multi-touch the storm – interactive sound visuals – subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.

What if you could mash, mangle, mush, and morph sounds with your fingers on a screen, watching the waveforms dance in response in three dimensions? That “what if” is expressed beautifully in a project by musician-developer Christian Bannister of Portland, Oregon, who works as Subcycle Labs.

The result is like being able to touch sound directly.

Three-dimensional forms morph and vibrate using visuals programmed in Processing, making architectural-organic shapes and spaces that really begin to “look” like sound. These forms can represent synthesis and effects parameters (Christian has done some work with the Massive synth from Native Instruments), or can allow navigation through loops using touch. Gestures remap offsets and duration for audio, scrub and slice, and apply granular resynthesis.

Controls use multiple touch points on a screen (apparently via Community Core Vision and reacTIVision), with sound from Logic, Reaktor, and Max/MSP, and auxiliary control with a joystick array and KORG KAOSS Pad.

Here’s what happens with a Massive bass line:

low frequency entity – subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.

It’s spectacular, gorgeous work, and I can’t wait to see more. It’s well worth reading through the whole description on the blog for more details, technical, musical, and artistic:

http://www.subcycle.org/

The iPhone has become an almost absurdly-popular platform for music apps this year, even given more capable, more plentiful PCs. But to those who don’t yet “get” the appeal, talk to a mobile music addict: having the ability to be creatively musically in corners of time that would otherwise go unused, like a cramped bus ride, can be a beautiful thing. (Now, you start talking about taking away my PC/Mac experience, and I will start screaming in agony – but that’s a topic for a separate post.) The question is, what form should that app take? Today, I’ve got an iPhone round-up going as I clear out my news inbox, but that thread lies beneath all the stories…

I’m working on putting together a collection of truly productive, non-gimmicky/non-toy music apps now that the platform is maturing. But two apps released this week I think deserve special mention, and mention together – partly because of the different angle they take.

They’re both essentially handheld grooveboxes. They’re both relatively powerful, bringing desktop-style production to the platform. They’re both good options, and at this price, you might go buy both. But as I go off to test these two apps, I’m already struck by the contrast between the two.

One is the kind of app that we’re seeing a whole lot of on the iPhone, just as we once saw it in me-too apps on desktop computers. It assumes that the way to reach more people is to give them a whole bunch of canned loops that already sound like the styles they might want to play, and assume they’ll be pretty limited in their ability to do much with those loops.

The other of the two apps eschews the obligatory audio loops for real synthesis, and strips out the usual “let’s try to look like hardware” interface for something a lot more minimal and (I think) touch device friendly. That’s a design lesson that might well be applied beyond the iPhone, too.

First, consider the looped audio approach.

From IK Multimedia, GrooveMaker is a real-time app for manipulating audio loops. Interestingly, IK brought it over from the Mac/PC software. There are some powerful features, real-time control over audio, WiFi upload to your computer. It’s all well and good, so far.

The problem is that GrooveMaker is yet another app that assumes the only way people can have fun is to start with a bunch of canned loops and genres. GrooveMaker comes with hundreds of loops in house, hip-hop, and club styles. But that’s it – there’s no way to really easily start a track from scratch. (Update: Note that I should say you can at least sequence from scratch, but only with the stock content – which would have made GrooveMaker bigger news on this platform were it not for the release of iDrum and BeatMaker first.)

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-sample. It’s not my own working style because it just doesn’t inspire me, but that’s a personal feeling, and not one I’d impose on anyone else. In fact, some of my best friends (ahem) are capable of doing things with sampled loops that blow my mind. The problem I have is with lowest-common-denominator thinking. In fact, I think synthesized tracks, tracks that give you real control over the sound, are often more fun for beginners.

Take, for instance, Smule. As founder Ge Wang discussed with CDM, their Ocarina and Leaf Trombone app are aimed really at non-musicians. But because these instruments use synthesized sound, people are free to really play with them and make whatever noise with them they like, rather than getting stuck with canned sounds to “remix.”

Now, perhaps a future version of GrooveMaker will make it easier to bring in other audio. Even then, it’ll have a lot of catching up to do with Intua’s far more powerful BeatMaker having been on the market for some time and offering features like integration with noise.io’s soft synth. But let’s talk for a moment about the flexibility of synthesis.

