What if, between the original classic Tron and the upcoming Tron 2: Legacy, there were another Tron movie, lost forever in cinematic history? Between the soaring score by Wendy Carlos for the original and Legacy’s Daft Punk music, what would the soundtrack have sounded like? Of course, it would have absolutely had some Journey in it.

Such a movie was rumored, but as with so many projects, leaves behind no evidence. What if it had left a score you could hear? The mysterious “Flynn 1.5″ writes to share a free, downloadable soundtrack that answers that question.

And you can argue with an album that begins out with “For the Love of ENCOM”? Indeed. You can stream the full album and download all but the Journey remix. Read the full “backstory” after the jump.

Tron moniker or no, the results are some lovely music, featuring the likes of Tiger Mendoza, Team9, artist and CDM regular reader Lilith The Kitten, and ringleader World Famous Audio Hacker, among others. (Trivia – Tiger Mendoza has his own, Creative Commons-licensed album, and Team9 earned notoriety for a mash-up collaboration with Green Day.)

In late 1998, I was commissioned to compile and produce the soundtrack for a sequel to the film “Tron”. A draft of the story had already been written and early filming had begun (as reported by ZDNet on July 27, 1999). As I understand it, the film was kept in great confidence with the producers as Pixar was still in negotiations with Disney about the responsibilities of the production teams.

“Rise Of The Virals” was a fantastic, but much darker storyline from the original — different from the “Into The Machine” pitch made to Disney by another party. It involved updating the ENCOM universe to a networked system (thanks to the Internet), but also created a darker world — full of programs abandoned as buggy systems (or “mutants”) and abused by corrupt users as viral systems. Furthermore, the story included the death of Flynn and presented questions about the digital life of programs lasting beyond the mortality of their creators — the users.

My task was to compile great underground artists to create a new soundtrack for this darker world of Tron. After the completion of the initial tracklist and first production draft of the soundtrack, it seemed as if negotiations between Pixar and Disney had broken down. Funding for the project was eventually pulled.

I have been most excited to see the announcement of the third film, the new “TR2N” (Tron: Legacy), especially with the involvement of those who will be creating the new soundtrack. It is obvious to me that “Tron: Legacy” takes place after “The Rise Of The Virals” without abandoning its first concept. Perhaps that is why we’ve seen sites like Flynn Lives creep up in anticipation of the new film.

I’ve decided to release the preliminary version of the soundtrack which includes a special remix of Journey’s “Any Way You Want It” produced specifically for “Rise Of The Virals”. Journey provided two songs to the original “Tron”, and their song “Separate Ways” will reportedly be on the “Legacy” soundtrack as well. In any case, since the story of “Rise Of The Virals” takes place between the first “Tron” film and the upcoming “Tron 2: Legacy”, I can’t think of a better title for this material other than “Tron 1.5″. I hope you enjoy the music these artists have put such great work into.

– Flynn 1.5

Tron 1.5: “Rise Of The Virals”
(Digitally Remastered)

1. “For The Love Of ENCOM” (4:16) (Team9)
2. “Askew” (5:08) (Solcofn)
3. “Build A Better Lightcycle” (3:24) (Tiger Mendoza)
4. “Rise Of The Virals” (3:37) (World Famous Audio Hacker)
5. “Any Way You Want It” (4:30) (Rhythm Scholar Syntax Error Remix)
6. “Electro City” (5:24) (Lilith The Kitten)
7. “March To Silicon Palace” (3:34) (Future Sound Of Tron)
8. “Lora’s Theme” (4:34) (Team9)
9. “Technojazz” (5:56) (Solcofn)
10. “Love Theme” (4:11) (Tiger Mendoza)
11. “Paranoid Space” (2:45) (Tiger Mendoza)
12. “T128.Flynn.FK@yf” (6:30) (EBNC)
13. “Core Dump” (6:01) (Lilith The Kitten)
14. “Means To An End” (8:00) (Solcofn)
15. “Theme From Tron 105″ (1:26) (Carl Walters)

The full album is available for free download at http://tron.fm/

In the Pocket (Rhodes and Moog Light Paint) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

Fantastic, hip, soulful keys couple with brilliant stop-motion editing, as a Moog and Rhodes keyboard are splashed with light painting, in this new music video from Ethan Goldhammer. (See his blog for more.) It’s the perfect example of how a much-seen technique can retain its novelty when used creatively, especially as the sound itself seems to dance in light-up oscilloscope patterns.

