Who says every music production tool has to be either a traditional DAW or Ableton Live?

Not Renoise, for one. I’m running out of things to call it. Modernized tracker? Tracker on steroids? Music production tool from an alternate history in which conventional DAWs were ignored and everybody just kept on using trackers? How about this: a gem that a tiny development team somehow keeps making more awesome with regular updates with misleading names like “point 8.”

So, what does “2.8″ give you? A couple of OS compatibility fixes and one new delay effect? Wrong. New in this release is a massive set of improvements. 64-bit is in there, but in terms of day-to-day use, the workflow improvements may be what really matters. (Okay, I usually cringe when I see “workflow improvements” in a press release, and here I’ve gone and used the same phrase. Let’s just say it’s “more awesome to use.”)

The new Renoise Pattern Matrix aliasing means powerful arrangement and compositional tools.

Highlights, condensed:

• 64-bit for everybody (Mac and Windows in addition to existing Linux support), so you can access more than 4 GB RAM. A bridge plug-in lets you use 32-bit instruments and effects, and there’s 64-bit ReWire support.
• Pattern Matrix now lets you alias and clone pattern slots. It’s a powerful arrangement feature that’s a bit different than similar block arrangement or clip launching features in other tools (both because of Renoise’s approach to patterns and clips, and this ability to use those aliases to create structure). Expect some follow-up.
• Collapse tracks and groups (see image below), giving Renoise some of the screen economy that made trackers famous. Route those grouped tracks, and use pattern effects across grouped tracks (also something relatively technique).
• DSP multitap delay. (Yes, there’s that, but also…)
• DSP repeater (“stutter”) effect.
• DSP Exciter.
• New pattern effects: Tremolo, Auto Pan, Set Envelope Position. (That last one sounds like it could be pushed into some insane places.)
• Meta Mixer lets you combine modulation signals. (It’s really a meta device – imagine combining what Ableton does with Devices and Reason does with Combinator and CV devices.) Improvements to other modules, as well, both aesthetically and in parameters.
• Improved editing in Sample Editor, including destructively rendering slices to individual samples, and editing features typically associated with waveform editors rather than tools like this. My favorite: cross-fading loop creation, which previously required jumping out to another tool (Peak, SoundForge, etc.)
• More performance: Hyper-threading on new Intel chips.
• More spectral views and editing, more envelope editing views, Favorites for devices.

And there’s a lot more, as well.

http://www.renoise.com/new

You've got to love the ultra-compact track collapse feature - ideal for 11" MacBook Airs or Linux netbooks.

You also get features like this: “up to 34 DSP devices can be addressed via pattern commands 1xyy-Yxyy.” Power users know instantly what that means musically. The rest of you – well, don’t worry, other parts of Renoise will gradually level you up to that kind of ninja insanity. And Renoise is humanizing things, as well: “Logical mnemonics for pattern effects from A to Z instead of cryptic numbers.”

Will everyone drop everything and use Renoise? Odds are, no: this tool remains an acquired taste (though don’t dismiss until you’ve given its unique workflow a try). But, then, that’s part of the joy of this: it’s not an “industry standard.” It’s just an incredibly terrific music making tool that proves that not all music making tools need to look identical.

Now that I share the same home city as the developers, I think I owe you more information from the inside. Stay tuned.

Renoise 2.8 is a free update for current users, and an insanely-low 58 € new.

http://www.renoise.com/

I think the first time I really understood handheld music making was when I first tried Nanoloop on Game Boy. While the more-popular LSDJ tracker is powerful, Nanoloop’s interface was unlike anything I’d seen before: aggressively minimal, it embodies in its interface design the feeling of a blank sheet of paper. Adding an idea feels like composition, like genuinely exploring open-ended possibilities and discovering what melodies may result. Now, Nanoloop – already on iOS – is available for Android, too.

It remains simple stuff, the sense of what a music maker looks like when designed for your hand rather than translated to mobile from desktop, studio-style workstations. There are six fixed channels, each assignable to a synth (FM, noise, or filtered wave) or a sampler. Then, each channel takes eight patterns. There’s a step sequencer, the ability to resample, and song editor with loops. The sampling capabilities are especially nice on Android, as you can now sample from the mic or load samples right onto the SD card. (The mic you can use on iOS, but not the SD card, of course.) You can export OGG files to your library, turning your Android device into a DJ-set-ready pocket music library, or send and receive projects via email. Via iTunes, you can even exchange files with the iPhone version, in case you have an Android phone and an iPod touch or some similar arrangement.

This isn’t a port of the Game Boy nanoloop, developer Oliver Wittchow is quick to note. It’s not for chip music, or emulating game consoles. It’s for … well, Android music. But make no mistake: while the tool feels fresh and native to the new platform, it also carries the spirit of the Game Boy version. And that spirit is handheld music making, not just the aesthetics of the chip, but the feeling of using a minimal device scaled to your hands, something you can use on the go.

Oliver tells CDM that he has used a lot of native code (via the NDK), as he did non-object-oriented C (not Objective-C) in the iOS version. He says it’s about 1:1 C and Java: “I could use the iOS code almost unmodified and get the sound engine and touch input to work immediately. I had an almost fully working nanoloop within few days – without any graphics though.
Now I ‘just’ had to write Java code for GUI, file access, recording functions and the different menu structure.”

The results, he says, are a little strange if you’re looking at the code (lots of getters and setters, C mixed with Java), but it works well.

Android owners, I’d love to hear how this works on your device. Let us know – just be sure to fill out a bug report. As the Market page notes:

Nanoloop works on a variety of devices, including HTC Desire, Motorola Droid and also midrange phones such as HTC Legend and XPERIA X10 mini. However, this is the first release and of course it has not been tested on all Android devices yet. If you experience crashes or other problems, please report them via e-mail or the anonymous bug report form at www.nanoloop.com. Thank you.

Now if we can just have some luck with Bluetooth MIDI at our hacklab tomorrow, this could be another candidate.

Oh, and most of all, I’d love to hear the music you make.

nanoloop on the Android Market (a stunning EUR1 … that’s a no-brainer. Better than an espresso shot!)

nanoloop.de [iOS, Android]

See our previous Android music round-up

For the historical record, here’s nanoloop for Game Boy on CDM – from 2004. It’s actually come quite a ways since that release, but the spirit is the same.
http://createdigitalmusic.com/2004/11/updated-nanoloop-20-game-boy-instrument/

Ready to make your Ableton Live pattern programming a bit more polyrhythmic with the power of math?

In Monday’s reflections and round-up of cycles and circles, I mentioned Euclidean evenness and Godfried Toussaint’s research. The basic idea is that a mathematical algorithm for spacing pulses has a lot in common with traditional preferences for polyrhythms spanning everything from rock hits to conga patterns and musical cultures around the world.

Reader Tony Wheeler has turned those patterns into MIDI clips so you can drop patterns into Ableton Live. Drum patterns and dance music are obvious applications, but this could be an idea starter for melodic patterns or music in a variety of idioms.

Each individual pattern will sound like an isolated cycle; it’s often when you put them together that they’re most compelling. Here’s an example; Tony added a regular bass drum just to make things more grounded (it actually calls attention to the asymmetry of the other patterns).

ScaledKit by wheelmaker

Tony has another terrific tool for Ableton Live that generates the AMS files used by Operator to tune oscillators to alternative pitches, as we covered previously:
Free Utility Makes Endless Oscillators for Ableton Live Simpler, Sampler
Direct link: AMS File Utility for Ableton Live

And for harmonic experimentation, see the Circle of Fifths Chord Resource:
Circle of Fifths Chord Resource in Ableton Live

This is all fairly academic stuff, but the funny thing about it is there’s nothing stopping you from making either a dance music hit or some experimental new kind of music that doesn’t sound like it came from Ableton.

Alternative tunings for Operator oscillators and Euclidean polyrhythms? There are many tools aside from Ableton that will work, too, but whatever your tool, this could be a great way to jump-start a musical idea. Airport layover, meet musical productivity.

Updated: Another great way to go is the Eckel VST plug-in, also donationware. It works on Mac (Universal) and Windows, and since you can dial up parameters, may be easier to use than the MIDI clips, depending on your workflow – especially since you can still choose pitch. (Or, hey, grab both!) Thanks to John Larsby for the reminder:
Shuriken.se: VST – Eckel

For Dr. Toussaint’s part, you can glance over his syllabus on Discrete Mathematics — and find a reference to Tony’s Ableton experiments.

Grab the download and read more on this topic (free, donations welcome):
Euclidean Rhythm MIDI File Resource in Ableton Live [Age of the Wheel]

Swedish developer Magnus Lidström is something of a virtuoso of music software, having worked with Propellerhead (Malström, etc.) and releasing his own unique µTonic (MicroTonic) and Synplant instruments. It’s been a bit since we’ve gotten new work from him – little matter, as I find his instruments tend to stand the test of time – but that changes now. MicroTonic, a well-loved drum machine cum drum synth, gets a major update this week, a 2011 New Year’s present to the producer community. (It is indeed a gift if you own a previous version; upgrades are free.) And one more thing – Sonic Charge is also releasing a terrific “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect” that does wonderful things with audio.