More Funner, with Synths?

bleep!BOX takes a different approach. Now, there have already been some 808 and 909 emulations on the iPhone. But you really have to see this instrument in action. Creator David Wallin has done some interesting work to make lots of sound parameters accessible.

David writes us:

I wanted to drop you a line to let you know that my iPhone groove box app is finally approved and live in the app store. It features 10 drum/synth parts (808 / 909 emulations of snares, hihats, etc and 4x 2-Oscillator analog synth parts). All sounds are generated realtime and are highly tweakable – no samples are used.

Compare the results: with the canned loop, you get something that sounds good right away – though it also sound predictable. It then actually requires a fair amount of effort to make that sound your own, if you succeed at all.

Using synthesized sound, on the other hand, you initially get, well, nothing at all. But you can very quickly get to something you’ve created yourself, even if your skill level isn’t all that high.

That’s an oversimplification, of course, but I think it’s at least born out in the design philosophies here; bleep!BOX allows the user to be more constructive than passive. (Audio manipulation techniques are capable of some tricks all their own – especially when you get into time manipulation and granular resynthesis. But that’s just the means to the end. There’s a difference between synthesizing music and consuming – or even passively remixing – music.)

I’m looking forward to spending some time with bleep!BOX as a sketchpad for beats. I’ll be interested to see how it might evolve to allow easier integration with desktop music workflows.

But notice what you can do with synthesized sounds – you can actually play. I think this is part of what made the Korg DS-10 such a smash hit on the Nintendo DS, even given the DS’ extremely constrained audio fidelity. (The iPhone – and, incidentally, Sony’s PSP – fare much better.)

Whether you’re a beginner or advanced user, “play” and expression are really what it’s about. A kazoo, for instance, doesn’t have canned sounds. It doesn’t come with presets. It can, frankly, embarrass you. But it’s fun to play, because you can feel a certain amount of freedom with it.

Ironically, I think it actually requires a fairly advanced user to have that kind of freedom with pre-canned loops. Aiming at a “lowest common denominator” is too often disparaged, when it can really mean aiming at a large public.

But maybe the reason “lowest common denominator” gets a bad name is that more advanced tools are often more fun. I’d love to see more work done on synthesized sound that’s really fun to play with.

The choice is yours, naturally. The two instruments:

http://www.groovemaker.com/
http://www.bleepboxapp.com/

So, iPhone/iPod touch users – now that the novelty has worn off, have you found apps you continue to use over time?

And, since you do come to CDM for opinions, anyone care to disagree with my take (or nod approvingly)?

ParamDrum TR Edition from Peter Dines on Vimeo.

Imagine a machine that lets you walk a thin line between control and chaos. You’ll be tweaking it, for sure – you’ll want to invest a sufficient amount of time shaping its sounds and adjusting its instruments to alter its flightpath. But once set in motion, it will give you variety and delicious insanity.

That’s the idea behind Peter Dines’ ParamDrum, a Reaktor drum machine with granular goodies inside providing sample manipulation and a set of clear sequenced controls for adjusting parameters. The “Param” bit refers to the parameters you’ll control – pitch + sample select + speed + size (of the sample) + smooth (granular) + swing. These parameters are unleashed against a sequence that you’ll likely never fully control – but that will never feel like it’s simply on autopilot, either. You can then load your samples into three players, which can be conceived as bass + clap/tom/snare + hat or something else entirely.

It may sound out of control, but “control” in the MIDI sense is essential. You can control step probability with MIDI velocity, tap in sequences with MIDI notes, and record playable automation with MIDI CCs from your hardware encoders. Pete has worked out a lovely template for Native Instruments’ Maschine controller, for instance.

ParamDrum, then, becomes a factory for variations. It allows you to iterate through plenty of results you don’t like to the one that’s perfect, for production or performance.

ParamDrum is a cheap US$12.50, though you do need a copy of Reaktor 5 (also included in Komplete) to use it. The upside is, it’s editable, and you get Pete’s immaculately well-organized patch macros, so it’s something you can modify easily or use as a model for your own patches.

Full details on Pete’s noisepages page, Modulations, which is also a new repository for his thoughts on sound design, Reaktor patching, SuperCollider learning, and other music technological geekery.

ParamDrum
modulations@noisepages

Planet ParamDrum

The other cool thing about ParamDrum in our throwaway technological world is that it’s already started to attract a little community of users.

