A team of artists has turned the Nintendo Wiimote into a controller for an adaptive, 3D sound environment. Claudio Midolo, Edgar Castellanos, Natan Sinigaglia, and Pedro Mari worked together on the project, and have posted extensive technical details if you fancy trying something like this yourself.

Logic’s Environment, a modular layer in the program for creating custom configurations, isn’t well known to many Logic users. But if you can get used to its slightly unusual interface, it’s capable of some really powerful stuff. You know, important music stuff. Like connecting Logic to your Nintendo NES game system. Jonathan Flugel writes:

The MIDINES evironment was created based on this chart:
http://www.wayfar.net/0xf00000_midi_chart.php

The environment allows for control of the 5 channels of synth/audio that the NES [supports]

Here are the 5 parts:
1-2 - Pulse Synthesizer waves
3-4 - Triangle/Square waves
5- sample channel

Since this is also my primary template for a Logic session there are other goodies I left in there:

1. NYC compression bus channel
2. 3 bus channels that I got from Hybrid (electronic group) for simple drum processing
3. MPC groove templates taken from an MPC 60
4. Ableton Live and Reason ReWire objects

There you have it: Logic + NES + MPC + Live + Reason. If that’s not a digital dream studio, I don’t know what is.

In case you want to give this file a look:
MIDINES.zip
That’s the MIDINES, Logic 8 file (if anyone has a MIDINES but Logic 7, let us know and we can share the Logic 7 file.)

Propellerheads have unveiled the newest version of Reason, entering beta now and shipping in fall. “Eagerly anticipated” genuinely applies here — I’ve heard various chatter about the new version for over a year. Anyone expecting audio recording or plug-in support, it’s still not here, but the upgrade does have some major enhancements that appear to stay true to its roots.

Thor “polysonic” synth: Continuing the industry-wide trend of combining different synth methods, Thor features six different envelopes, four filter types, wave shaping, and unique “analog-style” modulation routing. From anyone else, that description might be a non-starter, but the Props have a long history of really terrific synth design, and they promise Thor, like its predecessors, will be light on CPU usage — definitely bucking a separate industry-wide trend.

A mixer for quantization? Here’s where things get really interesting. The ReGroove mixer isn’t a mixer. It’s a groove/swing quantization tool. Quantization is real-time and adjustable, and can be applied to a full 32 groove channels independently. For anyone ready to break out of the mechanical sound of sequencing, this could be a powerful tool. I find it especially intriguing given the ridiculously simplistic quantization tools in Ableton Live; for some fine-tuned grooves, the combination of Live and Reason might again become popular. Oh, and yes, 32 independent grooves could well prove to be absurd overkill — we’ll have to figure out just how to use this. Or you could just apply one of the included groove presets, including (Props’ words, not mine) “vinyl funk gems of the 70s.” Sweet.

New sequencer: Yes, the original Reason sequencer was downright awful. This one sounds like one you might actually use:

…make global edits using “clips,” assign notes and controller events to different “lanes,” manage multiple takes, and edit events numerically—to name but a few of the hundreds of enhancements. Controller data now uses vector automaton for the smoothest of transitions. Users can manage tempo and time signature changes through a transport track. The inclusion of a floating tool window makes getting to frequently used tasks a snap.

In other words, Reason’s sequencer is a real sequencer now, at long last.

Also tasty-sounding: a new monophonic arpeggiator.

Despite its fantastic, CPU-light synths and effects, Reason had clearly fallen behind in terms of workflow. Beefing up quantization and sequencing and adding a new killer synth may be modest changes, but they sound like the right direction to me. I think the big question for a lot of users will be whether Reason fits in with another tool that handles audio, like Live, FL Studio, or a DAW. (And, for you hard-core sequencer types, maybe no audio at all but Reason inside an insane tracker.) I look forward to testing it.

The New Reason

And now, the obligatory giant rack shot:

All the major music software developers I’ve talked to have begun testing Vista, but Propellerheads has decided to go out on a limb and be the first to declare it “Works with Vista”, slapping on Microsoft’s official “approved” label:

Propellerhead Software Vista Compatibility

The flagship Reason, the original loop splicer-dicer app ReCycle, and the sample loading utility Reload have all been certified as Vista-compatible. In fact, you don’t even need a special upgrade: the existing versions work as-is, with two minor caveats. You’ll need admin privileges to install, and you’ll have to reauthorize your machine. (Updated: I shot off my mouth here and said that ReCycle wasn’t Universal on Mac. In comments, it’s noted that, while there’s not an Intel-specific build for Mac, ReCycle runs just fine on Mac OS X in Rosetta — makes sense, as unlike Reason, it doesn’t have the same performance needs.)

Now, requiring admin privs to install an app is a good thing, not a bad thing; OS X users have been doing this for some time, and it’s a major security hole in XP. (If anyone tries to use the “Windows just has more spyware because it’s a larger target” argument, you might ask them what kind of OS would let any application install anything anywhere without any user intervention. This should absolutely make Vista more secure.)

This news does tell us a little more about what to expect from other music software, and even if you’re on Mac or XP and planning to stay there, I promise there’s some free modular goodness at the end of this story. Really. You should read on.

EditorsKeys shortcut keyboards use stickers overlaid on your existing keyboard rather than requiring you to replace your keyboard. That has some definitely advantages: I’m not letting go of my beloved Microsoft keyboard, and the custom “shortcut” keyboards sold for programs like Logic and Pro Tools are often absurdly expensive. The EditorsKeys sticker sets cost under US$20, and right now they’re 20% off.

EditorsKeys Shortcut Keyboards

EditorsKeys tells us they’ve now unveiled a new set for Logic Pro, the first to be semi-transparent, so you can move the stickers to different keys if you’ve remapped your shortcuts.

Logic Pro Keyboard

Other sets include Pro Tools, Reason, Cubase, and SONAR, all updated for the latest releases, plus graphics software like Avid, Vegas, Final Cut, Photoshop, Premiere, and After Effects.

Now all I want is a keyboard with tiny LEDs that can change shortcuts depending on the active software. (And yes, I know a prototyped attempt to do just that evidently failed. Maybe later.) In the meantime, these are the most affordable solution.

I got a chance to work with the inexpensive (US$99) but high-quality library of acoustic drum kits for Reason, Reason Drum Kits, in a brief review for Keyboard Magazine. You can read the full review online. What most impressed me was how cleverly the samples were integrated with Reason:

Via what Propellerhead calls “hyper-sampling,� you can assemble endless realistic combinations of sounds. Everything’s here: multiple dynamic levels, mics, playing techniques, and other variations of each sample. Thanks to Reason’s ReFill format and features like the Combinator, the variety is inspiring, not overwhelming. Multi-output drum kits automatically connect to Reason’s mixer so you can adjust the mix of different mics.

As I noted, these kits won’t be for everyone, but if you’re a Reason fan and want acoustic kits, they’re a sure bet. Now, Propellerheads is applying the same technique to acoustic pianos, announced earlier today:

Just after making the Mackie C4 Commander software free (which works even without the Mackie hardware), Mackie has unveiled Reason support for their C4 control surface:

Mackie Control C4

There’s a PDF there with setup instructions. The C4 is becoming the go-to control surface for just about everything, with robust support for software like Live and Logic as well as Apple and Adobe video software, LCDs above each control, 32 endless encoders, and a US$1000 street. I know we have a number of happy users here. I could even see supplementing the new control features for the same apps in Novation’s ReMOTE SL with the Mackie, using one for synths and one for mixing. Now, all this cheerleading aside, I’d still like to see a more generalized, open standard for connecting control surfaces to software; I think it’d make life easier for both hardware and software makers. But that’s another story, and certainly the C4 works for a lot of people, and it’s nice at least that Mackie built it on MIDI rather than some proprietary standard.

Propellerhead has just unveiled three updates, Reason 3.05 for Mac, and ReWire 1.7 and an updated REX library for Mac and Windows. The big story is native compatibility of Intel-native Macs for Reason, but that’s not the only story. Just about everyone will benefit from the new versions, on PowerPC and Intel Macs, and Windows PCs, possibly even if you don’t run Reason itself. This general trend could be enough to make 2006 the Year of Music Software That Finally Runs Faster.

Novation’s SL series seeks to finally liberate us from manually assigning MIDI controllers to software, by automatically assigning its generous set of controls and displaying parameters on a lovely high-contrast onboard display. It could be just the thing for laptop-based performers, but a lot of us already have more keyboards than we need.

If it’s just more control you want, the ZeRO SL, announced today, might appeal. It has the LED displays, transport controls, faders, knobs, rotary encoders, and trigger pads from the SL series, but it’s ultra-compact — no keyboard attached. That means it fits nicely by your computer, as pictured here, or serves as a controller for your favorite MIDI keyboard. (Apparently there’s a stand included for angling it up — sounds brilliant, and why don’t other makers do that?) The lack of X/Y pad might seem an obstacle at first, but that keeps the size small and focuses the hardware on the basic controls.