MicroTonic was already a lovely combination of percussion synthesizer and pattern-editing drum machine. New in µTonic 3.0:

• A morph slider which interpolates between eight drum patches – all MIDI-controlled and automation-ready, for crazy performance and production options
• A matrix editor for accessing all eight drum channels’ patterns at once
• MIDI pattern drag and drop, for Ableton Live users (and all major hosts)
• Choke groups, MIDI pitch wheel and program change support, new pattern modes, undo/redo
• Prettier improved skin and UI improvements

And there’s much more, as well. See the full changelog:
Changes in µTonic v3.0

Just as compelling as MicroTonic, though, is a new US$29 effect called Bitspeak. Sonic Charge describes Bitspeak thusly: “It will make you sound like a robot. Robots are cool. Bitspeek is cool.”

But that doesn’t quite do it justice. Bitspeak is vocoder-like in that it works on the same fundamental principle. But it’s closest to the compression algorithm used in mobile phones – it’s a “real-time pitch-excited linear prediction codec effect.” Pitch, volume, and formant data drive an oscillator, noise, and filter. The resulting timbres can sound like conventional ring mods and vocoders, or something quite different – and I’m really intrigued to try this on different sources. As presented here, you really have a gamut of possible effects.

And yes, it sounds like a Speak ‘n Spell turned into an effect. Listen to those sound samples for more.

The two Sonic Charge plugins are available for Windows VST and Mac VST and AU. MicroTonic even supports Mac OS 10.4 and (G5) PowerPC, so it’s an ideal choice for an older machine. (Bitspeak requires 10.5 and Intel on the Mac side, but also supports XP on Windows, so still works on an older PC.)

Full info:
http://www.soniccharge.com/bitspeek
http://www.soniccharge.com/microtonic

Melbourne, Australia-based acid music lover dyLab posts 303-made goodness on the Acid Box Blues blog. And here’s a great way to get in the holiday mood — well, that is, if acid music gets you in the holiday mood. It’s a pattern laid out on paper, ready to program into your TB-303 hardware, software emulation, x0xb0x, Pd patch, or however you get your real/fake 303 on. The pattern is the work of Honeysmack (Soundcloud site), a fellow Melbourne-based artist.

The December Acid Pattern

I’m rather hoping that putting patterns and presets on paper catches on; I dubbed our MeeBlip version “hipster patch storage.” As it happens, in this case you can download the blank template for your 303 activities. There’s something about committing something electronic in nature to actual paper. And once you’re done, you can share with others with a SoundCloud group. Or, better yet, if you have enough music-making friends, make this your holiday card. (Start on that New Year’s card now, kids.)

There’s more in the way of giveaways, too. Try on a free TR-606 sample set and check out other goodies on the rest of the site.

http://acidboxblues.blogspot.com/

In Christmas We Trust by Honeysmack by DyLABs

What’s in for this season in music software? Cellular automata. You may have been exposed to a cellular automaton in the classic Game of Life; it’s basically a very simple biological simulator exposed as an intuitive, 2-dimensional grid of squares. If tic-tac-toe, Charles Darwin, and a petri dish of bacteria got together in one wild evening, you’d come up with something like this as a result. The Game of Life has been around since mathematician John Conway invented it in 1970, but lately it’s been cross-bred with music software to help patterns escape the rigid, boring repetition of traditional sequencer grids.

Cellular automata is in fine form on the beautiful, strange homebrew sequencer for the Nintendo DS, GlitchDS, which has had ongoing updates. It’s still fun as ever in Reaktor 5′s Newschool preset (old news, but enjoyable nonetheless). But in what’s so far the most anticipated plug-in release of the fall, CA takes on particularly powerful sonic possibilities in the first “experimental” release from beloved plug-in boutique Audio Damage:

Automaton [Product Page, Mac AU/VST; Windows VST]
Cost: US$49.99

Since the cellular automata grid can control anything, it’s what you hook it up to that matters — and that’s especially important, because it means instead of a set of knobs or sequence grid doing the same thing over and over and over and over again, CA “evolves” on its own, bringing much-needed change to your music. Automaton is a combination of a flexible CA sequencer with four effects:

1. Stutter (modulates a buffer, so you can combine Automaton with existing beat loops and patterns)
2. Modulate (a self-modulating ring modulator)
3. Bitcrush (which includes AD’s own “error” setting)
4. Replicate (based on their Replicant effect, which goes even further in the beat slicing realm a la Ableton’s Beat Repeat)

I’ve been playing around with the beta, and it’s just fantastic. I hope to finish off some special CDM presets and share them with you, though I’m a bit behind — let’s see if I can top the presets that come with the tool. One of the hallmarks of Audio Damage’s software in VST format is lots of MIDI learn support, and since it supports VST automation I anticipate some fun combining this with Kore. Either way, think easy tweaking and live performance control.

Now, question math geeks: any other cellular automata aside form the Game of Life that work well with music? I’m sure there are some experimental music projects out there that have used other CA, so link away.

Here are two tutorial videos of the tool in action, in case you haven’t seen them already:

Automaton Overview Pt. 1 – Sequencer… from Audio Damage on Vimeo.

Automaton Overview Pt. 2 – Effects… from Audio Damage on Vimeo.

Mobile music suites date back to the first PDAs; the Palm has long been a stand-out platform with apps like Chocopoolp’s wonderful Bhajis Loops. The iPod Touch and iPhone have been a hotbed for development, thanks to sharing development frameworks with the Mac. That led our iPod/iPhone software round-up to be bursting with good stuff. But lacking a final SDK from Apple, many of the options were, admittedly, early in development or toy-like.

Intua’s new BeatMaker, a complete music studio, looks more like a real music tool. The basic functionality:

• Mobile sampler: 16 pads for editable sample playback, slicing, and pattern recording. (I hoped this meant you could actually record on the fly, but it looks like you can’t.)
• Step sequencer with an interesting-looking interface, pictured above
• Effects: two channels with beat-synced delay, 3-band EQ, and bit-crushing distortion

Intua Product Page

We’ll be watching for news from Apple this week, which should give us a better sense, hopefully, of what Apple’s developer plans are. To me, the restrictions so far (limiting features, eliminating multi-tasking, and requiring distribution via official Apple outlets) dampen some of the appeal of the platform. Likewise, so far we’ve seen basically “hacked” development – and quite frankly, it’s been more interesting as a result. We should know soon more about what officially-sanctioned development will look like for music. BeatMaker could be one of the first generation of apps to fit that category.

And lest I just seem sour, to me the larger point is that OSes come and go; what we’re really seeing is richer capabilities on mobile devices. Apple certainly deserves credit for making that vision most apparent in a shipping device.

The DS’ stylus and touchscreen make an ideal pocket-able interface: they’re coupled with friendly, conventional arcade buttons, but provide precise control of visual interfaces without using a mouse. (Touch with fingertips is not nearly as accurate, especially on tiny screens.) That’s already inspired quite a bit of music software, but GrooveStep earns extra points for employing a friendly interface for easy, quick pattern sequencing.

Official GrooveStep Site, which includes a limited Flash editor interface demo.

Liz and I got to meet up with GrooveStep creator Martin Robaszewski at winter NAMM, but we weren’t allowed to talk about it — until now. What I can tell you that might not come across in the video:

• It’s ridiculously fun.
• The samples sound fantastic. (That humble DS headphone jack can make sounds, folk.)
• It’s really, really fast: the minimal interface makes on-the-fly pattern making pretty quick.

Official specs so far:

Song Features:
16 tracks with up to 2 samples per track
Tempo: 30-300 BPM

Pattern Editor features:
Variable pattern length: 1-64 steps
Variable pattern playback speeds: 1x, 2x, 4x

That’s all we have in the way of official info: release information is all in the future (when, where, how much, publisher, etc.). But with this and Korg’s DS-10, plus Pro Performer, NitroTracker, and DSMusic Interface (now including Wifi and serial alike), the DS is one hot little mobile music platform.

Side note — hey, bad news; it looks like the DSerial2, the DS serial interface with tilt, is no more? Anyone heard more about this?

Me-too 49-key controllers have been mind-numbingly dull for the most part. The new Akai MPK49, revealed in Frankfurt at Messe, easily qualifies as different. Not only does it add trigger pads as found on the MPC line, but there’s an onboard arpeggiator, functionality borrowed from the MPC, and additional MIDI control options, as well.

1. It’s a control surface: 8 endless encoders, 8 sliders, and 8 backlit switches, each of which can be controlled via 3 selectable banks (8 x 3 = 24 “virtual” controls each, 72 controllers total).
2. It’s a transport control: Start/stop transport buttons that actually send MMC or MIDI start/stop messages. (I shouldn’t have to say that, but not all controllers’ transport buttons actually do.)
3. It’s an MPC-style controller: 12 pads, yes, but unlike the pads on the Korg Kontrol49 or the M-Audio Axiom, it actually functions like an MPC, with note repeat and swing functions. Hopefully the quality will be closer to a standalone unit, as well.
4. It’s an arpeggiator: Akai’s mum on the details, but there’s an onboard arpeggiator in the unit — a rarity in controllers.

And it’s got a full-sized, 49-key keyboard, expression input (thanks!), and a big LCD screen. Looks terrific, though my only question is the quality of the keyboard; I’ve been a bit disappointed with recent entries from Alesis on reliability and feel. (Alesis, Akai, and Numark are now made by the same company; you’ll notice the similarity of this to Alesis’ MIDI controller line.) No pricing or availability yet, but given this unique combination of features, we’ll definitely be watching.

First seen at VJ blogger S.O. Sample‘s site, and I have to say, this could be an unbelievable VJ keyboard.