Loopy C, master of strange sounds, has turned ParamDrum into his personal “hyperdrummer” for a track called Jah Frazzin Zooks, which he describes in a kind of experimental abstract poetry:

‘Frippish’, vari-tempo spectralisms meet Ornette Coleman-influenced electronica, hyperperformance machines jamming in the cafe at the end of the Universe (which for some reason look like fractal vaginas? (above)). Duo form.

The full track can be heard at his blog:
Jah Frazzin Zooks

Brettwiththedobro has a screencast (above) showing his own rig, with custom samples and the combination of Kore and Reaktor for control. (If you’re interested in the Kore and Reaktor combination, Pete’s previeous video tutorial is a great place to start.

This is a screen capture of Peter Dines Reaktor ensemble ParamDrum. I replaced the samples with my own kitchen/dobro sample map and hooked it into Kore to control various parameters. Fun, weird loops are a cinch.

Pete is also working with me on OpenSoundControl implementation in ParamDrum, which could enable cross-country ParamDrum collaboration, and via a project I’m building, visualization of parameters in Processing. Stay tuned.

AudioMulch 2.0 live patching screencast from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Wonderful things come from Australia. Developer Ross Bencina has released AudioMulch 2.0, the audio patching environment, now on both Mac and Windows.

Audiomulch is all pretty in black now with a new UI. But why is it special? AudioMulch has always been distinguished in its quick workflow, its ready-to-use objects that allow sophisticated patches with relatively simple structures, and its idiosyncratic soundmakers. The Metasurface multi-parameter controller is also a favorite.

The price is higher, which may scare away some – US$189, or $89 upgrade. There’s a 60-day trial that you can try out.

But the best part of this launch is that, instead of releasing a flashy demo with pans over girls in bikinis or booming drum beats and type flying through that says something like “THE FUTURE OF MUSIC IS NOW … HOLD THE SOUND IN YOUR FIST … BE THE MUSIC … WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?”, they just released a video showing someone making a piece of music. (What a concept!)

The video at top is a live-patching video, and it really reveals how, powerful as many interactive music environments may be, having some objects that get straight to what you want musically makes a real difference. (That’s something to keep in mind even as you create macros or code in other environments, too, I think.)

I like the idea of other people doing live-patching videos that work as music and not just tech demos, not only in AudioMulch but whatever your tool of choice may be.

If you give AudioMulch 2 a try, let us know what you think.

http://www.audiomulch.com

Loops have gotten an unfortunate reputation as being a stand-in for real musicians or real musicianship – perhaps because, too often, they are. That’s why it’s always refreshing to see a discussion of how looping can incorporate musical technique. Like many electronic musicians, I have zero background in drumming; I’m a keyboardist and was trained in Classical Piano. But then, part of the gift of being a composer is getting inside the heads of musicians who play instruments you can’t. And when it comes to understanding rhythm, there’s a limitless supply of work to explore from around the world.

Ryan Gauss writes us to share a blog that’s all about rhythm and drumming. Blogging can be a distraction from music making, but in this case, he’s using it to help be even more disciplined in building technique:

Every day I record and post a new drum loop (with a link to the Logic session and .wav files). I organize the beats by category (rock hip hop, jazz etc) and try to change up the production style with every loop.

So far, there’s a terrific piece on “linear drumming” – a style in which you hit only one part of your kit at a time. (Now, this really inspires me in terms of some of the rhythmic sequencing ideas I’ve been thinking about – I’ll have to explore. Maybe I can build a linear pattern sequencer.) See notation at top.

Linear drumming for dummies. | ryangruss.com

There’s also a fantastic video from drummer Shawn Pelton, who to me really exemplifies the marriage of great drumming and sophisticated use of technology (Ableton Live, in this case).

Shawn Pelton’s studio | ryangruss.com

I’ll be reading this site, for sure. Thanks, Ryan.

http://ryangruss.com/ “Fresh Drum Loops Made Daily”
(question – are they best hot, as with Krispy Kreme?)

In the midst of the US election, I missed an important announcement: the smash hit Buddha Machine, a mysterious little $25 gadget that generates its own ambient music, has a sequel. You might think of Buddha Machine 2 as Buddha Machine Pro. New features:

• A bigger sonic palette, with nine loops
• Pitch bend (which the creators describe as being “like a whammy bar for your buddha box”)
• Three colors (well, it is a consumer product of sorts!)

