The Music Bore – Video 2 from Nicholas Humfrey on Vimeo.

“I’m sorry, Dave, I can’t allow you to listen to Coldplay.”

What would radio be like if playlists were not only robotic, but had robot DJs pulling information from the Interwebs dynamically? That’s the question asked by the winning team at London’s Music Hackday last weekend, which created an epic mashup of data sources to produce a voice-synthesized IRC chatbot that researches and plays music for you.

Music Bore

Music Bore was just one of a number of projects developed in the weekend of musical hacking, some for listening, and at least one (a fantastic and free synth plug-in) for what we really like – production. With some of the world’s top musical coders in attendance, the results were amazing, even if not all projects were entirely finished. (Hey, that’s why they call it hacking.)

You can check out the full list on the wiki, but here are some favorites — and if you were there, do shout out to us as you put more documentation up of the event and projects.

Harmony Box by Dave and Mike is a synth plug-in for Mac (AU/VST) and Windows (VST, thus also Linux) that quickly creates lovely chords. I love the simplicity of the instrument – really lovely work, gents – and I think I may actually use it on a project. They accept donations if you’d like to see this instrument mature. Of course, with everyone else doing Web mash-ups, this didn’t win, but it’s more up our alley. (Web 2.0 – meh, whatever.)

The synth has its own project blog:
http://davenoise.com/blog/

Other winners (in our book, and as recommended by Harmony Box co-creator Dave Gamble):

LonelyHarps by Jamie Hollingworth and David Padbury is a Last.fm-based tool concept that helps you find dates – and choose the right tracks to set the mood – using music for compatibility. And, really, do you really want to date someone who doesn’t have musically compatible tastes? (I’m sure it’s just because they spotted lots of hotties on Last.fm, but…) The only bad news: the app didn’t actually get fully made yet, but we’ll stay tuned, gents. They do have impressive-looking formulas.

Music Zeitgeist by Cristiano Betta visualizes lyrics by decade, such as the 1980s, above. (Yeah, it was all about wanting and karma, the 80s.) Check out the project directly.

Theremag by Jono Cole and Jonty Wareing of Last.fm is actually the app I most want to see, but there’s no documentation yet. It’s a Theremin emulator on the Google Android-based HTC G1, with an unusual sensor — the built-in magnetometer (the one that normally acts as the compass) which was used to pitch-bend Michael Jackson. Once they get documentation up, expect to see it here. (I love that magnet sensor, too. Good fun.)

iPhone Music Visualizer by George J Cook and Matt Biddulph grabs Soundcloud files, analyzes them with Echonest (which recently got an iPhone-friendly Cocoa API), and then plays them back with a visualizer. It looks like a great place to get started if you’re planning on building something similar yourself.

In fact, it’s well worth checking out the wiki not only because some of the projects have (okay, sometimes-sloppy) source code, but point you at the resources you’d need to tackle something like this yourself if you’re a coder. And the event prompted a lot of folks from Last.fm to Echonest and BBC and others to get their APIs together.

It’s a terrific idea, and it sounds like we need another music hackday here. (Press releases, ahem, claimed this was the “first” music hackday, even though we’ve done a global event ourselves, but who cares — let’s do more!)

New York would make a nice base of operations for a similar event because a lot of folks with interesting APIs are here (or in nearby East Coast towns), but I think it’d be great to get more people online and not just in one locale.

What think you, sirs and madames? Tips on how we could make an online event work?

What if you could record directly online from a Web browser – no additional software needed? It’s not a new idea, but online music community Indaba has an interesting new Java-based tool that gets one step closer. We took a first look at the tool last month, but it’s now publicly available at indabamusic.com today. Indaba shared with CDM some video walking us through the feature set, and the company founders also answered some of my questions. For the musicians in the audience, we’ll have some more hands-on time with this tool to see if it’s something you can use. (My guess is, it’s something you might use alongside your existing tool of choice.) For the developers and Java fans (or skeptics), I also want to dig a little deeper in the Java and JavaFX platforms behind the scenes.

What can you do when making music in a browser?

• Work online or offline.
• Record directly online and share immediately.
• Work across platforms, directly in the browser.
• Add real-time effects, mixing, and even multitrack automation for adjusting levels.

Indaba isn’t alone in some of these features, but the ability to have high-performance, non-destructive audio effects and to record directly into the program without the typical browser restraints is definitely a step forward from other solutions.

Pricing will include a relatively full-featured free plan, plus $5/mo and $25/mo tiers adding additional clips, online storage workspace, and real-time non-destructive effects. (Video sharing service Vimeo recently adjusted their free/Pro distinction, a subject Jaymis covered for Create Digital Motion yesterday.)

Here’s our own Q&A to get things rolling:

CDM: Obviously, we have readers who are very comfortable with some existing, non-browser-based tools. But I can see them having a place for a browser tool as a supplement. How might some of those kinds of people use Indaba, as you envision it?

