The saga of the Beamz Laser Music System goes on: the spectacularly awful demo video has spread on the Internets, and after Gizmodo proclaimed it the most stupid promo video ever, they were challenged by the PR company to do a real review. (No such challenge yet for CDM, mercifully.)

This does reveal where the thing came from, though. The Beamz tool was “invented” by songwriter Jerry Riopelle, who had a fairly significant career penning tunes in the 60s (”The Thrill is Gone”) and went on to a solo career in the 70s. (I say “invented” because it’s certainly not the first laser harp in existence.) Apparently his dream more recently was to move to the Valley and make a gadget, so he went on to focus on Beamz — and landed an exclusive distribution deal with Sharper Image a few years ago, before the company’s finances fell apart. (Doh!) Jerry actually plays with his Beamz system onstage, and it … uh … kinda sounds like it does in the videos.

But the PR firm wants Gizmodo (and the world) to believe everyone will feel differently when they play it.. except we’d presumably have to hear it, too, which so far is a bit on the painful side. (They also say this obviously tech-savvy crowd loved it.) Yet, that’s not what bothers me — this does (from PR man Matt Silverman’s retort to Gizmodo):

It is not meant to be a traditional musical instrument because that takes so much training for people to master. The beamz was conceived and created by an accomplished Hollywood musician and songwriter whose goal was to allow the average music lover to experience the passion of making music.

This is something we hear all the time. Yet you never hear anything like this:

• Cup Noodles: Experience the real joy of cooking — finally, without needing years of apprenticeship under French master chefs.
• Hot Wheels: Why own a real car and bother with greenhouse gas emissions and drivers license exams when this fits in your pocket?
• Connect the Dots: Because deciding what to draw is just too much stress — and who wants hours and hours of training drawing nude models?
• Tetris - the non-competitive edition: Put the blocks wherever you want! You don’t want all that pressure. Heck … the blocks don’t even move.

Updated:

On a more serious note — and illustrating just what a big difference different users, different musical content, context, and purpose can make — check out what happens when the system’s creator visits a Children’s Hospital. Part of why it’s worth being thoughtful about this stuff, and not reducing it to black-and-white marketing terms, is that interface design really can be meaningful. Thanks to Koen for the link.

It seems Warner exec Jim Griffin was unprepared for the rancor of the Interwebs, because he’s backpedaling on a proposal to create a blanket fee for ISPs on music. All of that was just part of a “dynamic conversation,” says Griffin in a statement, and “It would be unfortunate if a creative and fruitful dialogue were sidetracked by a rush to judgment about what was simply my own illustrative example of one of many concepts I have in this space.”

Yes, indeed — it’d be unfortunate if a discussion of a hair-brained scheme with no plan for implementation or investment from any of the stakeholders were derailed by the fact that it was a hair-brained scheme with no plan for implementation or investment from any of the stakeholders.

See some excellent coverage and analysis from CNet News.com’s Greg Sandoval.

And as Sandoval notes, “What happens is that people hear the word “tax” and objective analysis goes out the window. People condemn and vilify. Out comes the torches and pitchforks.” That lack of objectivity is what frustrated me yesterday, even without being a specialist on the legal details

Of course, I disagree with Griffin about what happens to the “dynamic conversation” when people bring out the pitchforks. He says people lose the opportunity to “consider a variety of raw concepts without prejudice.” I say they lose the opportunity to consider just how out of touch with reality his proposal is.

I’ll never fully understand technology bloggers when it comes to music policy. Here’s an obviously stupid idea: Warner Brothers, the label, comes up with a scheme to add a surcharge to ISP bills to allow, supposedly, “legal” use of music file sharing services. Stupid, yes.

Here’s the response from Michael Arrington (Techcrunch): “It’s clearly good for the music labels, who are facing their imminent extinction.” He claims that this is the plan the “labels” (actually one label) don’t want you to know (except that they’re sitting down for long interviews with Conde Nast Portfolio).

Gizmodo’s Matt Buchanan just regurgitates and further oversimplifies Arrington’s argument, and adds a picture of a kitten at gunpoint, concluding: “And as Arrington points out, it would basically freeze innovation in the industry, meaning labels would be able to ream them that much harder. Not to mention, thanks to the fine print, we’d probably no longer own our music. But that’s the whole point.”

Apparently, “imminent extinction” means multi-billion dollar industry. (In fairness, the industry often — inexplicably — argues the same thing. I wish I were part of an “extinct” multi-billion dollar industry.) And apparently you can’t even talk about the issue of how music will be distributed and paid for without focusing on the desire of said industry to destroy your life and the fact that it’s still completely doomed.

And we’ve already seen Arringtonisms like recordings are worth nothing, and musicians should really owe websites cash for promotion (the Web 2.0 Payola plan, evidently).