Expanding the sonic capabilities will be a welcome change. The packaging is wonderful, with a symbolically-appropriate lotus flower and a round hole that lets the speaker poke through. The only thing that makes me not immediately excited about the Buddha Box is that I’m really fond of open platforms, and this seems like a closed box – albeit a really beautiful one. While the RjDj project looks promising, the vision of a box that streams endless generative musical ideas to you, even on the new Mac-like iPods and iPhones, still hasn’t yet been realized. Of course, I do love the idea of a musical object that is meditative.

I haven’t gotten my hands on Son of Buddha Machine just yet, but here’s some good reading below. And at $25, it’ll be hard to resist picking one up. Check your hip indie record store or head to Cargo UK, Rough Trade (UK, which has a great write-up, too), or Forced Exposure (US).

Buddha Machine 2 released: Ambient device [Digital Tools]

Official site from FM3 collective

Hands On: Buddha Machine 2 [Gear Log, which does a real mini-review of the box]

And here it is in action. It sounds utterly fantastic – it really is a musical work of art, as an object:

Looping and scratching audio is so familiar at this point that it may be hard to know what more can be done with the concept. But I like the looks of Touch the Wave, a new iPod touch / iPhone app. It gets back to basics with some fairly simple audio looping and repitching. The twist: it uses multiple, color-coded loop points, and has the ability (if I’m looking at this right) to download audio from URLs. The app is the work of Yuki Yasoshima, and it’s free.

Touch the Wave on iTunes App Store (in Japanese, but available outside Japan, happily!)

Touch the Wave developer page @ Objective Audio

Jordan Harris, who sent this in, writes:

I stumbled across a really awesome free application for the iPhone 3g called "Touch The Wave."  All of the information on the developer’s website, and on the iTunes store, is in Japanese.  But it’s a pretty useful application that allows you to loop and scratch audio with multiple loop points. It is in the iTunes store if you search for "Touch The Wave"  But you’ll have to play with it for a bit as there are no English instructions or descriptions…  It comes with one sample song, but supposedly you can upload your own tracks.  I’ve been playing with it a little off and on, but it’s mostly just trial and error.

So, I have two questions for you:

1. Anyone with Japanese language skills care to translate some of the instructions? (Even if just a simple excerpt!)

2. What might be some alternative ways of approaching sample playback, looping, and warping?

One interesting take on audio warping is the free Nintendo DS app repeaterDS:

repeaterDS Project Page

It’s a simple idea – repeat length on the vertical axis, playback offset on the horizontal access. In other words, you set the start point and the length of the loop, the two critical looping parameters. Doing that via a different interface changes the results, and, nicely enough, repeaterDS makes the whole affair glitchy and unpredictable.

Other interesting sample interfaces you’ve seen? Anyone with fun Max/Pd patches, etc., you’d like to show off?

Our friend David Battino has the solution, and while it’s a simple trick, it wound up being the deal-maker for buying Korg’s cute little “dynamic phrase synth”:

What loosened my credit card was a secret hack Korg revealed during fact-check: If you power up the Kaossilator while holding down the Tap and Loop Rec buttons, the loop memory doubles from two bars to four. That may not sound like much, but it gives you time to set up tension and release; I find four-bar loops just breathe better.

Video and step-by-step instructions at O’Reilly Digital Media. Now, how can I do polyrhythms and larger phrase cycles? Hey, where’d everyone go?

Got other Kaossilator tricks? Let us know in comments.

Fennesz and Lillevan at Mutek 2008 from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

I met with Christian Fennesz and video artist Lillevan in the green room of the Theatre de Nouveau Monde, where they would be performing together at A/Visions 3. Fennesz had no idea what visuals Lillevan would be using that evening, but they say they have known each other for a long time and there is an element of trust there. The trust was well placed because their performance was lovely and memorable, often using oceanic and watery themes projected over the top of both performers as they stood in front of a screen.

We started right into discussing technical affairs, such as Fennesz’s live performance setup. In concert, he uses the Max MSP lloopp patch, available at http://lloopp.klingt.org/plone/lloopp/

PD: I’m going to ask you about geeky things for a moment –

F: OK [laughs] – no problem –

PD: What is it about lloopp as an instrument that attracts you?

