It’s been called, bluntly, “Internet censorship” by opponents. And now, US legislation that claims to curb piracy faces mounting challenges as that opposition grows, particularly as the White House warns it will block the bills.

Today, even as a flood of delightful new music toys become available, it’s worth pausing to consider why this matters – and, if you vote in the United States, to call your Senators and Representatives (again, if needed).

Many of us who create music believe the dynamic, user-driven nature of the Web is our best chance at a bright future. Free and open Internet communication is part of the fabric of societies around the world, and for music, offers a chance to share what we do, to discover new work, and to build our musical lives. They can be the basis of some of the most vibrant businesses that support musical practice, as well as contributing intangible but invaluable creative, technical, and spiritual input into what we make.

I wanted to collect today some of the best writing on the topic, from people who know this issue far more intimately than I do. Thanks to readers for their tips on this, as well.

Essential Reading

Ars Technica has some extraordinary coverage today. In particular, see:
Even without DNS provisions, SOPA and PIPA remain fatally flawed [Ars Technica] (goes into very detailed specifics of the legal issues)

What does SOPA mean for us foreigners? [Ars Technica] (The answer might surprise you: one of the flaws with SOPA is that the definition of “foreign” doesn’t even make sense. But in short, you don’t have to be in the US to be impacted by this legislation; foreign sites are specifically singled out for action. Do read the whole article; another huge, detailed report.)

How PIPA and SOPA Violate White House Principles Supporting Free Speech and Innovation [Electronic Frontier Foundation]

Google and Facebook and the like have come under attack as big corporations that benefit from Internet use and, some critics argue, from piracy. Why should they be using their deep pockets to talk about this issue? Google’s take today I think responds to that neatly. They have a beautiful infographic of a megaphone that counts all the critics – including law and Constitutional experts and human rights and pro-democracy groups – opposed to this legislation. And while I don’t know that Google always lives up to the “don’t be evil” mantra, I think digging into your deep pockets in this case is perfectly appropriate and defensible.
https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/

The best report-in-a-nutshell comes from The Verge, and lawyer-journalist Nilay Patel:
Why The Verge and Vox Media are opposed to SOPA

In brief:

• Sites that host user-contributed content are threatened by weaker safe harbor rules and high compliance costs.
• Overzealous compliance by search and payment providers could make life miserable for the rest of us.
• Significant flaws in due process and seizure.

Those kinds of problems threaten the whole Internet ecosystem of user-contributed work and threaten democracy and the course of law. (Uh, other than that, no problem here.)

Musicians Take a Stand

The evidence at hand makes it all the more disturbing to see groups of labels, content companies, and so-called artist advocacy groups using our name – the musical community – to claim this legislation is somehow good for us. Unfortunately, the analysis of people working in law and policy outside the content industry tell us otherwise.

At least one artist and regular CDM reader and friend, TRICIL, is blacking out his own artist site. Here’s what he had to say:

You may have heard of America’s ludicrous Stop Online Piracy Act bill that’s being brought forth for legislation.

In concert with Wikipedia, Boing Boing, and a host of other sites, I’ve “blacked out” tricil.net in protest for the next 24 hours.

For my fellow Americans, you can take action by visiting http://tricil.net and clicking the “CENSORED” bar on the top right to email your local congressman and spread the word. This will also “uncensor” my site, but you can put the bars back and take a screenshot if you’d like.

If the bill passes, sites like Vimeo, YouTube, SoundCloud, and my own are all at risk. I’ve taken my material off of those sites for the next 24 hours to show what effect this legislation could have on independent artists.

Read more at americancensorship.org

Thank you for taking a stand with me,

TRICIL

Watch the Reasons Why It’s Bad

Clay Shirky has a great video out for TED:

CDM Under These Rules

I won’t be blocking out CDM today, as instead, I’d like to continue the conversation. But what could happen to a site like this one?

• We could be targeted by a unfair compliance issue because of a complaint about content on this site – without fair protections and due process to allow us to respond.
• We could see sites we rely on – from SoundCloud to Vimeo to YouTube – face restrictive rules and compliance that would threaten their livelihood, and strangle channels through which musicians and artists make their work known.
• In a severe case, a compliance issue could literally shut down the site forever, especially given our limited resources.

But that said, I’m less concerned about a threat to CDM as the rest of the Internet on which we rely, the dynamism that made this site worth producing in the first place. And as a citizen of the United States and a citizen of the Internet, I’m morally and ethically concerned about laws that deviate from Constitutional rule of law and common sense.

If you’ve found other reading on this issue or other ways to take action, I’d love to hear them.

Previously:
Opinion: US Internet Censorship Could Cripple Online Music Web; Where to Find Out More, Where to Act

And yes, you acted – and your action made a difference, as the opposition grows in strength and the legislation withers. Winning battles can sometimes be a good thing.

If you haven’t been following the (excellent) coverage elsewhere, just how bad is the “Firewall of the United States,” the draconian Internet dystopia misguided legislation in the US proposes to create?

That legislation is so vague, so far-reaching, so poorly-designed, that it potentially threatens all kinds of sites musicians regularly use. And little wonder: a backwards legislation process in the US has locked out the very Internet and tech companies that have until now been glimmers of hope in a stagnant US economy.

The crux of this issue is the impact on legal sites, and democracy and speech online. For an alternative view, the MPAA argument is that existing Digital Millenium Copyright Act safe harbor provisions would continue to exist under the new legislation, thus protecting legal sites – like this one. However, I find compelling the arguments of speech and legal policy advocates who point to differences in the way the enforcement mechanism works here, which could potentially invalidate that safe harbor and shift undue burden to publishers before they have time to respond.

Social networks, file sharing services, and other tools we use (lobbyists, for instance, call out even things like MegaUpload as “rogue”) are endangered.

The presumed answer, that “you’ll be fine if you have nothing to hide,” is the worst kind of defense for what can only be described as bald-faced censorship. Because complaints are guilty-until-proven-innocent, because the legislation is too broadly worded, the net effect is that any site publishing online could be brought down by a simple complaint – even from a competitor or aggrieved party. The history of “snitch”-based censorship of all the worst kinds is littered with cautionary tales of what happens when that’s the standard.

