Native Instruments is releasing some cheaper ways of getting at their software guitar modeler, Guitar Rig, in the form of a cheaper software version and a hardware bundle:

• Guitar Rig 3 XE is a "lite" version of Guitar Rig, focused on the basics — 5 guitar/bass amps, 12 cabinets, and 21 effects. It also some of the "helper" modules from Guitar Rig, including a metronome, tapedeck, and tuner — but no looping module, which is one of my favorites. (See the full list.) US$99 on its own.
• Guitar Session bundles the LE software with Cubase 4 LE, some pop drums for KORE player via a soundpack, and the Session I/O audio hardware. US$250 for the bundle, available June 1 worldwide.

Native Instruments remains the unchallenged heavyweight of instruments and effects. Apple’s Logic Studio 8 recently got a formidable upgrade and a big price drop (US$499), but its bundled instruments and effects, behind cosmetic improvements, are largely unchanged from previous versions. Cakewalk, Digidesign and others have also gotten in the ring, but no one can match up to the insanely massive collection of sound production and mangling in NI’s software. So, when NI offers an upgrade, we notice. I’ll be meeting up with NI next week at the AES show for a full preview of the new KOMPLETE kitchen-sink bundle and updated individual apps (plus KORE 2, due in November), but here’s a quick look.

• New Sampler: KONTAKT 3 is the latest version of NI’s flagship sampler, and in terms of raw breadth and depth of features, Kontakt appears to remain at the top of the heap. New in this version: a 1000-instrument, 33 GB sample library, a new looping/slicing/syncing Wave Editor, new envelopes, new amp and cabinet emulations, better browsing, and more. I’m curious to see how the Performance View and the updated KORE stack up to OnStage in Logic 8 (or even what it’s like using both together).
• New Guitar Effects: GUITAR RIG 3 adds new amp models, new matched cabinets, new effects (tape echo and ring mod!), and more. Guitar effects competition is brisk, but Guitar Rig’s edge to me has been its range of sound possibilities, straight out to the bizarre/experimental.
• Addition of Massive: MASSIVE is NI’s latest soft synth, especially geared for “sonic impact” (read, great basses and leads), with drag-and-drop, semi-modular sound creation.
• Lots of updates: Refreshed versions of previous synths include Absynth 4, Akoustik Piano, Battery 3, B4 II, Elektrik Piano, FM8, PRO-53, and Reaktor 5. With the exception of Reaktor, most of these have gotten feature improvements lately, and all have been updated for Vista and Intel Macs.

Rax, the clever audio effect and instrument host for Mac, got a major update last year with performance rigs, custom visualizer support, and a slick UI designed by plasq. It’s an ideal tool for loading up some instruments and effects and playing on your Mac, especially if you want software that gets out of your way while you play another instrument or sing and don’t need a full app like Logic or Live onstage. But it never caught on with Mac users, even after I wrote a glowing review in Macworld. And it has certainly been overshadowed by more popular plasq products for the general Mac market, like Comic Life and the upcoming Skitch. So it was clear this unknown gem needed a new home.

Happily, Rax has now changed hands to another of our favorite small developers, Audiofile Engineering. Their Wave Editor has won over CDM’s game composer / contributor Brent, so we’ll be curious to see how they handle Rax. They’ll be supporting existing customers (few of them as there are out there, I expect there’s a good chance they’re reading this). Their 2.1.0 update is a minor release to bring Rax into the AE fold:

Ed.: Our friend Wallace wanders in search of truly transcendent software use, and he’s taking the leap to GURU. Expect a review soon, but here’s why we’re interested — especially with a welcome update arriving free. -PK.

FXpansion has released the long-awaited Guru 1.5 update, which fixes numerous outstanding bugs and incorporates almost 100 new features. What’s amazing is that they’re offering this update for free to existing users. Again, this is another case of a company that could have slapped a major new version number on it and charged at least a modest fee for the update to existing users, and it’s evidence of FXpansion’s generosity and commitment to their customers that this update is being offered for free.

