Too much comment here will spoil the fun, so enjoy – particularly with Dubstep how-to videos becoming, bizarrely, some of the most viral things online. (Hmmm… it’s almost like kids are interested in producing a wildly-popular music genre. Strange. But I hope you’ll stick around for CDM’s new Csound Drones That Hurt Your Ears series, comi– hey, where did everyone go?)

I at least can see lovers and haters of the genre now known as “dubstep” (not to be confused with the previous genre known as dubstep) finding this amusing. But should I turn off comments, just in case?

Thanks to Berliner and serious sonic scientist Martin Backes for the find. Yes, Martin, I am stalking your Facebook page. In the blogger “journalism” field, we call that “research.”

I’m not one to post every single minor software update, but with the latest handful of free upgrades for Native Instruments software, I think it’s safe to say the 64-bit age has come to the Mac musician. Windows developer Cakewalk heralded just this sort of advance for years on the PC side, with largely little company (even beyond the music world), but today, the technology is finally a reality for average users.

64-bit computing means a marginal performance boost on capable machines and more flexible memory usage. The 32-bit Mac has had an edge over a 32-bit PC – each application can access up to 4 GB, provided available physical memory. But with Snow Leopard and a 64-bit Mac, you can finally, say, take advantage of all of the 8GB or more you might have on your machine. And Windows users, likewise, can load up their machines and fly past the crushing limit – slightly below 4GB – that impacted their entire system. (Linux users can run 64-bit, too, or a PAE kernel that nets the same result as that 32-bit Mac.)

Back to the updates: both Mac and Windows users should benefit from bug fixes to FM8, Massive, Guitar Rig, and Absynth. You’ll find the free update on NI’s Service Center utility, or heading to the updater on the website.

But the 64-bit aspect is the biggest news here. Since standalone mode is supported, you don’t even need a 64-bit capable host like Logic or Cubase (cough, 32-bit-only Ableton). That brings the current roster of NI products with 64-bit products to the latest versions of:

Battery, Guitar Rig, Kontakt, Maschine, Massive, FM8, Absynth

…and drivers for all the Audio DJ line and Traktor Kontrol hardware. Unfortunately, that does leave a lot of 32-bit only stuff, especially if you haven’t upgraded lately, but you still have a significant number of choices.

Now, the collective wisdom of the readership of this site is far greater than my own. Any particular software you wish was 64-bit that isn’t? Has 64-bit software meant any real-world improvements in music production for you? Let us know.

Artists Leisure-B and Usselino collaborated on this Autechre-inspired audiovisual short, filled with pulsing geometric primitives. The work is a kind of A/V composition, the music arranged with abrupt, video-style edits. For fans of Native Instruments’ thick-sounding Massive synth, you also get some free preset downloads in the deal.

With Native Instruments’ software providing the sound palette, Ableton Live became a context for editing the music as you would video:

Leisure: “I tried to approach the composition as “sound design” as possible. Since the video was animated on the BPM (117) and rhythmical accents of “Vose On”, all I really had to do drum wise was find out which accents Usselino had used for his main video events. After creating the drums on those accents, most of the composition was just tweeking knobs and experimenting with note placement.

Since Ableton Live has excellent video support, I could just run the video in the loop region I was working in, and experiment with Native Instrument’s Massive’s great synthesizing capabilities. I usually start of with an init patch, and work my way towards the sound which I feel is fitting for the events in the video. The only exception to this rule however is the second bassline, which originates from Durk Kooistra’s WODAN bass, available for download in his 10 Free Massive Patches”

Watch the video, then check out the presets and more information:
10 Free Massive Patches
Cinema 4D meets Ableton Live: fret_1

More on the visual side, free Cinema4D download, on Create Digital Motion

Trifonic: Making Pads with Spectral Dronemaker from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Brian of the music production team Trifonic completes his two-part series on synthesizing sounds with Native Instruments Massive (which shows nicely here, though you could also translate these techniques to similar semi-modular synths). Part one from May covers oscillators, filters, and other features, further processed with a third-party plug; part two this week covers the performance editor and filters “to make sweet bass sounds.” (I like sweet and sour bass sounds, myself.) Check out the videos below.