F: I think it lets you improvise in the best way. That’s what it is. I’m still not very satisfied with the controller aspect – this is something I still have to work on.

PD: Using MIDI controllers and things like that?

F: Yeah. I didn’t even start doing that, you know.

PD: Have you tried Kore, from Native Instruments?

F: No, but that sounds interesting to me. I use Reaktor a lot in studio. I use a lot of Native Instruments software, but not for live playing.

(note: our discussion of Reaktor specifics is available here)

PD: So when you’re in the studio you use other software, other synthesis techniques –

F: Oh yeah, basically everything that’s available. My main working, composing tool is Logic. And I do use all the plugins, all the Hipnos and Pluggos and whatever – I do use Reaktor, I do use Guitar Rig.

PD: But when you go on the road, you bring the lloopp software on a laptop, a guitar, and pedals… mixers?

F: I’m always asking for a Mackie mixer. So it’s a quite simple setup.

PD: Do you combine lloopp with any other software of your own creation using Max / MSP?

F: Actually not, no, I just play guitar into it, and I use old guitar pedals [laughs] as extra effects, but basically I just use the lloopp patch as it is.

PD: When you’re playing live do you also have audio that you’ve prepared in advance?

F: Yes, I do, I have like a bank of samples and sounds that I always use, but as you might know, lloopp is pretty much freestyle, so it’s always sounding different. The mix is always a different one.

PD: About field recording – you’ve released field recordings in the past…

F: Well, that was just a title for an album. I’ve not been doing so many field recordings myself, you know… I just use it as a title. But I did a little bit of outdoor field recording, yes – but not as much as other people have – Chris Watson, for example, who’s also on the same label.

PD: While we’re on the subject of the Touch label, the last few releases you’ve been involved with on Touch have been on 7 inch vinyl, as well as digital download. Is that mostly being done for aesthetic reasons, or because of an economic aspect, where vinyl is something unique, a physical experience that can’t be ripped and downloaded?

F: It’s more an aesthetic aspect, because it’s not a good business for the label to release vinyl. Actually, they lose money doing that. But they really want to do it. And maybe with the download, they can get money back in… it’s really because of the love of the medium, you know – vinyl is just sounding different.

PD: You’ve got that particular warmth and sometimes a bit of crackle that comes from it…

F: Yeah… I’m not such a vinyl freak – but the Touch people are, and I’m happy to do it.

PD: On the Amoroso release, where you took Charles Matthews’ organ music, you used a light hand on the processing – a lot of the original sound of the organ is coming through – did you do other takes of it that were more heavily processed?

F: I did, but then I realized that what Philip Jeck was doing [with the same Matthews audio] was already so heavy, you know – big hardcore distorted sound and I thought I’d better do something that’s a little bit contrary to that.

PD: So you and Jeck knew what each other were doing?

F: Yes, I got an early mix of his contribution so I knew what he was doing.

PD: But you didn’t work with Jeck on a compositional level. Are you interested in doing that?

F: Oh yeah. Could be interesting. We played together a few times live. I remember there was one festival in Portugal where we met and we decided OK, we’ll do this together, and it was really great.

PD: The release is called a tribute to composer Arvo Part. Is that one of the compositions of Part that Matthews was playing? And did you try to maintain the same sort of aesthetic?

F: Yes, that was the composition, yes. I did. I was trying to keep, somehow, the main harmonies of this composition, the main chords, and I guess I transposed it, but it was still the same harmony changes. Because I thought that was the essence of the composition.

PD: When you’re in the studio, let’s say you’re working on some guitar audio you’ve recorded – what’s your workflow like? Do you tend to concentrate on the audio you already have, or do you do overdubs…?

F: It can be anything. Sometimes I just use an acoustic guitar just as it is because I want to have it like that. But sometimes I use a guitar sound as a basis for experimentation.

PD: When you worked with Ryuichi Sakamoto on the Cendre release, what was the collaborative process like? Were you treating audio, or did you each bring your own elements of audio to the work?

F: For example he might send a piano track. And I did some overdubs on that, sent it back, and then he would work on that again and send it back to me. So it was basically always sending back and forth, adding things and mixing things.

PD: So you were sending audio back and forth over the Internet? Or… on reel to reel tape?

F: [laughs] No, not that. We just uploaded stuff on our servers, and exchanged like that. But then we met in the studio in New York and finished it.

