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.”

Mastering – a step by step guide to good sound by monolake

Sadly, as Robert Henke concedes:

i still think it needs to be louder and it lacks dynamics and punch. I STILL THINK IT NEEDS TO BE LOUDER AND IT LACKS DYNAMICS AND PUNCH!

It’s like banging your head against a brick wall.

No further comment at this time.

Guess who’s gotten really bad at keeping a lid on upcoming product announcements? The manufacturers.

We’re suddenly utterly awash with teasers. Yes, it seems from intentional leaks to advance campaigns, we’re now destined to see every significant new piece of music gear before we see it, cast in shadows and partial photos and more. Apparently, the folks doing publicity think that this will cause people on the Internet to talk about them. They’re … right, in fact. And with the biggest American trade show for music gear landing next week, we’re in a flood of stuff.

I would willfully ignore such things, but I think it’s worth a quick round-up just to remind ourselves which booths we should visit next week in Anaheim at NAMM. And amidst more predictable teasers, the other good news is, the synths just keep on coming and coming. Who would have thought it? 2012 could be the year of the synth – again. (Even with MIDI DIN, no less!)

CDM is proud to bring you all this news, last. (I made the coffee and everything, but then seemed not to actually post this stuff when it arrived.)

Let’s take a sneak peak.

The best teasers:

NI tipped me off to their new @Traktor feed. There, we see, curiously, something resembling the colored buttons on color-mod monomes. And that’s all I can see, but I’m told we’ll see more from NI soon. (Note that NI doesn’t have a NAMM booth, so I don’t necessarily expect a NAMM announcement.)

Oddly, after I made a reference to the StealthMountain account, I see that tweet reads “Sneak Peak.” I’m going to assume that either that was a cheeky attempt to attract the ire of snarky grammar-correcting Twitter bots after I made mention of them, or that I should shut up as a lot of 2012 will be about me utterly butchering the beautiful German language.

Ken MacBeth takes the wraps off his MicroMac on The Facebook. “Micro” for Ken means basically “normal size” for the rest of us – the guy designs Paul Bunyan-style modulars. The Micro looks nice, indeed, three oscillators, loads of CV, and a VCF, plus Ken hopes for portamento and glide. This is still a prototype, but we hope to catch it in person. Compare the earlier proto design, second from top (which I actually quite like – anyone else?):

French synth maker Eowave is definitely on my must-visit list, with not one but two compelling new synths. The Domino (top) is a little more in the meat-and-potatoes category, a lovely, minimal analog monosynth. Koma (second top) is a bit more modern-looking and different, combining an analog bassline synth with a push-button step sequencer.

Koma @ Eowave
Domino @ Eowave [rattle your floors with the sound that autoplays]

More has leaked out about the upcoming Casio XW-P1. And yeah, basically, it sounds like what we’re getting is a general-purpose workstation, more along the lines of what Roland and Yamaha offer than the personality of the beloved CZ series. (SonicState does the math, too – it’s been since 1988.) The bad news: it’s a big workstation keyboard rather than something a bit more unique. The good news: coming from Casio, I’ll bet we see some serious value pricing … and you can still get your CZ on via eBay.

SonicState quotes Keyboard:
“A Mono solo section with up to six oscillators: two virtual analog, two PCM, noise, and external audio. Poly section with wide variety of gig- ready sounds. Drawbar organ mode. Six-way HexTone multis. Nine-track step sequencer with dedicated drum track.”

We’ve also got more details on Akai’s second controller-plus-software combo offering, the MPC Studio. (Curiously, if it’s small enough to carry with you, it’s called “Studio.” If it’s so big, you have to leave it in your studio, it’s called “Renaissance.” Got it?) As with the MPC Renaissance, the big story here is that you get a “dumb” hardware controller that doesn’t produce sound, and the operation itself all happens on your computer via software, a la Native Instruments’ Maschine. Unlike NI, though, Akai doesn’t really have a track record to speak of in software, so the big variable is how well their software works.

The MPC Studio, meanwhile, looks far more luggable and is presumably more affordable than its nonetheless cool-looking, monster truck-style bigger sibling.

It does look very, very slim. Unfortunately, with all those buttons crammed on the right side, it looks like a remote control for a home theater. I’ll be interested to try it in person and see if that’s usable in real life.

http://www.akaiprompc.com/mpcstudio.php [yup - URL still looks like "Prom PC" to me]

I’m probably most intrigued by Livid’s latest controller, the CNTRL-R, made in collaboration with M-nus Records and Richie Hawtin. That collaboration is interesting just because of the amount of live parameter control Rich and company are doing live. And Livid and their booth-mates should have loads of good toys. Livid’s Peter Nyboer writes in comments:

We (Livid) are showing with Mode Machines at E1009. We’ll be previewing some eurorack MIDI+analog things that we’ve been working on, the CNTRL:R that ships next month, and all our other controllers and DIY parts. I will also stand in the acoustic center of all the electric guitars and attempt an air guitar performance mimicking all the simultaneous shredding.

http://lividinstruments.com/hardware_cntrlr.php

Nord has a new organ and a new drum module coming. Sweet. I’m holding out for a Nord Virginal.

