For all the wonderful tools and toys for sound out there, sometimes you want to find the couple of tools that, like a great kitchen knife, can accomplish the majority of what you actually need. (And as with the kitchen knife, while it may not eliminate your desire for all those other gadgets, it’s worth some sharpening.) So it is with something like Csound, the tested-and-tried, free synthesis tool. Jim Aikin looked at the QuteCsound front end recently, which puts the power of Csound in a more friendly work environment.

Via Synthtopia, there’s also now a screencast series that covers using QuteCsound, starting with digging into presets. (Yes, that’s right – presets. And here you thought you were going to have to do a lot of coding to have any fun.)

I find two YouTube users uploading how-to screencasts:
http://www.youtube.com/user/mantaraya36 (author of the series starting at top)
http://www.youtube.com/user/ketchupok (start with “Where to start?”

Also worth following is Jacob Joaquin’s excellent Csound Blog, hosted on Noisepages:
http://csoundblog.com/
and on Twitter, follow @TheCsoundBlog

It’s very early in development (“alpha”), but Jacob is already doing amazing things integrating Processing, the non-coder-friendly, artist sketchbook-style coding language, with Csound, in a new library called Csoundo. That’s an ideal combination, because you can do logic and visuals quickly in Processing, then turn to Csound for audio. This is where I imagine work in two of Csound’s most popular rivals – the object-oriented, OSC-savvy SuperCollider and visual patching, Max-descendent Pure Data – may lead, as well. Check out Jacob’s roadmap for more.

By the way, I hear some folks are having some trouble building QuteCsound on Ubuntu, so I’ll see what the issue is, and write up some instructions and send them over to Jacob for his blog.

It’s a good time for Csound and free synthesis in general. With this work accelerating, I think doing a series of absolute-beginner tutorials will be very doable soon. And there’s no reason you can’t integrate a tool like this with your favorite host of choice, from Ableton to Cubase.

AudioMulch 2.1: Time signature support from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Does music production need more software with more features? Probably not. Could it use a little spice in its rhythms and time signatures? Absolutely! So, while I already have great respect for the idiosyncratic, underground-favorite AudioMulch, the addition of custom time signatures in the video above is especially good news.

And that brings us to the latest updates in AudioMulch, the cult-hit Windows-only app that’s grown up and now runs on both Mac and Windows. 2.1 adds dynamics processing devices, support for Mac Audio Unit plug-ins, an optional light grey color scheme (for those who missed the earlier skin), and updated help. Why use AudioMulch? This modular patching environment is packed with a carefully-selected array of useful objects, called “contraptions,” which make it relatively easy to patch together custom performance and production creations without the usual mucking around with low-level objects.

What’s New In AudioMulch 2.1?
Release Notes

Whether you’re likely to be sold on trying AudioMulch or not, interviews with users make for great reads:

Shadow My Dovetail – excerpt by erdemh
Turkish electroacoustic musician and composer Erdem Helvacioglu talks bout combining the software with his acoustic guitar live, complete with sound snippets on SoundCloud.

Octo Test (excerpt) by Jet Jaguar by AudioMulch
Jet Jaguar, aka Michael Upton, is behind some of AudioMulch’s example patches, and jams with loop players in the tool live and on the radio. (Part of what I like about this is that it’s sometimes the simple approaches that make people most satisfied.)

When you are ready to get started, or hone your chops in AudioMulch, there’s an excellent set of tutorials. I’ve chosen the introduction to AudioMulch’s MetaSurface below, because I think it best represents what’s unique about the tool, but you’ll also find other sound basics, MIDI control, plug-in use, in-depth details on a filter and waveshaping “contraptions,” and even tutorials and lesson plans.

http://www.audiomulch.com/content/tutorials

AudioMulch introductory tutorial 4: Using the Metasurface from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Download a trial version (or update) of AudioMulch for Windows (XP/Vista/7) or Mac (10.4, 10.5, 10.6):
AudioMulch Downloads

And if you’re using the tool, we’d love to hear from you.

The Covert Seq – Creating patterns and Presets from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

The Covert Operators and Bjorn Vayner have become my favorite go-to source for wild Ableton Live hacks. And even before the release of Max for Live, Bjorn has built some terrific, simple step-sequencers using Live’s Racks feature. That’s just the Racks feature – no Max patches or hidden features anywhere to be found. Sure, I suppose the clip view itself can be seen as a kind of step sequencer, but this gives you a unique way of generating sequences.

