Since this week has become Unplanned Unofficial Vinyl Week, I might as well keep going. Vinyl with printed timecode is just one path. Here are two examples (one recent, one upcoming) of products that have found other means of connecting digital sound to the turntable. If a product like Traktor Scratch or Serato Scratch Live represent the maturation of the integrated vinyl + hardware + software solution, these two tools virtualize the turntable experience in other ways. And they demonstrate just how much control technology can change in music, turntable or no.

The Numark X2, above, as pointed out by beatfix in comments, is a hybrid of two approaches. It’s a conventional turntable (meaning you can actually hook it up to an amp and hear something, which isn’t the case with timecode-encoded vinyl). But it also uses the turntable to manipulate an MP3 CD. Now, obviously, Numark has missed the obvious next step: why not transmit control data to a computer instead of a CD? The X2, with a street well below US$1000, isn’t new; it’s been around a couple of years. But I’m still waiting for the concept to be applied to a computer output. (Anyone?)

In the opposite direction, the Stanton Control System, unveiled at NAMM in January and due to ship in June, does away with the turntable. The deck, the SCS.1d, simulates the feel of a turntable with a high-torque motorized platter and even a motorized pitch fader. Personally, I love this — and think it could be a sign of other, non-DJ controllers with tactile feedback. (You heard it here first. Uh … but I do expect that to take a while, as tactile control design is hard.)

After more than a year of relatively trusty service and a country-spanning tour, my BCD2000 has finally become too flaky for performances. I’ve been looking at the various DJ-style midi controller options, and was down to about 5 options when I was asked to play a set on short notice at a relatively big festival this weekend. So I made a snap decision and picked up a Numark Total Control, choosing this over the NuVJ because it has a couple of extra sliders and knobs.

This is a NuVJ, my second choice MIDI controller from Numark

As a class-compliant USB MIDI device it installed fine. I loaded my VJ software of choice, Resolume, mapped the jog wheels to scratch video, and scratched.

The video went bonkers.

The ways in which people can reimagine the beloved turntable seems boundless. We’ve seen bass guitar turntables, computer scratching visualizations, turntable-controlled vibrating chaise longues, and turntables embedded in tree trunks as art installations. Still, there’s more:

TurntablistPC is an ongoing art project coupling a vintage turntable with a vintage PC, creating a hybrid, record-playing server that can be controlled remotely by remote websites around the world. It’s the creation of artist Mogen Jacobsen, and it’s currently being exhibited as part of a show called Webscape at the Art Museum of West Sealand, Denmark. What? You’re not planning to pass through West Sealand this fall? The museum still wants your help: embed a piece of code, and visitors to your own website will trigger manipulations of the turntable based on geographic position.

TurntablistPC Project Page
The TurntablistPC spins again! [Networked Music Review, my new favorite source for artsy music tech!]

Thanks to our artist friend Michael Una for tipping us off. I’m not sure I’ll be building anything of this sort soon, but what I do like about it conceptually is that it returns playback devices — increasingly abstract and virtual in the age of the iPod — to the realm of mechanical instrument. I think we may see all sorts of strange, new, hybrid digital/mechanical instruments in the coming years.

Of course, if you can’t figure out how to turn a turntable into a hybrid server art installation, you can always just don your black vinyl jumpsuit and strap your turntable to your back. I think Numark’s idea here was to somehow promote their turntables, but to me, they may have stumbled onto a new, futuristic couture in which we wear heavy objects as fashion statements. And for whatever reason, I’m game! (People could, you know, come up to you … I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine sorta thing?)

Making_sound grabbed this shot and sent it to our Flickr group; thanks!

I’m pleased to announce the first-ever CDM Giveaway. We’ve got over US$4,000 of hardware and software tools for music creation, and we’d like to give you the chance to win them. To do that, we’re holding a good, old-fashioned prize drawing — I’ve been warming up my true random number generator — so that all you have to do is enter for a chance to win. To better your odds, each prize will get a different winner.

CDM Giveaway Info Page; official rules (no purchase necessary).

Here’s what we’ve got:

Akai MPC500 mobile music workstation
Ableton Live 6 music production software
Alesis ControlPad drum pad controller
Glyph GT 050Q 250GB eSATA/USB/FW400/FW800 hard drive
Moog Music Moogerfooger FreqBox VCO effects box
Native Instruments Absynth 4 soft synth
Native Instruments Elektrik Piano soft synth
Numark Total Control DJ control surface
PreSonus FaderPort

…plus boxes of Ableton beanies and AudioMIDI.com Synth Legends DVDs. You can check everything out on the giveaway page.

And get some link love, too: Eligible residents of the United States can enter to win any one of these prizes. Unfortunately, for legal reasons we can’t extend the whole sweepstakes to international readers. To make up for it, we’ll be watching international entries for the best blogs, project pages, and music websites to feature on CDM, and we’ll send out Ableton beanies and/or DVDs to our favorite entries. (American readers, we’ll be watching your pages, too, so be sure to include your URLs when you enter.)

We’ve been putting this together for a while now and it’s been a lot of work, so I’m excited to be able to roll it out. We’ve hand-picked some of our favorite gear and software makers to partner with, or we wouldn’t be doing this.

Full details on the giveaway page. Enter now, because at the stroke of midnight following Monday, June 11, the contest is over. And I really want to get these boxes of gear and swag shipped. It’ll be a lot more fun out of the brown cardboard boxes, I’m sure.

Update: If you’re not from the US – please do fill out the form, if you include nothing other than your URL (so we can check out your site) and your country. (Nothing else is required.)

We’re really sorry we weren’t able to go global on this one for legal reasons (I try to explain why in comments). But that’s all the more reason to find out where you’re from. Server stats provide a very incomplete picture of what country people are from, and we would like to know. And if you include contact info, I might at least be able to get some of you some swag.

When purchasing an audio mixer, DJs are quite literally spoilt for choice. Visualists are a little constrained though, with only a handful of companies making a couple of vision mixer models each. This situation is improving rapidly though, with companies such as Vixid getting in on the act with their upcoming VJX16-4, and DJ company Numark with their AVM01 and recently updated AVM02.

I purchased an AVM02 when it was released in Feb, and have been testing it out in preparation for 2 months touring Australia with a rock star.

While I’m very excited about my AVM02, there seems to be some definite resistance from the VJ community as it doesn’t include some features we’ve come to rely on (MIDI, easily accessible effects parameters). However, for DJs wanting to expand their performance to include visuals this may be just the right mix of audio and video.

Unfortunately the lack of MIDI will probably turn off live musicians who are too busy actually playing their instruments to mess with manually selecting video channels and crossfading. Let’s hope Numark release a MIDI capable AVM03 soon.

In the next couple of years I see this product lineup in the video market expanding similarly to DJ mixers, with different layouts, effects and options available for “turntablist” style highly-technical VJing, live looping with onboard sampling and effects, battle-style VJ mixers allowing you to mount your DVD player sideways and tag over your DVD labels like the hiphop kids do… In the meantime the AVM02 is really the only A/V mixer available at anywhere near this price point, and it does a superb job too. If you’re a visualist branching out into the frightening world of audio, a DJ looking to add video to your set, or just someone looking for a solid, competitively priced vision mixer, you should definitely give the AVM02 a try.

Read the full article on CreateDigitalMotion.