“The drums of the future come from the past” is the tagline.

Or to put it another way, “The key to saving the future, can be found only in the past.” [1]

Or to put it another way, “The future is history.” [2]

Or to put it another way, “He will erase your past to protect your future.” [3]

Or to put it another way, “Fight the future.” [4]

Or to put it another way, “In the future, one man is the law.” [5]

Or to put it another way, “The people aboard Flight 35 are about to land 1,000 years from where they planned to.” [6, and I hope that doesn't happen during my Delta connection in Atlanta on the way to LA ... again]

If you want to hire me to do your next PR campaign – yes, conflict of interest, blah, blah – give me a call. Several commenters have said I’m a great shill. I think that’s a compliment.

Answers below.

[1] Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

[2] Twelve Monkeys.

[3] Eraser.

[4] X-Files: Fight the Future.

[5] Judge Dredd.

[6] Millenium.

Show of hands – how many of you got them all?

Also on our teaser tracker:
bodo notes:

Loads of new Eurorack by the likes of Pittsburgh Modular, WDM, Syntech, LZX, but the most eagerly awaited modules will probably be the Make Noise Oscillator (yay!) and Echophon (basically +pitchdelay http://soundhack.henfast.com/freeware/ in a Eurorack module)

We know Teenage Engineering is bringing something, and they win the award for most obscure teaser video. (TV dinner, suggests one reader.)

I look at 10 things I’m excited about at NAMM, though I think I may have to remove the one about “surprises.”

See you from Anaheim.

Readers have spoken, and it seems recent outings by Brian Eno can be a bit divisive. (Okay, I’ll admit – I wasn’t at all fond of Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, as a huge fan of Byrne and Eno.)

But Eno isn’t the only English musical legend who … cough … might make fans long for the earlier stuff. See video explanation above.

Music is, of course, taste – part of why we enjoy it is that it is emotional and not objective or (gasp) entirely quantitative.

So, to me, there’s not a moment of the above BBC Web-only comedy sketch that isn’t brilliant. Of course, you’re welcome to disagree. I might just have to ask you to leave.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to frame my exclusive artwork from King of Limbs and put the vinyl edition on the phonograph, after connecting my gold-plated cables. You just can’t hear it at all, otherwise. Who said “hero worship”? SHUT UP! OUT!

(quiet voice in the back … “well … i rather liked … king of limbs…”)

Via Myles Ashley Borins.

I really have no words for this one, other than there’s a hilarious APC40 meme happening on the Ableton forums. Is it love? Disdain? The APC as the new “All Your Base” for the Live warping set? Does it really matter?

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=116396

It’s good to know that, even as Ableton Live use has spread, us computer music folk are really not normal.

Via Tara Busch on Twitter of AnalogSuicide.

You know that viral, deeply inspirational Britain’s Got Talent clip in which a lone singer bursts the preconceptions and expectations of the whole world, dazzling audiences and bringing people to tears with her talent?

Yeah, okay, so this is pretty much nothing like that.

This is more in the category of self-deprecating artists who aren’t afraid to laugh at themselves, being exactly what you’d expect them to be – and then some. Let’s call it “dorkpop,” intentionally geeky musicians willing to be just the people they are. Three keyboards, and one man with a keytar. (Note that he basically demonstrates in the video why these should be called shoulder-mounted keyboards or something, since the only thing they have in common with a guitar is a strap.)

Artists able to laugh at themselves: always a good thing.

But the really funny thing about this clip is that Simon Cowell apparently can’t laugh. He seems somehow offended by the fact that they don’t take themselves seriously. Mr. Cowell, unable to handle irony?

Well, if Susan Boyle was so heartwarming you needed a dose of irony, here it is.

Via our friends in the UK who themsleves have quite a lot of British talent, MusicRadar (of Computer Music and Future Music):

Simon Cowell bemused by keytar trio

“This is not serious, right?” Evidently Mr. Cowell has quite a bit in common with certain grumpy readers of this site in comments. (You know who you are. We forgive you.)

The Internet, having satisfied itself yesterday with video that faked a Beyonce who couldn’t sing, now imagines news that can. And Steve Reich is proven ahead of his time — again. (Congrats on the Pullitzer – it took them just five decades to notice!)

