Speaking of gaming, here’s more news that the fledgling game audio and music area is getting more attention — something that we at CDM see as very good news. (See our sometimes-obsessive gaming stories.) CDM’s resident game composer and sound designer checks in …

In an e-mail he sent to me yesterday, Peter pointed out that Mix was soon to offer a bi-monthly newsletter on game audio. We were both summarily unimpressed - until we discovered that the newsletter was in addition to a monthly digital magazine, a sample of which is now available on the Mix website.

The sample issue covers topics such as audio for mobile games, World of Warcraft sound design, and an interview with Tim Larkin - composer for various Myst games, and sound designer for Half-Life 2 episodic content.(…see our previous interview with Tim Larkin.)

While a tad short on content, any level of coverage from the mainstream audio media is more than welcome, and we’re sure to see some great interviews and stories in future issues.

MP3s, bad because they have less music in them. So much less music, in fact, that your brain loses the ability to feel emotions listening to them. Okay, sure, over-compressed MP3s sound awful, especially at lower bitrates. But get ready for some strange psychoacoustics here, folks.

Producers howl over sound cut out by MP3 compression (and I see, while I was sitting on this, it got slashdotted, though no one took the bait

As Joel Selvin writes for the The San Francisco Chronicle, MP3s have less music:

…the music contained in these computer files represents less than 10 percent of the original music on the CDs.

Wow, I knew that compressed digital audio files contained less data, but less music?

In its journey from CD to MP3 player, the music has been compressed by eliminating data that computer analysis deems redundant, squeezed down until it fits through the Internet pipeline.

Of course! If they didn’t, we might stop up the tubes that make the Internet — or … um … one tube, apparently. (No wonder congestion is bad if we have just one pipeline! You need it to fit!) And there’s more:

When even the full files on the CDs contain less than half the information stored to studio hard drives during recording, these compressed MP3s represent a minuscule fraction of the actual recording.

The humanity! All those years when we were buying CDs, we were only getting half of what was recorded in the studio?! Why, that must mean they’re recording, say, four whole tracks when they record the album. And one take. (Okay, I’m assuming they somehow got this statistic by assuming 96kHz sample rates … except that’s not really half the amount of data … and that would still require 16-bit … and I don’t know who told them that, anyway.)

There are the obligatory and predictable quotes from Phil Ramone and others. I can understand engineers being squeamish about someone listening to a low-bitrate MP3 on iPod earbuds, though I wonder how they missed people taping pennies to their turntables in the 60s. (Scratches and dust, I suppose, just give you more music!)

You’ve read these kinds of articles before. They’re not entirely wrong, they just struggle to explain what lossy compression is. A journalist, I can imagine, would do that easily; I haven’t written any compression algorithms this morning so I’ll admit my own understanding of data compression is rudimentary. But, of course, what a journalist should do is talk to experts, and you hope they’ll tell you something that makes sense. In this case, they seem to explain away our ability to hear music at all. Get ready for — experts gone crazy!

My feature story for Keyboard Magazine on recording live laptop performance is now available online at keyboardmag.com (as well as in the July print issue). When I got the assignment, I think my editor imagined futuristic, sci-fi like network recording, in which audio was streamed entirely virtually from players to a recording server and musicians connected to one another over the ether. Instead, we got just the opposite: quick and dirty solutions for capturing improvisatory computer performance, and intentional efforts to make laptop performances sound more like conventional instrumental ensembles. The case studies:

• The Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra hosts laptop jam sessions at the conservatory that bears Leon Theremin’s name. Individual speakers, stereo mic — plus groovy visuals in the background.
• Princeton University’s PLOrk plays with hemispherical speakers so that sound radiates from near the laptop the way it would from a real instrument. Their recording configuration is a little more sophisticated, with not only a stereo pair for the audience but three mics above the stage.
• Share in New York has the toughest challenge of all: a club environment in which anyone can show up with any gear and play. They combine the tried-and-true (old-fashioned analog snakes on the floor) with software tools for standardization (a template in the open source Linux and Mac DAW Ardour).

Check out the full story for details:

Electronica Unplugged

One thing we didn’t broach was what to actually play (these ensembles all experiment with everything from alternative controllers to live coding). But the recording question alone turned out to reveal a lot about laptop performance, and how it’s gradually evolving into just music performance.

Also of interest, Craig Anderton talks about the basics of recording your sets live in Ableton Live. The basic idea: record not only the arrangement, but external audio, as well.

This story also turned out to be an interesting demonstration of what can happen when new online sites (like CDM) interface with a traditional outlet (Keyboard, bringing you music making information since 1976). That’s my ultimate hope: that these outlets will make each other better, and each will expand the knowledge of techniques and what (and who) is out there. Less lofty translation: if Keyboard hadn’t asked me to write this up, I might never have gotten around to it, and conversely, if I didn’t have CDM, I would never have hooked up with folks like the Moscow Laptop Cyber Orchestra.

Speaking of which, let us know how you record your sets and even laptop ensembles, and if I missed anything!

Previously:
Laptop Orchestras Proliferate, from Princeton to Moscow

I can’t take it any more. In one corner, we have PC pundits negatively reviewing Apple’s possibly-upcoming iPhone weeks before it’s announced — reviewing a product they know nothing about that may not even exist. (Incidentally, Microsoft’s new MadeUp Pro 2007 Edition — total crap. So is the new Imaginesoft NeverNeverLand iMadeUp Express.)

And in the other corner, we have a never-ending flood of reviews of Microsoft Windows Vista, weeks before third-party developers have shipped most of the drivers and application releases that would let them fully test it, bashing the new OS based on old, often misleading arguments. In a way, it’s only fair. After years of getting unfairly slammed in the press (remember the late-90s, when every Apple news story began with “the beleaguered computer maker”?), Apple now has some of its most vocal advocates helming the computer analysis for the New York Times, CBS, Chicago Sun-Times, Newsweek, and Wall Street Journal.

CDM Senior Editor W. Brent Latta sums up everything I’m about to say, only much more succinctly. “I’m not one to let Microsoft off the hook, but I want to know what is different about Vista - not what makes it a copycat of OS X. I have to use both OSes.”

Amen.

Now, I’m all for comparing Vista to OS X, because for the individual consumer, there is a choice. Apple hardware owners can even dual-boot Windows on their own machine, so they could theoretically make an afternoon of trying a new Microsoft OS — and wind up choosing both. With millions upon millions of users, operating systems are some of the most important technology on the planet. They’re worth criticizing. And it’s about time someone pointed out the real advantage of the Mac is its operating system, which often offers reliability and features well beyond Windows. That’s not just because Windows is “bigger” or more “backwards-compatible” and these features are impossible. For music, Core Audio and Core MIDI offer superior compatibility and performance versus Windows XP. The fact that XP is a usable OS and a favorite for many musicians suggests to me that Microsoft could and should compete with these features.

The only problem is, I’ve heard primarily two criticisms of Vista, and neither seems fair:

Whether using your home MIDI gear and software or building an elaborate DIY MIDI project, better understanding MIDI is essential to getting the results you want. Many musicians are aware that the applications of MIDI aren’t limited to traditional musical implementations, but a broad range of creative DIY projects. Explaining what MIDI is, how it works, and how to use it not only in music projects but other projects, as well, was the aim of a story I wrote for Make 07:

Make Magazine Volume 07
Primer: MIDI Control

The Primer link includes additional online resources that didn’t fit in print, including:

1. An overview of software that supports MIDI, including “DIY software” like Pd and Max
2. An overview of hardware, with an emphasis on available MIDI boards for DIY projects and sensor interfaces
3. Behind the scenes: An anatomy of a MIDI message

All of this information is freely available to subscribers and non-subscribers alike. The “anatomy” bit I adopted from a sidebar in my book Real World Digital Audio. I find that a lot of people don’t fully understand the data structure of MIDI messages, because normally it’s explained in technical terms. Hopefully this is helpful (though it’s easiest to follow, of course, in context of a full explanation of MIDI or if you have some basic MIDI background).

MIDI isn’t always the best solution for everything, so to me it’s great that the same issue includes a nice feature on the Arduino sensor board, which uses serial and now USB to transmit data from sensors. Ultimately, you’ll choose the scheme that works best for the application you have in mind. MIDI will be perfect if you’re controlling soft synths or VJ software, for instance, whereas USB or serial might work better for acquiring sensor data to be used some custom Processing code or for use with a home-built hardware rig, sans computer.

Mostly, I’m excited to continue to be a part of Make. They’re assembling a group of really incredible makers, and I’m finding myself reading the issues as they arrive cover to cover just to learn everything I can. I’ve traditionally been a “software guy,” and it’s great to learn new approaches to making things, soft and hard.

Subscribers, you should get 07 soon if you haven’t yet; non-subscribers, the magazine hits US newsstands August 21. I’m still trying to get better information on international availability. You definitely want to buy this magazine — not for me, by any means, but for everything that’s in it!

Grooves Magazine, dedicated to experimental electronic music and music tech, wasn’t exactly a formula for massive mainstream newsstand appeal. (I don’t think I ever spotted a copy in a truck stop. For a better example of how to make a magazine succeed, at truck stops and elsewhere, look at Easyriders: scantily-clad and topless women + motorcycles. See a comparison of the formula after the jump, in case this is unclear.)

Grooves didn’t make it on the newsstands, but it’s been reborn as an online-only publication, and that’s a good thing: now anyone can get to it and browse through it easily. US$10 buys you four issues, and well worth it (and much easier than tracking it down before). I personally prefer reading music magazines online, because then I can check out the music I’m reading about. (Reading about music just isn’t the same.)

Grooves Magazine Online

[Updated: I incorrectly indicated the subscriptions were free. They're US$10 for four issues.]

The current issue (#20) has plenty to appeal to CDM readers: Matmos on the cover, a roundup of custom ensembles for Native Instruments Reaktor, gear and music reviews, and even live music coverage. The spirit of the magazine I think is embodied in this shot from Brooklyn’s No Fun Festival. (Deathpile, photographed by Pierre Richardson.) I go for more of a well-groomed thang, myself, but it’s great to see one magazine avoiding the hype and heading straight for electronic music’s raunchy, punk underbelly. On the downside, the magazine continues to suffer from the “White guy hanging out along somewhere looking dour” syndrome with the artists it covers, but the online format makes it even easier to skip ahead to the geeky bits. And unlike some attempts to create online magazine interfaces, this one is fairly readable, with a download option.

In case you haven’t seen it yet, The New York Times reports today that New York-area schoolkids have resorted to an unusual solution to cellphone bans. Apparently unaware of phones’ vibrate mode, the students have opted for an incredibly annoying ringtone pitched at 17,000 Hz. Theoretically, “adults” shouldn’t be able to hear that. (The real issue is middle-aged adults, an ironic choice in New York schools where many of the faculty are younger.) I also think that’s a liberal estimate of hearing loss; while most people lose some of their high-end hearing as they age, the numbers from the private security firm quoted in the article seem a little odd — 12,000 Hz for a 50-year-old? I hope not! (Better cover your ears on the subways, huh?)

A Ring Tone Meant to Fall on Deaf Ears [NYTimes.com; registration required and free story may expire]

The upshot of all of this is that there’s a free, if primitive, hearing test in the article (and presumably, all over the Web where these students are getting it). Hearing loss is a major problem; according to Aetna and the Harvard Medical School, 24% and 40% of adults over age 65 have difficulty hearing, and thirty percent of people over age 85 are deaf in at least one ear. For a better hearing test, here’s a free online example (I’m sure there are others online, and of course this does NOT substitute for a medical exam . . . nor can it measure just how annoying a kid with a cell phone can be):

Free Hearing Test

Anyone out there know what typical hearing loss figures are around middle age? (Lately, every time I write something some real experts show up out of nowhere, which is a pleasant experience!)

Pick up a European electronic music magazine and you can hit a jackbot of free software. Sometimes that’s limited to free samples, but sometimes you get some cool stuff you couldn’t otherwise. (For those of you outside Europe, they do make it to newsstands, albeit at an inflated price; I can usually find them at independent newsstands here in Manhattan.)

Case in point:

Found in comments, Keys (Germany) will have the full version of the fantastic electric piano plug-in, Lounge Lizard Session. Look for the issue out today, June 2.

Meanwhile, plug-in developer Chris Randall (of Audio Damage) reports on his blog that Computer Music (UK) will have a free copy of Pulse Modulator in CM issue #102. (While you’re there, check the front section for my monthly Create Digital Music Downsampled column.) What’s Pulse Modulator, you ask? Why, it’s a tremolo with three LFOs and distortion. In other words, it is goodness, in software form. Better yet, if you miss issue 102, subsequent issues will have this plug-in, too, as part of CM’s excellent free studio that comes with the magazine. I’ll let you know when I get my hands on it.

In the meantime, feast your eyes on the inspiration for the Pulse Modulator plug-in, the original Electro-Harmonix hardware, conveniently posed and ready for makeover in the slick on-screen visual format Audio Damage has used on their recent plugs. Shown above.

It’s easy to miss stories among the various cool distractions on Matrixsynth, like videos of synth pioneers Laurie Spiegel and Suzanne Ciani. So, I can’t help but point to Matrix’s extended review of my book, along with some words from me about why I wrote it, even though self-promotion makes me feel funny. Why? Because I think Matrix has something great to say about books and general. And because I couldn’t be happier to be reading some new books like the ones pictured beelow, now that I’ve finished mine:

Real World Digital Audio review, interview [Matrixsynth]

*Disclaimer: Boookshelf pictured does not represent the wall-obliterating shelf space in my apartment.

Thursday rant time: It’s time to get over loops, stop generalizing about music technology, and find the record button.

Poor GarageBand. Loops can be a fantastic tool, a way of sketching out ideas, having virtual instrumentalists with which to practice your chops, or remixed into something truly original, and they’re useful to beginners and pros alike in those roles. They don’t replace live musicians, but that’s not the point; they’re useful for what they do well. They’re also the most misunderstood of modern music tech. Unfortunately, non-musician journalists like The New York Times’ Michael Walker keep trying to squeeze some deeper meaning about modern music-making out of loop-based software without understanding either music creation or technology. In Mr. Walker’s case, researching an article means piecing together random loops, failing to impress KCRW radio’s star DJ or the masses on MySpace, and then deciding the whole experience reveals something profound about digital music technology:

A computer had generated it. I had helped things along but was more of a spectator. Nevertheless, “Eventide” was something I had created, and like all creations was entitled to a measure of emotional exuberance from its creator.