PD: And what was the recording process like, live? How much was improvisational and how much was scored?

F: I developed new material that goes together with his piano playing. So I really composed music for what he sent to me. I was playing new stuff and recorded that. It was almost scored, actually. It was really designed and composed stuff.

PD: And once you had the material recorded, what was the post production like – mostly neatening, editing –

F: Editing, lots of editing. We met in his studio in New York and Ryuichi’s got these fantastic speakers, German speakers, Geithain? Unbelievable. You hear everything.

PD: Sort of a microscope for sound.

F: Absolutely. So that was the process there, when we just listened back to everything and tried to polish, tried to edit here and there. Added a few things.

PD: About “On A Desolate Shore A Shadow Passes By” – the digital release – you have some very, very clear guitar, almost unprocessed. Together with your handling of the Matthews audio on Amoroso, does this represent a trend for you, of a lighter touch, less processing?

F: I don’t think so – it just felt right at the moment, and… I’m still interested in heavy processing [laughs]. But also at the moment very interested in classical recording techniques, like how to use a good microphone in a good room. And how to record an acoustic instrument in a perfect way. So I’m reading all those books and trying out all those things, so it might have been influenced at this time. But at the same time I’m still very much interested in digital processing.

PD: But now you’re starting to explore capture techniques – expensive condenser mikes, tube preamps, things like that? Any favorites? Are you using vintage equipment?

F: Yeah, I do, actually. I have a pair of Telefunken V-72 preamps. They’re fantastic. I do use old Siemens filters also, sometimes.

PD: What is it about the Telefunken preamps? What do they do to the audio for you?

F: It’s valve preamps. I have the impression they make it sound almost 3-D, you know? There’s more room, suddenly. But I also just got this wonderful little API mixer. Sounds just as good as the Telefunken. Maybe even better. API is a classic console company, like Nieve.

PD: I’m going to finish up with the desert island question I’m asking everyone at Mutek. Let’s say you were on a desert island, with lots of fish, coconuts, lots of leisure time. No electricity. Would you still make music, and what would you make it with?

F: [laughs] Of course I would want to make music, and I would use a guitar. Just an acoustic guitar and I’m fine.

Special Thanks to Dimitri Nasrallah of Mutek for arranging the interview

BeatBurner, using innovative wave shaping and filtration methods, turns innocent drum beats, loops or sounds into new, fresh and vibrant audio parts for you to incorporate into your musical arrangements. BeatBurner comes with a myriad of sample loops to get you started but it doesn’t stop there, you can mangle, whittle or process any sound you want! Full automation and preset morphing means there are literally no limits to the soundscapes you can create.

Beatburner is NOT made with Synthedit.

Beatburner blog, downloads, and donation link, via DigitalLoFi

The plug-in also includes a healthy selection of bass and drum loops to get you playing right away.

I like having some free software to add to the arsenal — you get to experiment with some unusual soundmakers without the pressure of, you know, having a financial investment on the line. And if you appreciate the developer’s work, send a donation. There are still quite a few tools worth paying for, but I’ve gotten some musical ideas jump-started with the free stuff, too.

This isn’t the only free plug-in from Fat-Ass (aka CodeAudio, and yes, that’s their real name — I’m not just being mean or something). There are a whole bunch of synth and effects plugs available for free, some quite nice.

Just keeping score: on Windows, you can grab the rich Acusticaudio Nebula Hispasonic edition, a faux Commodore 64, the unique and powerful Open Circuit sampler, many of the excellent xoxos plug-ins and the highly-controllable Mechaverb, and the now-open source discoDSP HighLife sampler from the late Argu, all for free. There are a zillion more great choices from Adrian Anders, as well.

We got an interesting discussion going on the last free round-up here. It almost became a boring platform war, but for the most part, it went more along the lines of asking, honestly, why is there so much more free stuff for Windows? (And 7oi showed up, whose music I really love, a sign that it wasn’t just another boring platform thread.)

The conclusion for Mac users:

1. Check out Studiotoolz to track down hundreds of free Mac tools. There’s still not the quantity or quality of what’s on Windows, but there’s easily enough to distract you from doing any real work — erm, I mean, round out your creative arsenal.

2. Look at the open source SonicBirth for making your own plug-ins, along the lines of SynthEdit and SynthMaker on Windows. If Mac developers start to embrace this tool, it should deepen the available options