If you just want to begin playing with step sequencing in Live, Bjorn has a new download, aptly called The Covert Sequencer, as seen in the video at top. It’s free, it’s fun, it celebrates the 5th Anniversary of Covert Ops and the 10th of Ableton Live (good grief!), and it’s all voodoo built with dummy clips and MIDI effects.

Full post, downloads, and video tutorials:
The Covert Seq [The Covert Operators]

If you want to try your hand at the ninja skills behind all of this, Bjorn posted a screencast back in August revealing his secrets:

Making a Step Sequencer in Ableton Live. from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

And if you like this sort of thing, definitely don’t miss The Covert Operators’ exclusive creation for CDM, making elaborate use of the racks and slicing features of Live 7 and later:

Exclusive: Free Ableton Live Slicing Pack by Covert Operators

Slice of Winter from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

Want to make a splash among the aficionados of digital sound? Releasing a software instrument emulating a broad collection of vintage digital synthesis chips from game and computer systems seems to do the trick. See my look at that software, and just as importantly, the chips that inspired it.

Within days of the release of Plogue’s Chipsounds, we have a couple of fair reviews of the new tool. Already got Chipsounds? Plogue’s David Viens has released screencasts showing you how to use it. Curious about other ways to explore vintage 8-bit sound? We’ve got that, too, in samples, hardware, and even SuperCollider code.

Reviews are in

Torley has an extensive video review – amazing stuff for something just days old – shown above. Gisle Martens Meyers has a review, too, on the blog Ugress. One complaint is that the plug-in is multi-timbral, rather than requiring different instances. In turn, automation is in the form of MIDI Control Changes, not parameters, since parameter automation really doesn’t deal with multi-timbral plug-ins. But all in all, you can get a lot from both reviews, plus a look at how the software works. There’s also a sense of where the software could go in future updates.

Plogue Chipsounds makes chiptune & video game sounds easy [Torley Lives]
Chipsounds Plugin Chip Sounds [Ugress]

The discussion of Chipsounds has also brought other efforts to resurrect vintage, 8-bit sounds.

Get Your Chip Fix

This is by no means comprehensive, but here are a few of the best goodies readers have pointed out in the last few days:

Free Samples: Little Scale, aka Sebastian Tomczak, has been busy. He’s added sample packs of his own, including a Friday release of the Commodore 64 SID. Add that to Sega Master System, Mega Drive, speech chip, and Atari POKEY and TIA. These are just samples, so rather than being a turn-key solution as Chipsounds is, they’re more of a construction set – though that could make them useful in other scenarios.

C64 SID Sample Pack [little-scale]

Go Hardware! And, in turn, if hardware fires you up more than software or samples, Sebastian has done some lovely work connecting the actual chips to MIDI interfaces.

And here’s the documentation on how to do it with the free and open hardware Arduino platform

Other hardware solutions:
A DIY TI SN76477N-based Voice Module, comprehensively documented (a heck of a lot fancier than the Arduino stuff I wanted to play around with)

SuperCollider Code: For SuperCollider fans, Fredrik Olofsson (aka RedFrik) has built emulations of vintage chips in the object-oriented sound coding language. That’s a doubly delicious thing: aside from allowing you to make 8-bit sounds in the free tool, looking at his emulations is a great way to discover more of what you can do with SuperCollider. You can continue in code the kind of elegant, minimal synthesis design work the early creators of the original chips did in hardware. (Thanks, Howard S and Morgan Packard for the tip!)

SC Code [and a lot of other great SC code there, too... bookmarked, downloaded.]

Video walkthroughs

I know quite a few readers did pick up Chipsounds, so you’ll be pleased to know – in case you missed this – that there are some video demos that walk you through how the tool works. This also gives a better idea of how the software itself functions, since I got distracted waxing rhapsodic about the chips!

As my piano teacher used to say to me, “that should keep you off the streets.”

Enjoy.

AudioMulch 2.0 live patching screencast from AudioMulch on Vimeo.

Wonderful things come from Australia. Developer Ross Bencina has released AudioMulch 2.0, the audio patching environment, now on both Mac and Windows.

Audiomulch is all pretty in black now with a new UI. But why is it special? AudioMulch has always been distinguished in its quick workflow, its ready-to-use objects that allow sophisticated patches with relatively simple structures, and its idiosyncratic soundmakers. The Metasurface multi-parameter controller is also a favorite.

The price is higher, which may scare away some – US$189, or $89 upgrade. There’s a 60-day trial that you can try out.