And that’s to say nothing of the potential for higher costs, negative growth, and legal burdens on the entire Internet service ecosystem on which sites like this one depend, not to mention new DNS security chaos triggered by turning the US – still the largest Web consuming country – into something that resembles China, Iran, and Syria.

An alliance of people who claim to speak in the name of musicians, content creators, and copyright holders are right now proceeding on a course that would destroy a lot of the most innovative tools that protect your livelihood. They have some reasonable intentions in mind – a justifiable fear of big sites that flaunt copyright rules to share anything. But they extend that into a policy that unjustifiably expands its reach to legal sites. That’s why:

Google / YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and other sites that have helped us spread the word about our music are opposing it, afraid it could shut the entire sites down or usher in a new, more censored, shrinking network. (Heck, even LinkedIn and Mozilla are worried, and a site that shares resumes hardly seems the kind of “rogue” and pro-infringement villain the record industry keeps trying to paint as its critics.)

Kickstarter, the tool that has helped artists fund themselves and do preorder sales, is opposing the bill for fear a single instance of infringement could block everyone’s projects.

Tumblr, a key publishing platform used by many musicians and artists, warned its users via a dashboard that the legislation threatened their ability to express themselves online. Tumblr has a specific call to action.

Democracy activists worry that this silence voices of democracy around the world by blocking the tools they use to get around censorship (ironically, by creating similar censorship in what had been a country with online freedom).

The ultimate irony: because the SOPA legislation would block DNS and not IP addresses, it would do little to stem actual piracy of music and video. Instead, it threatens the freedom of the artists themselves to use these tools.

And again, because you could see an entire website blocked, not just a specific infringement, the legislation threatens to rob artists and musicians of tools on which they rely to promote their own music that they themselves own.

None of this has stopped the record industry lobbyists from remaining full entrenched in their position. For instance, this week, RIAA’s Senior Executive VP Mitch Glazier responded in an article headlines:

RIAA Question To Rogue Sites Critics: What Specifically Is Your Answer?

Glazier’s argument:

The next time you hear a vague, sweeping critique, backed by the platitude that of course intellectual property protections are supported, we encourage you to ask: what specific legislative proposal do you have that would meaningfully address this problem?”

Actually, no. In the event legislation is really, truly insane, it’s not in any way the burden of the critic of that legislation to propose an alternative. Here, let me illustrate:

The Protect Humanity from Deer Ticks Legislation, which proposes to … burn down all the forests.

Critic: I have a proposal. Let’s not burn down all the forests.

See? It’s concrete, it’s specific. Yes, our critique is “vague and sweeping,” because the legislation in question is vague and sweeping and wrong.

It’s absolutely, totally valid to make the concrete, legislative action not voting for a bad bill. The RIAA ought to know that; it’s pretty basic lobbying.

Yet again, though, those organizations let down their labels, who are now struggling to find new growth and revenue, with legislation that hurts those same members. Who is the rogue, anyway?

There’s far better explanation of this legislation than mine, and it’s not too late to act:
http://americancensorship.org/ [Electronic Frontier Foundation, with brilliant infographics and detailed, fair background reading]

Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation [EFF]

Stop the Great Firewall of America [New York Times op-ed from New America Foundation senior fellow Rebecca MacKinnon]

I need your help–please. Call your congressperson? [Terrific, straightforward editorial from an engineer, Matt Cutts - one who happens to work at Google, but writing on his own time]

SOPA, controversial online piracy bill, gains support as lobbying intensifies [The Washington Post early this morning, which illustrates to me in its quotes from the bills' supporters just how out of touch they are]

Sham of SOPA hearings riles up key internet figures [Silicon Republic on how tech and Internet firms were locked out of the legislation's creation]

Great, clear Lifehacker story on how this works and what to do

Shocklee.com has done a terrific job of covering this story as it evolved, speaking of artists, as well as via their Twitter feed

OpenCongress.org links to information on the bill, full text of the bill, co-signers, actions, supporters and opponents, and even dollar-sign figures on how much lobbyists on each side of the issue (yes, including opposition) have given to elected officials.

From there, you can read the bills, make up your own mind, and if you’re a US citizen, talk to the people who represent you in Washington.

H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act
S. 968, the Protect IP Act of 2011

Among Senate bill opponents, as you can learn from that site – even though the Senate bill is at least a little less draconian – American Association of Law Libraries, American Library Association, and Human Rights Watch.

If you’re a citizen of the United States, I would ask you to call your Representative now. Tell them calmly (remembering, they may even be on your side, and regardless, they’re your elected representative) what you think.

If you do call your Representative, let CDM know what their office says; feel free to leave that response in comments.

NodeBeat is the kind of experimental music application that’s thriving in the age of the multi-touch tablet. Its dynamic interface and sound are built on the foundation of free and open source software tools regularly covered here on CDMusic and Motion. OpenFrameworks, the Processing-like C++ library, handles the UI, as libpd, the embeddable version of graphical media environment Pure Data, manages the sound.

What you get is an open-ended plane on which you can graphically array sequences, far away from the standard grid, for generative and sequenced music. It’s good fun, which made it a hit on iOS. Developer Seth Sandler, working with Justin Windle, did a brilliant job. Then, earlier this month, NodeBeat made the jump to Android, with additional porting work by Laurence Muller. Android has been getting tablets that can hold their own — I’ve enjoyed my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1, for instance. But the platform has remained severely starved of applications in contrast to iOS, but at least in place of quantity, there’s some quality: this application being one, tools like Mikrosonic’s RD3 or Reactable orControl or Nanoloop qualifying, too. (I’m not delusional; this does not make it at this point any serious competition for iOS, but it does demonstrate potential for developers. And I’ve already had the chance to use Reactable and Control in live performance, personally.)

That is, NodeBeat was temporarily available on Google’s Android Market. Then, without warning, Google suspended developer Seth Sandler’s seller account. This led to an extended discussion with Seth, other developers, and myself as we watched events unfold, ironically on Google’s own Google+. (Yes, that Google product works, despite what you’ve heard.)

It’s back now, so please, go buy and review it if you get the chance. If you’ve got a compatible Android, you’ve got truly no excuse as it’s a delightful app, and it holds up even in the crowded iOS platform:
NodeBeat @ Android Market
http://nodebeat.com/ (iOS and all versions; there’s even a free, desktop version with source code!)

Okay? Bought it? Good. Now it’s time to talk about how bad this is for a developer.

The account suspension on the Market represents a series of obvious flaws. First, of course, it shouldn’t have happened in the first place – Google support eventually acknowledged the suspension was entirely random, “incorrectly suspended” in the words of support, with no other explanation.

Second, support was largely nonexistent. Days passed during which Seth was left without any information. (Amidst discussions of how “evil” or “open” Google is, I’d sometimes be happy just to see them seem something other than desperately rushed. And that seems to be the primary “Apple-fication” of the market – the company’s rivals now are so rushed to try to compete that they screw things up constantly. “Don’t be crappy.”)

Third, and most bizarre, the application stayed available but payment was impossible, leaving customers confused and unable to buy the app.

Now, horror stories like this weren’t unheard of in the early days of the Apple App Store, and I still hear – with, happily, much less frequency – complaints from developers about Apple’s store and approval process. Apple deserves credit for ironing out those flaws, but from the skeptical perspective of a developer, It’s hard not to draw the conclusion that you may want to consider distributing your software via more than one means. Even as Apple fails to allow that on their mobile devices, that means considering going cross-platform. That’s not a philosophical claim; from the perspective of a developer, you don’t want to be dependent on only one company. Feel free to disagree, but my experience has shown otherwise as I’ve watched developers get burned. (And it’s worth noting that while Google couldn’t sell Seth’s app, Apple could.) Technically, via Android, developers are free on the vast majority of devices to sell direct or sell via alternative stores; unsurprisingly, Seth submitted his app to the competing Amazon App Store and is awaiting approval there.

None of this, of course, excuses Google from a big customer failure on Android Market. And whereas Apple’s earlier hiccups occurred as it was the only game in town, Google is making an uphill battle even worse. With Amazon’s Fire on the horizon, there are two questions to watch: one, can Amazon deliver enough tablets to create the tablet market Android has thus far lacked, and two, will their store deliver a better experience? Meanwhile, Google continues to promise a better Market; it’s all I hear about at developer events, largely because it’s the primary complaint from developers. As tech pundits make largely-unsupported claims like “Android users don’t like to buy software,” as if they’re a bunch of degenerate freeloaders, I’d point to the often-inferior Market and frustrating hardware experiences.

But, let’s put it this way: in addition to the obvious range of iOS choice, yes, there are superb applications beginning to appear on Android. For that, I credit developers like Seth and his collaborators. Even as we push for better audio performance, some of those applications are already running exceptionally well on new tablets and higher-end phones. If you have one of these devices, you can fire these up and enjoy making some sounds. And because you can’t always rely on another vendor to get things right, having cross-platform, free and open source tools behind these applications means developers have the flexibility to adapt to a changing market, and to focus on creative design and not constantly reinventing the wheel.

Here are some notes on NodeBeat’s creation on our forums.

And let us know what you think of NodeBeat, or if you do have an Android device you’re using for music (or a Fire on pre-order, for that matter).

The tenth anniversary of the iPod debut means you’ll find plenty of commentaries on Apple’s iPod and how it has changed music. It’s an issue that’s been talked to death enough, continuously, in the past ten years that I’m literally uncertain there’s more I can say about it. Here’s one good, compact commentary from Daring Fireball, inspired by Macworld’s sharp review from the 2001 debut of the hardware.

Instead, let’s consider what hasn’t happened: Apple hasn’t discontinued the standalone iPod, as distinct from the iPad and iPhone and other general devices. For music lovers, that’s a big deal. The sad news is, the category itself has all but entirely imploded.

The last ten years has been in almost every category a kind of battle between dedicated devices and convergence devices. Anecdotally and statistically, you’ve seen people abandon dedicated video cameras, still cameras, audio recording gadgets, and audio players for something like their iPhone. Little wonder: unless you have enormous pockets, if the integrated device does the job – and its battery doesn’t give out – it means something that’s always at the ready.

Apple’s legacy in music players is curious: they both defined the category, and wiped out all the competition. And that’s true even before Apple changed the category again with the iPhone. That’s not the normal pattern: typically, in electronics or any other tech, the pioneer defines a space in which other competitors come and play. Not so with the iPod: a combination of shifting consumer trends, the profound success of the iTunes “ecosystem,” and the general ineptness of competitors to make quality, differentiated alternatives has led to the iPod standing more or less alone. The iTunes issue shouldn’t be overlooked: recall that when the iPod launched, record labels were still concerned about copy protection. The result was an iTunes-iPod relationship that ultimately kept consumers from working out the complexities of moving their music library to another, rival player. (The fact that most of the rival players weren’t any good didn’t help, so we can’t ever really know how much of a factor this was.)

Two things have happened this fall. Microsoft did discontinue the Zune, in what seems the final death knell for any major dedicated music player that isn’t made by Apple:
Microsoft confirms Zune HD is dead

But, secondly, even as various analysts predicted Apple would kill the dedicated iPod players or even the iPhone-with-no-phone iPod touch, Apple didn’t discontinue anything.

My favorite player remains Apple’s iPod Classic. It’s beautifully designed, holds an absurd amount of music no phone can match (160 GB), and has a simple, clean interface for getting to your music. It’s sad to me only that it’s the only choice, particularly because the one thing rivals did have going for them was easier, more open sync rather than iTunes-only solutions. In fact, even the original iPod had as a major selling point the ability to work as a dedicated hard drive. As a purchaser of the first iPod, one of my favorite features was the ability to easily tote around a big file or two atop the music library.

Oh, yeah, and it’ll still run when your phone battery is dying, and it costs just US$249 – no phone contract required. Ahem.

http://www.apple.com/ipodclassic/

Phones as playback devices are pretty great. But remember that the original dream of the iPod was something different: it was the ability to put your whole music library on one device and take it anywhere. My main question is how that legacy will pan out. Dedicated music devices give you distraction-free access to nothing but music, and ongoing storage innovations mean that something that’s just a music device may long exceed what the convergence devices can do, surviving for the reason SLR cameras do.

Apple’s iPod series will last so long as people keep buying them; Apple seems in no hurry to walk away from extra revenue. (It’s part of the reason why they’ve got all that cash, folks.) But I wonder in the long term what will happen to the category. To me, the major gaping hole is something a lot of us wanted even when we saw the first iPod: a dedicated, pro-quality music player, a kind of audiophile iPod. It doesn’t need any fancy features or silly gold-plated jacks, just something dedicated to playing music and nothing else. I wonder if we’ll ever see that, or if it’ll be another casualty of the explosion in consumer gadgets. In the meantime, long live the iPod Classic.

And for the record, if you do have an original iPod from ten years ago, you can still make it sing: install Linux and it’ll even run Pd.

Moog Music’s synth Animoog is out today. Synthtopia gets full credit for being first; James concludes with the question “time to buy an iPad?”:

Moog Animoog – The ‘First Professional Synth For The iPad’?

I’m looking forward to playing it and having some time to work with it, and fully expect to make some actual music with it, which is the whole point. I can already see that it has some interesting ideas, and it seems an eminently sensible approach to iPad synthesis. It builds on Moog’s software models of their filters, delays, and whatnot, but exploits the iPad’s touch design by assigning morph-able timbres and polyphonic pitch shift to the X/Y pad of the iPad. The results should be terrific fun to play with, and I don’t think I have to test it to assume it’ll be worth a dollar. In fact, given the pricing of computer soft synths, I expect it’ll be worth $30, too.

Significant points: unique synthesis, MIDI in/out support (even so-called “virtual MIDI” with other iOS apps reportedly works), and polyphonic operation, all at an absurdly low price.

http://www.moogmusic.com/products/apps/animoog

Moog video tour

This is already looking like absolutely the sort of synth you’d hope Moog would release. It has some characteristics in common with their hardware, it uses code that we’ve already heard producing great sounds in the Filtatron app, and it also remains different from their hardware, tailored to the iPad. Centering it around an X/Y plot for control is also fitting, as that was the central innovation around with the Minimoog Voyager was built as the modern-day successor to the original Minimoog.

Wired has a review (see video); Moog has posted sound samples, below.

Wired’s Michael Calore concludes:

WIRED A varied instrument capable of both subtle and wild sounds. Excellent sound quality. Plenty of presets to explore. Hours of fun, even if you’re not very musical. This is what the iPad was made for. On sale for $1 — which is a steal, people — for a limited time.

TIRED Advanced features are quite complex, and you’ll need to RTFM. Keys are tiny — you can make them bigger, but that reduces the range of notes. And you thought it was tough to wrestle the iPad away from the kids before.

Moog Debuts an iPad Synth From the Outer Limits

Animoog by moogmusicinc

Here’s where I start to lose the plot. It’s only my opinion, but I imagine I may be giving voice to some other folks who feel similar frustrations. My concerns are partly about Moog, but largely about the growing hype cloud around synths for the iPad.

I think it begins here: something about the video above sets my teeth on edge. It’s not entirely Moog’s fault, but it means it’s time for some reckoning with this whole, uh, iPad thing.

In short: the app is sonically terrific, but it’s past time to properly evaluate the usability of the iPad. And saying this is the first “professional” synth, or that you need a synth from Moog just to make music on an iPad, simply isn’t fair.

The iPad Shares Some PC Strengths – and Failings

The iPad clearly deserves credit for what it does beautifully. I spoke to a major music software pioneer last month in San Francisco who shall remain nameless, and I talked to him about why he was so excited about the iPad. He cut straight to the crux of the matter: by allowing you to touch the interface, you more directly interact with a software instrument. (I’m paraphrasing. I think he said it better.)

Here’s the thing: the iPad is then a better version of a software synth, but not a better version of a hardware instrument. It’s a different beast, but it is on some level an evolution of software. (I would argue this is why my ongoing criticism and praise for the iPad, whether or not you agree with it, has been consistent. I was initially concerned about software lock-down or consumption-focused applications because I was judging the thing as a computer – and likewise found things like MIDI input and output equally useful. That is, I’m certainly biased, but I try to be at least consistently biased.)

And as a result, something about the teaser video above looks horribly, terribly wrong. The modern Moog Music is the brand that, more than any other, more than any boutique modular vendor or blog or synth builder or eBay find, has stood for the beauty of hardware design. This is wrapped up with lots of mysticism among their fans about the sound of analog – some legitimate, some not, some misunderstanding the role of digital circuitry in making analog gear work, and some very real. But more than anything else, it’s about the value of designing hardware that integrates sound-making with physical control.

Having spent the better part of the summer having design discussions about what individual knobs should do, I can tell you first-hand that designing hardware is radically different from designing software. I enjoy each uniquely for this reason: software lets you do anything; hardware forces you to make choices.

If we had simply fetishized beautiful Moog gear with its wooden endcaps and such, then this criticism would be unfair. But I’m assuming it isn’t just nostalgia that makes us appreciate those designs.

Framed by that beautiful gear, artist Marc Doty looks frankly ridiculous tapping away at a screen you can’t see. It looks wrong for two reasons: one, because you know that the experience of the Moog hardware is so very different, and two, because the effect of playing the iPad is somehow incongruous, too.

Now, obviously, our friends at Moog I’m sure aren’t suggesting that we switch from their hardware to iPads. But it’s worth saying why I think the two things are so different, because in the celebration of the cheapness of software, and Moog’s own marketing blitz for their new app, it might otherwise get missed.

Tap, Tap, is This Thing On?

Of course, computers look ridiculous. We all know this. Seeing someone behind a computer is a problem precisely for the reason that watching someone play a video game is ridiculous: the human is involved in an essentially abstract activity in which physical motion only makes sense with visible feedback from a screen. People repeat this criticism to me when I see them the way that people repeat greetings like “Good Morning.”

Illustration:

“Mornin’!”
“Hey, you doing?”
“Pretty good, you?”
“Can’t complain.”
“Weather’s nice today.”
“Yeah, winter’s coming.”
“How’s your work going?”
“Busy.”
“You know the problem with computers? They lack the kinetic experience of connecting a physical gesture to a sound, because of the natural abstraction of software. The keyboard/mouse interface paradigm introduced in primarily with the 80s Macintosh and copied from the XEROX PARC GUI research was never intended for musical use. The convenience of the computer is unassailable, but we have this fundamental interaction model problem. Audiences are therefore un-engaged in laptop performances, because all they see is a person behind a glowing laptop screen with the Apple logo. They could be checking they’re email.”
“Yup. Laptop music sure is f***ing boring. Guess you’d better by a f***ing fader box for fifty bucks. So, see you tomorrow?”
“Ciao!”

The problem is, tablets (okay, iPads, since that’s all anyone at the moment is buying), while they look different than computers, can also look just as absurd. Somehow, they’ve escaped this criticism, perhaps because of their newness. Well, dear iPad, it ends now. The laptop has stood up to these complaints, and we know why we use them anyway. We make fun of them, and they’re tougher for it, and we still love them. Now it’s your turn. We may still use you, but you’re going to have to play with the grown-ups now and start to answer how wildly un-musical and un-usable your plain glass screen can be.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’m fully aware of my own checkered past. I spend large amounts of my time looking silly. (This extends to a great many things in my life, but let’s focus for now on how stupid I look a lot of the time making computer music; lest this post become the size of Wikipedia.) I’ve spent years looking silly and strange using a laptop, since I first played with a computer in 1993. I did it enough that I knew, each time I heard someone reflexively complain about musicians “checking their email,” I was exactly the sort of person they meant. I have seen the enemy, and it is me.

But I have enough expertise in looking stupid to have a sinking suspicion that we must be very, very fast approaching the day where we start to (rightfully) make fun of the iPad, too.

This is not to say you should sell all your computers and trade them in for modular synths – though I do know some people reach that conclusion. I think software is a wonderful thing, in case that wasn’t blatantly and painfully obvious. It allows us greater flexibility of use, and the ability to create sounds you haven’t heard before.

The iPad is a terrific, new marketplace for such synths, because of a voracious consumer base and easy distribution. I doubt the Moog synth would single-handedly motivate an iPad purchase: you either want one or you don’t, and if you don’t, there are so many other ways of making sound I seriously doubt you’ll be genuinely missing out. If you do, you’ve probably already loaded up with other synths, and this one could provide extensive good times. And that is a good thing.

The danger is, in the understandable enthusiasm for embracing this market, we might lose sight of the fact that the iPad shares a lot of the same problems as the computer. To be fair, you can connect MIDI input and output to the Moog app, thus adding more tangible control. And X/Y touch works very well for continuous control, on the iPad as it did, once upon a time, on touch sensors on early Buchla synths.

But Moog, uniquely and more than any other iPad developer anywhere, had better start to think about how they will distinguish between the message about their iPad app and the rest of their hardware, especially since their hardware costs a lot more than 99 cents – and rightfully so.

I really wasn’t joking earlier today when I said I’d trade in my iPad to have a Moogerfooger ClusterFlux instead.

To be clear: the Animoog app benefits greatly from X/Y touch navigation, and you can replace the keyboard with MIDI input to make it far more playable. The issue is simply that what you wind up with is a different – if also powerful – experience from what you get from Moog hardware. And the actual programming outside of the X/Y pad can still be tricky on the iPad’s screen, which has been the ongoing issue with mice on computers.

Good Times Ahead

The big picture is brighter than the iPad alone. Musicians are finding ways of keeping their laptops onstage, but focusing on their performance – of instruments, of controllers, of vocals. Computers themselves can disappear, without losing their flexibility, as we saw with DJ sniff’s display-free Mac mini rig. And the same embedded technology that powers the iPad is finding its way into other tools that are more musician-friendly, even if they lack Apple’s magical, consumer-inspiring tech. Chris Randall’s Beepcat project proposes using the BeagleBoard embedded platform as open hardware for distributing all the power of software synths, without the clunky computer. (More on that soon.)

The iPad, too, can be a useful tool, so long as we appreciate and work around its limitations, as we’ve learned to do with the computer.

This is, of course, the beautiful thing. It’s not about whether you choose analog or digital, iPad app or Ableton Live on Mac or Pd patch running on Linux, hardware or software, knob or switch or touch ribbon or Theremin. We have a wide spectrum of possible choices. There’s great experimentation on the iPad, and the best way to appreciate that experimentation is to realize how many people are tackling it, in many different ways. The iPad synth developer is given a radically imperfect device with all sorts of problems; that’s what makes their solutions so interesting. Because the iPad looks so silly, it’s important to make it sound really, really good, just as the mouse and keyboard and office machine rig that is the modern computer has been transformed by software that can make you love the thing.

First ‘Professional’ Synth?

So, on that note, one final criticism. I’m disappointed that Moog marketing chose the phrase “First Professional Synth Designed for the iPad.”

Yes, this is the sort of thing marketing people do all the time. But it’s no less unfortunate. And I thought it was a bit funny to see in comments on Synthtopia’s excellent preview people saying that they were excited about it because it came from Moog.

Don’t assume that for a second. Assume the opposite: the Moog name means it better be damned good, or you should get your pitchforks. (That’s even truer given that the Moog brand was in the hands of some less-than-stellar owners once upon a time.) We love Moog the way we love the New York Yankees – we love their achievements, and we’ll spend the extra money, in order to celebrate those victories – and be equally savage if they don’t live up to their name. My sense from the people I’ve talked to at Moog is that they’re aware of these expectations, and the expectations, not the assumptions can be what’s motivating.

Independent developers have done some fantastic work in iPad synths, work that obviously influenced the creation of the Animoog. Implying their work was somehow not “professional,” when this synth is built on that work, is insulting.

I’m not holding a grudge here, because the people I know at Moog are uncommonly supportive of the work of other creators. It’s the Moog marketing department’s job to say their thing is the “only” or “first” pro tool. It’s my job to say it’s not, and to pay just as much attention to developers you’ve never heard of as the ones that have. And I know when people feel I’m not doing that job well – whether I think that criticism is fair or not – I hear about it. (Oh, do I.)

We love the Moog name, we put it on t-shirts and drink beer with it on the label and get tattoos and go to festivals named after it because we love the designers who built them, and the feeling of using their designs, and the sounds they make when we plug them in, and the music we produce together with and made for people we love.

Apple? Moog?

Just a brand.

And in the end, if we’re willing to pick up the thing and look really silly tapping away at a piece of glass, we’ll know that the software is very, very good, indeed.

Now, let me update my iTunes credit card information.

Since CDM doesn’t have an editorial board, and this is just me talking, we really do welcome your feedback. Am I pulling too many punches, and you want to go further? Do you disagree, and want to write up an op-ed? Fire away in comments, and if someone would like to write a response / rebuttal, we’ll publish that here or link to your own site. Also, if you think I look silly, you may feel free to call me names; I’ve only ever deleted really rude comments. -PK

In August, the Resident Advisor film on Detroit gave us a chance to reflect on that city’s cultural response to economic catastrophe. To talk about a city that has seen sweeping change and challenge, it’s difficult to beat Berlin. Resident Advisor released the third installment of this series in September, but I missed it as I was traveling … somewhere … and it’s no less relevant today, least of all on a gorgeous, sunny day in the German capital on the eve of the coming winter.

The creators describe it thusly:

For the third edition of Real Scenes, RA and Bench go to one of the most special places for electronic music in the world: Berlin. When the Berlin Wall came down in 1989, techno became the underground soundtrack to the reunion between East and West. In recent years, it’s become an international destination for ravers—a cheap place to party with clubs that are renowned throughout the world.

Techno has become a business in the meantime. Yet Berlin still maintains a credibility that other cities lack. To understand why, RA and Bench went to the German capital eager to find out about its unique history and the reasons behind its continued relevance.

Like my long-time home of New York, Berlin has to answer regularly whether its place as a hub is all hype, whether its best days are behind it. I’d say some of Berlin’s unimaginably worst days are behind it, so this seems an odd question. In a place that served, more than once, as a backdrop against which humanity itself seemed as though it might tear itself apart, no degree of optimism and hope seems naive. Perhaps the same can be said of the planet. The wonderful thing about the Web age is the proliferation of all kinds of hubs and interconnects, some better-known and denser than others, but all vital and potentially growing. New York has had an ongoing run since the 17th Century; Berlin, longer. I suspect all of these places have more than a bit of life left, because of the generations of people who come through them that make it happen. Don’t believe the hype, true, but it’s our job to cut through that.

And yes, for those who haven’t worked this out yet, Berlin is at the moment my personal home base. So hello to those of you here.

Okay, I think this may be some of the best / worst promotional marketing I’ve seen for music software. It runs something like this:

Do you want to be just like Jamie Lidell?

The answer is as close as the iTunes App Store and your portable device.

Just download Native Instruments’ iMaschine app to your iPhone, fire it up, and then …

Forget it. Really. I mean, this guy is actually lying in bed in his PJs, the sound you’re hearing is really just the crappy internal microphone on an iPhone 4 iPod touch, and what you’re hearing really is the line out, and this is really all one take. (I confirmed as much with Native Instruments’ Constantin Köhncke as we watched the final take earlier this week at their office.)

For all we talk about microphone selection and placement and such, there’s not much substitute for being able to sing. That is, iMaschine can make anyone sound like this, just so long as they are Jamie Lidell.

And, actually, maybe that means this isn’t such bad marketing after all – perhaps not for iMaschine so much as music software in general. I’m kidding, of course – once you realize you’re not Jamie Lidell, you can work out who you are. And you do have a voice of your own.

iMaschine

I could at this point mention the features in iMaschine, but … what’s the point? It records stuff. You can lay down beats and then sing into it. Just like you can do with other tools for your iPhone or your laptop or even a piece of used sampling gear you found on eBay, all of which can fit comfortably into a bed on a lazy weekend.

In fact, who cares about how technically-sophisticated your software is, or if you have a fancy, high-end mic handy? I hope that we’ll all get a few minutes lying in bed somewhere this weekend. (I know that’s part of my plan.) So, use the internal mic on your laptop, or phone or tape recorder or whatever, use that bicycle for the mind, and in the words of Sesame Street’s “Sing,”

“Don’t worry if it’s not good enough / for anyone else to hear / just sing / sing a song.”

I’ll have a review of iMaschine by next week, but I’m even more interested in what you make.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

Why DIY, anyway? As we prepare for a special Handmade Music afternoon hosted by Amsterdam’s STEIM research center, my co-curator Takuro Mizuta Lippit (dj sniff) asked me to answer that question. Here’s what I wrote for STEIM’s international Patterns and Pleasure festival.

“Do it yourself.”

In the world reshaped by recording, in which music is ubiqiutously available on demand and even bare-bones DJing qualifies as “live” entertainment, the act of just making music surely qualifies as “DIY.” Add the fact that distribution, promotion, and booking of music often falls increasingly on the artists themselves, and it’s hard to see any part of music that isn’t DIY.