Background:

Original music by Ethan Goldhammer and S. Burke.
Time Lapse footage shot in August 2008 on Block Island, RI.
Stop motion and light paint September 2008 in Cambridge, MA.

The lesson here: gear pr0n and special effects work perfectly when they visualize the way we feel about our musical objects and sounds.

Okay, so how did he do it? Ethan responds:

Ableton all the way. Recorded as loops with an [Akai] apc, then arranged later. The secret is also, making the animations, rendering them in [Final Cut Pro] but then WARPING them in ableton to the proper timing and bouncing them back to FCP.

Nicely done. Of course, this is why some audiovisualists have turned to Sony Vegas for Windows – formerly developed by Sonic Foundry, Vegas is actually half audio, half visual software. On the other hand, Live is a comfortable and flexible tool that does many things Vegas can’t.

Ethan also has a beautiful rendering of “Air on a G String,” the second cut from the legendary Switched on Bach. Wendy Carlos, if you’re out there, please don’t stop Ethan; I’d love to see more collaboration instead.

Air on a G String (Oscilliscoped) from Ethan Goldhammer on Vimeo.

Float away with Mujik… from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

Musical technology is often designed to be “hard” in character. Interfaces are cold and technological-looking, futuristic like spaceships, or made to replicate antique gear to make guitarists feel nostalgic. Musical interfaces consciously avoid anything “childish” – calling something a “toy” being the worst possible insult – and they’re certainly never whimsical.

That’s why the real news about Mujik isn’t that it’s a new iPhone app, or that, after a few weeks of teasers, you can download it today on the iTunes store. (The app is free for a limited time.) The news is that it’s a musical interface with lightning bugs.

Mujik teaser… from The Amazing Rolo on Vimeo.

The creators, led by Yann Seznec, clearly had this goal in mind:

Do you want an iPhone app to make beats? And produce like totally awesome tracks with a zillion channels and plugins and automation and 808 simulators and stuff yeah? Oh. Well, this is not for you. Mujik is more than a music app – get away from fake sliders and buttons and enter the world of Mujik, with charming graphics, lovely music, and a wonderfully tactile interface. It’s not rocket science, it’s just fun.

Mujik is brought to you by Lucky Frame, a small team of awesome people based in Edinburgh, Scotland. It’s lovely here, you should come visit.

You can’t save yet, but I rather like that. And while you can’t yet add your own sounds (which they’re also working on), I actually can imagine this would be something you’d share with your friends who are intimidating by the arcane, unreadable tracker you have installed on your hacked Game Boy.

On the team: Yann Seznec is also known as The Amazing Rolo, who we’ve seen previously on CDM making a free Wii looping machine, and who recently did a three-part series just for CDM on the Maker Faire. (one, two, three)

Thanks to Chris Hahn on Twitter for the tip!

Remix contests are all the rage lately, but quality is another thing altogether. I’m happy CDM is involved in a new contest with Dancetracks, however, because the ingredients of a contest that’s worth your time all all there.

First off, Seattle-based [Dave] Pezzner on freefrange is an artist worth noting. He’s a talented producer, has a great sense of sound, as has moved from commercial and television sound and music into being a breakout dance artist – something to which many CDM readers may aspire. He’s assembled just the kind of smart track we like:

Valldemossa was inspired initially by a tape recording I found of a boys choir recorded circa 1982, which was piped through an analog tape delay. The ending result of this tape recording was outstanding and left me with a gold mine of sounds to pick from. I built this song using a handful of my favorite tools, FL Studio, Ableton Live, Native Instruments Battery, Reaktor, D16 Phocyon, some sounds from the Mellotron M400 tape banks, Klanglabs Stompbud collection and Mixed in Key (as well as some keen direction from master and chief, Jimpster). Feel free to let loose and let your inner artist speak loudly. We’re excited to hear what you do!

Pezzner

Valldemossa

Freerange Records

Download M3U »

Dancetracks Pezzner Valldemossa Remix Contest

Many contests claim they get you exposure, of course; it’s another thing to deliver. The winner of the Dirtybird Records Dancetracks contest last year, as covered on CDM, managed to net a deal for an EP with that Claude VonStroke-run label.