Yes, Antares’ Auto-Tune plug-in – now so ubiquitous in mainstream, non-audio-engineer knowledge that it’s become a generic description like “Kleenex” – can be applied to everything. (We, um, can only hope these industrious YouTubers are using legally-licensed copies – that is, until Antares releases a 99-cent iPhone app.) And so, hilariously, we imagine a world of news sung hip-hop style.

As it happens, this digital foolery does reveal something deeper. One of the joys of language in general, certainly true of English, is the degree to which musical-like inflection turns our spoken words into songs. In English, these inflections are more decorative than syntactical – good news, as unlike a language like Mandarin, the wrong inflection won’t get you in trouble. But I think a lot of the texture of the music of English-speakers – native and non-native alike – is influenced by the rhythms and melodic contours of our speech. Would Jazz have happened in a country without American English and its regional dialects? Given the sounds of “talking” trumpet mutes, my guess is it would have sounded quite different.

Poor video, but gives you the idea (where’s the official Steve Reich YouTube channel?):

The Auto-Tune News is intentionally silly, of course. But even without digital aids, people have been finding songs in recorded speech. Take composer Steve Reich: without the aid of Auto-Tune, he found surprisingly in-tune sounding melodic fragments in interview recordings for pieces like Different Trains, and later built an entire opera around the technique. (The Cave, with its accompanying video, below.)

Antares, for their part, is keeping a good sense of humor about all of this – and laughing all the way to the bank. There news stream has followed the pop culture references to their product, and even jokingly suggested they would introduce Direct Mind Access Composition Technology on April Fool’s Day. (Don’t laugh too much: I heard composer Jon Appleton, sitting alongside fellow luminaries Bob Moog, Laurie Spiegel, Morton Subotnik, and others, suggest a musical brain hat at a panel on the future of music. I’m happy to actually shut down my mind occasionally, so I don’t entirely understand the appeal.)

Previously:

AutoTune: The Song, a $99 Version (Hide!), and Some History

And here’s part I of Auto-Tuning the news. Daily Show, eat your heart out:

Thanks to decrepitude in comments. (Erm – that being the dude/dudette’s alias, not actual decrepitude in comments. That we’re not thankful for.)

Something has happened with electronic musicians and producers. We’re not confined to the ghetto of electronic sounds any more. You could argue it’s a sign of waning interest in those timbres, but I think it’s something else: people are simply becoming more flexible creative producers, comfortable with acoustic and electrified and synthesized sounds alike.

So, in that spirit, one of my most anticipated albums of this year has been one that’s mostly instrumental and not-terribly-electronic or digital. It’s the March release Saskamodie from Mocky, Somali-Canadian-Yemeni musician. I’ve just begun listening to it, and I’m quite enjoying it. It’s definitely retro, a groovy, poppy reverie that seems more than a little inhabited by the soul of Serge Gainsbourg, who once recorded in the studio in which it was recorded. It’s also effective partly because it fits squarely into the realm of jazz. It oozes warmth and humor, sonically and musically.

In the meantime, Mocky himself has shown us how to market effectively with tongue planted firmly in cheek, as seen in the video above. It’s a dangerous maneuver to attempt – trained professionals only. But by invoking some digital effects and a heavy dose of hyperbole, Mocky I think manages to strike a balance between self-promotion and self-deprecation.

He has some help from his friends, too: collaborators Jamie Lidell, Feist, Gonzales, Kevin Blechdom, and Peaches show up. That lineup puts Mocky in with a crowd that embodies a growing retro-savvy aesthetic. I actually don’t think that “retro” has to even carry any negative connotations. Done poorly, of course, an album can simply seem backwards-looking or out of place – but that’s true anyway. Done well, we have a new sense that time can fold in on itself, that in an age of digital recordings, we share musical space virtually, even with musicians who are now very dead. And maybe that’s the zeitgeist this video unwittingly touches.

After all, at worst, we live in an age that could be a simple, cheap digital effect – the kind being (cough) mocked here. We could paste ourselves onto old musical styles, and look just as awkward as a couple of the motion-tracked faux heads floating on the bodies of drummers of the past. Happily, I don’t find that that’s the case here. Mocky has a comfort and sensibility that somehow hints that it’s 2009, but perhaps 2009 doesn’t have to be 2009.

That said, I’d still like to hear more envelope-pushing in these retro directions. Sure, it’s fun channeling Serge Gainsbourg, but I don’t hear people challenging someone really tough, like bleeding-edge Miles Davis. The styles we cherish so much came out of real experimentation. Maybe that’s a challenge for myself as much as for the albums on my listening queue. Nonetheless, Mocky’s mock-marketing and self-branding is as suave as his music, and Saskamodie is like an easy-to-drink, expensive port – a dessert drink, but a delicious one.

You can download the new album from the label, Crammed Discs.

http://www.mockyrecordings.com

Thanks to Tobias Thon for this one (via Facebook).

Feeling a warm, holiday glow – or is that just nostalgia for simpler times, times when less digital information was needed to capture sound? Bits were real bits; sampling rates were low enough you could count to the top of them. Kids walked uphill through the snow both ways to buy a new Casio keyboard, and they didn’t yet believe Nintendo’s R.O.B. was a gimmick. They had none of your Grand Theft Audio nonsense: they hummed along to annoying tunes and watched sprites dance across the screen like a derezzed Sugar Plum Fairy.

These should put you even more in the mood, then.

8-bit Jesus is a work-in-progress by Doctor Octoroc, applying the style of an NES game to each Christmas favorite – think “Super Jingle Bros.” Unfortunately, the good Doctor’s server has been overwhelmed by holiday cheer, or his server admin has been drinking too much Egg Nog. Anyone got an alternative link? Found at:

8-bit Jesus, the NES themed chiptune holiday album [boing boing Offworld]

8-bit collective, the all-powerful assemblage of chip artists, has their own holiday creation: a virtual musical advent calendar, in which each day is a new tune. Best title yet: “Joy is all up in this B*****.”

8-bit Advent Calendar [8bitcollective]

Fans of 8-bit or newcomers wondering what the fuss is about, Weekend America did a story on the Blip Festival that just concluded here in New York:

Blip Festival Radio Story

Lastly, Bohus Blahut at Retro Thing points to the album Kasio Kristmas, as seen in the video at top. It’s not free, but it does feature freaky-looking fellows dressed as coneheaded aliens. Bohus’ copy is ready for them to add to their press clippings:

With more than a touch of Devo (and that’s a good thing), vintage electronics, and oodles of out and out weirdness, these AA battery powered tunes re-electrify the holiday classics.

Enjoy!

And just to round this out, I’m running this photo by Scott Beale of laughingsquid, because I didn’t photograph my bottle, and because it seems somehow appropriate, and will likely inspire someone’s own 8-bit (or 64-bit) album.

This week, the Web is buzzing over the music video of AutoTune, the (parody) song.

Sadly, this video could have been so much more – not even so much as a Cher reference, really? (Cher’s producers: AutoTuning way before Kanye West, and then lying about it! Brilliant!)

For a bit of AutoTune reflection and history:

Read the 1999 Sound on Sound article in which the producers tried to fool people into thinking they used a Digitech Talker vocoder, which, come to think of it, sounds like it would have actually been a pretty decent idea, anyway. That story is now updated with the correction. I’m sure the producers are relatively sorry about it certain they can’t get away with it any more / it’s hardly a trade secret.

Sasha Frere-Jones wrote a thoughtful article on AutoTune for The New Yorker earlier this year. Best bit:

Someone once asked Hildebrand if Auto-Tune was evil. He responded, “Well, my wife wears makeup. Is that evil?” Evil may be overstating the case, but makeup is an apt analogy: there is nothing natural about recorded music.

That much is true. Of course, it begs the question: does his wife smear lipstick randomly over her forehead? Can you actually see her face? You see my point.

Perhaps feeling the pressure of free tuning and vocal plug-ins now shipping with many audio apps and DAWs, Antares have introduced Auto-Tune efx, a US$99, simplified version of the plug-in for Mac and Windows now available exclusively at Guitar Center. Oddly, a selling point is that it currently comes with a free iLok; given that it’s targeted at beginning users who likely would be shocked that they have to pay extra to use DRM added to a program, that seems like not something one would advertise. (Wow! Thanks!)

In Antares’ defense, though, no, I don’t think AutoTune is evil. In fact, I think ironically, it’s drawn attention to some of the potential fictions of recording – and, through the magic of reverse psychology, made a great case for making changes to the actual vocals and using the computer for more creative tasks rather than seeing it as a panacea for fixing human beings.

Antares also does produce software that can be used to creative effect, like the AVOX2 toolkit and its mutating effects.

To me, the most interesting (and overlooked) thing about AutoTune is its roots in seismology and geophysical data. Yep, that’s right: founder Andy Hildebrand got his start at Exxon doing things like looking for failure points in pipelines. He went on to study composition at Rice’s Shepherd School of Music, and used his smarts in seismology to solve musical problems.

For more on that history, read the 1999 awards citations in the newsletter of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists [PDF], recognizing Hildebrand. (I love search engines.)

So, knock AutoTune if you like: what it demonstrates is the flexibility of digital algorithms. In fact, the beauty of computers is that they don’t worry about issues like taste or the difference between music and underground oil. And that means you can take a tool and apply it to a radically different job – giving us human beings near endless potential in how we interpret digital tools.

And that suggests that you ought to be able to use AutoTune and your voice and do something that isn’t awful at all.