There’s a strange debate going on over the free software (as in freeware, not necessarily open source) issue of Computer Music magazine. After seeing the magazine’s top 10 reasons to use free software, commercial developer IK Multimedia got surprisingly defensive, and issued a rebuttal:

Why you shouldn’t use free software – a commercial developer’s view (at Music Radar, the online site for the magazine’s publisher)

Now, there’s probably a much simpler way to put this.

Why to use free software: It’s free.
Why to use free and open source software: It’s got source that’s free and open.
Why to use commercial software: It’s supported, and you probably can’t get exactly the same thing as free and/or open source.
Why to use a combination of all of the above: Because then you get a combination of all of the above.

(For more of the above, stay tuned for “Peter says not very interesting and obvious things Special Issue,” not coming to newsstands soon. The bonus disc includes a 2-oscillator virtual analog synth that has no interface and produces no sound.)

Why is this a Debate?

Obviously, most of us use a combination of different kinds of software. If you’re serious about using commercial software, you pay for it, because you’re serious about support and you’re smart enough to understand that if you don’t send the developer money, they won’t make any more software. If you love plug-ins, you try free plug-ins, because it gives you more tools, and if you believe in the power of communities and sharing for technology, open source software is at least part of your setup, too. I find even people running Linux passionately often use some proprietary software, like the recently-released EnergyXT for Linux or any combination of software they’ve bought inside the Windows compatibility environment WINE.

Also, it’s worth pointing out that, despite the rebuttal from IK’s UK representative, commercial developers were not calling Future Publishing to cancel ad accounts when they heard about the free software. They don’t host ritual burnings of Computer Music’s cover disc, nor spit on newsstands when these issues come out. Presumably, they instead assume the obvious, that these discs generate interest and get more people involved in the computer music market, which is good.Native Instruments, for instance, supported the issue and involved their own free Kore Player instrument.

But forget NI for a moment — how about IK? IK Multimedia have themselves long used free software editions to promote their for-fee tools; I included not one but two free instruments from IK on the cover disc of my book Real World Digital Audio. It was actually IK’s idea.

Now having said the obvious, there are elements of the software development landscape that are anything but obvious. If you work for a proprietary developer, you had better be thinking about some of these issues. When does it make sense for something to be free? How do you get people to pay for software, if that software requires money for development and you require money for rent? As musicians, when do we benefit from software being proprietary versus open source, and when to we benefit from paying for it versus getting it for free?

Every time you turn around, someone else is holding some sort of promotional music contest. But this week, we have not one but three contests I think will really appeal to CDM readers — and I’m especially eager to hear what results you might submit.

Guitar Rig Hero is a huge contest with some big prizes. Native Instruments notes that users were already, without prompting, posting Guitar Rig videos to YouTube. So, they’ve put together a jury to properly judge the best possible contributions, with jurors including the likes of the Deftones, Dweezil Zappa (yes, the offspring of Frank Zappa), and (one of my personal favorites) Mogwai. Prizes: a quad-core Fujitsu-Siemens laptop, NI software, and (non-software) guitars from Gibson.

NI says participants are “asked to capture a video of their most original and spectacular performance using GUITAR RIG 3, without any sonic or artistic limitations applying.” What’s interesting is that not all the entries are using guitars — there’s already an interesting experimental entry with violin and Guitar Rig, and I suspect if we unleash some of the CDM community on this contest, there will be more.

You don’t have to own Guitar Rig 3 to participate; the demo version will work (and then you can try to, you know, win the full version). The contest ends September 30.

I’ve run synths, keyboards, and even sitar through Guitar Rig, so I’m interested to hear what other not-guitars you can come up with.

Guitar Rig Hero Contest Page @ NI

Guitar Rig Contest YouTube Channel (with various videos up already)

Matthew Dear, performing as Audion, is coming to Minitek in New York this weekend, and we know from reader feedback that you’d like us to talk to him. (Yes, some of the endless minimal entries in Minitek, true to the festival’s name, start to blur together, but Matthew to me is someone really musically special.)

