There’s a curious distinction in hardware keyboards. You’ll find plenty of keyboards geared for performance with software at the low-end to mid-range. But if you want a keyboard with uncompromising durability and action – and you’re willing to pay more and lift more weight – those choices suddenly disappear. Suddenly, you have to buy a workstation keyboard or something with built-in sounds or even built-in speakers. What if you want a really uncompromising keyboard to use with software and nothing else?

It’s almost as though manufacturers assume “serious” musicians want to gig with built-in sounds on a standalone keyboard. That’s a pretty stunning assumption in the year 2009, given the versatility, reliability, and unmatched sound quality and diversity of software instruments. If you’re looking for a controller alone, your options are limited. M-Audio, Novation, and others have some great affordable options, but nothing really high-end. Roland, Yamaha, and Casio have some nice controllers, but the higher-end models aren’t dedicated to the task, and therefore there’s no way to dedicate all your dollars to the controller itself. (Dig deeper, and there’s still more sacrifices to make – yes, you can have x, but then we take away y…) My short list would probably be Doepfer’s lovely keyboard in a road case and Studiologic – and that’s about it.

Studiologic’s new Numa Nero, therefore, looks like the serious controller a lot of us have been waiting for. It’s a full, 88-note keyboard made for serious musicians. Yes, part of it is plastic, but plastic doesn’t necessarily mean “cheap” – good-quality plastic can be more durable than other materials. And the design itself finally focuses on getting you the best-possible keybed and action, assuming your software will take care of the sound generation.

• Graded hammer action (essential for piano players, as it makes the lower end heavier than the higher end)
• The last key mechanism design by late Fatar founder/designer Lino Ragni
• Double-dipped, “full-body” solid black keys – not hollow black keys. (The press release points out that most digital pianos have hollow keys, which is something I can verify. Unless you play in C major all the time, this is a major problem.)
• 20 dynamic curve settings which “sense” playing in real-time and respond accordingly. It sounds like the piano action equivalent of anti-lock brakes; I have to try it to understand what they mean!
• 4 zones with independent velocity curves, MIDI, program, pedal, and control settings
• Two pedal inputs, plus an illuminated side wheel controller. (The side is an unusual place for a wheel, but I could still see being able to reach it live.)

Now, what’s missing from all of this is a control surface, which bothered me initially – you don’t, for instance, get faders to use as drawbars. Upon reflection, though, I actually think having all that empty space is a huge advantage. If you’re an organ player, you can add a drawbar controller. If you’re controlling unusual instruments, you could add a touchscreen-equipped laptop. Or add a monome. You get the idea.

And the best feature of all may be this: “An aluminum back piece slides out to support another keyboard, sound module, or laptop, without the need for another stand.”

No, my only remaining gripe is that, while the keyboard supports aftertouch, it’s monophonic aftertouch, not polyphonic. Poly aftertouch seems to be a dying breed, but it would certainly have qualified this keyboard as “ultimate.” I’m nonetheless dying to play the Numa Nero. I’ve been waiting a long time for a worthy controller that doesn’t try to make sounds or arrange beats for you or do anything other than talk to your software setup, and this could be it.

US$1274, which goes to prove my point – focus entirely on the controller, and you can keep the cost low without compromise. Weight: 57.3 ponds.

There’s also a 22-pound Numa Nano coming at winter NAMM; keep your eyes out for that one – if it could be just as brilliantly-designed but more liftable, it could be the perfect companion, a nano on the road and a Nero back in the studio (or when you’ve got transport).

Numa Nero Product Page

And yes, it’s worth considering the entire Studiologic range. Ironically, the line they call “vintage” is the one with lots of added controls. They’re absurdly cheap for the quality, have action that can beat most of the pricier options out there, and immensely logical designs that pack maximum playability into the weight and form factor. The designs are, charitably, “workmanlike,” but if it’s more playable, who cares? I also understand they’re easy to service. Now, the only remaining question is why the Italian-based Studiologic seems to be so alone in getting this area right.

It’s a strange and wonderful sampling instrument and live rig, capable of mangling and remixing live, synced to tempo. It’s proof that live computer performance doesn’t have to be in only one tool, or use one technique. It’s a ready-to-play, affordable instrument you can pick up and use. It’s a Reaktor patch gurus can pick apart and learn from, along with other resources from one of Reaktor’s masters. It’s a new blog and an opportunity to talk about live performance. It’s an EP release.

It’s actually all of these things – a tool, but more than a tool. The Finger, a US$79 / EUR 69 instrument, is a product, first and foremost, created by master live electronic performer and hacker Tim Exile. Tim is such a dedicated Reaktor user that he once managed to give himself a repetitive stress injury from connecting patch cords. (Not recommended.) You can run this thing out of the box using the free Kore Player, or get in deeper with a full version of Kore, or get into the patch itself with a copy of Reaktor 5 (also included in Komplete 5 and 6). It’s quite a product, too. I could try to explain it, but I couldn’t possibly do as good a job as Tim does in the video.

I’m not sure I agree with the marketing material’s claim that this is “a new type of live performance and remix effect.” In fact, Reaktor, Max/MSP, and other tools have led to all sorts of similar, original performance tools. Unlike going into a gig with just an Ableton Live set (something I’m doing in, literally, fifteen minutes), having a custom tool means focusing on performance techniques. And “new” hardly matters – Tim is a ninja at working with Reaktor’s deep sound DSP layer, Core (not to be confused with Kore). Whether it’s new or not, this is the ultimate patch from one of Reaktor’s masters. Along with Reaktor creator Stephan Schmitt’s Spark, it’s proof that sound packs from NI – or anyone else for that matter – don’t have to be limited to stock presets.

More than that, though, The Finger is connected to a music release by Tim, and is already triggering discussion of live performance and sound design – issues that go beyond any one tool. Tim has started a new blog to talk about his own take on live performance, starting with more info on his EP and some tracks you can hear:

http://thenowwave.blogspot.com/

Other folks I know have picked up The Finger and started to play with it, including the underlying Reaktor patch. Most notably, see Richard Devine transform The Finger from a Sound-Like-Tim-Exile machine into a Richard-Devine-Sonic-Insanity-Generator. (See, just because you use someone else’s tool doesn’t have to mean you need to sound like them.) With Max for Live coming, hackers getting smarter and slicker with open source tools like Processing, ChucK, SoundCollider, and Pd, and techno-literacy again on the rise – more connected than ever by these Interwebs – I think we could be in store for a really wonderful age of creativity, in which people make part of the craft of music making the craft of tool making, as well. Designing a tool, after all, is designing a system, in the same way that composition (in any medium) is about designing a system. Finally, instead of keeping that to ourselves, we can actually share the whole process.

In the meantime, let’s watch those videos, on Reaktor, The Finger, and more.

Richard Devine takes on The Finger:

Native Instruments The Finger vs Richard Devine from Richard Devine on Vimeo.

Tim Exile performing in Reaktor:

Tim shows his Reaktor-based setup – not just The Finger, but beyond:

Related tools:

Updated based on feedback in comments See also…

Sugar Bytes Artillery2, which focuses more on effects – and offers a whopping amount of effects variety, from step-sequenced buffer scratchers to vocoding. As with The Finger, the idea is to map effects to keys.

Rekkerd notes that Sugar Bytes has just discounted Artillery2 to 50% through October. Devoted loop manglers will buy both. I’m going to wait for a Richard Devine video in which he routes Artillery2, Lucifer, and The Finger together in one chain, then randomizes all the settings – your move, Richard.

The Lucifer plug-in is now discontinued, but Devine Machine offer a range of related looper/performance tools – from the practical tools to the manglers.

The basic ideas here I think are worth copying: making use of the keyboard to control things live rather than having modulation all running automatically, routing different effects together for mangled results, and loop recording and effects that are synced it time are all useful concepts to combine. I’d love to see people push those concepts in various directions, and the exact combination of ingredients you want is likely to be personal, so it’s well-suited to DIY concoctions, too.

Richie Hawtin has been the subject of adulation and sometimes seemingly-random scorn by readers of this site — blame the passions of the Internet. But amidst that noise has been a clear signal: bring back Plastikman.

Richie is a terrifically talented DJ, but for many of us it’s his work as a producer that we love. And for all m-nus has done over the years, the handful of work that comes from Richie’s Plastikman persona remains significant. He’s announced he’s bringing Plastikman back, and has a survey to match. Don’t worry – this isn’t something like “What’s your favorite bpm,” or “specify preferred filter cutoff frequencies.” It’s more along the lines of whether you’d see a show in Santiago or Perth. But there are indications of a new live show and re-releases. (I’m not clear whether the “new project” includes a new release, but I do hope so, and it does talk about “creative process.”)

When considering the various aspects of Richie Hawtin’s persona, it seems fans reserve a special place in their hearts for Plastikman. So it’s only right that as we prepare for a new Plastikman project next year, you should have some input and control over exactly what you see and hear.

http://www.plastikman.com/survey09/

Richie Hawtin and the also-excellent Ambivalent reflected on music making with technology at DubSpot here in New York over the summer. I think they had some really good things to say, even if your own music tends in other directions or genres, so now is the ideal time to share that. Both Richie and Kevin spoke about the need to incorporate physical gestures into digital music making, whether it was drawing on the performance (for Ambivalent) or locking oneself into the studio and getting physical with the gear (for Hawtin). That made something like Maschine important to Richie’s newer work, he said. DubSpot has video of this conversation (led by an audience Q&A of Ableton users), as well as a private conversation with Richie about his work.

Videos via the DubSpot blog.

Thoughts? Care to disagree, for that matter, with their take on performance and what matters? (I think there’s plenty to discuss here in an open conversation.)

Living in the digitally-connected age means a constant flow of media – but also the chance to reprocess (or even hack) it. Tim Exile (aka Exile aka Tim Shaw) is an electronic music innovator and one-man DSP laboratory. He didn’t just turn on his TV to watch today’s US Presidential Inauguration – he mashed it up on his own Reaktor creations. Here’s a live take (after a few moments, he warms up and it absolutely takes off). Tim notes:

Most significant international events don’t have a pre-warning but this one did, so I thought I’d take the opportunity to mash it up live with my live remix/mashup/improv machine which I made. It’s all improvised using the BBC world service live web stream. Unfortunately the web stream flaked out at the beginning of his speech so I had to start part way in.

The likes of William Saffire may ponder how today’s speech stacks up against past US Presidents Lincoln, F.D.R., and Kennedy. But no one was doing live remixes of Roosevelt’s fireside chats, were they?

More on Tim Exile: check out the Tech Talk from NI, or visit Tim’s MySpace page

More on Reaktor:
http://kore.noisepages.com/tag/reaktor/

Tim Exile: Reaktor Video Master Class/Demo [kore.noisepages.com]

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.

Yes, for the record, that is a young woman screaming to the sounds of AudioMulch. Believe.

Jordan Harris was able to snag some screenshots of Girl Talk’s rig. There’s not much to tell: a laptop, a mouse, and in a sign of the growing stature of Girl Talk (Gregg Gillis), some very practical plastic wrap to protect the machine. What’s unique about Gregg’s work is that this computer doesn’t clear out the room: it attracts screaming throngs of fans. Especially lady fans, proof that this does not have to be a sport for boys. (As it happens, I find they also like watching American NFL football. Poor girls; everyone is convinced they know what they want but don’t ask.)

Every music tool is supposed to have celebrity users, right? Well, AudioMulch definitely can claim Girl Talk. This $89, currently Windows-only tool (yes, Vista-compatible) has long had an underground following. It’s a real-time modular synthesis, composition, and performance tool, which you might suppose would put it in the same category as the likes of Reaktor and Max/MSP. Unlike those tools, though, its modules are laser-focused on certain sonic capabilities. There are ready-made objects for live performance control, and unique, handy tools for setting up envelopes and sequences. It’s got fantastic pre-built effects like a delay line granulator and live looper. And because AudioMulch is also a VST host, it could be your one and only environment.

AudioMulch is the software equivalent of that deceptively cute little rally car that blows more impressive-looking cars off the road.

Version 2.0 is due early next year with new features and Mac compatibility.

GearWire did a fantastic video tutorial series on AudioMulch last year.

PCs are computers that look ugly and don’t have slick ads with popular songs playing in the background. People believe they’re not used for music, but they are, often by musicians who actually play stuff life (yes, even with a mouse as a controller) rather than playing backing tracks from inside space-alien props.

Plastic wrap, according to Wikipedia,“is a thin plastic film typically used for sealing food items in containers to keep them fresh.” Going by the popular brand name Saran, the 1953 invention was not originally designed to protect computers from beer. But if you play music that people like to dance to and you typically see beer bottles around (note the unprotected shot below), it may be an important music technology accessory. Update: According to an interview, the Saran Wrap is there to protect Gregg’s laptop from .. Gregg? So, either he’s lying about the sweaty hands to sound extra awesome, or he really does have some sweat issues. I can’t say I’ve ever worried about my hands the way I’ve worried about beer. (And I tend not to have those screaming, drunken fans, even.) Hot venues? Hot laptop, powered up to full crunching audio signal? Gregg, if you’re out there, inquiring minds…

Two more photos of AudioMulch after the jump…

Updated: more details from Jordan:

He did have one more spare latop on the table next to him, although it stayed closed the entire show.  No idea if it was the Toshiba in the other pics.  Also, the laptop in pics is a toughbook I believe.  The show was at the abercrombie holiday party at the lifestyles community pavilion here in columbus.  This is a pretty large venue with an indoor capacity of 2200.  The guy tore the place up with just a laptop and sheer force of character.  I believe there are a few videos and some pictures posted here: http://thegrip.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/girl-talk-abercrombie-fitch-2008-holiday-party-at-promowest-pavilion-in-columbus-ohio/#more-3776

There are some good shots there showing just the size of the crowd who came out to see this guy use his laptop on a cheap folding plastic table.  This was a private invite only party, but his show at the Newport Music Hall in January is already sold out. 

Let’s start with the important bit: the Traveler really is a mobile interface. It weighs under four pounds and fits into a backpack; it’s actually a little lighter and more compact than a typical 15” laptop. Now, if your input and output needs are limited (a mic in, headphone out, and stereo out do suit a lot of folks just fine), your options are obviously many. But the Traveler manages to be this small and pack an absurd amount of I/O and functionality into that small space.

Audio interfaces tend not to get a whole lot of updates, but MOTU has been steadily upgrading the Traveler. New in mk3:

• Digital I/O expanded for a total of 28 simultaneous ins and 30 outs (including digital I/O), on top of the (existing) four XLR/TRS mic ins. Digital up to 96kHz and analog up to 192kHz – all eight.
• True high-impedance guitar ins
• Hardware limiter on the pre, plus a “soft clip” feature that “engages just before clipping occurs and helps reduce perceptible distortion.” (That’s “soft” as in the clip prevention – the process takes place in hardware. I inaccurately described this as being similar to a compressor; it’s not – it’s a different process, and combined with hardware limiting makes this ideal for live mic input.)
• 1 dB trim increments on all analog ins
• MIDI Time Code support
• Optical I/O: choose 16 channels ADAT, 8 channels of SMUX, or two pairs of TOSLink, or mix and match
• New software: CueMix FX software, which turns the Traveler into a mixer with compression, a modeled version of the Teletronix optical leveling amp, and real-time signal analysis
• … and you can access these features from the front panel

… just to name a few improvements. And lest you think FireWire is dead, have a good look at the Traveler. The whole package is powered by the FireWire bus, or you can add a field battery pack. On the Mac side, this is yet another reason not to get a non-Pro MacBook.

New CueMix FX software, which is also available for MOTU’s other interfaces.

A lot of these features are nice, but to my mind, the major draw is still that you get a ton of I/O in a nice, mobile box, now with four mic ins. For anyone doing surround, you also get front-panel monitoring controls, and enough actual outs to pull off various surround setups, with different setups nicely supported in the software. On Mac and Windows, you get full ASIO, WDM, Core Audio, and Core MIDI support. (Linux has been maturing as far as FireWire audio support, though I don’t know off-hand how this will do.)

MOTU isn’t shipping the new Traveler until Q1, but they promise the same pricing as the current model, which has a street around US$850.

MOTU Traveler mk 3 [Product page, which goes into some of the rather lovely effects in there]

If you own another MOTU unit, you’ll be relieved to know the CueMix software features will be available for download on other FireWire audio interfaces.

Bet this would look fantastic as a pillow, too.

Who’s sampling what? When is sampling stealing? Who’s stolen sampled samples, and was the sampling stolen stealing? Is anyone actually playing live? Does anyone know what the law is? Does anyone care?

Yes, it’s been a lively November so far for massive, complicated legal battles, PR battles, who-said-who-sampled-what battles, and general sampling messiness. Here’s a quick round-up for those of you who haven’t been able to keep up (understandably).

And we’re going to play a game. I’m going to start talking, and you can see at what point your head starts to spin and you need to go lie down.

Ready?

Here’s the executive summary:

• Justice steal samples and talk about it, because you can’t recognize them.
• US courts said long ago “nowhere to run, nowhere to hide,” to the dismay of even the RIAA.
• German courts, disagreeing with the US and with other German courts, say it don’t mean a thing if you can’t hum along.
• FL Studio turns “Faxing Berlin” Deadmau5 demo content into “Berlin” mostly-the-same demo content and a bunch of people start screaming obscenities at each other and most of us lose interest.
• Justice can’t keep their USB cables from falling out, may have to pirate samples of themselves.
• The Killers (or MTV, more to the point) plagiarize an entire stage.
• My head hurts already.

1. Justice admits they steal samples. French duo Justice admitted to borrowing the likes of 50 Cent without clearance because “they are such short samples no one can recognize them.” (See Beatportal story.)

Of course, the fact that they’re non-recognizable is kind of defeated if you talk about them. In a sane legal world, a completely unrecognizable sample warped until it might as well have come from a field recording of tree frogs wouldn’t be litigation bait. But this is the United States. As I covered way back in early 2005 for Keyboard Magazine, the standing circuit court decision in the US says all sampling is illegal, whether it’s recognizable or not. The elimination of what lawyers call a de minimis (plain English: common sense minimum) standard actually got the RIAA and the plaintiffs concerned about over-litigation. (Yes, you read that right: the ruling was so stupid, the plaintiffs appealed a case they themselves had just won.)

Don’t like it? Move to Germany. No, really.

2. German court says sampling is fine, unless you can whistle the sample. Kraftwerk suffered a legal defeat that made it (via Associated Press) all the way to the front page of CNN.com. It seems a court in Hamburg said what US courts did – no matter how small, sampling is illegal. The highest civil court in Germany says the opposite, but then goes on to be explicit about what constitutes illegal sampling (if un-cleared):

The civil court ruling, however, forbids sampling of a song melody and insists that the sample must be part of a completely new musical work bearing no resemblance to the original.

What’s interesting about this: the length and nature of the sample of Kraftwerk (two seconds of rhythm from “Metal on Metal,” as used un-cleared by Sabrina Setlur) is the same as the sample in the US civil case (two seconds of Funkadelic’s “Get Off Your Ass and Jam” as used in N.W.A.’s “100 Miles and Runnin.”) That’s neither here nor there, except to say if you sample anything in a recognized track, some court somewhere will probably make your life miserable, especially with no international framework to smooth out the difficulties. (Case in point: the US samples had been cleared by N.W.A. – the movie studio No Limit simply forgot to clear the samples in the song for sync rights when they used it in a film.)

3. FL Studio user uses demo loops, meets irate Deadmau5. Thanks to reader Scott Metzger for tipping us off on this one. FL Studio 8 ships, as do many programs, with included loops. It also comes with demo content. An FL 8 user released a track that uses some of that demo content almost wholesale. Now, some people are defending the FL user, because Image-Line says its loops are released royalty free. (They claim they never said that explicitly about demo content, causing confusion.) Image-Line clearly should have been more explicit about this, or this might not have happened. But royalty-free sampling is one thing – plagiarism is another. The user in this case released a track that basically was Deadmau5’s Faxing Berlin. He even copied the name, calling his track “Berlin.” (Smooth.) It’s almost not different enough to count as a remix. I could make some general criticism, except that he’s already been roundly flamed in especially colorful terms by the FL forum users.

I’m still looking for ways of getting a laugh from fellow nerdsters by sneaking some of the roundly-despised Ableton demo track into a set. But, in case your eyes haven’t already glazed over, here are more of the gruesome details of this story.

FL Studio user faces legal action for using built-in samples [MusicRadar, who have more patience for digging through this story than I do]

Don’t use FL Studio loops! [FutureMusic, inadvertently giving users some good advice]

Lesson: software developers, label your loops. (And in all seriousness, it does sound as though Image-Line has lost some of their credibility on this one.) Users, don’t … do this, okay? Just don’t. We can hear you. We can hear those stupid Garage Band loops, too, for crying out loud. Or, alternative names, how about “IMing Hamburg” or “Skyping Munich” or “Snail Mailing Frankfurt”? Maybe change your name to L1v3M0us3 or Deadr4t. I’ll stop. We’re not even done with this damned round-up yet. There’s more.

4. Justice, the Milli Vanilli of Our Time? In case Justice weren’t in trouble enough already telling MTV they’re sampling illegally, they’ve got MPDgate to contend with. Beatportal showed an image of them grooving away with an MPD24 that was, rather inconveniently unplugged. (Their answer: the cable fell out.) Don’t worry, though, Justice fans — Resident Advisor springs into action with a series of photos that would do Oliver Stone’s JFK proud. (There it is – a loose USB cable on the grassy knoll! The screen gone blank, then on again in the Book Depository! Again! Change the angle!)