Among the new features:

• Expanded audio export options, with options to render pads, tracks, engines or full mixes, with drag n drop to the host application or even back inside Guru for further mangling. I can see this being seriously useful for loop slicing and mangling
• Expanded slicer functionality with greater precision and a new velocity implementation
• Adjustable randomizer with options to control the amount and depth of randomization
• New sample options for reversing samples, new layer modes and pre delays for fine tuning
• Improved file browser functionality
• Expanded sample library
• Windows Vista & multi-core support
• Expanded keyboard support so every function in Guru can be almost completely controlled without the mouse
• Widely expanded MIDI implementation, with much more control over UI elements
• Drop-out free audio engine, allowing for seamless transitions between kits while previewing

In short, not a whole lot of radically new functionality, but the workflow enhancements and expansion of existing functionality make this update a must-have for existing users, and will likely be enough to tip the fence sitters. I’ve used Guru on a friends machine, and while I really dug it, it just seemed to be missing a few things here and there. With this update, they’ve addressed all those problems by listening to their users on what could (and needed to be) improved. Consider me officially off the fence. When Guru was first announced, it held the promise of becoming the ultimate software beatbox. With the 1.5 update, Guru has officially arrived.

New in 1.5

Apple’s GarageBand 08, unveiled today, focuses on addressing two major areas: for beginners, making entry into the program easier, and for experienced users, fixing some holes in previous versions. Despite its user-friendly interface and the fact that it comes free with new Apple computers, many average Mac users just didn’t dig into previous versions of this music creation tool. A new “Magic GarageBand” mode is clearly aimed at getting better saturation of this tool. The remaining features, while not necessarily earth-shaking, appear to seek to make GarageBand more well-rounded for music making by inheriting tools from Soundtrack Pro (multi-take editing, visual EQ), and fixing existing complaints (automation).

This is just a preview of what’s new, not a review. I’m curious to hear what you think, though, because it seems these two directions are very different, and sum up the challenge “beginner” programs face — who, exactly, is a beginner, and what do they want? GarageBand 08 represents very different ends of the spectrum, as you’ll see.

Here’s what Apple says is new (actual hands-on with the program still to come):

Magic GarageBand: (That’s really what it’s called.) Select a genre, and GarageBand will walk you through adding an ensemble of virtual instruments. The eye candy is slick, and this should definitely take away any excuse a total newcomer might have for not getting into music making right away. But do you really need a wizard to tell you what should go in a country ensemble? (What’s that thing called? That thing you bang on? With sticks? Oh, yeah, drums! Now what about that other thing … that thing that’s like a board. A board covered with keys.)

Here’s a blast from the past — an algorithmic compositional blast from the past, that is. M is a unique piece of software for “interactive composition.” With patterns, cycles, and conducting options, you can create algorithmically-generated music, adjusting various parameters for sophisticated results rather than sequencing directly. It’s a totally different approach to working, something that’s easier to experience than to describe. M launched way back in 1987 and eventually support Atari, Amiga, Mac, and Windows; it was a big hit in the years afterward. The creators were David Zicarelli (now with Cycling ‘74, and a sort of father to Cycling’s Max/MSP), John Offenhartz, Antony Widoff, and Joel Chadabe. (Check out the whole history.) I saw it for the first time at a summer program at Oberlin and loved it immediately. Now, with a computer stacked full of soft synths and the recurring desire to get out of my head, compositionally, I think I actually have more use for it in 2007.

It’s not very often that vintage software gets update
d with current tech while retaining its original interface, but that’s exactly what Cycling ‘74 has done with M 2.7. Intel compatibility means it can run on your brand-new Mac Pro, but the angular throwback interface will make it look like a Mac II. (Got a good System 7 skin, anyone?) But the real story here is Core MIDI support. It allows you to plug M into your existing soft synths. Imagine M plus Logic’s Sculpture, or combined with a monster Max/MSP patch.

M 2.7 @ Cycling ‘74

It’s great to see someone recognize that it’s not only about the upgrade that’s just around the corner. Virtual Console games are selling by the millions on Nintendo’s Wii. Hopefully creative technology, even in limited form, could be next. I’ll be testing M soon; I’ll let you know how it goes.

PC users/Atari lovers: See details in comments on the freeware Atari version. But what’s this about an emulator? Time to scour eBay for an Atari ST, I think.