As it happens, among Beatport’s regular contests, there’s an Audion remix contest for “Billy Says Go.” Downloads started this week, and you can submit through the end of the month. This is public voting as opposed to juried voting, but since I know there are some Audion fans out there, let us know if you do something nice. Prizes: Traktor Scratch, $100 Beatport gift card, and a grab bag of Beatport swag. Those of you trash talking Richie Hawtin, maybe this is your chance to show us your skills.

Audion Remix Competition @ Beatportal

Sonoma’s RiffWorks software and accompanying community is apparently popular among readers here, so it seems worth passing this along. The RiffWorks site is awarding RiffWorld.com community members IK Multimedia software and other downloads and goodies. That in itself isn’t that interesting, but what is a bit different about this particular competition is that you can collaborate on entries; if you decide not to go solo, you can invite up to three other people to work with you. I still prefer collaborating in person rather than online, but I’ll be interested to hear how collaboration is working out for people. (Naturally, the reason they’re emphasizing this is to promote the collaboration features of the site — but you’re the best judge of how that works.)

RiffRumble 12

Seriously, do let us know if you choose to participate in these contests, or if there are other online communities you’re working on; we’d love to know. I imagine running this means a dozen PR folks will be breathing down my neck tomorrow with other contests, but these do seem up the CDM alley and … well, for the rest, that’s what the “mute conversation” feature in Gmail is for. Enjoy!

Daz Diamond is back with another wacky, experimental effect. When we last joined Daz, he was sharing strange and wonderful granular, delay, and sidechain effects. Now, he’s been thinking about buckets (as in brigades, as in sets of delay lines combined to form a reverb). He writes:

Hi Peter, I’m at it again, and have just put out bucketEER MK I - a stereo reverb/delay fx inspired by bucket-brigade style machinery - simple, quite primitive, and surpirisingly good sounding - also interesting for unusual delays with lots of taps …

Full specs on his site, but here’s what I like about the fact that it’s very much in “beta”:

At the moment, when changing from one preset to another, the buffers may get stuck for a few seconds resulting in a glitchy effect. this may or may not be a bad thing, and may or may not happen depending on your host.

So, quick, go grab that before he fixes the problem, and add some organic glitches to your reverb!

Some powerful features:

• Pre and Post effect shelving filters


• Predelay with control over level and time


• Size and Time controls


• Width and Mix controls


• Central readout of knob values


• 17 Randomize buttons - ‘global’ and ‘local’


• Freeze Function


• Bypass switch for each bucket and slot


• Output level meter


• 8 presets

Daz welcomes donations. I may also give this a go on Linux — enjoying Windows VST compatibility on one machine.

Updated - somehow left out these links. Been a bit out of it this week; sorry!

whiteLABEL bucetEER Product Page and Download
Daz Diamond / whiteLABEL Google Discussion Group

Richie Hawtin actually topped the list of people CDM readers don’t want us to interview at NY’s Minitek this weekend, which I’m tempted to take as a challenge. (Hey, I’m all for combating hype and talking to the many talented but under-appreciated artists out there. I just find it amusing how much negative energy Hawtin attracts.) In the meantime, CDM’s resident electronic scenester Liz McLean Knight notes that he has revealed some of how he works live on his blog.

M_nus label owner and minimal techno pioneer Richie Hawtin has eschewed the “trade secret” mentality (and ridiculous toupe-combover hairstyle, thank god!) and shared brief videos on his myspace blog explaining his live setup.

Traktor lies at the base of his arrangement, and in particular he makes use of Traktor’s Four Decks. Much in the way Ableton Live enables live syncing of basic elements, Hawtin uses elements of unfinished tracks, such as a partial demo track from label-mate Marc Houle, as building blocks in a live set.

And in a move that some people consider controversial in the DJing world, he admits to using the Sync function, as it allows him to focus on other things such as four-deck manipulation and playing with effects, a view to which digital musicians are more sympathetic.

Richie Hawtin: My Setup

I don’t think using four DJ decks can really be considered innovative any more, frankly — not with Ableton Live in common usage and live electronic musicians pushing in other directions. But this is how Hawtin works, and he’s more than entitled that. It’s also nice to see someone who actually uses NI’s four decks rather than just talking about them. And for all the hating around here, I do think Hawtin does deserve credit for having been at the digital DJ phenomenon from just about the beginning. (Whether that phenomenon has been a good thing, that’s a separate issue to debate.)

I’m equally interested to see, though, where people go next. I think Hawtin rightfully deserves credit for his taste factor and the influence that had — even if you hate him, here’s a guy who was able to really build a brand an a musical identity not only for himself but his label and self-imagined genre. If the ongoing attention following Hawtin seems disproportionate, perhaps that’s because others have failed to fill the void or find a way to be that successful moving in other directions.

Yes, that’s meant as a challenge.

Update: here’s a compilation of all the videos. (Thanks, Louis!)

Richie Hawtin 2008 DJ Setup from Dean Koch on Vimeo.

Cubase 4.5 is here, with CC121 controller and MR816 audio I/O hardware integration, some new sample content, and a mysterious new “media management” format called VST Sound. It is nice to see the hardware/software integration we’ve been clamoring for. But will developers actually start supporting VST Sound and VST3? Will I manage to find a way to get excited about Cubase? We can only wonder… and it’s time for some Steinberg advocates to speak up.

Cubase 4.5 was released last week as a free update for 4.x users. The main story is that it integrates with the CC121 hardware controller. You may recall the CC121 as the hardware controller I just didn’t get, because it requires mousing over the parameter you want to control so you can tweak it with the hardware knob. Well, now here’s a rather lame marketing video from Steinberg, which doesn’t help. (Video via AudioPorn Central. Not sure why companies insist on making things like this, but they do.)

Help! Our band is caught in THX 1138! Hint to Steinberg: this is what a marketing video should look like. Okay, maybe you didn’t want to dump paint on your CC121.

Monome Life, indeed. What makes the Monome so wonderful is not so much that the hardware and software itself are open source — nice as that may be — but that they have become a platform for experimentation and personalization. Max/MSP, now freshly injected with life following its version-5 release, has a similar ethos. Here are a couple of the creations that have impressed me most recently: a hacked-together implementation of The Game of Life in Max and Monome, and an impressive DJ app, dj64.

This is Your Life

Bean (blog | twitter | flickr) clearly very much loves his Monome, as indicated by the slideshow above. I recently spotted an interesting creation on the CDMusic Flickr Pool — an implementation of the iconic Game of Life simulation/game — and asked him about it.

I made it mainly just because I figured it should be possible. It’s not terribly efficient, and occasionally stutters, but that feels like part of its charm. It is monome tailored, but would run stand-alone with a little tweaking.

I’ve got the cleaned up version posted on my page of monome-specific patches:

http://www.fourthirtyeight.com/monome/#maxlife

There are a number of downloads there, including that one, so Max users, have at them!

In case you missed it on Create Digital Motion, we’re now beta testing a version of open source OSC controller software for the iPhone and iPod touch 2.x firmware. (For something along the same lines, see also OSCemote.) It’s well worth reading that story, as mrmr’s creator Eric Redlinger talks eloquently about what this is about: controllers that can connect to a performance, even a stranger’s performance, as easily as an iPhone could dial up a webpage.

Mrmr iPhone 2.x Firmware Beta, and the Self-Configuring Touch Controller

But in case even that argument doesn’t make it clear, this isn’t an iPhone story. It’s an OpenSoundControl story. It’s about chickens, eggs, and the future. It’s just a glimpse of that future, but it could be a meaningful one. This is technology coming to far more than just Apple’s devices. Let me explain.

An old PC laptop could be relegated to the closet or (worse, since it’s highly toxic) landfill. But filled up with tasty freeware plug-ins, it’s a virtual studio full of tools and oddities. Via the feast of gear that is the CDMusic pool on Flickr, our friend Jumahat Leman aka uncle bigbrown artfully captures his budget software setup, described as follows:

• A 4+yrs old Acer laptop (a desktop replacement to be exact)
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/lots of freeware VSTs
• using same earphones/headphones/ToneportGx for recording

** My observation:
If you’re a “free VSTs/plugins” hunter/user like me, there’s tons of them available for download for the Wins platform in the worldwideweb. That’s where “cheap” Mac users/lovers (like me) are at a disadvantage with our OSX. So its always good to have a Wins machine at your disposal…

The Mac doesn’t get left out either, though. A G4 tower has become a virtual guitar stompbox and recording studio:

• 9 yrs old Sawtooth “Earache” G4 Mac
• Ableton Live 5.01 w/freeware plug-ins
• $80 Toneport GX
• old iPod earphones or $50 Sennheiser Headphones (for recording/monitoring/mixing)

**most times i load the “mixed songs” into the iPod to listen/compare/mix and check eq/volume.

(The guitar is a PRS SE Paul Allender.)

