Updated: Let me sum this up. Ableton may or may not have a vocoder in the works (signs actually do point to yes on that). The best part of this story is the remixed “no one needs a vocoder” video, which encapsulates electronic music’s current love/hate/cliche relationship with the thing. And other than that, there’s a lot of me talking without really have any idea what I’m talking about — which is why I usually don’t post on Sundays. Doh. Just watch the video / sample it in your next Live set.

I haven’t necessarily been following Live’s forums lately, but apparently one of the hot-button issues lately was a rumored "secret" vocoder in a future build of Ableton Live. The myth goes something like this: a camera crew doing a behind-the-scenes look at Ableton’s Berlin office accidentally captures a brief moment in which an unreleased vocoder appears in the bottom part of the screen. I’ve been hearing buzz about this for weeks, but Garret Collins is the latest.

I actually really recommend the Inside Ableton MusoTalk video (German); it’s a great little feature. But, of course, the hint of something new in Live has now upstaged that original video.

Live fans go even further, so that the Vocoder — hang on, it’d need a simpler Ableton-y name, like … uh … Carrier or Encoder — is part of a massive conspiracy by which Ableton keeps you from getting the bezier-curve envelopes you really want. (Side note: I prefer Catmull splines, myself.) And it turns out David Zicarelli was on the grassy knoll working for the CIA, or something. (Another side note: I just got to link to Geocities! And it’s still running!)

It seems zany, but then this is the week when the mainstream computer tech blogosphere is speculating about the likelihood of Microsoft switching to spherical interfaces. (Look out, Apple "i"! And will that get people high, like the sphere in Woody Allen’s Sleeper?)

No One Needs a Vocoder - Henke

Okay, I digress. The really amazing thing is this comes up today, again, when shortly after the original video was widely debunked earlier this year. Here’s the problem: just a few days after the video, Ableton co-founder Robert Henke had this to say about vocoders — hilariously:

An anonymous readers tips us off on new control surfaces from Euphonix, a maker usually known for products at the higher end of the market. Whether this was an intentional post or not (it looks like you can pre-order the product), it’s definitely something new, and could mean you get a little Euphonix love in your home studio in the "affordable by mortals" territory.

We’ll be reporting from NAMM, so I’ll be sure to drop by Euphonix and see if we can see these up close and personal.

Reader X writes:

Doing some searching for studio control surfaces at Sweetwater.com turned up the following two product listings — which oddly enough aren’t anywhere on Euphonix’s web site, nor have they even been announced yet, to my knowledge - there’s been no news or blogging about them whatsoever. Could this be an accidental leak? If anything, they seem to represent a real breakthrough in price-performance and they look pretty slick…

Euphonix MC Control — a slim-profile control surface with 4 moving faders and a dynamic touchscreen display, plus hardware jog/shuttle wheel, list $1999, retailing for $1499, or roughly 1/10th of their flagship MC Pro DAW controller. (!)

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MCcontrol/

Euphonix MC Mix — a $999 surface with 8 moving faders and parameter-editing displays; I presume this could be used in conjunction with the MC Control much like a Mackie Expander, etc.

http://www.sweetwater.com/store/detail/MCmix/

Both of them use the EuCon protocol so I guess you’d need compatible software (logic pro over logic express, for instance).

Those links are live as I write this. Looks like potentially good stuff, and at a price that starts to be competitive with products like Mackie Control.

Java may not be on the radar of the average Mac user, but to the Java development community, Leopard has been a bombshell. Apple’s been slow with Java releases before, but something’s different this time: there’s been almost no information on the topic, and Apple has even pulled an existing Java 6 development build (released for Linux, Windows, Solaris, and every OS on Earth late last year). While Java and Apple apologists alike bend over to explain why this doesn’t matter / isn’t really an issue, we received an interesting comment here on CDMusic that suggests something big has happened they’ve all missed. This tipster argues Apple has all but eliminated its Java development team, and future development may (finally) fall to Sun. From our comments:

i had a long chat with a sun engineer over tea today where this issue came up as well. he was basically saying:

• apple has moved all developers from the java team to the ical team except for one poor bloke who is mainly working on a stable java 1.5 version
• the guy doing the actual 1.6 port left apple, apparently finishing the port is just a piece of cake, could be done in a few days but for legal reasons he cant do it anymore.
• apple will most likely never release an opensource version of their vm because it is a big dirty mess using various old frameworks all tied together in spaghetti code/ secondly it seems to require sourcecode access to the mac os x standard frameworks sources e.g. coreservices etc.
• some people at the java fx team at sun have started making their own java 1.7 runtime for os x which hints that eventually sun might take java for mac back under its control
• speaking of sound and other java things missing in osx - the answer is: wait for java fx! its very promising, you’ll be surprised.