Indaba: The Indaba console is fully integrated with our global community of musicians, so it’s much easier to share work and collaborate on mixes. Even if your readers currently use non-browser-based tools, the Indaba console enables them to work together seamlessly from any computer without having to transfer files from machine to machine. What’s more, because the Indaba console is web-based, it can capture inspiration that strikes when artists are on the road or otherwise away from their studios. For musicians who don’t currently use complex DAWs, the Indaba console can be even more – a turnkey solution for recording, editing, and mixing.

Why JavaFX? What specifically was possible with JavaFX versus, say, Flash – given that at least some basic DSP functions we have seen in Flash?

The real decision was to build a Java application. A signed Java app gives us the freedom we need to tap into client-side hardware (sound-card, hard drive etc) and the power we need to handle multiple non-destructive effects. Other client-side technologies simply can’t offer this level of access. JavaFX gave us the ability to develop a sexy interface that wouldn’t look/feel like the stereotypical java apps of yesteryear. Going forward, this will enable us to do some pretty amazing things.

Ed. – note, that generally answer leads to some follow-up, specific development questions I have regarding implementation on Mac, Windows, and Linux, so we can talk more about those details – feel free to pass along your own thoughts and I’ll see what I can learn.

CDM: It’s nice to see the Creative Commons license on the sample materials. Will there be ways for artists using Creative Commons to release their own clips / share their own loops?

Not in this release but shortly thereafter. For now there are hundreds of clips available to our members.

Will there be an API for other sites to hook into what Indaba users are doing / what they’re doing on the Java-FX-based editing platform?

It’s definitely something we’re planning on releasing at some point. At the moment, we have private APIs for corporate partners.

What are some likely workflows with the new tool? How does that differ from previous versions?

It cuts a tremendous amount of overhead out of the process and is a simple and quick way to capture your ideas in high quality. Previously you had to download tracks, record locally, bounce them out of your DAW and upload them to the site… Now you can pop open the Console, record in high quality and mix your song all within Indaba.

Stay tuned for more details. And, of course, Indaba does have some competition on the Web; it’ll be interesting to see how it all stacks up.

Kongregate is a bit like public access, only on steroids and for games. The idea is this: get indie game makers in one place contributing games, then get lots of people playing those games, then support the system with ad revenue shared with the game makers. The model has grown rapidly, with millions of users and over 15,000 original games.

The newest project from Kongregate looks to connect artistic talent on projects, including musicians, composers, and sound designers wanting to work on game projects. The Collabs section will see artists and sound and music creators uploading their work to find collaborators. Initially, there’s a contest on, with competition for attention, cash, and studio prizes.

http://www.kongregate.com/collabs

The competition aside, this could be the beginning of a successful community for collaboration in the indie Flash gaming world. Assets are often uploaded under a Creative Commons license, and I see one of the top sounds draws on samples from Freesound.org. While career success is an obvious goal, the contributors so far appear to see sharing as a way to get there – in stark contrast to the model in the mainstream, big-business game industry. Quality is, of course, variable, but ask anyone in the game industry how to become successful and the answer is always make as much as you can. Getting work out there, even primitive, can be part of a learning process. So I’m eager to see what transpires as these kinds of communities grow.

There is an invariable comparison to Deviant Art – and you’ll see they’ve already begun to invade.

Oh yeah, and I quite like these glassy tendrils, rendered in Cinema 4D. Image (CC) Chaodeath. Now, make that run real-time. Or, erm, imagine those are virtual renderings of artists … collaborating.

Fritzcrate Project / RGB Color Mixer from Michael Schieben on Vimeo.

As you can see, people have already begun playing with ideas for tangible interfaces. Oddly enough, two German gentlemen each named Michael (not aware of one another) have gotten a headstart, including the first experiment above in progress. We’ll be experimenting with new interfaces in New York and around the globe. (If that isn’t enough experimentation with new interfaces, the NIME conference – New Interfaces in Musical Expression – is happening now in Pittsburgh, and we expect reports back from that, too!) The event has also been featured on Boing Boing and MAKE.

Follow the action at :

http://hackday.noisepages.com

Or via…

IRC: FreeNode #cdmblogs

Twitter: Hash tag #hackday or cdmblogs or follow the group of hackers at tweetknot.com/hackday

Live Streaming Video (we hope!): livestream

View Global Hackday in a larger map

Indaba Music, a community and suite of online tools for musicians, announced today they’ve revamped their online recording and production tool using Java and JavaFX. The result: a platform-agnostic, online interface that allows you to record music “directly to the Internet.” And the band Weezer is excited enough about it that they’re giving their official endorsement.

Indaba, along with some others, already had an online music production tool. The new version expands on that idea, allowing you to record audio signal directly online, and beefing up tools for mixing, editing, and looping. Just like tools like GarageBand, a pre-built set of loops is ready for people to quickly mock up songs.

With some help from Sun’s JavaFX technology, the browser/desktop barrier isn’t as noticeable. You get a graphical-looking interface that works the same anywhere, plus the ability to drag audio files to and from your desktop.

indabamusic.com

javafx.com

Interestingly, Weezer’s endorsement focuses on the fact that they don’t know how to use other music software. I have to admit some skepticism here – a lot of musicians I think are savvy enough to get to use creative new music software, and a lot of the basic functions of the Indaba software itself are straight out of tools like ACID and GarageBand. Nor do you have to worry about any JavaFX tool blowing away your REAPER, Logic, Live, Pro Tools… well, you know.

On the other hand, while this is basically just an ACID-style audio production station in the browser, I’m curious about what new applications might take advantage of in-browser collaboration that don’t look like existing audio tools. Maybe we’ll have specialized tools for working out specific ideas or sharing snippets in-progress. And there’s no question that building some tools in the browser makes sharing more immediate.

I’ll be talking to the Indaba folks and the JavaFX team a little bit about the technology, and with Sun in particular I’ll be sure to ask about some of the future potential here for other tools. If you have questions, let me know.

Quick – you’ve got a music file that someone (a collaborator, a client, a friend) needs to hear. How do you send it to them?

It seems countless Web entrepreneurs have new ways for sharing media – there are online Flash-based music editing applications, social networks, elaborate MySpace and Facebook killers. We’ve been impressed with some, like the rich player and commenting and fans on Soundcloud or the ability to create artist/band pages that really work on Bandcamp. (The latter, I do really want to spend more time with.)

But sometimes, these services are overkill. This week, I had to get some revised sound scores to a choreographer so he could have them in a rehearsal. I didn’t want to share them with my network of friends or let people remix them in Flash – I just needed to get them to him in the easiest way possible.

That’s where drop.io is just absolutely gorgeous and lovable. Using something else? This is probably better.

1. There’s not even a login. Click a button, upload a file, done. You can add your email address and password if you need to be updated, but even that isn’t necessary.
2. You get an instant short URL – either automatically generated or customizable.
3. Drop any media you want – images, music, etc.
4. You get instant in-browser playing / viewing, and embeddable links and downloads.
5. Control: non-public if you like, expire whenever you want, let others add files.
6. It’s free for basic usage, and the free account isn’t crippled. You get 100MB of space per drop. Need more than that, and you can upgrade, but I think a lot of folks will be pleased with the free plan. Fortunately, the premium plan is powerful enough (branding, bigger drops) that premium users may be able to subsidize the occasional, casual user.
7. Integration: Firefox add-in, Twitter, etc.

In other words, this kicks YouSendIt’s sorry, badly-designed, clunky and non-functional a**.

drop.io
playlist.io, announced this week, allows easy, playable playlists, so ideal if you have a set of tracks – all with the same features of drop.io

It’s probably not how you want to share video or whole projects. But for a quick audio bounce of your current track, photos of the venue you’ll be gigging at, and the like, it’s about perfect. There’s a place for more complex tools that allow you to collaborate on, say, custom designs for music software or hardware or elaborate session sets. But that makes it even nicer to have a quick tool that solves a simple problem.

And speaking of “tools that get things done up against tight deadlines,” drop.io has added a whole new dimension:

Real-time functionality

The folks at drop.io (who work just over the river from me in DUMBO Brooklyn, that “other” Silicon Alley) have been hard at work on new real-time functionality.

What this means is, you can instantly add media, notes, and chat message, even via a mobile device, and everything is there instantly. So, someone calls on the phone and wants a file. It’s up there instantly, and you can even comment on it, make changes, and get it done.

Speaking as someone who is constantly missing deadlines, um, I mean regularly procrastinating things until the last minute, uh, erm …. uh, always overbooked and dealing with crises … uh, I mean, “moving at the speed of innovation,” this sounds like a lifesaver / problem solver.

There’s no question this is of use to music pros and the ilk. I know the people doing music and sound design for South Park have regularly emailed MP3 files in order to get them on the air on Comedy Central the same day. We’re a “just-in-time” — or, perhaps, “barely on time” crowd, the digital creatives.

I’ll be really curious to hear how you use this, and what other tools are out there you like. And because drop.io is a relatively simple tool, I’m equally interested to see what might be possible with their open API. Let us know what you think.

Updated: Via comments, Kyran notes that Dropbox is also a really strong option. What I like about Dropbox: desktop clients, sync capabilities, easy sharing of whole folders, revisions, and most of the chat features. What I like about Drop.io: stupidly-simple quick file uploading one file + url. Drop.io is to me sort of Twitter-style file uploading. Dropbox is also a really terrific solution. I could actually see using a little of both, which is why lightweight solutions are nice.