If these visuals got your attention, there’s another lesson to be learned here. Not only does this visual illustration give you a sense of what his workflow is about and perhaps passes along some tips, but he uses photos and illustrations as a great promotional tool. It helps that Jumahat is a talented designer. I love his mini-portfolio, below. He also makes wonderful promotional posters and stickers. As I noted earlier this week, the ability to make something visually expressive that is meaningful to your music can be powerful - starting with album art, but going beyond that.

Or, to make a more important point, Jumahat has one of the only tasteful MySpace pages I’ve ever seen — and that’s a feat.

Happy weekend projects to everyone; hope this provides some inspiration.

drechohead, Jumahat’s MySpace page
echoinmyhead @blogpspot, with more visual goodies

Updated: Plug-in List

Now, the answers revealed. (See if you guessed any of these correctly.)

Nova (audio by Helios) from flight404 on Vimeo.

The rumor mill’s conventional wisdom is that iTunes 8 will be part of Apple’s music-themed press event next week. That’s a safe bet — iTunes 7 is clearly due for an update. But Allan White has some interesting speculation with which I’m inclined to agree. There’s an excellent change Robert Hodgin’s excellent Magnetosphere visualizer is going to become an official visualizer for iTunes 8. That’s be a big win for Processing (site | cdmo tag), the visual code “sketching” tool — and a likely time suck for your productivity next week, if true, as you stare into its hypnotic pulsing orbs. (Just fair warning.)

Allan White writes on his blog — a lovely visit for fans of music and visualization:

[Robert] Hodgins built a wonderful iTunes visualizer called Magnetosphere a while back - which mysteriously disappeared from his site a few months back. I wrote him, and he said that it had been sold to a third party. There’s strong evidence that this third party is in fact Apple, and that it may ship with iTunes 8, which could be shown as soon as next week at an iPod Event.

iTunes 8 Rumors: is Magnetosphere the New Visualizer?

One way or another, it looks like we will be getting the visualizer. And getting it officially would be terrific — it’s about time the fairly moribund world of visualizers was reignited. (Just remember, musicians, work with a real VJ/visualist when playing live for the full experience. End public service announcement.)

Magnetosphere Video
(Above, a reskinned take on the original — Robert does wonderful things with iterating his code)

Magnetosphere iTunes Plugin Page

Flight404 on Create Digital Motion

At your desk, you want another few moments with FL Studio or Live or Pd or Pro Tools or (your app here). Then, you kick back on the couch or on the bus to play with … more music software. Yep, you’re one of us. Here’s the latest from the world of Nintendo DS music apps.

First off, a couple of you write to say your preorders for the Korg DS-10 cartridge have been delayed until October 14 for the US. (The cartridge was released in Japan over the summer, and we had previously heard September 30.) This does line up with the anticipated European release, though.

For a better sense of what the DS-10 looks like, here’s a nice video from YouTube user Denkitribe, who has been carefully producing all sorts of hands-on videos. (high-quality link) Take a close look: as I’ve said before, I think there are design lessons from mobile apps that may carry over to how other music hardware and software is designed.

Meanwhile, in the homebrew scene, the step sequencer / soft synth / sampler will be released free, joining other lovely DS homebrew for music. (See Palm Sounds.) CDM got to break the news on GrooveStep, and as it happens, we have another couple of announcements to make about this; stay tuned. Currently closed beta, but we should have release info and hands-on for you soon. GrooveStep also lets you load your own samples, so there’s no question this can be a tool as well as a toy.

GrooveStep homepage

For a feel for what GrooveStep can sound like, its creator played with it during CDM’s Futuristic Music Night at NASA Ames Research Center in the spring: