Link love, chip love, software love, music love – Create Digital Music is celebrating five years, and it’s time to spread some of the love back to you here in New York City. Wednesday night, we’ll be celebrating five years made possible by our incredible readers with a big party at Love Nightclub in Manhattan.

We’ve got one of the best sound systems in the city. We have eclectic, handmade, heavy beats from the likes of David Last, King Britt, Ganucheau, and IJ Catling (and me, opening up the sets). And because the Honorary Official Language of CDM is Portuguese, we have the baile funk princess Zuzuka Poderosa on vocals. (pictured below)

Zuzuka is singing. Prepare to dance – yes, even us computer nerds, really.

There’s an open bar (beer + house), 7p – while it lasts (get there early).

We’re supported by HP and Intel, featuring the HP Envy 15 Beats Limited Edition laptop, which I’ve programmed to take advantage of its low-light/no-light nightvision webcam. I don’t get to keep mine, though – I’m giving it to you. Limber up and compete in our Twitter Twister contest – enter for a chance to hit the mats and out-twist your friends as we emcee and DJ behind you. Whoever wins takes home the Envy and loads of bragging rights.

Wednesday, December 2
7-11pm
Cover: FREE.

Love Nightclub, 179 MacDougal St in Manhattan [Map], near Washington Square (BDFV-ACE to West 4, RW to 8th St)

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There’s plenty of rightful skepticism about the use of mainstream displays for multitouch in general purpose computing. And why not? As a full-time replacement for other input, multitouch probably doesn’t make sense. But for music, the equation is changing. Multitouch capabilities are showing up on commodity-priced PC computers like the multi-touch enabled HP laptop models – the tx2z seen here starts, incredibly, at US$850. And because computer musicians are looking for more control, having a touch-enabled display (even single-touch) just makes sense.

The screen for a laptop musician is a huge piece of real estate. Finally, instead of sitting dumbly in front of you glowing, it can become an X/Y controller or give you shortcuts for controls or provide additional parameters. Yes, using a touchscreen exclusively can result in the dreaded “gorilla arm.” The ergonomics of using a vertically-oriented screen are extremely poor – if you use it exclusively for an extended period of time. But if you look at the way people are using these touchscreens, for incidental control in combination with other things – and the ability of convertible laptops to transform into a horizontal orientation – I think this is no longer the deal killer it once was.

At top, an HP laptop ($850) plus the free version of Sensomusic’s Usine is all you need to create a multitouch interface for Ableton Live. Correction: right now this is limited to single touch only, but multitouch is supported in the hardware, in drivers, soon in Windows 7, and support is promised for a future version of Usine. The point still stands — as does the ability to optimize controls for your fingers. Being able to use more than one at once will, of course, be that much better.

Fractal (see Myspace) uses the combination to play Ableton Live with some simple controls. If you get hooked on Usine, you can get the full “Pro” version for EUR70 with additional patches and objects.

The one major remaining obstacle to multitouch, at least, is cost. If you don’t especially fancy buying a new HP laptop, add-on kits still run in the range of US$800-900 (meaning, ironically, you might as well just buy the HP instead). Laptop vendors are still slow to adopt the technology, though that could change when Windows 7 ships later this year. (On the other hand, tablet PCs, even when they were shipping in relative quantity, often were constrained in available configurations and either skimped on specs or demanded a significant premium.)

But let’s not complain too much. The simple reality is you can add an HP laptop now to a live rig as a performance instrument for under a grand.

As you no doubt heard, Apple today refreshed their MacBook lineup with across-the-board adjustments to pricing. I’ll let other sites comment on the news more generally, as this is a music site, not a notebook site. But the big news for audio in terms of I/O, just so you don’t miss that:

• FireWire on more models: Finally, you can again get a 13” MacBook (now called MacBook Pro) with onboard FireWire – a FW800 connector. That’ll restore the use of audio interfaces and certain high-speed storage, and means the MacBook is again a good choice as an audio machine at the US$1199 base price point.
• ExpressCard on fewer models: Oddly, the addition of a lowly SD card slot (nice for photography and mobile recorders) has supplanted the ExpressCard slot on the 15” MacBook Pro. If you want ExpressCard, you have to buy the 17” – which, in turn, loses the SD card slot.

Now, generally the news here is pretty good. For music, you probably aren’t too concerned about the GPU, so the 15” MacBook Pro at US$1699 is looking like a nice deal. But PC users are no doubt puzzled, given that all of these connections are standard equipment on the vast majority of PC notebooks, including ones that cost less than a grand. And there still aren’t as many USB ports as you’d like – you get two ports on all but the 17” model, which has three, and very often only one of those may actually be usable because of power issues.

MacBook Pro [Apple]

The battery life is also greatly improved, but unfortunately is no longer user-upgradeable. See further comments on CDMotion.

No doubt about it: touch is coming to more screens near you. But there’s no need to disappoint your current beloved laptop. $200 kits can turn your laptop into a functioning touchscreen.

Now, as I’m working with JazzMutant’s Lemur this week, before you get excited, this is no Lemur – or even anything like your iPhone or iPod touch. Sensitivity and accuracy are workable, but not exceptional, the overlay is pretty simple (as you can see in the video) rather than integrated with the display, and this is single-touch only — not multi-touch. Lastly, on a conventional laptop that isn’t convertible, you may miss the ability to fully extend your laptop perpindicular to your body. (Having the screen be parallel can put your arms in a fatiguing position.)

But that said, there’s a lot of potential once you have the ability to reach over and make quick gestures on a laptop screen that control a set. You might make your own instruments and effects or controller dashboards in a tool like Processing or Reaktor. And at $200, this could be a brilliant way to retrofit a machine and breathe new life into it. There’s support for Mac, Windows, and Linux; you just plug in via USB.

Laptops for music are nothing new. But better versions of Linux make no-hassle music production easier and more powerful – and new netbooks make it cheap and ultra-portable, too, for times when even that 15” laptop feels clunky. Netbooks aren’t for everyone, and I imagine some people will miss Windows and Mac OS, even with better compatibility and powerful features on Linux. But if you are looking for an additional, more mobile machine, the combination is definitely worth a look.

A significant revision to the one netbook customized for Linux music has just become available today – you read about it here first.