadgets we love has to do with their materials. The silicone in the case may well be low-impact, but it depends on the particular silicone Tascam used, to say nothing of the other ingredients of this device.

On the other hand, good design means you consume less, save longer, and get more use out of a device. So in the long run, it could be the practicality of a device like this tuner that helps the planet – because you love and use it for a long time.

I’m hardly an expert in environmental design; I’m just pointing out the obvious. But since Tascam raised the issue, let us know what you think. A discussion of what music gear really is planet-friendly is an important one for another day. And as for the tuner, let us know if it’ll go in your bag.