But the best part of this launch is that, instead of releasing a flashy demo with pans over girls in bikinis or booming drum beats and type flying through that says something like “THE FUTURE OF MUSIC IS NOW … HOLD THE SOUND IN YOUR FIST … BE THE MUSIC … WHERE IS YOUR GOD NOW?”, they just released a video showing someone making a piece of music. (What a concept!)

The video at top is a live-patching video, and it really reveals how, powerful as many interactive music environments may be, having some objects that get straight to what you want musically makes a real difference. (That’s something to keep in mind even as you create macros or code in other environments, too, I think.)

I like the idea of other people doing live-patching videos that work as music and not just tech demos, not only in AudioMulch but whatever your tool of choice may be.

If you give AudioMulch 2 a try, let us know what you think.

http://www.audiomulch.com

The DJ Booth at Bily Kun where Bidule was first conceived.

Ed.: Music creation is all about the special relationship we have with certain, powerful tools. And one app that gets very little attention is unquestionably the deep but elegant modular patching environment Plogue Bidule. CDM turns to power user Primus Luta to kick off a series on learning this tool, starting with an exclusive interview with Bidule’s creators. And if the interview sounds, at times, more than a little pro-Plogue in bias, make no mistake: this is love. Primus Luta takes it away, as we look forward to his upcoming how-to series. -PK

In the modular future, the Bily Kun will be a leading tourist attraction for Montreal. Patrons will come with laptops tucked under their arms sporting fork bomb t-shirts. The bartenders by then will be used to answering the question only tourists ask with a slight wave of the hand toward seats on the other side of the bar. The tourists will follow that wave to the ultimate destination of their pilgrimage, open their laptop, and broadcast their location to bidulers everywhere, before reenacting some sort of virtual cabling ritual to mark their presence at the conception place of Plogue.

“It all started what seems a long time ago,” Sebastien Beaulieu, Plogue co-founder tells me. “David (Viens of Plogue) was coding a few VST plugins to add new toys to Ross Bencina’s AudioMulch. We would meet up one evening a week to code a few cool bits then head up for beer afterwards at the minimal techno pub in Montreal called Bily Kun, where most of the ideas for the future came into place.”

It was the late 1990′s. Modular audio was just coming out of a clumsy adolescence. Miller Puckette rewrote his then decade old MAX software in a new open source format to create Pd. David Zicarelli founded Cycling ’74 to continue development of the original MAX codebase beginning with a new audio processing engine – MSP. Ross Bencina released the first of thirty six public beta versions of AudioMulch. It was a developing frontier, still early enough that the horizon couldn’t completely be made out. And while working on what would be the first Plogue product, the VST plugin ReBuilder, what would become the Plogue team started envisioning a horizon they could paint themselves.

“Once we had one completed VST,” Sebastien continues, “we decided we needed some kind of entity to release them. We ditched our temporary name while(1)fork();, used to provide a ‘label’ name for our various IDM/Minimal DJ sets. Found a Quebec anglicism/slang word for ‘plug’, some nice chaps to design our logo, and so Plogue was born.

Plogue Bidule

We did another VST plugin (MixedGrains) and then started on Bidule, which, at the start, was to be an app that would improve on both AudioMulch and MAX/MSP, in terms of providing the user with a smaller learning curve to do more. An application that could both be used as an easy modular application, because of high-level objects, and a more advanced one with low-level objects that, depending on your usage, interest or knowledge, you might never need to even look at to get you going making sounds.”

An ambitious endeavor to say the least, starting from scratch in an attempt to improve on a technology while decreasing the learning curve. All of this with a core team that in the decade since founding would only grow to four members, only three of whom are coders, and of those three only Sebastien spends 100% of his time on Bidule.

“Bidule was coded from the start with portability in mind,” he explains, “so the code is mostly C++ and STL. It uses OpenGL for the patchbay rendering. The ‘graph traversal code’ is optimized for various connection types and feedback paths. XML is used to ‘mirror’ the processing graph for serialization.”

Simple, but quite powerful. Powerful enough to attract the attention of some of the bigger names in audio software, such as Garritan and Sibelius, who came to Plogue looking for licensing opportunities. When asked if this was always a part of the Plogue business plan Sebastien firmly states, “Definitely not, but once the opportunity presented itself we thought of it has a good way to sustain and grow. The ARIA Project is a different case because we are developing that in collaboration, which means it’s something we can also use for our own products. This explains why it was developed as a sample playback/synth hybrid engine rather than a straight sample playback one.”

With a reliable buisiness to business revenue stream one can’t help but wonder what influence that has in the development of Bidule. “Our licensing work does not have much influence on what is Bidule,” Sebastien explains. “Licensing work is usually started from our base components/libraries, some Bidule-borrowed code and our knowledge from doing audio plugins and applications. There are way too many things in Bidule to use that as the basis of a licensable audio engine without ending up with either an awful amount of #ifdef or too much code separation in different files.”

On the business end of things he states, “While the added income enables us to pay ourselves and employees it also takes time to do and that time is taken away from our own projects. There’s no way to know what would have happened if we strictly worked on our stuff, would we be at the same point we are now with a physical office and employees? Would we still be working from home? Or would we have given up on doing much more interesting work for less money and gone back to your typical programmer job full time and code the fun stuff evenings and weekends?”

There’s a constantly growing community of bidulers who are thankful not to have to worry about those possibilities. Congregating in the forums, the community in many ways acts as the additional staff for Plogue. It’s an interesting model, because while bidule is proprietary the communal nature of development is reminiscent of open source. One only need look at the Feature Request section of the forums to realize the high percentage of requests that end up in future releases of the software.

“There are several possible way to use Bidule,” Sebastien explains, “and we obviously cannot think of all of them. That is where the community input is important. We can’t even count the number of times forum posts, discussions and emails have led to new features in Bidule or changed the way we were going to approach a specific feature.” As such, you can find Seb (as he’s known in the community) in the forums regularly logging bugs, discussing problems, and ensuring user needs are met. Three years ago those user needs resulted in an SDK. “The SDK came up as a quick way to add new modules. There are times when users need something totally specific to their use or setup and it doesn’t make sense to add it inside Bidule. With the SDK, anyone having some basic code skills can add their own module.”

The true testament to the power of Bidule are what the users are able to do with it. When asked for example use cases Sebastien replies, “Building a setup for an art gallery installation where control comes from external sources. DSP companies using Bidule for quick prototyping of larger algorithms and systems through building blocks and SDK-built modules. People playing live in all sorts of music styles from experimental to jazz and even faith gatherings!

“Some things have just surprised us to find out that they were even possible with Bidule,” he continues. “For example Bram de Jong made a basic time-stretching algorithm out of basic bidules. Someone else made some noise reduction algorithm out of side effects of Bidule’s FFT algorithms. There’s also what you’re doing, which we found interesting because you’re basically building a complete instrument within Bidule and documenting the process.”

All of this with a software still in beta. Easily surpassing the thirty six beta versions of Audio Mulch and going into its seventh year of public beta, perhaps the Guiness Book of Records should be contacted. When asked whether the 1.0 version of Bidule would see release this year, Sebastian navigates his web browser to a virtual Magic 8 Ball site and types the question. The answer is: Very Doubtful.

“Bidule 1.0,” he explains, “has been a long standing internal debate in here. If you made a list of programmers that can’t let go until it’s perfect, you would find us in the upper portion. Lets just say we especially dislike ‘version 6.x’ applications that crash when you just look at them and the endless cycle of pay the yearly (or so) update fee to get a few bugs fixed.” Strangely enough for active bidulers, 1.0 may not be that important. The communal style of development is perhaps the most valuable part of Bidule. Would that come to an end if it were to come out of beta?

“I don’t see why it would stop because we think it has served us very well so far. More importantly, everyone at Plogue uses Bidule as their main development/test tool for everything else they do (like ARIA and chipsounds for instance). It’s our pen, if you will. With that mindset, as long as Plogue is alive, so will Bidule.”

An Alpha Version of Bidule Running on Linux Circa 2001

If Bidule has any limitations, it is perhaps the lack of a Linux version. When asked what’s keeping the software from being ported to the open OS, Sebastien quickly responds, “A time machine might help!” As it would seem back in 2001 there was an alpha version of Bidule which did run on Linux, development on which has since ceased. “I think our main concern is that we are not yet totally convinced of the viability and welcomeness of closed-source applications to Linux. Pretty much every thing else would fall into the lack of time category (most of our other concerns would probably be answered by research and testing), chasing two major platforms is already a time-consuming task, we’re not yet ready to add a third major one.” That shouldn’t be read as the end of the conversation for Linux users. If there’s anything which cannot be overstated about the Plogue team it is that community demand moves them.

This week Plogue launches the latest public version of Bidule 0.9685. As with all public releases it comes with a three month trial period for users to demo the software. To coincide with this, I’ve been given a space over on CDM’s NoisePages where I will be providing a series of introductory and advanced tutorials in Bidule, using the instruments created for my Heads Project as examples. You can read all about the latest Bidule release and after you’ve downloaded you’re copy make your way through the first tutorial. If you’ve ever wanted to have a look at what Bidule is all about, now is the perfect time.

In the modular present, Plogue Bidule has achieved much of what it set out to do – smaller learning curve, doing more. The modular future is bright.

“Total freedom to experiment, and try ideas fast.”

New Year’s Resolution: do cool new stuff. In celebration of the coming of 2009, I’ve got a set of tutorials to post here on createdigitalmusic and createdigitalmotion, so you can get a jump start on the new year by learning some new skills and making new music and visuals. First up: our friend Bill Van Loo has a great video tutorial on working with touch control on an iPod touch or iPhone.

The ingredient list here:

• TouchOSC, one of a handful of superb new touch controllers on the iTunes app store that supports the flexible, forward-thinking OpenSoundControl protocol. TouchOSC’s edge? Ready-to-use, clever, music-oriented control layouts.
• Ableton Live, a good choice because of its live-playing emphasis and solid hosting features
• BigSeq, Audio Damage’s fantastic analog-style sequencer plug-in
• OSCulator, the glue that holds the rest together by intelligently

In fact, even if you don’t have an Apple mobile gadget, you may find this useful: the OSCulator software on the Mac used for control processing can work with a variety of controllers. If you don’t want to spend $200+ on an iSomething, you can spend a few bucks on a Wii controller and run with that, or grab a SpaceNavigator (also very affordable) or Wacom tablet. (OSCulator is Mac only; PC users may want to check out the likes of GlovePIE.)

chromedecay studio look: TouchOSC with Ableton Live and BigSeq

I love my job. I get to watch as Peter Dines, contributor on our Kore/Komplete site for NI, constantly cooks up brilliant ideas for sound design. His latest screencast plumbs the depths of Native Instruments’ Massive synth, which he uses in conjunction with Kore. We’ve already seen Peter make song arrangements out of morphing sequenced patches. Now, he focuses on preset design – and gives away some free presets for you to enjoy.

Feedback, Routing and Modulation in Massive from Create Digital Media on Vimeo.

Feedback, Routing and Modulation in Massive, with Free Patch Downloads [Kore@CDM]

Part of why playing with routing and modulation is such fun in Massive is that it has this semi-modular, drag-and-drop architecture. That’s something I’m gratified to say has been improving in soft synths in general; rather than simply emulating the interface of hardware synths, we’ve really seen some interesting ideas in how to design interfaces as software. I’d also include in this category instruments like Future Audio Workshop’s Circle, which I hope to look at a little more this month. Circle, in fact, was compared to Massive, but while they both have drag-and-drop, color-coded routings, the actual implementation is very different, they’re philosophically different, and sonically different.

Have a look, and let us know if you have your own thoughts on Massive, tips, questions, or anything else.

Software: it looks bland. It often sounds the same. Then there are the gems, like Ohm Force’s incredibly tasty line of plug-ins. Their delay plug-in Ohmboyz really isn’t over-hyped when they call it “the best delay money can afford,” as it’s almost frighteningly deep, with wild special effects and dirty-sounding vintage-style possibilities.

And those wacky interfaces aren’t incidental, either. Dave Cronin of San Francisco design firm/consultants Cooper just posted a great blog entry on “whimsical interaction design.” He says he’s been pondering whimsy in design, pointing to the playful music app Bloom, but also humor by industrial designers Droog, wacky Google cartoons, and, yes, Ohm:

In many cases, it seems that playfulness in interface design is not just for laughs but also help users tap into a different part of themselves than the strictly rational mind. OhmForce, a bunch of slightly crazed French audio software whizzes provide “funky” skins for their products that feel designed to help users think a bit more like Lee Scratch Perry, and little less like Bill Gates.

OhmBoyz does so much, indeed, that you might need to tap a bit of that irrational part of your mind just to use it successfully. Oliver has a great screencast for wire to the ear.

Ohm Force OhmBoyz from wiretotheear on Vimeo.

And that’s just one of many wonderful Ohm creations. If you want to invest in some new Ohm goodness, ProToolerBlog is doing a group buy. The idea is, the more customers commit to buying, the more the price goes down. The discount is up to 35% off already and should hit as much as 50%. (In fact, sign up now and you automatically get that 50%; see comments.) Details and specifics here. Let us know if you’re feeling the Ohm love, and if there are any others you’d want to see in a screencast. (how about “synth grain” plug Symptohm?)

Strange Ohm group buy interactive widget thing, showing discount

What it is, how it works, which plug-ins you can choose and other details

Ohm Force Site (get ready for lots of wacky Flash; sorry)