Sibelius 5 is a big upgrade to the notation tool, now part of Avid. The biggest change of all: real VST and Audio Unit plug-in support on Mac and Windows. This merging of audio software and scoring software has been a long time coming. We saw limited support in Finale, but Sibelius actually fully supports racks of VST and AU instruments and effects to use on your scores, integrating with the Sibelius mixer for playback control, and merging into groups for control of sections of your orchestra/ensemble. There’s even MIDI control: the Sib site says “… if you have an M-Audio keyboard you can use its own faders and transport buttons to control Sibelius’s playback.” Wow, terrific! (Um, I’m guessing that will work for any MIDI keyboard once you assign the proper controllers, not just M-Audio hardware — but still good news.)

In case you want out-of-the-box instruments and not just plug-ins, Sibelius now includes 2 GB of orchestral, band, and other instruments from Garritan and others.

Also new in this version:

Ardour, the free, open-source audio workstation for Mac and Linux, received a major 2.0 release on April 30. Now, this is the point where you’d normally expect to see the same, boring list of feature improvements that commercial manufacturers release as bullets in each release. But when I asked the Ardour project lead Paul Davis to say something about the new version, he responded with something — well, unorthodox:

Audio on Linux sucks, you can’t make music on it, there are no soft synths, my plug-ins don’t run, nobody can configure Linux, my hardware doesn’t work on Linux, it can’t open Pro Tools sessions, it doesn’t do MIDI sequencing which makes it about 10 years behind the curve, Reaper is better and changing faster, it doesn’t run on Windows, why bother?

Sorry to disappoint those of you ready to troll in comments; Paul just took your ammunition.
Ardour 2.0 Release

Whew! I’m glad we got that out of the way. Now, having dispensed with the typical PR hype (yeah, that should silence any comment trolls), the 2.0 “bullet points” actually do look quite nice:

And you thought all Max/MSP/Jitter could do was make sound and visuals. Stephen Lumenta writes in to let us know he’s created a Max patch for searching various DRM-free music stores:

i just saw the drm/other music thread. maybe i have too much time on my hand but i built a little max standalone app that will search drm-free stores (juno, bleep, 3beatdigital, emusic, othermusic). maybe useful, maybe just for fun.

Mostly interesting as a demonstration of some of Max’s more unorthodox capabilities, but fun nonetheless. You can download a free version for Mac standalone (Universal Binary), or a patch source that will work on either platform, from his Max page:

sbl - Max/MSP Code

There wasn’t a Windows standalone version, so I built one myself (no guarantees about whether this works or not):

DRM-Free for Windows (standalone)

While you’re at Stephen’s site, check out his Pluggo SBL Vintage Collection, a nice set of glitchy plug-ins, one of which earns extra points for having a face in its UI. More self-effacing description: “Some plug-ins to get that vintage glitchy sound people tend to be after. Drop them on your tracks and expect instant generic gratification. But don’t be fooled that anyone cares about your dsp efforts.”

Mac Universal Binary + Windows XP versions, free, and another demonstration of what’s possible building plug-ins with Max/MSP. Here they are, pictured in Ableton Live. Boy, there’s a lot of overlap of interest between Ableton lovers and Cycling ‘74 gurus. If only those two companies would work together on something — oh, yeah. They are.

Previously:
Berrtil, Free Circuit-Bent Modeling Plug-in. Plug-in Smash. Sound Crush.
As Other Music, Others Embrace Downloads, is Big, DRM-Laden Online Music Out?
Where Do You Get Your DRM-Free Music?

Bertill is an insanely glitchy distortion unit based on models of circuit-bent hardware, as a free VST for Windows and Mac (Universal Binary). Actually, whether you should really believe that or not, I’m not certain: I’m only vaguely sure of the relationship of the massive digital mangling this plug-in causes and the obscure Handycam shots uploaded to YouTube of a circuit-bent setup. Regardless, the thing sounds wonderfully awful. The knobs are straightforward and will demolish your sound entirely if you like; dial different “types” for a variety of different settings. Some of the higher type numbers are actually fairly subtle. Good stuff.

Shuriken: Berrtil Distortion unit

Here’s what it can sound like hooked up to a pad from Sytrus:

berrtil.mp3

Sure, theoretically you should use real circuit-bent hardware for this. But this is fun anyway.

The plug-in is the creation of a Swedish Betabugs Audio vet going by the name Shuriken, which is apparently a ninja star. (Nice domain!) Lots of other good things on the site. Here’s the circuit-bent setup, though you mostly see it rather than hear it. Use your imagination: