When we say “handmade music,” we really mean this sense of crafting something , of touching something – not so much the technique or the technology as the intention behind what you do. In a striking film portrait of Nick Zammuto for nakedmusicians.com, the craft of living is spotlighted as much as the craft of music making.

Nick, is known for his role in duo The Books (with Dutch-born Paul de Jong), and their distinctive, rhythmic, homebrewed-original sound. Here, he covers his manipulations of everything physical and temporal. Sound sampling is a tangible process, the poetry of things put together and assembled in surprising ways. So, too, is his life in music, as he talks about raising kids and literally building a home. They are all of these activities a way of stopping and shaping time, of composing yourself and your loved ones into the future. The resulting sounds and stories might just make you want to move around.

You can learn more about Nick on his site:

http://zammutosound.com/

Burlington, Vermont-based filmmaker Matt Day is responsible for this gem.

And if you’re in the Eastern USA, you can catch Nick live:
FEB 3: Mass Moca, North Adams, MA
FEB 4: 92YTribeca, New York, NY
FEB 6:Brighton Music Hall, Allston, MA

Sounds from his new EP, via SoundCloud:
Zammuto – Idiom Wind EP – Make Mine, London UK by zammuto

Digital Performer, and Performer before it, has been a Mac-only program for almost as long as you’ve been able to buy a computer called “Macintosh.” The first Performer release was available in 1985. (Professional Composer, before that, was out in ’84.) Performer, accordingly, has had a big impact on the history of the sequencer, and later the audio and MIDI arrangement hybrid that came to be known as Digital Audio Workstation, throughout the history of the genre. But it’s never run on any Microsoft platform – until now.

In an announcement I doubt anyone saw coming, MOTU has announced they’re shipping Digital Performer 8 for both Mac and Windows, in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes. That means, of the major conventional DAWs, nearly all run on both platforms: Pro Tools, Cubase/Nuendo, and now DP, to say nothing of tools like Ableton Live or Reason. All that’s left are Cakewalk’s SONAR, and Apple’s Logic – and Logic is the one made by Apple. Of course, being cross-platform isn’t always good for business – just ask the ghost of Opcode Studio Vision Pro – but recent changes in how software is developed have made cross-platform compatibility and testing more straightforward than they once were.

For Windows users, you get VST plug-in support and ReWire compatibility.

Other new DP8 features for both Mac and Windows:

• “Punch Guard” adds four seconds of audio before and after each record, in case you punch in too late or out too early.
• A new video engine supports 720p or 1080p with flexible output options – aside from your main screen, you can use a second display or HDMI or (very cool) SDI. In the producer community, I often hear skepticism about who uses DP. One major answer: the scoring and video production markets, in a big way. And MOTU’s recent developments in video hardware (hello, Thunderbolt) make them a player to watch, even when industry heavyweight Avid is casting its shadow.
• New guitar amp and bass cabinet plug-ins, guitar pedals, modeled analog delay, multi-band dynamic EQ, de-esser, kick drum enhancer, and modeled vintage spring reverb. Give a DSP programmer a cookie, and … you wind up with a DAW full of fun sound design toys.
• Themes for the UI, including “None More Black,” ensuring full Spinal Tap joke compliance for this industry-leading DAW.

That means that Mac users still have plenty to sink their teeth into.

http://www.motu.com/marketing/motu_products/software/dp8/dp8-hero

Also, if you happen to be using the CueMix FX software in MOTU’s audio interfaces, you can now control that software via an iPad. Here’s what’s cool there: they’ve done the implementation in OSC (OpenSoundControl). It’s great to see a big industry player throw some weight behind that format.

That’s all we’ve got now – that and a screen shot – but I’m interested to know, any Windows users intrigued by getting to run DP? Or do you have no idea what it actually offers?

Getting anyone to switch DAWs seems to me generally near-impossible – and with good reason, given the investment in workflow. But could this make you keep your DAW, but buy a PC? Or… return to a DAW you miss from when you had a Mac? (Or switch, really?)

I like to do six impossible things before breakfast. You?

This is either the first death knell for the traditional desktop DAW, or an ill-fated attempt to squeeze a desktop DAW onto a tablet. Or, more likely, it’s somewhere in between.

Auria isn’t the first multitrack production studio for a mobile platform, but without question, it’s the first to look and function in the way you’d expect only a computer Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) to work. The track count is the first banner feature, but perhaps what will turn heads most is actually the support for conventional plug-ins.

Updated: You know, I’m writing about this thing based on their description, but it’s worth adding that the track counts (with these kinds of plug-ins), multi-track recording, and even plug-ins were previously believed to be impossible by many developers. That makes this an … interesting announcement. Happily, we’ve just gotten updates from the developer explaining those questions — see below.

Just a few of the bullets that might cause more than a little surprise:

• 48 mono/stereo, 24-bit/44.1kHz tracks, with recording for up to 24 tracks (you’ll obviously need a USB audio interface that can do that – see notes below)
• 64-bit, double precision mix architecture (something even Pro Tools only just acquired)
• Full delay compensation
• “Vintage-inspired” channel strips, with a desktop-like UI and VU/RMS switching
• Plug-in support (Out of the gate, PSPaudioware, Overloud, Fab Filter and Drumagog all work. You need to do custom wrapping of plug-ins for this host; standard plug-ins won’t work. The format is based on VST, but it’s not VST in the traditional sense in that they have to be custom-wrapped for sale through the app. See developer notes below.)
• Dropbox, SoundCloud, AAF, MP3 export
• Advanced channel strips, EQ, expansion/compression and dynamic controls ready to go
• Convolution reverb. (Really.)
• AAF import/export, making one definite application using this as a satellite for your desktop DAW (more on that notion below)

Update: I should say, and this is vitally important, the software isn’t shipping yet. No one has seen it in action. And that means all of this is hypothetical until we see whether this works at all. But see some notes from the developers that answers some skepticism. (This wasn’t just skepticism coming from me or end users – I heard from a number of puzzled developers who work on iOS apps!)

As impressive as all of this is technically, I’m not sure there’s a strong case for why you’d need such a thing on an iPad, other than “because you can.” But that raises the question of how you might actually use it. One obvious application for me is having a portable multitrack recording rig on which you can instantly add effects. It’s easy to imagine taking this to a concert gig, recording multiple tracks, then mastering a live show on the back of a tour bus. Then again, there’s nothing really stopping you from doing the same with a computer.

The main thing for me is to get hands on with this and see how this desktop-style UI adapts to an iPad – whether it feels newly mobile and touchable and usable on the go, or whether it feels like someone crammed your desktop DAW onto a different device. It’ll also be intriguing to see how plug-in counts work in practice on mobile hardware. And you do have to consider, cool as the plug-in support it, that you may miss some desktop plug-ins.

I’m eager to see someone review it, but that for me comes back to the question – how will you use it? And what is the real advantage of doing what you’ve done on a computer with an iPad?

My bet remains this: I still think the whole beauty of mobile devices is, for most, as a satellite, a complement to your desktop setup. And you have to consider how affordable something like a MacBook Air is – complete with Thunderbolt, something I don’t expect (as Intel tech) on an iPad any time soon. But that makes a touchable tablet as an inexpensive tool to orbit your studio really appealing, and I see some features here that could make this work in just this way.

(In fairness, I’d ask the same question of any new DAW entry – even on desktop.)

http://auriaapp.com/Products/auria

I believe Synthtopia gets the nod for this:
Auria Brings 48-Track Recording & VST Support To iPad – Are You Ready For The iPad To Replace Your Studio?

Wait, your whole studio? I think you still want monitors and mics and things, right? (Sorry, had to point that out…)

Not due until this spring, so we have some time to work out how to review it.

And yes, the most important question here is, is this actually possible or impossible?

Developer Responds

Rim from Wavemachine Labs answers questions I – and many developers – had about the app. I’m going to promote these from comments, as they’re important, and will add more as we hear it. (And yes, it’s actually quite good news to hear that they do have this working.)

CDM: How do you get 24-track audio recording on an iPad?
Rim: iOS5 supports USB Class 2 devices. We’ve got Auria recording with 18 input interfaces (the largest available right now). We’ve tested over 20 audio interfaces from various manufacturers and will be posting a list of compatible devices on or site when we released the app.

Although there are no 24-input USB interfaces out there, I’m ready for them in the code, and there’s enough resources to handle them.

Q.: How can you have “plug-ins” in an app on iOS, given Apple’s rules?
Apple won’t allow users to add anything to an app, like a plug-in for example. All add-ons to an iOS app must be statically linked into the app when it’s released. Auria supports real VST plug-ins which have been linked into the app. Users can then purchase these through the in-app store. If you’re a developer and would like info on how to port your plug-ins to iOS, drop me a line (rim at drumagog). Auria supports the official VST SDK (2.4), and we also have a custom JUCE library available for developers.

Q.: How much can you really do with an iPad versus a computer? Many of us would have imagined that doing this much was impossible.

I’ve spent the better part of a year of making 48 tracks and plug-ins happen It does work, even on the current hardware. If you’re going to be at NAMM. please stop by and see it work… You can have a 48-track project (with perhaps half of these tracks stereo), and have 24 tracks of channelstrips open, an instance of Drumagog on one track, and use about 70% of the CPU/ 50% of the disk resources. There’s also a track freeze function. We used assembler for lost of the heavy lifting and a lot of experience (I designed a very early touch screen based DAW in the late 80s).

For years, since the launch of Ableton Live, many have waited for a worthy rival, something that combines production and live performance for music users. Live isn’t without alternatives – Renoise, for instance, has earned some fans, though it isn’t necessarily built for live performance. But few provide the same real-time workflows.

Bitwig, based in Berlin as is Ableton and featuring some Abletronic veterans, today took the wraps off its own Bitwig Studio. The good news is, it’s looking as though it might shape up to be a viable tool for DJing, performing, and making music. The bad news is, in a market already crowded with lots of similar tools vying for your attention, the first release will look more familiar than radical. That is, it looks and works a whole lot like Live. There’s an Arranger view, a clip launching view with scenes, a tray on the bottom with effects and instruments (they’re even called Devices, like in Live). The screen layout, and even specific interface widgets and channel strip arrangements are all straight out of Live.

It’s not just a little like Ableton Live, either – it’s in some cases a direct clone. Nested drum machine Devices, for instance, work in a way that I’ve never seen out of Ableton Live. A channel strip similarity or two is almost inevitable; here, though, lots of little details add up to something that feels like Ableton, but didn’t come from Ableton.

What that means to you may depend on what you want: whether you just want an improved Ableton alternative that works like Live, or whether you want something more fundamentally different from Live as an alternative.

If you want “Ableton Plus,” Bitwig does take on features Ableton is missing. For instance:

1. Linux support. In fact, right out of the gate, this could quickly be the answer for Linux users waiting for something they could use without booting to Mac or Windows.
2. Proper multiple document support. You can share content between projects in Ableton, but here you can actually open and freely exchange media with multiple files at once.
3. Mix audio and MIDI on the same track. Tracks are content-agnostic.
4. Per-note automation, with the mixed MIDI and audio, promises more detail-oriented editing.

Those are three significant breakthroughs. And it looks like there are lots of tweaks and improvements throughout the tool, many of which I’m sure we’ll hear about as people begin testing the beta. (One nice example: a vertical pane lets you view arrange and clip launching views simultaneously.) Multi-monitor support, while present in many tools, is sorely lacking in Live but available here. Plus, as some readers note, you do get 64-bit support, though that seems an advantage over Ableton that won’t last long.

The challenge is, as a new entrant to the market, your first obstacle is telling a story about what you are. And here, there seems a missed opportunity to make a first impression as something truly different, rather than something “similar, but better.” Ableton Live 1.0 when it was released was a significant departure from what had been seen before. So, too, were the first trackers, the first audio+MIDI DAWs, and the first graphical sequencers. Bitwig Studio isn’t that kind of breakthrough – not yet.

Not that being different is easy, or even always desirable. Amidst so many things users want, and so many expectations they have about how things will work, it’s tough to do something genuinely new without simply confusing everyone and driving them away. But it has happened – Ableton Live’s original release being a notable case. One question is whether you make some sacrifices to release the most significantly-different tools initially, or whether you choose to cover the basic bases to provide a workable solution from day one, and the Bitwig devs seem to have chosen the latter.

The most interesting features remain on the horizon. LAN multi-user jamming and multi-user production are both on the roadmap – features we’ve seen in other tools, but which have yet to catch on. And there’s an integrated modular system that lets you build your own instruments and effects with graphical patching – something seen in various forms from Buzz to Max for Live, but one that could use a fresh take in integration with the tool.

In the meantime, we’ll have to hear from beta users whether Bitwig is something worth a look. You can sign up now:
http://bitwig.com/bitwig_studio.php

We’ll be eager to hear what you think.

Pics:

Sonic and musical inspiration are never far away, especially with a microphone in hand. For the latest example, Ableton Live meets a local playground.

Jason Richard, aka “bassling,” used field recordings in the park to compose a track. He writes:

I’ve been recording playgrounds and remixing the sounds in Ableton Live to create tracks. To help people understand what they’re hearing, I’ve been making short videos showing some of the process.

It’s an idea I’ve had in mind for a while and the centenary is deadline to work towards. I’m inspired by the Italian Futurists and Alan Lamb, who mentored me in 2006 as part of the Unsound Festival.

The playground is part of a series of videos of local playgrounds, intended to celebrate the 2012 centenary of Leeton in New South Wales, Australia. (That’s southeastern Australia, for the uninitiated.)

More information:
http://bassling.blogspot.com/

It’s really nice having the video to serve as a guide to the music, I think. So, what field recordings have inspired you? Let us know.

One of the smallest measures of time in the world is now the time that elapses between when Apple ships a new mobile product and someone has uploaded a video / album / feature film with it. It’s rather amazing. Somewhere, other tech vendors are … crying.

But that said, I think the video above is a wonderful thing. Perhaps the mobile smartphone is this generation’s new PortaStudio – something so readily accessible and portable that there’s really no excuse not to record a musical event when it happens. And however you do that I think is healthy.

So, in case you’re curious how a spare cable or adapter or two and a phone can be there – just in case someone forgot their laptop / ADAT machine / reel-to-reel deck – let’s just copy the full press release, as it’s told as a very nice, personal little story. And the music is sweet-hearted, too.

The app in question is Sonoma WireWorks’ FourTrack.

CDM’s own Marsha Vdovin has her 4S and loves it, hopefully shooting with it a bit over at AES. I’m, meanwhile, hobbling along with my unlocked original G1 in Europe, so, uh, if any vendors want to buy me off, I’m game.

Here’s the other thing: while the iPad gets a lot of attention these days, our internal stats at CDM tell us many, many CDM readers have iPhones – and only a fraction of you have iPads. Little wonder: it’s easy to justify a smartphone, harder to justify a tablet on top of the laptop you probably already own.

But enough of that: let’s hear how they recorded. And reminisce about the days of the portable tape 4-track. (It worked for the likes of John Lennon.)

“I’ve been touring lately with Alexa James and thought my new song “Come Running to Me” would be a great song to sing with her. We started doing the song together on a recent tour in Europe, and people seemed to like the song. We took that as a cue to get a recording of it, and thought- why not the new iPhone 4S? Let’s see what it can do,” says Rory Partin, a Los Angeles based recording artist.

Rory pre-ordered his phone, and in thinking about how to approach the video, realized they would need a second phone. So this past Friday, iPhone 4S’ release day, Alexa went at 5:30 am to camp out in the long line at the Apple store. Approaching the front of the line around 10am, she was almost in the store. But then AT&T systems started to overload, and delayed her getting set up. Soon, Verizon and Sprint were also facing delays because of the great demand of the new iPhone 4S. Alexa was finally up and running around 1pm, and the recording began.

Sonoma Wireworks created an app called FourTrack which is the app Partin used for the recording process. Along with a learning curve of a new app itself, there was also the learning curve in how to best record into the app. “We spent hours,” says Partin, “recording guitars, keys and vocals using different microphones and plugging those directly into the phone because usually you can get a cleaner sound going direct (like you see in some shots of the video). But we found that we got the clearest and best sound just holding the phone near the instrument or voice. We couldn’t believe how much better it sounded to just use the built in mic that comes on the phone. So when our guitarist, Jeffrey Miles was recording his guitars, I literally stood next to him and held the phone over his shoulder.

To record my vocals, I was able to fit the iPhone 4S in between an open slot in the microphone clip on a mic stand, and I sang into that. Alexa was next to track vocals. By the time we got to her, it was 4am. I then re-recorded the keys. The three of us pulled an all-nighter, and left around 7am Saturday morning so i could go catch a plane.”

Mixing down the tracks was also an interesting process, as FourTrack iOS has, you guessed, it, four tracks. FourTrack iOS allows you to bounce tracks, so we were able to do several guitar tracks, mix them on the iPhone 4S, and then bounce them down into one track. You can then send those files to your laptop to make room for more tracking, as well as for back up and a final mix. We also used our MacBooks for final video edits for the sake of time. Alexa grins, “We obviously didn’t have fancy lighting or makeup artists, but the quality of the iPhone 4S to take video is quite amazing in spite of how I looked after a few hours of sleep and camping out at the Apple line.”

rorypartin.com
alexajames.com
http://www.sonomawireworks.com/iphone/fourtrack/

Hang on, I’m supposed to be keeping up the anti-Apple bias everyone tells me I have.

Hey, what’s up with rounded rectangles, anyway? What’s wrong with corners?

Better?

Wait, crap, this may be one of the posts where I get told I’m personally responsible for the destruction of the Earth and my promotion of capitalism. Uh… we are the 99%?

(Seriously, I do have concerns about toxic waste, human rights, and mineral extraction; that’s why I’m glad to see people making music with these tools and finding lasting, meaningful uses for them.)

“It must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” -Arthur Dent, in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy

If you’re having any issue getting through your Thursday, it’s tough to beat some proper, good techno – the kind of techno anyone can love, even if they keep shouting about how they “hate” it.

Techno pioneer Carl Craig is still going strong, the kind of artist whose work seems to flow freely. He’s got the roots, having begun with Derrick May in Detroit, but he’s remained a font of new work and invention since, mixing his work with live and jazz music and even endeavoring to introduce young people to new music through a self-started not-for-profit. (Check the cat’s bio.) If you haven’t checked in with him lately, he’s touring … well, nearly everywhere, and is keeping the new sounds going through his Planet E label. Planet E turned ten earlier this year, accompanied by new a full-length and remix EPs, but here’s a quick test of what’s coming out of this label via SoundCloud.

Latest tracks by carlcraignet

I have Carl on the brain partly because I’ve learned King Britt (Saturn Never Sleeps) has new music with him. I owe King and SNS’ Rucyl Mills a good weekend hiding out during Tropical Storm Irene, where I got in to see King’s workflow – mixing MIDI with CV triggers, Mono/Poly with Maschine, analog sequencing with Ableton Live. (We maintained power through the storm. Can I please evacuate to a chilled-out studio session more often? I’m a very, very blessed person, and believe me, I’m grateful for those gifts, those moments.)

The resulting sound represents the best, most organic feel of the different generations we’ve seen of this music. Whereas once production was laborious, we now get to cherry-pick the most comfy tools, the looseness of live playing and analog gear twiddling and sequencing with the speed of a Maschine or Ableton setup on a laptop. And it comes out, with tracks that are improvisatory, relaxed, and naturally grooving. I think you can hear it in Carl’s new stuff, and I know I can hear it in King’s, having listened in and jammed as some things were made.

Remember handing burned CDs to DJs? In this case, Carl got hold of King’s tracks and King of Carl via email and Twitter.

For a glimpse, see the informal video. (I shot some video of King, too, but want to wait to get his and Rucyl’s word on their collaboration. Oh, and I need to, like, upload it. I’ll just ask my extensive video production department to– doh!)

Give King’s upcoming tracks on Planet E a listen.

King Britt presents Dynamic – Secret of the Stars b/w Things Take Time by planetedetroit

Here’s a look inside the session (and yes, that is a KORG vocoder):

King’s been doing this a long while, and his craft I feel is razor sharp, which lets him keep those tracks feel as loose as they do. He talks about how he tunes tracks in the mastering process on the Universal Audio blog. He definitely lets his UA fan side show, but he also gets loads of mileage out of some specific UA plugs – and the basic techniques here you can easily apply to any mastering plug-ins you like. (Readers recently brought up the excellent and underrated Samplitude, which is also a good choice with its integrated mastering tools.)

Give King talking UA and mastering workflow a read:

King Britt on Mixing “Bit by Bit,” by Saturn Never Sleeps [Universal Audio Producers' Corner]

More, mailing lists and blogs and whatnot:

King Britt.com
http://planet-e.net/blog/
http://www.carlcraig.net/

CDM is a presenting sponsor of the IMSTA FESTA in New York on Saturday. It’s a completely free event, but registration is required. What’s notable about this sort of event is that it tends to be more directly musician-focused than big conferences like AES or the truly trade-only NAMM. Some of the highlights of which we’re taking note:

• Vendor presentations by Native Instruments, Steinberg, Celemony, Propellerhead, Image Line, Waves, and Cakewalk should all be interesting as they all have new products, and say they’ll be showing some of them off. (Also present: McDSP, Pianoteq, SSL, and others.)
• Legendary producer Hank Shocklee’s Shocklee “Innertainment” is involed, including talented chief Jo-Ann Nina.
• Web music is front and central, including a look at the future of music platforms with our friend Oliver Chesler of the blog Wire to the Ear (with whom I’ve panelized a couple of times now), and Evolver.fm’s Eliot Van Buskirk. The CEO of Tunecore is on-hand, as is new cloud backup and sharing service for musicians Gobbler.
• Production is there, too – think Hank moderating a panel with industry heavies on mixing pop, and teaching his own master class, plus drum programming.

http://www.imsta.org/imsta_festa.php

Here’s the catch: normally, covering New York events is easy because I’ve been based in New York. But I’m currently on the road and based in Berlin for most of the remainder of 2011. So, if anyone wants to go and do some investigative research, take some video or the like, let me know!

Read last year’s write-up by Oliver on the panel I moderated:
imsta festa panel review [wiretotheear]

One other question, for the whole world and not just New York: what would your dream event look like? Where would it be? Would it be a mix of workshops and events? With so many events (Music Hack Days, trade shows, and the like), what aren’t you getting from present events? (Asia, Pacific, South America, Africa, interested in hearing from you, too, if you’re out there… not just Europe and North America.)

No specific context, but I do find the question comes up a lot.

Global availability of music may not have silenced the usual gripes about musical quality and diversity, even if they should. But the Web is providing a place for people to share music with other music-making enthusiasts, sharing the craft of constructing it with the relish of chefs talking over drinks at the end of a long day.

Anyway, that’s my excuse for mentioning fellow blogger, music software developer and musician Chris Randall, again. I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the meticulously-concocted sounds of his new micronaut EP, Particulate. Ticking away leisurely, with thick alphaSyntauri pads set against cool, understated metrical rhythms, it’s the as though the machines themselves are enjoying a calm weekend afternoon.

On the Analog Industries blog, more description

Chris admits something I’ve been hearing increasingly in whispers among producers from a wide variety of genres – he’s getting away from the DAW. The dominant computer software model, even in more restrained incarnations like Ableton Live, still involves an overwhelming set of tools and sequencing apparatus that can get you away from, you know, actually playing your machines like instruments. Instead, Chris uses “good old-fashioned playing,” and gating from analog outputs from an Apple IIe-based sequencer. It’s nothing new (quite literally so, as the gear is from the 80s), but it’s a discipline to which I hear many producers return again and again. (I got to read them talking about it in the 80s and 90s, too, as I edited old Keyboard stories for an upcoming book – sometimes you have to turn the sequencers off and focus on really playing the machines. Think that bit in Star Wars with the flight computer.)

The gear:
Roland CMU-800R + Apple IIe (kids, ask your parents)

alphaSyntauri, also based on the Apple II

Korg 770, which has the best vintagesynth.com description ever: “Aside from being very old, there isn’t much else to say about the 770.” Assuming I take care of myself and survive to be a senior, this is I hope what I can someday make my epitaph.

Korg MS20, about which much could be said

Euro-Rack modular

Korg Monotribe

iPad running Curtis (granular app) + Alesis iO Dock

Lexicon M300 (now-discontinued hardware reverb), and ValhallaRoom and Chris’ own Eos, as reverb

I love the polish of the EP, but it’s also revealing to watch Chris tinker with his rack of gear, as in this more recent image:

By the way, for my part, I’m also enjoying not sequencing materials. If you don’t want to go to tape, you can take the same approach in any software. Hanging out with King Britt in his studio, he tracked live playing and CV-gated sequences into Ableton Live; I’ve taken to using Propellerhead Reason (formerly Record) for the same purpose. (Hint: that absence of MIDI output? It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.)

All of this is relevant, as there’s a big Synth Meet tomorrow in Los Angeles put on by those connoisseurs of analog, the blog (and sometimes-artists’-collective TRASH_AUDIO. And certainly the idea of investing in all this shiny is, eventually, to actually make something resembling music with it. Chris, look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Also, fans of alphaSyntauri — I’ve been watching this growing, open group on Facebook devoted to that instrument:
The Alpha Syntauri Group

They point to a big load of documentation someone has collected.

Now I’m nervous, because typically when I ramble on about something like this, commenters get angry. It’s a Friday. Don’t hurt me. Go listen, and if you don’t like it, it’s a Big, Wide Internet. In fact, go make something.

God Bless Russian engineering. As of this summer, it’s the only ticket to and from our space station, via a capsule that Just Works. It gaves us the very first electronic instrument (thanks, Professor Theremin). And it gives us an insane music tracker slash production tool slash soft synth selection slash modular hosting environment that runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm, Windows Mobile (yes, you’re reading this list right), and now iOS and iPad.

Well, don’t just thank Russian engineering. Thank Alex Zolotov, who sends along his latest work. Highlights:

• Waveform drawing
• A drum synth
• Sample recording
• Side chain compression (top)
• iPad MIDI keyboard support (second from top)

Fortunately, if you’re not a mad scientist, we’ve got a lineup of videos that show you what all of this does and how to get started with this eminently affordable, insanely powerful tool. (Cue someone complaining in comments that they can’t read the interface, etc. Uh… well, you can’t have everything, eh? Bifocals?)

And in case you don’t believe this is a music tool, we even have some music created in it. (Actually creating digital music – interesting.)

Now, let’s Crash Adobe Flash(TM) with a bunch of videos:

More New Features

Where to Start

And yes, even where to start performing live on an iPhone / iPod touch:

More video tutorials:

SunVox Video Tutorials @ warmplace.ru Forum

Official SunVox page:
http://www.warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/