SoundCloud, the music and sound sharing service we saw launch this month has added a very important feature: support for different licenses. When you upload tracks, you can elect to protect your work with a conventional copyright or opt instead for a Creative Commons license. That’s an important feature I’d like to see all these services support. The one thing Creative Commons and conventional copyright advocates agree on is that being explicit about what rights you want to your work is essential.

Naturally, this means not only that you can upload works, but that SoundCloud could soon become a rich repository for CC-licensed work to use as video soundtracks or sample, in the way that Flickr’s CC search has fired up lots of (legal) image use. We have heard some dissatisfaction from readers about SoundCloud’s pricing scheme, but this announcement means SoundCloud remains one to watch — even if you’re not personally uploading to it.

SoundCloud also came up with a unique idea: they created a drop box for CC-licensed works which they played at a party.

You can read about the new licenses and other news tidbits on the SoundCloud blog:
Introducing SoundCloud Creative Commons Support

I’ll be taking both for a test drive, but as I’m looking at them, any other services we should be considering for a prize fight? Any first impressions on which you like best?

Be sure to vote in wire to the ear’s poll, too; we’ll be watching.

Bandcamp Screencast from Ethan Diamond on Vimeo.

SoundCloud: The Tour from SoundCloud on Vimeo.

SoundCloud, an online sharing community for sound and music, is now hours from public launch. I’ve been playing around with a closed beta for several months, and have to say, I’ve been really impressed. SoundCloud isn’t the first attempt to provide places to share music files with others, but previous attempts have been lackluster when it comes to easy sharing, features necessary to make music listening more enjoyable, and upload capacity. Most importantly, none has accomplished the community “stickiness” that has been the cornerstone of successful media services like Flickr, Vimeo, and YouTube. In fact, there’s been so much of a noise-to-signal problem with the Web space, I expect a lot of you have simply tuned out new Web services. There are some good reasons to pay attention to SoundCloud, though:

• Singing telegram, anyone? Music on SoundCloud acts more like a messaging service. Tracks from people you’re following appear in an inbox for you to sort through. You can even create a DropBox for other people, so this could be huge for people running labels or live events. (That’s especially welcome now that a lot of people have given up on individually clicking myspace links to hear what someone sounds like.)
• Easier uploads and sharing: Getting files on the service in your favorite format, with whatever length you want, is a whole lot easier than on competing services.
• Smart player interaction: Services like this now live and die on their embeddable player. SoundCloud’s is really clever and attractive. Download links are everywhere. Also, SoundCloud attacks the biggest problem with music – it’s invisible. There’s a waveform view, and people can comment on specific points in your music. That feature has been annoying in a lot of video players, but here comments appear only if you want them to, and I’ve found them really helpful in getting feedback. (See my example track below, for instance.)
• Open API: A full API means you can built interesting apps atop SoundCloud. Check out the lovely Radioclouds by Matas Petrikas for an example of how interesting this can be; source code is available.

SoundCloud, indeed, seems to have all the kinds of features that made Flickr stand out from a crowd of photo services. Labels are already onboard, too: Compost, BPitch Control, and Goldie are already making it part of their workflow, says SoundCloud.

One very significant missing feature: it’s not yet possible to embed licenses in your music, so it’s not possible to tell what’s copyrighted and what’s Creative Commons-licensed. SoundCloud founder Alexander Ljung tells us this feature is coming very soon, though, and as on Flickr, you’ll be able to set a global default for your music, so if you want to release everything under a CC license, you can. That should make SoundCloud absolutely explode as a place for CC-licensed remixing.

Now, the only bad news: pro accounts are a bit pricey when compared to a service like Flickr, priced at EUR9-EUR59 each month. The EUR9/mo account is actually probably what most people will need: 15 tracks per month (that seems like plenty), plus basic stats, dropbox, and support. If you were a beta tester like me, you probably got a complimentary Light account through the beginning of next year. And importantly, there’s no limit on file sizes on any of the accounts. That means you could easily upload 15 live/DJ sets a month, so no complaint here. My guess is that the rates are a reflection of what it costs now in bandwidth for an ad-free site. And you can always go for a free account and see how the service works. But I do expect price to be the major obstacle to this service’s popularity. Update: comment to that effect in, what, five minutes of me posting?

Alex and the team say they’re CDM readers, and I’ll get to meet with them next week while I’m in Berlin. So if you’ve got any questions or feedback, let us know. I’d also love to see this stuff integrated more tightly in other communities; Facebook is there, for a start. Stay tuned.

SoundCloud

SoundCloud Tour

SoundCloud Blog

Here’s an example of my player (just an informal live improv set, not a full track). I need to go upload more content but plan to do that over the coming weeks. But it gives you a sense of how this works in action.

Here’s the upload interface, which I find quite usable. Note that you can also use SoundCloud for private files: