Here’s a superb reader tip: DJ Josef Prusa has been using SugarSync to synchronize Native Instruments’ Traktor Pro DJ software, so that he and his brother have their full music collection at the ready at gigs. (Naturally, this same technique means that if one of their MacBooks should die, bro to the rescue!) Not only does music get synced, but playlists, collections, MIDI mappings, and settings do, too. Now, you could use something like the ubiquitous free command line utility rsync to do the same thing, but SugarSync has the advantage of giving you cloud storage, too, so you have an additional backup and always-on access to your files.

Traktor is just one example. You could do the same with any other essential files. Josef also syncs Max/MSP patches for monome, plus a promising-looking, in-progress wifi controller. File sync in SugarSync works across Mac, PC, and now iPhone, Windows Mobile, cell phones, and Android. (One gripe: no Linux support, something DropSync can muster.)

Synchronize multiple collections of Traktor PRO automatically

Before this becomes a SugarSync ad, though, I am interested in what other solutions people are using. There are various cloud storage and sync services. SugarSync is fairly unique in providing both true sync/remote access with cloud storage. But maybe you have added your home server to the mix, or found another solution.

Josef seems to be the perfect geek DJ – check out his iPhone-MIDI hack and (while not musical) iPhone R/C car control.

It’s the little things that keep you happy sometimes. The Sunday Soundtrack blog has an interesting idea for tracking work on the MPC — write it down. (I have to say, I miss having paper notes as I did when I was making hard-copy patch diagrams of my Moog and Buchla modular creations in college.) This fellow has a printable template you can use yourself if so inclined – and, of course, it’d work with any 4×4 grid, not just the MPC.

Post:
Music Production on the MPC
Full-sized image for use as a template

Keep anything on paper in the studio yourself – music notation? Lyrics? To-do lists? MIDI maps? Doodles of made-up creatures to keep you company? I’d love to hear how you work.

Previously: A Brief History of the MPC

Food for thought: if we didn’t still make “albums,” we’d never know when the album was done. Sure, the delivery mechanism that spawned the album may be disappearing – “LP’s” in particular are long gone. But perhaps, like so many ubiquitous technologies, the album was a fortuitous coincidence of physical practicality and human scale, happenstance generating some unit of creativity that just makes sense to artist and listener alike.

For Imogen Heap, the beloved artist who’s just finished her latest, it’s cause to literally dance and sing, accompanied by a generative Buddha Box. (We can dance around when we get the album in August.)

http://www.imogenheap.com/

It’s not the only approach. Geek troubador Jonathan Coulton rose to Interweb fame partly through the creation of his Creative Commons-licensed Thing-a-Week podcast, which fired up his productivity as he released 52 (get it?) tracks in the space of a year. The episodic form helped him build a following and created a new unit of musical output.

From other parts of the online world, we get a little insight from each of these favorite artists. Imogen Heap videoblogs her latest album and talks promise at top, as found via the lads of SonicState.

Jonathan Coulton talks to one of my favorite non-music blogs, Lifehacker, about staying musically productive – and keeping other productivity away from his musical process. He talks about using Google apps and MobileMe as an intelligent cloud he can share with his assistant and PR person.

He also speaks to musical process:

It’s a combination of things. I generally write when I have guitar in my hand, but, capturing ideas is like … I do use the voice recorder app on my iPhone like crazy. I’ve learned that whenever you get one of those little song fragments, out of the ether, it’s like a dream—no matter how much you’re going to remember it, you’re going to forget it, in like five minutes. And I’ve lost too many of those, so wherever I am, I take my phone out, I pretend that I’m making a phone call, so that people don’t think I’m crazy, and I sing into the voice recorder, and then I have it available later on.

If I want to do a more involved quick capture of something, my MacBook has a piece of software on it called Ableton Live. It’s meant for loop-based composition, but it does recording as well. It’s very easy to capture an idea and sort of rough something out, even if you don’t have a bunch of gear handy. You can use the built-in microphone, use your keyboard as a MIDI keyboard. It’s a nice way to put together a quick demo, and capture some ideas about arrangements.

And, comfortingly, he doesn’t have enough time for music, either, and winding up wasting time on latency problems. (Jonathan, we feel your pain. And if you came to this site and didn’t find your answer, well… sorry. I need to put together a better reference for that stuff; open to suggestions!) He dives into finance, career goals, the game Rock Band and “accidental” discovery of music – all fantastic stuff. Thanks to Kevin Purdy for a great interview – who says you need music publications for great music magazines?

Jonathan Coulton on Making Songs and Geeking Out [Lifehacker]

Despite its quirks, Windows can be a wildly underrated OS for music. Of course, that has little to do with the way it works out of the box. It’s a matter of tweaking your setup so you reshape it into a finely-tuned musical tool. And I believe in sharing that info, because ultimately you should be able to make music on whichever OS you choose.

Rain Recording, a custom PC vendor that specializes in building systems for music and creative work, asked me to write up some of my favorite tools for just that job. For the first part, I looked at the unpleasant stuff — tools for troubleshooting your system and keeping it operating at maximum efficiency.

Part 2 is more fun — the goodies that actually help your musical workflow. I kept this entirely to utilities for MIDI and control, but thanks to the effort of some passionate musician-programmers, that winds up being an impressive toolkit. Quite a few items are Windows-only. (I do actually intend to cover Mac OS and Linux, too, but Windows stacked up pretty well.)

My picks, all free, donationware (and do donate and support these tools!), or relatively cheap:

1. MIDI-OX: This is usually the first utility I install on any PC — it’s a do-everything MIDI monitor and MIDI-processing utility, for watching messages, troubleshooting, and performing various processing tasks. Donationware.

2. MIDI-Yoke: Unfortunately, Windows doesn’t have built-in inter-app communication between apps using MIDI, but MIDI-Yoke performs the task elegantly. (Note, Processing lovers: it also works with Java, so this can allow you to build wild interfaces for music in Processing that control other apps.) Donationware.

3. Bome MIDI Translator: A fantastic tool for creating custom MIDI mappings, translating MIDI to QWERTY keystrokes (and back again), and building rules for performance. Prices range from free to EUR59 for end-user releases, but this is one spending money on.

4. SendSX from Bome sends System Exclusive data. Free.

5. Bome’s Mouse Keyboard gives you an on-screen, clickable interface for controlling synths — essential for when you’re doing some last-minute synth programming and set editing on the go. (Yes, like if you decide to make a last-second tweak in the hotel room before a gig.) Free.

6. Edrum Monitor This tool is useful enough for drums alone, with powerful features for adapting input from electronic drum kits and drum sensors for better accuracy. But they didn’t stop there: with deep data monitoring tools, visual meters for calibration, and support for keyboard, mouse, and joystick inputs, this is just an insane do-everything tool that deserves its own category. Donationware.

7. Jack for Windows An inter-app or even inter-computer audio server, ported from Linux. Linux does Jack better, but if you can’t bear to part with your Windows software, it’s worth testing this – and hopefully someone can help the talented Jack team support and develop it further on the Windows OS. Free.

8. Wormhole2: Think Portal for your host of choice: insert this VST plug-in, and you can route audio to and from different apps, different PCs, or even between Macs and PCs easily. Finally, you can bridge the platform divide and the Mac can lie down with the Windows PC happily. This began as commercial software from Plasq, but it’s now free and open source.

9. MCmu: Emulate Mackie Control with devices that don’t support it. Make devices that do support Mackie Control better. Get the controller power you need with apps like Ableton Live and SONAR. Brilliant stuff. EUR39.

10. OSCGlue: Broadcast OpenSoundControl messages from within a host, ideal for gluing together music software and live visuals. Free, from the vvvv community.

11. WMIDI: Transmit MIDI from Wacom (or other brand) tablet input, complete with tilt and pressure, to turn your graphics tablet into an expressive musical controller. Free.

12. GlovePIE: Somehow I left this out of my original round-up. Take joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, MIDI input devices, Wiimotes, and other devices, output MIDI, keystrokes, and other forms of control (even OSC). It’s my favorite software for control input/output. Requires some scripting, but there are some good sample scripts; hope to post more soon. Free.

Full details and more commentary (plus some additional picks):

Essential Toolkit for Windows – Part 2: (Mostly) Free Musical Utilities for Power Users [Rain Recording Pro]

Previously:
10 Free Non-Musical Windows Software Every Musician Should Use

Of course, this is just a short list of my personal favorites. Any I left out, Windows users?

Sound design secrets have traditionally been closely-guarded secret sauce. But in the age of the Web, the opposite is happening: people can actually enjoy sharing what they’re doing, just as passionate cooks chat about recipes on food blogs. Case in point: reader John Keston writes to tell us about AudioCookbook.org, on which he’s blogging a new sound each day. Not only is this a nice way to talk about techniques with fellow enthusiasts, but it’s a great example of how you can use blogging to encourage you to get things accomplished, rather than just distracting you.

John writes:

I’m a big fan of createdigitalmusic.com and wanted to let you know about my “One Sound Every Day” project. I am posting a sound every day on a non-profit resource for experimental sound design that I founded called AudioCookbook.org. Every post has a sound attached along with a brief description of how it was produced. I feel that the content there is something that your readers might appreciate. Please check it out and let me know if you’d consider a story or cross post, etc.

Audio Cookbook

It’s Creative Commons, so perhaps someday we’ll have a massive, open source sourcebook of music techniques from various writers.

Have a look, and let us know if you have favorite techniques of your own!

Previously:
Demystifying Sound Design: 15 Online Learning Resources for Film, Games, and More

And for an example of the same spirit of sharing for visual coders, on Create Digital Motion this week:
Code as Art: Generative Visual Inspiration and Sharing

RSS readers can be terrific; I use FeedDemon and NetNewsWire, both of which recently became free. (Yeah, after I bought them.) But sometimes it’s just too much to wade through RSS, especially after you get back from vacation. Alltop, a site headline aggregator, recently added CDM to its music page, and I’ve started using it as a quick way of glancing over topics like “Music” without cluttering my RSS reader more. Oh, yeah, and it’s nice to see CDM next to KEXP. Alltop is the product of Guy Kawasaki; he’s been a hero of mine since he introduced evangelism to Apple (you know where that led), and he’s still doing great stuff with business and marketing. So, thanks, Guy!

That brings me to my question, though: what’s your preferred method for keeping up with blogs and forums and mailing lists without eating up all your time for music making? (We do see CDM readers on different platforms, including someone who just spent 12 minutes reading on BeOS. Also featured: Wii, PSP, Atari, UNIX, Symbian smartphone…)

Anything we could do to help you keep up with feeds more easily — not only ours, but other sites, as well?

thing-a-day: matchbox synthesizer from ranjit on Vimeo.

Sure, it won’t win any audio fidelity awards, but it’s great fun. It gives me some other ideas for things that could be fit into a space that small, as well. See what the other daily Thingers are doing:

ranjit @ Thing-a-day.com

Quick review: the term means to unplug from the Web to allow yourself some creative space, a concept suggested by Sir Elton John himself, who wants someone to tear down the Internet so we can make some music.

I’ll be Elton Johning today in preparation for an open house showing at Eyebeam tomorrow of a project I’m working on. Create Digital Motion has been a somewhat permanent state of Elton John, but expect it to be De-Eltoned within the week — I’ve got a backlog of stories, and Jaymis is returning, along with some other guest writers.

In the meantime, we strongly encourage you to spread both the act and the term Elton Johning when appropriate to your friends and colleagues. You can also place this on your voicemail: “Hello. You’ve reached Peter Kirn. I’m sorry I’m not available to take your call, but I’m currently Elton John. Leave a message for either of us after the beep.”

What the heck I’m on about