But what happened to the obviously stupid idea? I agree with these sites that the plan is bad — I just think, ironically, it’s bad for even more reasons than they think. I’m not actually sure anyone read the original source — I think they were too busy being enraged, or looking for appropriate kitty pictures:

Fee for All: Jim Griffin will lead Warner Music’s fight to tame the Web’s lawless music frontier.

Forget about artists. Forget about copyright holders. Screw the musicians. This is ridiculously stupid even for the labels, partly because they’re unlikely to agree on the idea — meaning the idea is extinct on arrival. “Freeze innovation”? I guess — if the labels actually pursue this. But the blogosphere has become so rabidly anti-label, it’s fighting them instead of pointing out the planet-sized holes in the logic we’re being fed:

Not everyone agrees with all my raves about FL Studio 8 — including some loyal FL users. Whereas Ableton Live has taken some flak in recent upgrades for catering to requests for more conventional functionality, even some FL lovers are frustrated with the program’s quirkier bits. Evan X. Merz writes a rant on FL Studio and version 8:

FruityLoop’s approach is so unique that it negates the value pricing. If you want to use FruityLoops, you basically have to commit to another DAW. So while you will save money by getting everything you get with FruityLoops, you will still find it necessary to purchase another DAW to streamline your recording … so the final price you pay will end up being about as much as if you had just bought another product in the first place. …

Ableton co-founder and general visionary Robert Henke (also known as Monolake) gave a full-length workshop in New Zealand recently. If you’re up for 90 minutes of discussion of musical and sonic techniques in Live, plus a look at his unique Monodeck controller, the whole video is there. But that’s not the main reason the video is making its way around the Interwebs. It’s because there’s a bit of a bombshell right at the beginning of the footage:

He says, outright, you don’t need 64-bit sound to get “audio quality.” You don’t even need 16-bit all the time.

Okay, maybe that’s not such a radical thought in and of itself. Oh, yeah, except for one thing — the 64-bit summing engine he’s talking about happens to be the one in Ableton Live 7.

Video by Tom Cosm, via AudioLemon

Some people are already assuming this means Ableton has somehow betrayed them (well, in fairness, Robert does say the summing engine is just a marketing gimmick). And what about Cakewalk? Robert doesn’t mention them by name, but the only DAW that’s been trumpeting 64-bit mixing and signal processing is SONAR.

In fact, far from conflicting with Robert’s vision of sound, Ableton Live 7 really embodies it. And as for the Cakewalk thing — well, that’s complicated, because the term “64-bit” applies to a number of basically unrelated topics dealing with sound and computing. But none of that matters as much as one thing: if it sounds good, it is good.

This is the new Steinberg control surface. (See the hands-on video at SonicState.) It’s built to integrate out of the box with Cubase 4, which if you’re a Cubase 4 user should be good. You or I might give it a name like “CubaseControl” or something, but Steinberg has seen fit to call it the CC 121, which sounds like it was lifted off of a MIDI specification. No matter — they can call it Eustice if it’s a good controller.

But that’s not the only odd thing about the CC 121. There’s a little light that goes on to say it’s “Cubase Ready.” (The marketing materials say this gives it “instant plug and play.” I’m not entirely sure why you need an LED for that, but I guess it’s comforting or something.) Then there’s the control layout, which has so much blank space that it looks a little like someone dropped a stack of encoders and buttons on a piece of paper and glued everything where it fell.

But the oddest thing about the CC 121 is the controller choices themselves. The whole point of previous single-fader control surfaces — at least, so I thought — was creating a compact device that can sit by your mouse. The point of the CC 121 seems to be, well, EQ. There are a full twelve dedicated EQ encoders. For everything else, there’s … uh … one knob. (It’s the one that says “VALUE” on the right side.) It is supposed to be a really smart knob, at least. Here’s how Steinberg describes it:

“Ultra-precision Advanced Integration controller knob with ‘point and control’ support: controls any visual Cubase 4 parameter, internal FX setting or VSTi parameter using mouse pointer selection”

Translation: you can click on any setting in Cubase and control it with our encoder, one setting at a time. Want to control more than one setting at a time? Say, delay time and wet/dry mix? Sorry. There are four buttons so you can change the function of the one value knob, but not the obvious solution of having any more than one knob. I know what you’re thinking. There’s blank space all over this unit, so why couldn’t you just have four “Advanced Integration Controller Knobs”? I think I have the answer: if you did that, you wouldn’t have room for the “Cubase Ready” light.

You may think I’m just using this opportunity to beat up on Steinberg and be snarky, but I’m not.

The Magic of Third Parties and Broad Compatibility

No, on the contrary, this illustrates something I’ve suspected for a long time. Just as most screenwriters shouldn’t direct their own films, software developers shouldn’t necessarily make hardware controllers for their own software. Sometimes the magic works; sometimes it doesn’t. Either way, having choices beyond those the software vendor chose is a good thing. Third-party hardware can work with more than one app (in case you ever use something other than Cubase), it can provide more choices (in case your needs are different than someone else), and it provides the much-needed perspective beyond the folks who built the software. You may not get the brand name of your DAW on the unit, but smart software can still make the out-of-box experience just as integrated. That doesn’t mean I think the software vendors shouldn’t try — as Alan Kay is often attributed as saying, “People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.” But, even assuming he did actually say that, and assuming we should all listen to him, he didn’t say that you had to make that hardware for your own software, or that you’d be successful all of the time.

Someone out there I’m sure really, really loves tweaking EQ. Congratulations: the CC 121 is for you. For everyone else, you have not one but four excellent choices: Novation’s SL line, Frontier’s AlphaTrack and TranzPort, and PreSonus’ FaderPort. They all integrate fairly automatically with Cubase (even older versions which are incompatible with the CC 121), and give you lots of control. And that’s just compact control surfaces.

Not only that, but Novation, Frontier, and PreSonus all make hardware that works with other stuff not from Steinberg. The AlphaTrack, for instance, just added extensive support for GarageBand 4 (adding to a long list of other supported software), plus software you probably haven’t even heard of — SAWStudio by RML Labs and MultitrackStudio from Bremmers Audio Design. SAWStudio support didn’t grab the Messe headlines the way a Steinberg control surface did, but I’ll bet if you’re a SAWStudio user, you’re really excited. And that’s the point: we choose our software personally, so we should choose our hardware the same way.

Here’s a quick review of the other compact control surfaces available — not only for Cubase, but a lot of other software, as well:

Are you making music without real acoustic instruments? You know, in, like, virtual reality? Then you may have stepped into a strange, alternate dimension. Let’s call it, for the sake of argument, The Gibson Zone. They control the horizontal. They control the vertical. They invented what you’re doing … right now.

Or, at least, that seems to be the message sent by a recent patent dispute between Gibson Guitar Corporation and Guitar Hero developer Activision. (Harmonix, the original Guitar Hero developer, has moved on to Rock Band.)

I know what you’re thinking: maybe Gibson claims to have invented the guitar, or the Guitar Hero controller looks a little too much like an Epiphone or something. Ah, but that might actually make some sort of logical sense, and this is the topsy-turvy world of intellectual property. In fact, both Harmonix and Activision already have licenses with Gibson for their guitars.

Instead, Gibson is arguing they own the rights to anything that can “simulate participation in a concert,” which they patented in 1999. (Look out, air guitar lovers.) Now, I don’t claim to be an expert in patent law, but being the layperson that I am, I would assume the original Gibson patent would have some passing similarity to Guitar Hero.

System and method for generating and controlling a simulated musical concert experience [Google Patents]

Well, let’s review. The Gibson patent is described as follows:

“A musician can simulate participation in a concert by playing a musical instrument…”

Okay, with you so far.

“…and wearing a head-mounted 3D display that includes stereo speakers.”

Nope. Lost. They do know that Guitar Hero is not available for Virtual Boy, right?

PC games — and even Windows customization utilities — make up a much larger market than music software. But in this parallel universe there have been echoes of the challenges facing music developers since the early days of PCs. Both have highly dedicated, niche audiences. Both face rampant piracy. Neither has the support of big business sales as the likes of Adobe and Microsoft do. Many of the customers use the products in their free time, rather than as tools that generate revenue. (Sorry, but it’s true.) Both have, let’s face it, customer bases who often don’t have that much money to spend, period — particularly after a hefty hardware investment.

And both gamers and musicians have been the target of aggressive anti-piracy campaigns, campaigns that get to the heart of the debate over software DRM, and very often blame pirates for failing business models.

Stardock, a “boutique” developer with a rabid following of sci-fi strategy gamers, finally spoke out. And they had good reason: a game with absolutely no DRM made it to one of the top three spots in the country.

Piracy & PC Gaming

There are real lessons for the potential of future music software development, not only in terms of piracy, but in terms of building future businesses.

By now, you’ve likely heard that Apple’s iTunes Music Store has taken the #2 spot in music sales — all music sales – right behind retailer giant Wal-Mart. This tends to lead to one of two somewhat gloating reactions from Apple advocates. One is a sort of “rah, rah, go Apple!” attitude. The other is along the lines of “hurrah, discs are dead, go throw your CDs in with your eight tracks and vinyl while we leap into the future!”

A typical sentiment comes from Scott McNulty on The Unofficial Apple Weblog: “I have an iPod, an iPhone, an Apple TV, and I manage all my music with iTunes as I am sure many, many other people out there do as well… “

Eep. Any votes for “I have a Sony Cassette Walkman, a cheap mobile phone, a … TV, and I manage all my music on my bookshelf”? Is that more boneheaded nostalgia?

Of course, it wasn’t supposed to be this way — any of this.