I’m inclined to give Justice the benefit of the doubt, especially because I care less about this one gig than I do about this outrageous comment by Beatportal’s Terry Church:

Anyone with a shred of understanding of how the music is made knows that it’s near impossible to play electronic music 100% live, unless you have the talent of somebody like The Bays.

Of course, if it were 100% live, it wouldn’t be electronic music. (You could get really literal and claim that you have to be Bobby McFerrin and not even use instruments.) But taking this as I think Terry meant it, uh, Terry, the entire readership of this site has something they’d like to discuss with you.

He also didn’t say “play electronic music 100% live well,” which means for each time one of us has screwed up catastrophically onstage by getting overcomplicated with live sets, we’ve done our bit to demonstrate that we’re not faking it. Unless the USB jack fell out, in which case, no photos!

But yes, I think we can safely say Justice are performing clips they stole from 50 Cent completely live.

5. Killers Plagiarize / Sample an Entire Stage. Okay, forget about two-second samples or even FL Studio demo songs. How about if you showed up in motorcycle helmets and a giant pyramid that looked exactly like Daft Punk? Erm, not in a tongue-in-cheek, parody sort of way.

Etienne de Crecy did a live stage show in France with giant projections mapped to a big cube, as produced by the talented Exyzt crew in Paris. Then, US band The Killers does … exactly the same thing?

Exyzt installation Ripped off by “the Killers”

In fact, the two were so much alike that over at Create Digital Motion, we just assumed it was another Exyzt install job. (Apparently, that isn’t so; even if it were, uh, novelty wears off a bit when you do exactly the same thing with another artist.)

Originality. Try it. It’s amazing.

You know what, by contrast have at those two seconds of rhythm that no one can recognize anyway.

(In fairness, as Wallace points out, MTV is likely to blame here. The Killers were just playing in the cubes and, most likely, were not directly responsible for the stage design.)

How’d you score?

How far did you get before you had to lie down, or strum an original tune on a ukulele? (Wait, damnit, that sounds just like “All the Things You Are.”) Let us know in comments.

We routinely talk about how the interface paradigm of a computer — screen, QWERTY, trackpad – isn’t optimal for music. But how many of you have, in a pinch, done a live laptop set with just your computer, and found some way to make it work? The Stanford University Laptop Orchestra, set to play this year’s Macworld, natch, is making the most of what it has:

“We tilt the notebook and use its built-in accelerometer to expressively control sound. We use the trackpad as a kind of violin bow,” explains Ge Wang, SLOrk’s founder. ”You can make some wild, diverse music with the MacBook.”

And why not? Designing expressive interfaces can pay off in something that’s satisfying, absolutely. But however you decide to play, a lot of it comes down to how you approach an object compositionally and musically. So, there’s two ways to look at this: on one level, it’s a novelty, and while to most of us seeing people playing behind Apple logos is nothing new, I’m sure Apple enjoys seeing a swarm of their machines. But on another, the real point is that the Stanford orchestra is getting the most mileage out of the machine. Trackpad? Check. Accelerometer? Keyboard? (Why stop there – Apple Remote? Webcam?) You’ve got quite a lot on the laptop itself to use.

We’ve looked at laptop orchestras before, but here’s still more:

Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk): Musical Macs [Story for Apple Pro by Dustin Driver]

SLOrk

Via: Stanford’s MacBook orchestra exposed [distorted-loop.com] and Macworld maestro Paul Kent’s Twitter.

Previously:

Laptop Orchestras Proliferate, from Princeton to Moscow

How to Record Laptop Performances – And Make Them Sound Live (linking to a story on the topic I wrote for Keyboard Magazine)

And for the mother of modern laptop orchestras, recently winning a MacArthur Foundation grant, see PLOrk at Princeton

In addition to Halloween-themed music mixes to entertain you this weekend, sounds and images from experimental to trance are echoing through the Internets this week. We’ve got the details on Create Digital Motion.

For visualists and a range of out-there-leaning audiovisual and sonic acts, France and the rest of Europe have a festival streaming online:

Festival Stream: French and European Visualists at Cinesthesy 1.0 Today and Saturday

And 11:30p US Eastern is SWiY, with more gear than we have (as pictured above):
Halloween Stream Tonight: SWiY Live Trance and Gearlust

Scare your cat and your significant other and keep the sounds going all weekend, I say. That is, if you’re not roaming America scaring up votes (that’s important, too).