“Fruity Loops” has long proven that not all music making apps have to look the same way. FL is quirky and different. Its editing interface is built as much around step sequencers and pattern sequencing as the conventional, mixer and audio-tape-derived views. But perhaps some of its real draw is that it packs, in its mid-level-and-higher packages, it’s packed with fascinating and unusual sonic toys. FL 9 looks to continue that tradition.

And because it’s FL, if you’ve ever bought FL, you get a free lifetime upgrade to this version. (Seriously, if you’re pirating FL, stop. You have absolutely no excuse.)

New toys in this version:

• Autogun Derived from the excellent sounds of the Ogun synth, this instrument has “more than four billion presets.” (Wait… what?) I do agree with Image-Line’s description of “rich metallic and shimmering timbres” in Ogun; that’s exactly what it sounds like.
• Vocodex vocoder, the “last word in Vocoders.” (I thought the last word was, “No one needs a vocoder,” but I could be wrong.) Automatic speech enhancement plus up to 100 “variable-width, multi-parameter” bands does give this some interesting twists.
• Stereo Shaper.

I think that improved performance and editing may be bigger news, however:

• