Record is now shipping, and the beta closed – and now is a perfect time to talk about learning.

Okay, let me explain something. Propellerhead doesn’t want Record to be called a “DAW,” for Digital Audio Workstation. I personally overcame my own distaste for the strange acronym today because, well, there’s not another good name for a related set of tools.

But I do think Record is different. Workstations are usually defined by being all-in-one environments, for hosting other third-party instruments and effects, and adding in additional features like notation and video scoring. Record is none of those things. You can even treat it like a virtual mixer or rack of processing tools and load it into your existing “DAW” of choice, or take something like Ableton Live and load it into Record for mastering.

But then, Record is the exception that proves the rule, isn’t it? Aggressively geared to be the anti-DAW, to avoid trying to be all things to all people, Record illustrates the variety of ways you can get your music making done.

We’ve had a good, healthy debate on this topic, so no reason to resurrect that. Instead, I have two pieces of news: one, Record is now actually shipping. Two, if you’re interested to learn how to use it, or just to see what they’ve done, the Props have assembled a terrific set of learning resources. For beginners, “Record U” promises to cover the basics of recording tasks as well as the software. (So far, the first episode, “Recording Guitar,” is available.) You can add that to lovely ReWire tutorials from the folks who developed the technology, and mini-tips on how to use the tools. Whatever you think of the software, it’s an exemplary learning site, just the kind of thing you’d hope developers would do.

Basics video
Record U
Tutorials Page
Micro Tutorials and iTunes podcast link

I’ve chosen my favorite so far. Love it or hate it, I think this illustrates some of the vision of Record. It makes moving tracks and devices as easy as racking up instruments and effects in Reason, and makes mixing and matching audio uncommonly easy. That could make Record a nice tool to have around for trying to take your pile of recordings and productions and turn them into finished tracks and albums. (A lot of this “love it or hate it” phenomenon seems to depend on your feelings about Reason, so Reason fans will also want to take a look at the Reason – Record integration video.)

Okay, that’s technically not a snow leopard, but I came pretty close, right? Photo (CC) Mark Kenny.

For the latest on Mac OS X Snow Leopard (10.6), be sure to check out our full round-up. It’ll be regularly updated through the coming days.

We have updates from Propellerhead and Ableton. Basically, the message is what we’re hearing across the board – developers have been testing their software, but you should be cautious about updating and ensure all the hardware, software, and plug-ins you want to use work. More details on the state of development from these favorites to follow… notably, including an expected update to Live 8 that will bring full, official support to 10.6.

Updated: More news coming in and added to the round-up page. Antares reports their software works — good news. But the big news is that many Tascam hardware products will need driver updates. That is suggestive of changes to the OS that could impact other audio interfaces from other vendors. I’m going to keep saying this – upgrade on launch day at your own risk. Writing and testing audio drivers is tremendously time-intensive, so if you want everything to work, you’ll need to verify compatibility before you upgrade. Snow Leopard’s improvements will only be cool if your audio box works, too.

Ableton’s Dom Wilms, Manager – Technical Support, writes CDM:

10.6 is not officially supported yet, as we’re currently testing it with Live 8 and based on the results we will release a free bugfix update during the next weeks that will officially support 10.6.

It’s likely that Live 7 will also be just fine with 10.6 – but we don’t want to promise this right now before the tests are all finished and us being sure that we can achieve 100% compatibility.

And yes, we also do not recommend upgrading yet if stability is crucial for the used system. In this case customers should wait until all third party software and hardware products are confirmed to work with the new cat…

We will come up with a little FAQ regarding those questions in our forum today or tomorrow.

Note that reader Jae sent in a thread from the Ableton forums with some testers, but I wouldn’t take it as scientific evidence. It begins with a user finds a reduction in CPU usage that’s actually too large – that is, it seems there’s some significant variable that’s not controlled.

None other than CEO Ernst Nathorst-Böös writes in with the official statement from Propellerhead. So far, so good – just, again, approach this new OS with caution.

Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard) Compatibility Statement

Apple have released a new operating system, Mac OS X 10.6 also known as Snow Leopard. Our products have been tested on this new OS X version and we are happy to report that all our applications are fully functional.

Please note the following non-critical issues:

ReCycle – You need to activate Rosetta to make ReCycle work. This is similar to what happened if you ran ReCycle on a Intel-based Mac under Mac OS X 10.5.

Reason and Record – The text in the device patch selector has a display bug. The characters O, o and 8 have filled rather than hollow circles.

Record – The Record installer reports an (actually non-existing) problem after installation, but Record runs fine. You can safely use Record without any problems.

Hardware Note

Your music system does not consist of software alone. Please be aware that you may need to update the installation of your audio hardware, keyboard controller or other controller when upgrading to Mac OS X 10.6. We recommend that you consult the hardware manufacturer for more information about compatibility, before you upgrade your operating system.

Disclaimer

While Propellerhead Software has gone to great lengths to verify the information above, please note that it is based on early versions of Mac OS X 10.6 and that the testing performed is by definition limited. This information does not constitute any warranty, express or implied.

By the way, I want to thank developers who do post frank information on the forums and who have helped us out with this series – at a time when they don’t have all their testing data yet.

In a Hollywood overrun with remakes, a new Tron has quite a daunting challenge. The original film may be a cult hit for its 80s arcade cool, but it also was a seminal moment in the evolution of computer animation, at the nexus of obsessive-compulsive optical effects that came before and digital effects that came after. (Google Perlin Noise, if you must.) But where the bits of the effects look uneven or dated alongside the brilliant, it’s nearly impossible to top the genius of Wendy Carlos’ score. Her deft blend of choirs, orchestras, organs, and rich electronics wasn’t just forward looking: it’s fresh today, an alternative to some of the signature sameness in today’s games and films.

Perhaps Tron Legacy will do what other belated sequels have not: express love for the original. With Daft Punk helming the score and a reverent, inspired crew ready to make Tron live again, the trailer last week was the real sleeper hit of Comic-Con.

If that’s not enough layers of fandom, though, head to GearSlutz for a lesson in film scoring and a recreation of the trailer in Reason, custom Reaktor patches, and Ableton Live. This is not much of an infomercial for Live: because Ableton’s arrange view doesn’t quite understand frames, scoring with Live is a bit of a beast. (Live 9, anyone?) But it’s a great example of love for the movie and its original score. And hey, everyone need a source of joy, even a film.

Ableton Live for Sound Design :Tron Legacy [GearSlutz forum]

Stripped the original audio and redid all of the sound from scratch using Reason/NI Reaktor/Ableton Live 8. An M-Audio Axiom 49 was used to perform the Lightcycle Engine Oscillations

Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, we get it. You revolutionized film scoring and electronic orchestration, and we’re all in your debt. It’s not so much that you switched on Bach or switched on Moog or even switched on Kubrick and guys in glowing skin-tight outfits. You switched on sound, and nothing has been quite the same since.

Now, we just have to hope 2010 can show us a good time, too.

As I’m going through all the responses for the Propellerhead Record beta, I couldn’t help but notice this image, taken in Lima, Peru this month. Sure, you can claim that Propellerhead’s software looks too much like analog gear, that racking up lots of instruments and effects together (especially now, with parallel racks in Record) leads to visual clutter. But then, that mish-mash of knobs and colored panels looks, well, a lot like this Lima electronics market.

Interestingly enough, the photographer notes these are all homegrown efforts, unique DIY electronics. A theme that comes up every time I talk to folks in South America is a reminder that they can’t always afford the latest-and-greatest modern tech. And, of course, neither can a lot of us on the other continents — hey, here in the US, we’re paying off loans, debt, and health insurance bills. So I do think the DIY world will continue to spawn things people themselves can use. An oft-overlooked driver of the open source software movement remains the desire to create something for yourself, even in the shadow of titans like Red Hat, IBM, Sun, and Novell, who stand to reap big business rewards. With the interest in these things exploding, as well as indie commercial development, hardware and software alike can be thought of as a virtual analog to this rack of strange Peruvian sonic gear.

It certainly reveals something essential about the drive to decorate your audio creations, and to make them unique. Hardware or software, it’s hard not to look at this and want to go make some crazy noises.

Given the passion of the debate, it’s easy to forget that Propellerheads’ Record has been firing up discussion from many people who haven’t actually seen it. Record is to audio recording, mixing, and mastering what Reason is to synthesized sound, and for Reason lovers, it finally delivers that holy grail – multiple racks. Record is a bit like Reason Studio, taking those instruments and giving them a full production context.

Since its release, Propellerhead has amplified polarized opinions about this tool. It doesn’t support plug-ins (though you can use other ReWire clients), it doesn’t do things like film scoring, and thus its singular focus on recording means I think it’s fair for Propellerhead to say it’s not a DAW. Of course, going so far as tell blogs they can’t label it as such is going a bit far, and it only made some people protest more. And the focus on those features hasn’t pleased users who want everything and a kitchen sink on their feature list. Users were divided over the Ignition Key and online authorization scheme (see full explanation), of course.

But it is something about which everyone seems to have an opinion, and for that alone, I love it. That’d be a little more fair if you’ve actually gotten to use it, however. So, now’s your chance to try Record for yourself:

http://www.propellerheads.se/products/record/

The beta is a full-featured, open-and-save-capable version, through its expiration date on September 9.

If you’re impatient, we can get you the beta key right now. Just leave a comment, say something intelligent, say “+1 beta,” and be sure to leave your real email address. (Emails are not published on the site; I’ll just see them in my inbox.) If you’d like to be on the CDM Notes mailing list (no other marketing or spam), say “+1 email.”

All out! Thanks to everyone; hopefully we’ve gotten everyone a code who wanted one. Follow comments for some little glitches with their Website…

Once you’ve got a reply from me, download Record by entering your code at http://recordyou.com. You’ll also get two codes to pass along to friends.

Update on registration: I talked to Propellerhead’s web developer – when you get the confirmation email for recordyou.com, go ahead and log in! You’ll be confirmed automatically. Some people saw this login page following the confirmation email and thought something was wrong. Don’t worry, log in, and everything will be fine.

We’ll give out keys until we run out. Propellerhead shared some with us, but then composer Josh Mobley, whose work is featured in Record and has been an advocate of the software from the beginning, reached out. Josh gave us half his stash of keys to share with CDM readers, because he’s devoted to Propellerhead’s stuff. How devoted? He has a Reason tattoo. And it’s nice to hear that Record is pleasing a Reason fan, as that to me remains the big test. Josh has done some significant commercial work, ranging from NBC’s The Office to Ford Motors to the US Department of Defense, with scoring, music, sound design, remix, and environmental projects.

http://www.joshmobley.com/

And he’s a superfan in the best way. I asked him why Record matters in his work:

I love me some Reason. In fact, I love it so much, I got a tattoo on my wrist of the Reason logo. Most people thought I was out of my mind but I love it. Why? Things really didn’t start taking off for me until I started using Reason. I took one look at the program and thought, they made this for me. I started busting out tunes faster than I ever had before. And people were snatching them right up. It dawned on me right then and there that this self-contained environment had freed me up and allowed me to be creative without scrolling through a bunch of plug-ins and whatnot. The distractions of making music were gone. A limited tool set that can be routed and combined in an infinite number of ways. One needs only to look at the patches and music that [Reason user] peff is making to see that reason is the most powerful music instrument in the world.

And now, we have Record: Audio+Reason+SSL Mixer. Having used it since the early alphas, I can honestly say that Record is every bit as musical and easy to use as Reason. The time stretching is, frankly, jaw-dropping. The new mixer sounds like the SSL at my old studio. You can easily do a whole song in Record without any other software. However, Record+Reason is a lethal Combination.

I could go on and on, but at the end of the day, you really need to spend some time with this program and see what’s possible. I can almost certainly guarantee that you will be making music faster than you ever did.

Now, a superfan is not a fanboy. Fanboys, as we know, are the folks who get defensive even in the face of some obvious shortcoming, who spend lots of their time talking down other people’s choices. The superfans I’m guessing are generally too busy actually using their software – in this case, making music.

And if you do find software you love enough to tattoo on your wrist (see also our friend Jo with Reaktor), you don’t need any reviewer or forum commenter or expert or anyone else to tell you what to think. You’ll know.

Do tell us what you think of Record as you use it, and good luck snagging a code.

Previously:
Propellerhead Record In-Depth Preview: Recording, Reason-Style; Beta Test Now
Propellerhead Record: New Getting Started Video Tutorial, Blog
How Propellerhead’s New “Ignition Key” Authorization for Record Works

There’s plenty of rightful skepticism about the use of mainstream displays for multitouch in general purpose computing. And why not? As a full-time replacement for other input, multitouch probably doesn’t make sense. But for music, the equation is changing. Multitouch capabilities are showing up on commodity-priced PC computers like the multi-touch enabled HP laptop models – the tx2z seen here starts, incredibly, at US$850. And because computer musicians are looking for more control, having a touch-enabled display (even single-touch) just makes sense.

The screen for a laptop musician is a huge piece of real estate. Finally, instead of sitting dumbly in front of you glowing, it can become an X/Y controller or give you shortcuts for controls or provide additional parameters. Yes, using a touchscreen exclusively can result in the dreaded “gorilla arm.” The ergonomics of using a vertically-oriented screen are extremely poor – if you use it exclusively for an extended period of time. But if you look at the way people are using these touchscreens, for incidental control in combination with other things – and the ability of convertible laptops to transform into a horizontal orientation – I think this is no longer the deal killer it once was.

At top, an HP laptop ($850) plus the free version of Sensomusic’s Usine is all you need to create a multitouch interface for Ableton Live. Correction: right now this is limited to single touch only, but multitouch is supported in the hardware, in drivers, soon in Windows 7, and support is promised for a future version of Usine. The point still stands — as does the ability to optimize controls for your fingers. Being able to use more than one at once will, of course, be that much better.

Fractal (see Myspace) uses the combination to play Ableton Live with some simple controls. If you get hooked on Usine, you can get the full “Pro” version for EUR70 with additional patches and objects.

The one major remaining obstacle to multitouch, at least, is cost. If you don’t especially fancy buying a new HP laptop, add-on kits still run in the range of US$800-900 (meaning, ironically, you might as well just buy the HP instead). Laptop vendors are still slow to adopt the technology, though that could change when Windows 7 ships later this year. (On the other hand, tablet PCs, even when they were shipping in relative quantity, often were constrained in available configurations and either skimped on specs or demanded a significant premium.)

But let’s not complain too much. The simple reality is you can add an HP laptop now to a live rig as a performance instrument for under a grand.

To see something else with Ableton Live, here’s a video by Andrew Coenen from earlier this year of Pance Party’s Bartelby playing Live with the open source Max Multitouch Framework. This is a more sophisticated setup – it requires a table-style setup using the Frustrated Total Internal Reflection tracking method. But the idea is basically the same. (By the way, Max 5 is an optimal choice because of its excellent widgets, and it’s great having this choice, but it’s a little odd having an “open source” framework in proprietary software. If you want a fully open source solution, there are options like PyMT, which we recently saw on Create Digital Motion. And that said, there’s no reason you can’t try out both.)

And yes, someone has done Reason, too (poor-quality video, but gives you an idea).

Updated: As I’m posting this, I see that Oliver Chesler is writing about how effective touch interfaces can be for synthesizers – just using iPhone as the example (but the idea still holds). And, in fact, you don’t necessarily even need multitouch to make this work; single touch would be effective.

The example: an upcoming iPhone/iPod touch synth from the folks who gave us the Curtis granular synth, The Strange Agency.

Sound Scope Space for the iPhone [Wire to the Ear]

Sound Scope Space demo from strange agency on Vimeo.

Of course, I have to point out at this point, this is another reason that OSC (OpenSoundControl) support becomes essential. Whether or not conventional gear vendors adopt OSC, it’s a logical way to deal with the growing number of touch-enabled devices, from your own display to your iPhone.

I expect this could all accelerate as we near Windows 7’s release. (You don’t need Windows 7 – HP is doing just fine without it – but the presence of in-box APIs for paging through photo galleries and the like is almost certain to encourage Microsoft’s hardware partners.) Stay tuned.

More Examples

$200 Makes Your Laptop Touch-Enabled; Usine Music Demo

Sensomusic Usine + Ableton Live = Modular Touchscreen Interface

What do you really want from a recording tool on a computer? The Digital Audio Workstation answer to that question has for years been on giving you a generalized set of tools that try to anticipate every possible need. The “workstation” approach puts a whole bunch of functionality in one place, in particular adding features like plug-in hosting for supporting third-party effects and instruments, video editing and scoring, and music notation.

Record is a different animal: it’s a specialized tool focused on making music with audio, instead of a generalized tool. Reason has focused on synths, with a distinctive set of hardware-styled modules in a virtual rack. Record focuses on sound, with a distinctive set of hardware-styled modules in a virtual rack. Get it?

What’s left out is important. There’s no plug-in support, but by limiting use to the internal sound modules, Record is entirely agnostic about things like sample rate and can be far more flexible with modular audio routing and fluid tempo changes. (There’s also no MIDI out support, but if you’re looking to sequence external hardware, I might look elsewhere, anyway – especially with gems like Numerology out there.) Record also supports ReWire and has various export features, so the assumption is that – as with Reason – when you really want plug-ins, you can use your existing environment of choice.

Maybe you can call the results a DAW, if you really want to. But the one thing that isn’t debatable: Record is Reason for sound.

CDM was first with the official story from Propellerhead over the weekend, talking about the philosophy behind Record. Now we can talk about the specifics inside – and I have a test version here I’ve been working with while on the road.

Basically, Record combines comp-based recording with Reason-style racks and a whole load of goodies for processing and mixing your sound, including Line 6 guitar effects and an emulated SSL mixing desk. Why am I excited to begin working with it? Basically, it’s what happens when you flip the Record interface around. The most important screenshot (see any of these shots bigger by clicking on them):

Here’s what you get:

• All about “Record”ing – with comps: As the name implies, the real soul of Record is recording. Comping is built in from the beginning so that you get a take you want, and each track even includes an integrated tuner by default. This is really a tool that assumes you’re actually one person plugging in an instrument and playing.
• Music and tempo-based sound: “Tempo-independent” audio is almost the reverse of what this is. When you record sound, the idea is that you always have some musical information in mind – beats and bars. Record lets you then change the tempo of that audio fluidly, without ever having to think about warping or slicing or markers or loops or anything like that. Propellerhead says they’re especially proud of the audio quality of the stretching algorithm working behind the scenes to make these changes sound good, which is what we’re already hearing (unofficially, of course) from beta testers in comments and elsewhere.
• Tempo changes: Unlike other tools that have focused on DJ-style or electronica-style master tempo, Record assumes fluid changes in tempo from version 1.0. There’s always a “conductor” track, a main tempo lane, which can have subtle, curved tempo changes (accel./rit.). When you export your audio, that information is exported as MIDI, so this musical information travels with you to other tools.
• An integrated recording/mixing/arrangement environment: This is the one DAW-like part of Record, though it still feels more like Reason than anything else. Each track gets three things: a channel routed into the mixer, an individual device module you can insert into the rack (as in Reason), and a sequencing lane for MIDI and audio.
• Sequencing: This is the most traditional part of Record – you do get conventional sequencer lanes. Clips can arbitrarily contain audio, MIDI, and automation data. The important thing to note is that, because Record doesn’t support plug-ins, you can count on consistent integration of automation – if there’s a knob in a module, you can automate it in the sequencer, just as in Reason.
• Hardware-style mixing: No software-style mixer here: the mixer inside Record is a direct simulation of hardware, not a loosely-inspired emulation. The Record mixer is modeled after an SSL 9000k analog mixing desk, so that it intends to look, work, and sound like the real thing. (SSL was not officially involved, so you’ll just have to count the Propellerheads as SSL fans.)
• Reason-style effects: In addition to the mixer, you get Reason-style modules for EQ, dynamics, and other effects.
• Line 6 guitar effects: Line 6’s virtual POD is built in, so you get their guitar amps and cabinets built in. I’m guessing those should be quite nice with keyboards, too.

Arrangement: Looking at the birds-eye view, Record does admittedly look like a DAW. But dig in a little bit to how these modules work, and there’s more Reason DNA than anything else. It’ll be interesting to work with these modules over the coming months. Also, most important to recognize is that when you see audio in Record, it will always obey tempo changes you make, including gradual speed increases and decreases – no warping or slicing required. When you do want to slice up audio, you could, say, drop Record as a ReWire client into an Ableton Live set, or even export your audio with tempo changes from Record as one track and put your sliced audio in a different rack.

The mixing desk:

The thing is, it’s not so much what Record does as what it does in a Reason-style way. So while this is a preview, not a review, here’s what makes Record more like Reason:

For Reason users, this one image pretty much sums everything up. The workflow is still essentially a Reason workflow – if you love that, you’re likely already salivating. If not, it’ll likely take more convincing from the other aspects of the tool.

• Every track is a rack: Each time you create a track, you get a modular rack, which translates to the inserts you see in the mixer. For advanced users, this means you can do anything with routing you want. You get a full-blown rack on each track, with all the usual goodies for routing. For beginners, it means you can call up easy presets for whatever you’re doing, and the parameters show up as plain-English knobs in the mixer. You don’t have to think about routing or what everything represents; you just focus on sound. For beginners and advanced users, the ability to “see” all of this routing with virtual cables and such means sophisticated mixing and routing setups aren’t quite so abstract.
• It’s a Reason interface: Everything looks and feels like Reason, even with a much more involved UI. All the new views continue on the theme of adjustable navigation panes. These views either get combined into a single-window interface, or can be detached if you’d prefer. But there are almost no dialog boxes, with one notable exception:
• You get Reason patches and patch browsing, for audio: Reason users will feel right at home, as Record extends the patch browsing metaphor from Reason. And because track effects inserts use what are essentially Combinators, those inserts just feel like Reason devices inside a mixer.
• Reason + Record: If you have Reason, you have access to all your Reason modules. And since Record has a big Reason rack – well, you get the idea. Instead of recording inside Reason, what Reason users get is Reason inside a bigger version of Reason that understands not only recording, but mixing and audio arrangement, and treats audio like music, with tempo.
• ReWire: Record is a ReWire client (slave), not a host (master). That should be your first clue Propellerhead aren’t trying to replace Pro Tools, Live, and Logic. But it does mean you could easily use, say, Record for recording purposes on your own, then drop it into a Pro Tools session in the studio, or Record to do some song-writing that you then bring into an Ableton live PA or remix set.
• Reason-style automation and control. Most notably, this is the first audio production tool I’ve seen that was set up from the beginning to be used with keyboards, as Reason was. It’s funny: right now, M-Audio are pitching using a keyboard to control Pro Tools with their Axiom Pro / HyperControl product. This essentially goes the other way: like Reason, Record uses the “Remote” protocol, which was effectively the first to “automap” your keyboard controller and control surface to the software. That means you can comfortably produce an entire work from your keyboard, while adding guitar or vocals as an audio recording.
• Oh yeah, it’ll be fun even if you only use synths: In case you haven’t guessed already, for Reason users, this means mixing and processing and arrangement tools that weren’t available before, so even if you never hook up a mic to Record, I imagine you could use almost all of these tools. (Only the tuner and audio comps become redundant.)

It’s really the relationship of the device rack to the mixer and tracks in Record that make it unique, and will be fun to explore over the coming months. When you create devices and Combinators, you can easily see them in the mixer and track sections. Sends are named as the actual sound parameter, too. Because it doesn’t support plug-ins, that also means you never have to worry about the way parameter names are handled in formats like VST, though you can always return to your favorite host when you do want plug-ins since Record is also a ReWire client.

Line6 guitar and bass amps are available out of the box as insertable modules. This is all you need for the interface: it’s aggressively simple.

The patch window will look familiar to Reason users. But if you’re new to this, what it means is that you can easily surf through, say, Line 6 guitar presets and hear immediately what they sound like.

So, what does the music sound like? Josh Mobley via Twitter tells us about his official demo song, “Push Me Down,” made in Record for Propellerhead. All the songs in the embedded player below were made in Record, with the exception of “Narrow Escape,” the demo for Reason 4.

About that Dongle

The other bit of news – and the one item that’s likely to be most divisive – is that Propellerhead is changing the authorization scheme in Record, as explained here:

Ignition Key

The good news: “demo” mode / non-authorized mode is actually only “open”-disabled. You can even save files in the demo; you just can’t open existing files. The Ignition Key comes free with the tool rather than being a separate purchase as with some iLok products, and if you lose or break it, a replacement is available for a nominal fee. (Some manufacturers actually have the gall to charge for the full purchase price of the product or close to it, which is utterly ridiculous.) Also, if you don’t want to use the key, there is an Internet authorization.

The bad news: it is still a dongle. Internet authorization requires a consistent connection while you’re working; the moment that’s dropped, the software reverts to demo mode. I would personally much rather have seen one-time Internet authorization as is available from Ableton and Native Instruments, among others, especially as Record would be fun to use on a bus or train without plugging in a dongle. Propellerhead say they’ve put some thought into this and wanted to do copy protection right, but I expect they’ll hear about it anyway.

The one upside I do see is for people who use a lot of machines (like myself, for one). You can use just the dongle without any other authorization, and you can use it on as many machines as you want. So that means you can move from a studio to a Mac laptop to a PC laptop to a netbook just by moving your dongle around, and never have to fill out a registration form or worry about if you’ve run out of authorizations.

Also, I’d suggest that people use this as an opportunity to freely try the demo without any annoying limitations and decide if you like the tool before you buy it.

Availability / pricing

Beta testing is starting now, today – sign-up at the site below.

September 9, 2009 is the official release date.

Suggested retail: US$299, EUR299. No word yet on what bundles will be available for existing or new Reason users, but Propellerhead says that it will have special bundle pricing of some kind.

Videos and more info at:

www.record-you.com

It’s been a long, long wait for side-by-side Reason and audio racks and recording in Reason, but there’s no question that this is a big announcement.

Since many of you will be beta-testing this alongside me, I look forward to hearing your opinions of the tool and any tips or techniques you discover.

The name gives it away: Record is a product based on a feature Reason users have long requested — audio recording. The surprise is, that need has led to an entirely new tool. Instead of just adding a requested feature, the company has revealed that they built a new application, re-examining in the process what recording really means. Internet rumors have been predicting something along these lines. The problem is, rumors can sometimes create distorted expectations. In this case, I think it’s worth taking a closer look, which we’ll be doing over the coming days.

Today, the first audiences of Reason users learned of the tool’s existence at the Producers Conferences events staged around the world. We’ll be able to talk about the details on Monday, but having spoken to Propellerhead co-founder Ernst Nathorst-Böös, I want to at least say that this really is shaping up to be something different.

Record is an audio recording program, says Ernst, but "This program has nothing to do with audio. It’s all about music… We wanted this to be about music making." Record is a piece of software designed around the musical possibilities of recording audio, he explains, emphasizing the actual act of recording and working with sound in ways that are always connected to musical time, beats and bars, and a fluid approach to tempo and tempo changes. It focuses on a single task rather than bundling together lots of tasks.

Most importantly, I am already convinced that Record is not intended to be a DAW, or Digital Audio Workstation – that is, a tool defined by bundling together different functionalities. This sometimes-muddled product category has been created after the fact to describe a certain breed of software, applications like Pro Tools and Logic. DAWs are defined by the way in which they combine a lot of different features, from audio and MIDI to plug-in hosting, mixing, and even video and notation. They’re useful and powerful for many tasks, which accounts for their popularity and staying power. But regular readers of this site are always up for new ideas, and attempts – in all varying degrees of success – to try new directions.

There are many new ideas in musical instruments and effects, but you don’t get entirely new ideas about how to put together a commercial music application very often. Actually changing the mold is a big challenge. Propellerhead’s own Reason and ReBirth, Ableton Live, Image-Line’s Fruity Loops (now FL Studio), and Sonic Foundry (now Sony) Acid all had a big impact on a wide group of computer music makers by effectively changing the mold. (And, of course, with or without big user bases, readers of this site are fans of many lesser-known tools that have done the same.)
We’ll have a number of months to begin to see what Record’s contribution might be. But whether it’s successful or not, the good news today was that, after all this time, Propellerhead isn’t using anyone else’s mold. Tune in Monday for our first look at some of those results, and then be sure to let us know what you think and what you’d like to know down the road.