Why this sort of rumor may be wrong: Note that it’s not clear how much of this is an accurate picture. Java isn’t dead in Leopard — on the contrary, Java 5 has been updated for the new OS, even if Java 6 is missing. And there are still developers at Apple working on Java, as they regularly appear on the java-dev list — and there’s more than one person. Even among Java developers frustrated with Apple’s progress, it’s clear that those engineers do a terrific job — though they may need more resources, and it is unclear whether it’s still advantageous for Apple to be maintaining Java in place of Sun in the first place.

Java everywhere, media everywhere: Why bother putting this on a site called Create Digital Music, and not, you know, Create Digital Java Applications? Because Java is a key, cross-platform development platform for music and multimedia, in the form of tools like the open-source coding-for-artists platform Processing, and a significant amount of media research. The alternative is generally less-elegant, more time-intensive C and C++ code; Ruby, C#, Python, and others haven’t really proven themselves for multimedia applications.

Musicians, behind the technological curve? Not when it comes to interface design: we’ve been consistently ahead. Little wonder, as digital musicians look for ways of making digital media more expressive, with centuries of physical interface design in musical instruments to push those demands further.

In other words, Microsoft is up to something, and I look forward to whatever it is, but it’s the long view that will ultimately matter more.

Numerous outlets are reporting that Microsoft is expected to introduce its gestural, multi-touch technology, called PlayTable. I’m not quite sure why the product name sounds ripped off from the ReacTable. But, while I’m interested to see what Microsoft is doing, I’ll give the ReacTable the edge, unless Microsoft open-sources its software, builds a library for Processing, and starts touring with Bjork. (I’ll take Radiohead + PlayTable. No? Not happening?)

I do think, though, that after over two decades of mainstream computer software interfaces using basic pointing devices not far removed from joysticks, multi-touch is pretty inevitable at this point. So the real question here is, can Microsoft deploy the technology, or is this just another prototype?

The Week of Deep Apple Electronic Music Patent Mysteries continues! Behold as Apple submits a patent for — as near as observers can tell — detuning oscillators with common beats. Let’s switch to synthesis 101 for a second. Detune two oscillators, and destructive interference between them will create beats. Apple’s patent claim: “The present invention relates to a music synthesizer and a method of generating a synthesizer output with a constant beat.”

1. A method comprising: generating a constant beat parameter; adding the constant beat parameter to a pitch signal to derive an input for a first oscillator; and combining an output of the first oscillator and an output of a second oscillator to generate a music synthesizer output with a substantially constant beat.

2. A method as in claim 1, further comprising: deriving an input for the first oscillator from a linear pitch control signal.

3. A method as in claim 2, further comprising: combining a detune parameter with the linear pitch control signal.

Patent: Music synthesizer and a method of generating a synthesizer output with a constant beat

The patent, in other words, covers a basic synthesis technique, and that’s raised some controversy as this patent has spread online among synth geeks: why would anyone want to patent something so basic?

At the very least, it looks like Apple is working on significant new music software features, as you might expect. But depending on how you read their patents, new music hardware — even touchscreen hardware — could be in store.

Apple is a big company with a lot of intellectual property, so teasing out patents can be difficult. But, as others have observed before, looking for Dr. Gerhard Lengeling, the Emagic founder who came to Apple along with his company, reveals interesting results:

20060278058: Frameless musical keyboard
20060272485: Evaluating and correcting rhythm in audio data
20060022956: Touch-sensitive electronic apparatus for media applications, and methods therefor
20050288805: Providing synchronized audio to multiple devices
20050204906: Method and apparatus for simulating a mechanical keyboard action in an electronic keyboard
20050204904: Method and apparatus for evaluating and correcting rhythm in audio data
20050145099: Method and apparatus for enabling advanced manipulation of audio
20040125122: Method of manipulating an audio and/or video signal in a graphical user interface (GUI) and a computer readable medium containing a program code for said manipulation
20040125083: Method of controlling movement of a cursor on a screen and a computer readable medium containing such a method as a program code

Lengeling Query on the US Patent and Trademark Office

Reader Doug Joyce, who sent in the link, observes:

There seems to be ample evidence of a touch screen interface for the next Apple offering. There are a few other interesting tidbits in the patent applications as well if you’re into to reading this stuff.

Some of this is old news: synchronized audio to multiple devices was rolled right into the operating system in the form of network communication and device aggregation features.

But what’s that about a “frameless music keyboard”? Or a “touch-sensitive media device”?

Let’s talk about the touch-sensitive media device first.

Rumors have swirled around Apple’s flagship music and audio software since the company first absorbed Emagic. In the absence of a Logic update, the rumors are back. This time, they come from an unusual source: former Emagic employee Philippe Brodu, in his blog “Le Sith de Feeleebee.”

Des collectors Emagic : ça vous intéresse ?
Logic 8 : Une nouvelle pièce au puzzle !

An excited French reader on Gearslutz.com’s message forum sums it up this way:

There will be no Logic 8!!!!!

The new app will have a new name.
They are working on it for 5 years and it will be out this year.
It will be a “Pro Tools Killer” with a Logic feel but in a new user interface and take advantage of OSX.5 (it will need it and don’t work on X.4 or prior) and new Apple hardware (touch screen display!).

More info: no more xskey and no more envirronement [sic]

Whoo, and it’ll make cappuccino! And it’ll have support for a new, high-definition replacement for MIDI that Apple will push to become an industry standard! (Not sure which of those is less likely, actually.)

Before you rule this out, though, there’s a well-reasoned argument for it at Barbarism Begins at Home:

Will There Be No Logic 8?

Fortunately, I happen to know absolutely nothing about future versions of Logic, so I think I can safely speculate, secure in the knowledge that anything I say that does happen to be true is entirely coincidental. A “Pro Tools killer” says more about the sales of the resulting product than the product itself, though I’m sure Apple would like to make some bigger inroads in Digidesign’s market the way Final Cut did with Avid. (Though there are plenty of Avid editors out there, still.)

I know enough to say this: the successor to Logic may be a huge upgrade, and may even have a new name, but it’ll still be aimed at musicians and will likely remain connected to the core of Logic and GarageBand. Beyond that, we can say anything we like and amuse the people at Apple (a number of whom read this site); they know more than we do.

Remember patent 0060026536? It’s the multi-touch, gestural patent Apple filed that was clearly the precursor of the Apple iPhone. Here’s the curious thing: the iPhone, as demonstrated at the Macworld keynote, isn’t all that focused on multi-touch. With the exception of Apple’s clever zooming gesture, most gestures are single-touch. Most are horizontal and vertical strokes similar to what you can already do on laptop touchpads.

A lot of what gets put into patents never shows up in shipping products, but I would be very surprised if Apple’s multi-touch abilities didn’t start to spread to new stuff. Touchscreens and eventually multi-touchscreens are likely to appear on more computers, PC and Mac alike. And other devices have likely lacked touchscreens only because the digitizer hardware — and the processors to deal with tracking multiple touches — hadn’t yet reached the right economy of scale, something that’s likely to happen soon (the iPhone in June being a good indicator). Phones have the advantage of subsidies from the phone carriers — the iPhone would presumably cost hundreds more if it didn’t have Cingular reducing the cost to get you on a 2-year plan. But the touch trend is likely to continue.

And that brings us back to the original patent. Could Apple in fact be working on a music mixer or other touch-enabled music interface? Or was this just a demonstration of an idea they had, and not a working product? Time will tell. I’ll repeat my concerns: touch is great in its flexibility, but losing tactile feedback is not — maybe something Apple themselves have discovered. But that’s unlikely to stop manufacturers from integrating touch into products for musicians in the near future, whether it’s Apple or someone else. And it won’t just be the Lemur.

Okay, no remaining stories this week will have headlines in the form of a question; I promise. “NAMM: New DJ Hardware????”

Yamaha has revealed its upcoming products to be shown at the NAMM show later this month:

1. New keyboard integration with Steinberg and Arturia software
2. Motif XS and MM6 synths, based on the MO series
3. New MIDI/USB controllers and USB MIDI adapters from CME, plus an expanded wireless line (though we’re still waiting on the existing wireless hardware to ship from CME)


4. New PSR and EZ series portable keyboards and DD drum kits
5. A new music lab for schools
6. 500-watt compact PA

A couple of interesting items here. CME has had plenty of surprises when it comes to MIDI hardware, some hits and some not. New synths are nice, as well.

Also on the NAMM radar, M-Audio are promising new stuff, including their Torq DJ line, and if Apple announces an update to Logic or anything else music-related, I’d expect they’ll do it at NAMM rather than at Macworld following past tradition.

I know some of you have made New Years Resolutions not to be distracted by new gear, so I’ll trust you to ignore those stories. Those of you who are researching purchases, though, or are just curious know you can rely on CDM.