Of course, dangling promises of exposure and record deals is one thing – let’s talk loot. In this contest, the winning release (ultimately determined by the label) is a sure thing, along with other goodies:

Winning remix released digitally on Freerange, featured on Dancetracks
Dubspot NYC Professional Mixing & Mastering session ($1095) with private mixdown session*
Ableton Live 8
M-Audio CX5 Studiophile monitors
M-Audio Pro Tools M-Powerd 8
M-Audio Torque Conectiv
Glyph Technologies PortaGig 800 professional harddrive
Cluster Sound 20 Gigabytes of sounds
MONO Producer bag
$100 download credit on Dancetracks
Freerange t-shirt
Dancetracks t-shirt

Nor is Dancetracks just using this as an easy way to cash in — pre-warped stems for Ableton Live (or plain audio for everything else) are a free download.

The contest ends August 31.

Pezzner Valldemossa Remix

Help Us Choose CDM’s Pick

If you do happen to enter, let us know here on CDM, as I’ll also offer a CDM Editor’s Choice Award to my favorite track. I know this musical genre is not everyone’s cup of tea, so I’ll be listening for something really unique and further out, and will make sure your work gets properly exposed. I sadly can’t offer lavish prizes, but I will have a dancetracks shirt and $50 certificate for you – plus coverage we like to think is priceless.

If you’ve entered something already, just send us a link. If not, let us know when you have.

When Remix Contests Go Bad

So, I’m just here pimping dancetracks, right? No, I went through those points carefully only to emphasize that most remix contests get this formula horribly, horribly wrong. And that’s a shame – this shouldn’t be rocket science. Cool track and artist + free download of stems + rich prize package + actual exposure = working remix contest. This should be a doable thing.

So, how is it that the formula often becomes variations of random track you want to shill + paid stem download as a quick cash earner + cheap prizes + exposure that’s anyone’s guess? As our friend Dave Dri – himself both a successful recorded (and performing) artist and musical journalist — puts it:

What is disappointing is the increasing frequency of major labels and their “independent” imprints in creating prize-less or obscene remix competitions, under the premise of “helping up-and-comers”. The fact is that a remixer can simply message or email another producer or label and offer their services with a great deal of success.

So where is the appeal of remix competitions that offer little in the way of an actual prize? Or having to purchase the remix parts from Beatport? Just where does “up-and-coming” translate to “exploitable”?

Check out the whole article for a no-BS take on remixing in general – remixing as business, and not just supposed remix culture.

Life at The Terminal with Dave Dri [Time Off, Australia]

I’m sure some will disagree with his take, so feel free to debate the merits of the argument in comments. But it is worth asking – maybe even about dancetracks’ contest, too; I’m happy to hear constructive criticism.

A thing for the sake of the thing tends to be useless. Remix contests can be a total waste of time – or they can be a powerful tool. But then, you can’t blame labels alone. It’s up to artists, too, to make the right call.

True, it’s the 40th Anniversary of the moon landing. But it’s also the 40th Anniversary of David Bowie’s space trip Space Oddity. What better way to celebrate than with access to stems like the “little mouse fart” sound effect? (Seriously. Maybe it was a space mouse?)

EMI is re-releasing Space Oddity on a special EP with all the versions — mono and stereo, US and original, and the 1979 re-record. Buy that for US$5.99 on iTunes, and you get the stems, too, including the lovely Mellotron line, the vocals, guitar, instrumentals — heck, there’s even a nice Stylophone stem. For people who don’t have their own remix software, EMI is offering the free PC/Mac iKlax Creator Standard, though I expect you’ll be happier with your tool of choice.

For an additional US$1.99, though, you can get an interactive remix app for the iPhone with still more stems. Interestingly, you can also use this as an on-the-go interactive player for Space Oddity, so you can trip out and get stoned with your iPhon um, yes, erm, relax on your sofa with a special mix of Space Oddity. Shake it, and the accelerometer sensor tells the app to make a random mix for you.

News on the Bowie Website
David Bowie Remix Page

iPhone apps are groovy, but — sorry to say it, folks, the 1969 video is way, way, way groovier. Huge missed opportunity, EMI: you could have created an iPhone camera app that would have simulated the reflective tube effect in the classic Bowie video. Any takers?

The EP itself, though, is better news. There was a 1999 “digital remaster,” but this release comes closer to the original goodness.

Space Oddity has a special place in the hearts of CDM since “oddities” is the catch-all category for everything out of the ordinary in a special way.

So, yes, it’s yet another remix-iPhone app-record promotion, but, come on … it’s Bowie. It’s Space Oddity. It’s the 40th Anniversary of the Moon Landing. (You want trippy? Humans walking on the moon can blow even a 2009 mind.) And it’s also an excuse to embed this video:

Live-triggered video inside your music host is about to get a lot more popular. Daniel “Herb” Herbert writes to let us know that his Mabuse Software, an “experimental audiovisual software company,” has developed a new AV plug-in for mashing up video. It’s a VST plug-in based on the now-defunct Pluggo, with a Max for Live port coming later this year as that is released. Of course, that does reveal some of the trouble with Cycling ’74’s decision to dump Pluggo. You’ll be limited to running this kind of cool software in Live, and from what they’ve said so far, you’ll also have to pay for Max for Live to do it – no free run-time is planned. But I can tell you that all of Jitter’s video and 3D output capabilities work from inside Max, including in full-screen mode, so there’s no question you’ll get some power out of the combination. I just hope people find some creative stuff to do and not just more of the same YouTube mash-ups.

Herb describes the software and promises more AV tools to come:

The beta version won’t save, but is otherwise fully functional.
A full screen add-on will be available soon, as well as a number of other plugins to expand the Mabuse AV range.
Features include:
Run video within a VST plugin
Automatic Tempo matching
MIDI controllable video fx
Easy to use browser
Record to Quicktime Movie

A PC version will be available if there’s enough interest through the forum and you could be in with a chance of winning a copy by joining the mailing list before the full version is released.

Short 1 min demo video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9TGDrkJh6A

5 min tutorial video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ_xDptp-ws

That sounds like the usual collection of meaningless YouTube buzzwords, but yet again, in the spirit of the YouTube-fueled musical genius of Kutiman and, more recently, Tan Dun and Internet orchestras, the combination of user-contributed videos turns out to be magical. Perhaps “You” are a star, after all.

In Bb also gives You, the viewer, some powers over the remix. As the name implies, everything will blend, so you can start the videos as you wish, and control volume with the volume sliders. It’s part of the ongoing evidence that sometimes simple ideas can be deeply musical and effective.

Now, you weren’t expecting to get any more work done on this Friday afternoon / evening / Saturday morning (depending on where you live), were you?

Creator and producer Darren Solomon (Science for Girls) – like Kutiman before him – is someone with some real musical and producing chops, too, so well worth checking out his other project. (Electronic Musician recently did a write-up). Here’s what he has to say:

In Bb 2.0 is a collaborative music and spoken word project conceived by Darren Solomon from Science for Girls.

The videos can be played simultaneously — the soundtracks will work together, and the mix can be adjusted with the individual volume sliders.

Participate! Create a video and send me the link! Here are some guidelines:

• -Sing or play an instrument, in Bb major. Simple, floating textures work best, with no tempo or groove. Leave lots of silence between phrases.
• -Record in a quiet environment, with as little background noise as possible.
• -Wait about 5-10 seconds to start playing.
• -Total length should be between 1-2 minutes.
• -Thick chords or low instruments don’t work very well.
• -Record at a low volume to match the other videos.
• -You can listen to this mix on headphones while you record.
• -After you upload to YouTube, play your video along with the other videos on this page to make sure the volume matches.

Update: Wow! This got bigger than I imagined! I greatly appreciate every submission, and I will watch everything, though I may not be able to reply to each. Also, I am being selective, in order to maintain the feel of the project. Many, many thanks to all who have submitted!

Thanks to for the tip, Mike Cohen!

http://www.inbflat.net/

Well, fine, Jamie Lidell. Now you go and ruin it for the rest of us. See, none of us playing with a Nintendo DSi will possibly look as good as you do.

I jest, of course. Jamie Lidell, the wildly-talented vocalist, picks up the new, online-savvy take of the Nintendo DS and breathes cool into it. This is what Sony ads tried to do, but Jamie does masterfully. And, okay, don’t expect the built-in sound app on the DSi to do as much as it appears to be doing here – there’s quite a lot of non-real-time, non-DSi remixing going on, even though what he does do with the simple app is genius.

Thanks to Liz Revision for finding this one.

This does bring us to a burning question: Nintendo and Sony, I’m looking at you. When will we be able to run eccentric and niche music creation apps as official software on your machine? Imagine NitroTracker on the DSi download store or PSPSEQ and PSPRhythm on the Sony Store.

It’s not lost on me, either, that I’ve complained about Apple’s App Store approval for iPhone and iPod touch as being vague and inconsistent with a few apps, while Nintendo and Sony and Microsoft’s Xbox only allow a few apps to ever see distribution. But now that the game makers have online distribution, I wonder if that could change. Movie multiplexes once promised that, amidst a few dozen screens, one would show Bollywood and experimental film. Perhaps these stores could have an “enter at your own risk” category for homebrew. Sony, after all, is desperate to recover sales lost on its PSP. And I have to admit, I think homebrew is, sadly, partly at fault. Homebrew developers and users painstakingly document hacking steps because it’s the only way to get their software on the device – only to have the same system abused by people who don’t want to pay for games.

Korg came out with its DS-10 app for the Nintendo handheld officially, and it was an enormous, runaway success, spawning YouTube virals and entire bands. Now, granted, the app had a major commercial publisher behind it (AQ Interactive), adding credibility – but distribution was limited by the physical cartridge, and the app itself didn’t shy away from Big Boy, niche soft synth controls.

8-bit musicians will likely never touch the DSi, preferring the vintage Game Boy. But a few hard-core gamers are also hard-core handheld musicians. Underground is great, and there’s a certain ethos around hacking. But access isn’t such a bad thing. If just one advocate at Sony or Nintendo would consider it, I think wonderful things could happen.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to see if it’s possible to get a DS homebrew music app running in an emulator on my Android.

Via YouTube Doubler, a twisted online YouTube mash-up tool created by digital artist and Emergency Broadcast Network veteran Brian Kane, comes a strange new … orchestral composition. (EBN, for those not in the know, should translate as "video mash-ups before you knew what video mash-ups were.") Charlie Rose interviews Charlie Rose. "Google…" Just watch. (The video is embedded after the break, as it’s essential that both clips start up at the same time. Video will therefore naturally autoplay.)

We’ve got two layers of mashing-up going on: the first layer of this mashed … cake is a new composition by Tan Dun.

ThruYou / Kutiman already showed us what happens when an elaborate video mix pieces together imaginative songs from tiny clips of YouTube uploads – a potentially gimmicky concept, but brilliant when done right. Noted composer Tan Dun has gone that route, as well, with his Internet Symphony.

Using thousands of submissions to http://youtube.com/symphony, the resulting composition is entitled “Internet Symphony, Eroica.” See top.

But all this gets much better when the mash-up is squared in YouTube Doubler. In addition to the Tan Dun composition, a short film has Charlie Rose interviewing Charlie Rose about the Internet. Rose appears as the spoken word narrator on top of Tan Dun’s score, and what results is an odd, reflective commentary on our times, adding a certain nervous uncertainty to Tan Dun’s Internet optimism.

Enjoy.

YouTube Doubler

If you don’t like Charlie Rose, well, there’s always John Cage. [YouTube Doubler autoplay]

Sure, Wacom may be trying to get into the DJ market, but watch out for Hamilton Beach. This is a real flea market blender controlling Ableton Live beats with the aid of an Arduino and RFID-tagged fruits. Sadly, you can’t actually blend things (that might do nasty things to the RFID tags, and the blender would have to work), but it’s beautiful nonetheless.

“One-man collective” Matti Niinimäki has been giving us all kinds of goodness from his secret Finnish “ninja hideout,” working on projects like controlling real-time animation with Mickey Mouse’s head with the aid of Max/MSP.

This is only the first draft, so I hope to tune in again as the project progresses.

Ah, Fruity Loops:

The audio tracks are triggered by inserting different fruits into the blender. The buttons on the front panel control the mixing modes and you also have two different types of transformer switches for cutting the sound in and out.

The options are:

* Stir
* Puree
* Whip
* Grate
* Mix
* Chop
* Grind
* Blend
* Liquefy
* Frappé

How does it work?

* Arduino for brains
* RFID reader
* RFID tags inside the fruits
* Max/MSP for converting the serial data to MIDI
* Ableton Live for playback
* Mad skills to pay the bills

Side note: this also demonstrates why Max for Live should be nice for Live users; as I understand it, you could theoretically just drop in a plug-in style Device for inputting serial data, as easily as you can add Beat Repeat. (Speaking of which, maybe Beat Repeat needs an Osterizer Live Pack, complete with a Frappé preset. I get a cut of sales if you use that.)

Now, if I can just figure out a way to make my Breville an ambient music generator so I can make sandwiches while performing and producing. Mmmm… baked beans.