So, given all that, what would drive artists to make or modify their own musical tools? One might as well ask why make music in the first place. (Because you can? Because it’s fun? Because it’s the most satisfying way to realize an idea or feeling – often the two together?) I believe some of the separation between “music” and “tools” or “gear” or “technology” is arbitrary. That independence is itself a recording-centric notion, in which musical content as artifact is imagined as independent from how it was made. During the process of production or performance, they’re inseparable. The evolution of musical practice, meanwhile, is intertwined with the technology of playing and representing music. Musical instruments in archaeological records appear alongside the first human tools. Those instruments, like the musical materials themselves, are vessels for expression of human thought. We can make our body an instrument, via percussion or voice, but as with so many other elements of our human life, we extend that body through invention.

When you play an instrument, whether a flute or an interactive music software patch, what you express is mediated both through musical language and the tool. I know as a child, it was what first drew me to music: I could press my fingers to the keys and hear something very much other than what I could produce myself. It’s easy to see the connection to the synthesizer and the computer.

When you want to realize (or discover) new musical and sonic ideas, then, it’s necessary to become involved with the way in which those sounds are produced. As composers for acoustic instruments and voice, you dive into the realms of harmony and rhythm, but also the mechanisms of the instruments and standard and extended techniques. Working with the computer, you employ interfaces – whether simulated knobs or code or graphical representation – to realize your ideas. With electronics, wires and resistors and diodes become compositional. With both, the container you fashion, the handcrafted cases or user interfaces, becomes part of the musical identity you design.

There is no such thing as an instrument built from scratch. To quote Isaac Newton (in words adapted by countless electrical engineers and computer scientists), “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.” We inherit a great body of knowledge and tooling. Whether a commercial DAW or a modular development environment or the circuit that makes a filter, we connect with the ideas, imagination, and expertise of generations of engineer-artists. Notably, we lost Max Mathews this year, whose lasting legacy, even more than breakthroughs in computer synthesis, may be his influence on decades of students and colleagues in chasing the limitless potential he saw in digital sound. Thought is the greatest technology there is.

I think we can easily become overly worried about the rise of digital tech. Computers and electronics are here, and for all their dangers – misuse and toxic waste being foremost among them – they are fundamentally a compilation of human ideas. If you like people, you’ll like computers and circuits when you get to know them. We can also become overly concerned with “new”; the great implication of the maturity of electronic sound technology to me is that we can begin to go from novelty to repeatability and expertise. That’s not to discount discovery; it’s simply that discovery can’t exist in a void. At the same time, in our appetite for mastery, we can devalue the novice. I’m excited by seeing projects that don’t quite work yet, that are only at the stage of technical demo or proof of concept, because to me it’s seeing the first steps on a path that could lead a musician into years of practice and refinement. It’s seeing the chicken popping out of the egg. Potential is stimulating when you believe it has a future.

Here, designing one’s own instruments is much like learning to play an instrument. You repeat the ideas of others, just as you repeat the sounds of others when you learn a musical scale. You make sounds that, at first, are, well, awful, but that then grow up. Whether arguably innovative or not, you make discoveries that are inherently personal. And the degree of that progression is dependent in large part on learning from others, playing with them and sharing their experience. As people share that experience, in the end there are breakthroughs to the genuinely new. Collective progress is what allows those individual eurekas.

With economies from Amsterdam to New Amsterdam slowing, with growing unfilled demand for the ability to actually make stuff and not just push abstract numbers around, and with technical problems that demand solutions literally to ensure our survival, all those strange noises we make take on a new meaning. Tools and technology enabled our civilization; now we need them to make humanity sustainable. Silly sounds and musicians’ racket and din may seem distant from that. But we can sing this necessity as a song. We can celebrate the spirit of experimentation by making things that make immediate noise. A bridge or a jet plane isn’t a great place for experimentation or on-the-job learning; music is the perfect playground because errors are always okay. If any community could help encourage free innovation in our culture, music is a strong candidate; today’s young synth builder could be tomorrow photo-voltaic breakthrough. And even if not, we’ll make a wonderful noise.

“Open source” and the “Web” are significant tools to make sharing expertise easier, but at the fundamental level, it’s simply “sharing” that matters. And this is where music’s makers and inventors are helping resurrect the principles of music as community. We have to share ideas and sounds to be able to move forward.

We do it ourselves, together.

DJ Magazine’s Top 100 list of DJs is irrelevant and broken, based on a flawed methodology, prone to manipulation, and out of touch with what actually makes someone a top DJ.

That’s the conclusion you’d probably reach after reading the latest critique of the poll, and the conclusion is that the list needs to get out of its print past and embrace new tech. It hardly seems like a surprising opinion. But here’s where this becomes news: the analysis comes from London-based Terry Church, formerly a News & Web Editor at DJ Magazine as well as a PR guru and former Beatportal editor.

Terry doesn’t just rant about the top 100. Insetad, he offers a detailed history of how the list came to be, and how at its inception in 1997 no one really saw the potential problems (or had today’s more intelligent survey tech). He also goes, step by step, through the gradual downfall of the survey among artists and listeners. Some good signs: intelligent bookers and audiences are simply well-educated enough that a top list isn’t as necessary. But the bottom line for the top 100 just isn’t good; as Terry writes:

So DJ Magazine’s Top 100 will A) never be secure, and B) will always be plagued by unscrupulous marketing practices. As such, the poll’s popularity has fallen in recent years, even amongst trance fans, who traditionally were the most ardent supporters of the poll’s results due to the large numbers of high ranking DJs from their scene.

However, even among the aspiring candidates themselves there seems to be a general feeling of apathy.

Terry also has some suggestions for how technology might make the list more interesting. Google Trends doesn’t come up with much that’d be too surprising — though, really, a top five probably shouldn’t be surprising in the first place, or it wouldn’t be “top.”

Well worth a full read, particularly to see how an idea in journalism can evolve (or devolve) over time:
Opinion: Should technology replace DJ Magazine’s Top 100 DJs Poll? [terrychurch pr; not sure why that headline ends as a question mark given his thesis]

But for me, this all raises an interesting question. Google Trends is a fairly primitive metric. How might we get some more compelling data visualization and analytics on musical practice? Maybe the next top list will come out of a Music Hack Day, not a suspect print magazine survey. And that sounds very interesting, indeed.

