If you want some hope that good things can happen online, look no further than Designing Sound, a blog/online magazine by Miguel Isaza and Jake Riehle. They’ve built a place where pro legends regularly rub shoulders with newcomers eager to learn more.

Now, Miguel has a new site, entitled Sonic Terrain, that promises to do the same for the “art, science, and craft of field recording.” Whereas Designing Sound focused on sound for visual media, Sonic Terrain is really for anyone who wants to take a mic out into the wilds, whether a composer, an amateur, an ecologist – anyone.

The first post is already a must-read, taking on three “missions” for packing your gear:

• Packing a Handheld Recorder
• Stealth Recording
• Packing a Microphone Windscreen

Co-founder Nathan Moody is our kind of artist, with a background in multitouch design as well as multimedia, sound, and music. His existing blog has adventures with parabolic mics, toy helicopters, and much more – all with copious SoundCloud-hosted sound example:

http://www.noisejockey.net/blog/

Nathan can take you into a glorious dawn world of ibises and cows in the Sierra Nevada:

Ibises and Cows in Sierra Valley by noisejockey

So, go enjoy!

http://www.sonic-terrain.com/

Twitter / Facebook

(Incidentally, while CDM hosts Designing Sound, we’re otherwise unaffiliated… the template looks like CDM because I installed it as a default choice on our server.)

Stewart Guitars Stow-Away (via)

Detach this sucker’s neck and you can fit the guitar into a briefcase, not to mention terrify your friends. (Oh, for the love of God, you broke your guitar!) Bonus: heightened terror alerts won’t make people think you’re carrying a gun. They make a similar model called the Road-Runner.

But while we’re at it, what else could you put in your mobile guitar studio carry bag? Here are a few suggestions from CDM posts past:

1. Vox DA5 miniature practice amp (see comments for similar models)
2. Fender keychain pocket tuner
3. iPod Nano with iRocker pocket tuner, metronome, virtual chord book, fingerings, and scales
4. Treo running miniMusic software for scoring, composing, beats
5. Laptop running Guitar Rig 2, made easier by Guitar Rig’s bundled, compact interface/foot pedal combo. And soon, Intel MacBooks should be supported

Guitar and bass players, what’s in your bag?

Updated: Kevin of the Nettles sends us details of his rig, with some terrific tips for an all-in-one music rig for the road.

Laptop bags are too often clumsily made and clunky to carry, but the Nerdbag could quickly become your favorite day-to-day laptop case. The 15″ version fits my PowerBook 15″ snugly; versions are also available in 16″ and 17″ dimensions. (The 15″ is a bit too snug for my 15″ Toshiba PC, so check the dimensions on Ableton’s site and measure your machine.)

The men of Ableton here in NYC both bought Airbags for themselves, and love them, but don’t worry that you’ll look like you got the bag free as an ad gimmick from a trade show. The Ableton logo is understated, in an individually-numbered tag and patch on the shoulder strap; the primary feature of the limited-edition Ableton bag is a sexy green interior and jet-black exterior color scheme.

Using a custom-crafted bag like the airbag is an entirely different experience if you’re used to mass-produced bags. Everything on the airbag is beautifully made, from perfectly-executed stitching to velcro attachments. That’s not just an aesthetic issue: I put a lot of stress on my bags, like many mobile musicians, and most cheap bags simply fall apart. My airbag shows virtually no signs of wear after months of hard use.

Materials are fantastic, too: the strap is made of the same high-grade material as seatbelts, and the bag itself is made of luxurious recycled materials. Airbag uses fabrics from repurposed air mattresses, rubber dinghies, and other unlikely sources. The result is exceptional padding for your laptop, and a bag everyone you meet will want to stroke inside and out. (Whether that’s a good thing or not, I suppose, is up to you.)

As a Manhattanite, I subscribe to the “one bag is never enough” philosophy, so I still have other bags for carrying additional gear. The Airbag itself is best for fitting just a laptop plus an accessory or two, like the power adapter, headphones, a paper notebook, and a Dell Axim PDA, in my case. I have other bags that work better for heavier loads. As a light bag you won’t be embarrassed to wear out, though, the airbag is perfect.

The bags are available for EUR 129 / US$149 (slightly more for 16″ / 17″); that may sound pricey, but in four years this bag will still be going while a lesser bag has fallen apart. It’s a great buy for a beautifully-crafted piece of luggage.

Nerdbag Ableton Limited-Edition [Ableton.com]

Airbag Craftworks Site including other bag designs

The airbag craftworks folks themselves are fascinating people and electronic music lovers, and they have an extensive line beyond the Ableton bag. I’ll be talking to them about their products in a coming story. In the meantime, snag those Ableton bags while you can — or check out the other airbag offerings.

Sure, you could raid your local camera shop for something similar, but then you wouldn’t have the Moog logo. And it’s just US$59. Deliveries start January 1, so if it goes on my gift guide, it’ll have to be for Orthodox Christmas / St. Nicholas Day. (Or my birthday, January 13.) Pic of the innards after the break.

Moog Multi-Purpose Gig Bag [Preorder from Moogmusic.com]

In other news, this is CDM story number 1,000! Woo-hoo! Watch for our best stories of 2005 once we get near New Year’s Eve.

Live 5 is here, and it’s a major upgrade to everyone’s favorite digital audio workstation-you-can-perform with. And we’ve got a bevy of other updates from Ableton.com: Download the upgrade and take advantage of a special deal on Live + Operator, watch behind-the-scenes and tutorial movies, download the demo version of 5 (which has only a save disable; you can otherwise use it free for an unlimited time), tour the new version, or — here’s a nifty bit — check out the uber-hip nerdbag custom-made for Ableton. Wrap that laptop in recycled materials. (Rubber dinghies and air mattresses get a second lease of life, your PowerBook gets a second lease on cool. Excellent.)

Oh, yeah, and last but not least, Friday night is the Ableton 5 launch party here in NYC at Tonic, complete with visuals and live music.

See also CDM’s take on what’s new and why you’ll be hearing even more mash-ups than you are now. But don’t think this is a toy for mash-up artists: this software will continue to appear at a club or studio near you. More on all these stories soon . . . it’s suppertime at CDM HQ.

The ThinAmp from AXL,
introduced in January at NAMM, is a portable amp packed into the size
of a laptop: only 2" thick and just 5 lbs. (!) You can literally fit it
into a laptop bag — in fact, you can probably fit it and your laptop
into a laptop bag. The amp is geared at guitarists, but Synthtopia reviews it and finds it suitable for laptop, too.

Of course, you can't expect a whole lot of sound out of a 2" amp; while
it has EQ and DSP presets for reverb, vibrato, flanger, chorus, and the
like, the ThinAmp's sound will be a bit thin with just 10W of power. On
the other hand, for US$140 street and at this size, this is pretty
tempting.

The folks at Novation, the synth company now owned
by Focusrite, have sent along some images of their X-Station
keyboards which are finally shipping here in the US. In addition to new
keyboards with more keys, the company has now formally announced
specially-designed bags for the X-Stations as we first glimpsed at AES
in October. The 25-key Novation bag does look noticeably larger (but
slimmer, interestingly) than M-Audio's Oxygen Tank.