Note that this is my own personal take. I did run it by Propellerhead, however, so this is not a rumor or leak. Embargo is lifted on the details on Monday, when we’ll be able to actually show images of the software.

Here’s the lineup:

Los Angeles May 9, Musician’s Institute, Hollywood. Bon Harris, Kevin Teasley, Gerry Basserman, Kurt Kurasaki

New York City May 9, Clinton Recording Studios. Ben Weinman, Aaron Albano, Chris Griffin, Chris Petti

Guildford, UK May 9, Academy of Contemporary Music, Guildford, Surrey A Guy Called Gerald, Alex Blanco, Gary Bromham.

Berlin, Germany May 9, Kulturbrauerei Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg Simon Grey, Philippe van Eecke, The Green Man.

Stockholm, Sweden May 9, Propellerhead Software HQ Eric Gadd, Pär Wiksten, Joachim Ekermann, Jonas Löfvenmark

While Novation was refreshing their Automap software for NAMM, M-Audio was unveiling their own dynamic controller technology, called HyperControl. M-Audio has one (big) edge on Novation: their controller technology can access ASCII keystrokes – something I’d love to have in all keyboard control editors. And HyperControl sounds like it has some promise, at least on paper – especially with the absurd number of controls M-Audio has packed onto the layout.

There are just two catches. One, there’s the (ahem) styling on the Axiom Pro keyboard. To put it diplomatically, it’s not terribly … subtle. Two, you get support for some DAW/workstations (Pro Tools, Cubase, Logic, Reason) but not others (SONAR, Live, Tracktion, etc.) Now, that could change in future releases, but Automap has a significant running start.

Also, can we please get a moratorium on adding “Pro” to product names? (I mean, we don’t call the other model the Axiom Hobbyist or the Axiom Day Job.)

The keyboards: 25, 49, 61 keys, though sadly you don’t get controls on M-Audio’s 88-key models. The 49-key model lists for US$599.95, which means it’s in the price range of the Novation – though that also means the Novation is competitive. The keybeds are M-Audio’s semi-weighted “TruTouch,” which is one of the better semi-weighted actions out there.

But, seriously, this styling says “pro”? To me, it says this, minus the sportiness:

The features: One big graphic LCD (compared to the longer but narrower character Novation displays) – though that means the display is also not immediately aligned with the controls, so there’s a trade off. ASCII keystroke support so you can access keyboard shortcuts directly from a template. A ridiculous number of controllers, including function keys and keypad buttons the Novation lacks. Then again, if you go that far, you almost want a little trackpad while you’re at it.

Supported DAWs: Pro Tools 7.4 and up, Cubase, Reason, Logic. Now Reason is a no-brainer – it has terrific support for this kind of thing. But SONAR and Ableton Live also have lovely internal support for dynamic controller mappings. I hope that’s planned for a future update, but in the meantime, I’d have to recommend the extensive template support and track record on the Novation.

And then there’s the fact that you can get a more muted-gray Axiom 61 with most of these features – minus the whiz-bang HyperTransport you may not need anyway – for US$329.95 list instead of $599.95 (49-key).

But I am interested to hear more of the specifics of how HyperTransport itself works, because it sounds a bit different than Automap – same idea, different execution. M-Audio says, when working with DAWs and instruments alike:

The constant two-way link with your host DAW means the keyboard’s controls are always in sync with your software’s active parameters. The intuitive graphic LCD constantly updates the current values, which ensures seamless editing and prevents parameter jumps—even when plug-ins are closed. Toggle instantly between Mixer and Instrument control modes. Map buttons to send QWERTY key commands right from the Axiom Pro 61. Save settings to 50 memory locations—each with four profiles of quick recall via the intuitive graphic LCD.

The ability to control plug-ins when they’re closed sounds especially interesting. Stay tuned.

Axiom Pro Product Page

By the way, one other rival out there – albeit with traditional, non-dynamic controller maps – is Akai’s MPK49 and (new to NAMM this month) MPK25, in case you don’t like the fact that their new Ableton-centric APC lacks piano-style keys.

Akai Pro MPK25

Another advantage: the Akai still looks a little silly with so many pads and knobs, but somehow less so in black than white.