Polling ends tonight. For their part:
http://www.djmag.com/top100

Sure enough, rumors are surfacing saying as much. (I’ve gotten at least one email, secondhand – no, Apple, no Apple employee has said anything to me; if they had, I wouldn’t even think of posting this story). For instance:
Apple Moving Toward Release of Logic Pro X? [MacRumors]

Now, of course, what I’ve heard even more than rumors is users of Logic in an absolute panic that Apple will muck around with their product. Putting it diplomatically, feedback to Final Cut Pro X has not been overwhelmingly positive. I have no idea what the next version of Logic will look like, so it’s very possible Apple will indeed screw around with Logic in a way that makes its existing user base unhappy. But, since I feel free to speculate idly simply because I really, truly don’t know anything and thus can’t get anyone fired / violate any NDAs (again, Apple, please, please, please don’t hurt me), I’ll say this:

Assuming Apple is “running away from pro users” is probably wrong. This was a widespread reading of Final Cut Pro X. I think it’s fair to say Apple hoped their adjustments would attract new users put off by previous versions and other pro non-linear editors. Otherwise, though, I have to disagree. Apple’s pro user base is hugely profitable, in direct sales and high-margin, high-end Mac sales, and there are a lot of those users out there – I’ve sat with that team at Apple as they talked video pro sales numbers, for actual sales from pros, not even including pirated copies. (Anyone who thinks Apple likes to see their product pirated so they can sell more Mac hardware? Highly unlikely, that, too.) There’s a big difference between wanting to alienate your pro user base, and doing it inadvertently. I think Apple’s reputation is such that people have come to believe that everything they do is part of a grand plan, even when it’s not.

Developers want to make changes. Big changes don’t always work as expected, or work right away. Users are resistant to changes, and far more resistant the more the use of software is part of their pro, up-against-deadlines, demanding workflows. That’s the bottom line. I’m not going to be terribly complimentary here, though: I think the problem with Final Cut isn’t that it was designed for non-pro users, but that it wasn’t finished or fully fleshed-out. Enough has been said about that – see The Internet – but I can imagine anything similar in Logic would cause some (rightfully) unhappy users. And quality and implementation are everything; there’s a reason I gave Motion a positive review in Macworld, and you haven’t heard similar complaints about it, even though it uses some of the same UX paradigms and underlying engine. I hope future updates to Final Cut are more like that version of Motion in terms of user experience. (This is not a Final Cut review; that’d be glib. Suffice to say I tried Final Cut Pro X and decided to do editing in another program, and that I do appreciate some of what I believe Apple was trying to do, and that I do hope future versions are more successful. This is the reality of using pro tools.)

That said –

Apple is probably not overhauling Logic as thoroughly as Final Cut. Final Cut’s code base, as of Final Cut Pro 7, was not 64-bit and was dependent on deprecated video frameworks; it’s not unreasonable to assume that Apple felt they had to start over from scratch. Logic already has 64-bit support, and is already built atop parallel audio frameworks like Core Audio and Core MIDI that haven’t changed so radically. So while file management, save and undo, and other Lion-style features would likely call for changes, that doesn’t mean you’ll lose the old Logic, necessarily. And Logic has already undergone one Apple-administered UI overhaul, which was able to preserve the way Logic users work with the tool. Part of what’s admirable about Logic is its longevity, love it or hate it, so while a UI reskin is almost certainly in the works, that doesn’t mean Logic Pro X will be like Logic Studio X.

Apple will probably try to do Mac App Store distribution and take out some bundled apps. You don’t need rumors to figure this one out. App Store distribution? Almost certain. Unbundling tools like Soundtrack Pro or the rarely-used WaveBurner, each of which has robust competition from other developers? Certainly not unlikely. The interesting question here will be how Apple handles the sheer size of things like bundled audio content, and whether Logic’s support for plug-ins will mean either adjusting App Store rules, or whether Logic will get a special exception because it’s Apple (fully within their rights).

Apple probably won’t dump support for plug-ins. Apple continues to actively develop its Audio Unit plug-in format and push validation, and if they didn’t support plug-ins, they’d disrupt users and the entire vendor ecosystem. I’ll be stunned if that goes away. One thing they almost certainly will dump is technologies like Pro Tools interface compatibility – Avid has been moving toward Core Audio support, anyway – and possibly even ReWire. But while any change anywhere in a DAW will impact someone, neither of those would be likely to radically change user relationships to the tool.

Also, as a reader points out, Final Cut Pro X supports plug-ins.

The most interesting thing to me about all of this is whether the appearance of Logic on the Mac App Store, if it happens, will impact other audio apps. So far, it’s been a desert there, as I and some others (read: developers) predicted, partly because music software is so dependent on the plug-in ecosystem and sales to users through direct channels or music stores.

Additional evidence: GarageBand is already in the App Store, and supports plug-ins (AU). So the real question here is more the question of whether other hosts would try to / be allowed to follow the same model, and whether even plug-in distribution, using approved Apple frameworks, were allowed. (The former seems more likely than the latter: you can run a host without a plug-in, but not visa versa.)

What I’m interested in is whether other software follows suit at all. Aperture, Motion, and Final Cut haven’t necessarily produced an onslaught of other pro tools for visual Mac users – at least, not so many high-end or flagship tools, though there are many really useful smaller ones. Will audio be different?

Disclaimer: I know nothing. All of the above is purely speculative, based on things that to me seem pretty obvious. I’m not divulging secret, privileged information, my brain isn’t under an NDA, and all of that means I could be completely wrong. Take with a box of salt.

Updated: I neglected to link, by way of contrast, this editorial from around the time of the most heated Final Cut followup:
The End Is Night…

In it, Chris Randall (himself a plug-in developer tasked with supporting Logic and AU validation) argues basically the exact opposite of what I do here.

In review, my entire analysis above could be summed up as this: Logic will be on the App Store. It’ll still be more or less the Logic you love, or don’t love, as the case may be, but it’s unlikely to introduce radically new feelings even if you aren’t getting a stack of DVDs.