What I love about Brian’s videos is that they’re very much connected to his way of working – more master class than dry curriculum – while still giving you a taste of the features you need to know in the tool. And since they are more compact, they’re a good way to tickle your creative sound design bones for a few minutes, then set you on a project, ideal for launching this weekend. You can follow them here:
http://nextstepaudio.com/

Massive is cool, but Mac users won’t want to miss the gems of plug-ins he mentions in the video at top. (I know I missed them — MacBook, boot!) Michael Norris’ SoundMagic Spectral is a collection of completely free-as-in-beer, Universal AU plug-ins which, true to the name, cover real-time spectral processing:
Included in SOUNDMAGIC SPECTRAL are the following plug-ins:

Spectral Averaging • Spectral Bin Shift • Spectral Blurring • Spectral DroneMaker • Spectral Emergence • Spectral Filterbank • Spectral Freezing • Spectral Gate and Hold • Spectral Gliding Filters • Spectral Granulation • Spectral Harmonizer • Spectral Partial Glide • Spectral Pitch Shift • Spectral Pulsing • Spectral Shimmer • Spectral Shuffle • Spectral Stretch • Spectral Tracing • Chorus • Comb Filter Bank • Grain Streamer • Idee Fixer • Mr Filterbank

http://www.sinevibes.com/experimental-audiounits/

Brian makes use of that DroneMaker, at top. Enjoy some production this weekend, folks! On to Massive…

Trifonic: Synthesis with NI’s Massive – Part 1 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Trifonic: Synthesis with NI’s Massive – Part 2 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Cellular AutoMidi is a generative music making app, making use of a modified version of the ever-popular Cellular Automata algorithm – a simple evolutionary model on a grid that works nicely for sequencers. (See, among many others, Lazyfish’s legendary NEWSCHOOL for Reaktor, and Audio Damage’s Automaton.)

Cellular Automata is nothing new, but here, you get to see it as an AIR/Flash app, which means a modular CA-based creation you can drop anywhere. (More on the cross-platform details after the jump.) And hey, if we can have countless step sequencers, why not countless cellular automata step sequencers? The project is developed by Leeds, England-based Flash developer Lawrie Cape.

It also deserves special mention for some nice sounds made with NI’s Massive synth, using FL Studio as host; see the video.

Cellular AutoMidi – Generative Audio Flash AIR App from Lawrie Cape on Vimeo.

Lawrie writes:

Each cell can be alive or dead. Once in a generation, each cell looks at it’s surrounding cells, and dies if it is lonely or overcrowded. If a dead cell has an optimum amount of neighbors, it will come to life! Each generation, all the cells which have come to life will sound a note. The notes are assigned based on the cell’s y position, and are all in the pentatonic scale.

There’s a few controls at the bottom which change how things work too.

Start/Stop – Starts/Stops the automation.
Load – Loads a pattern from the text box.
Export – Exports the current pattern to the clipboard. You can send it to friends, or save it for later, then load in with the load button.
Clear down – Stop and clear the current pattern.
Law Mode – An error when coding the cell rules gave this other odd mode.
Skip Audio – Just show the cell animations.
Sing Dead – Instead of singing the recently revived notes, sing for the recently deceased.
Note duration – Alter the system speed.
Also, along the top there are banks of preset systems. Click play to start a saved pattern, and click assign to assign the pattern currently displayed to that button. You can also trigger each pattern with the keyboard keys 1-8.

When you press Export, your pattern is automatically copied to the clipboard, so you can save it, or share it with people. Here’s a pattern I made – you can load it by pasting it into the load box, and pressing Load!

I’ve written a post about it on my blog here – http://www.lawriecape.co.uk/theblog/index.php/archives/735

And you can download the app there too.

What about MIDI function on different operating systems (Mac, Windows, Linux)?

Flash Midi Server is Processing based, but I’ve packaged it as Win and Mac apps in the Google Code download at – http://code.google.com/p/flash-midi-server/downloads/list
In the next couple of days, I’ll put together and test a Linux version, and hopefully release the Processing source code too – although as my first Processing project, I’m sure the code is pretty ropey.

So, give it a try, and maybe someone with some Processing MIDI skills can recommend some tweaks to MIDI operation. I think this will be particularly welcome on Linux, where the toolset is a bit leaner.

If you use it, let us know what you think or what you create!

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/

I love my job. I get to watch as Peter Dines, contributor on our Kore/Komplete site for NI, constantly cooks up brilliant ideas for sound design. His latest screencast plumbs the depths of Native Instruments’ Massive synth, which he uses in conjunction with Kore. We’ve already seen Peter make song arrangements out of morphing sequenced patches. Now, he focuses on preset design – and gives away some free presets for you to enjoy.

Feedback, Routing and Modulation in Massive from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Feedback, Routing and Modulation in Massive, with Free Patch Downloads [Kore@CDM]

Part of why playing with routing and modulation is such fun in Massive is that it has this semi-modular, drag-and-drop architecture. That’s something I’m gratified to say has been improving in soft synths in general; rather than simply emulating the interface of hardware synths, we’ve really seen some interesting ideas in how to design interfaces as software. I’d also include in this category instruments like Future Audio Workshop’s Circle, which I hope to look at a little more this month. Circle, in fact, was compared to Massive, but while they both have drag-and-drop, color-coded routings, the actual implementation is very different, they’re philosophically different, and sonically different.

Have a look, and let us know if you have your own thoughts on Massive, tips, questions, or anything else.

To really work with music software as an instrument, you have to focus on a set of tools and get deep into what they can do. Today, we’re launching the first of a limited series of minisites that lets us do that. It’s called Kore @CDM, devoted to NI’s Kore and Komplete lines. We’ve built a special blog which will feature regular tips on how to work with this set of tools, basic and advanced tutorials, and downloadable content, all free and open. (The contents of the site will be Creative Commons-licensed, so you’re free to share and modify what we do, with credit to the authors.)

Kore Minisite @CDM, http://kore.noisepages.com

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Why choose this product now?  I’ve felt really strongly, even having been critical of Kore’s first release, that Kore 2 has the potential to live up to its promise of creating a "meta-instrument" for working with sound and effects. Combined with the rest of the Komplete family, including Reaktor’s open-ended patching environment and the scriptable sampler Kontakt, NI has some deep tools — not perfect, not for everyone, but tools that matter to us. We want to really get into how to use them, and to develop a set of techniques and tools for others, both for sound design and live performance, in combination with hosts like Ableton Live. And this means not just doing stuff "by the book," but really seeing how far we can push these tools, sonically and in playability.

Kicking things off is Eoin Rossney, who talks about how to create feedback loops intentionally in Kore for special effects. It’s something mentioned in the manual, but there haven’t been instructions on how to accomplish it until now. Eoin takes that challenge on, and produces some really oddball sounds just by routing effects into themselves. Have a listen to the samples — just be sure to turn your speakers’ volume down first.

How to Route Feedback Loops in Kore – On Purpose [Kore @CDM]

Peter Dines, a Reaktor whiz and author of the Reaktor Tips blog, will also be writing and screencasting for us soon. Both Eoin and Peter have been CDM regulars, so it’s great to have them onboard.

Why we’re partnering with NI: So that we can provide as much content as we can for free, we’ve gotten sponsorship from Native Instruments to produce the site. But that doesn’t mean we want to make an "advertorial." NI has been generous enough to give us full control over the contents, and the goal isn’t a review, or an ad — it’s as much actual knowledge of these tools as we can provide. And, hey, it’s basically our job to demonstrate that by doing as good a job as we can and listening to your feedback. I’m happy to answer questions about why we’re doing things this way and what it means; we can talk in comments or contact the site.

Most of all, though, I hope you’ll check out the site. If you don’t own Kore or the other tools, we’ll still have sound and video samples and will include instructions for trying out projects in the demo, if you just want to kick the tires a bit. And definitely let us know what you think as we roll out more stories, because we want this to be as useful to you as possible.

Oh, yeah, and if you’re wondering about what the "noisepages.com" thing is about, you’ll be hearing more soon. Suffice to say the Kore site isn’t all we’re working on.

Bonus points to anyone else who had the "opportunity" to see the movie Deep Kore Core.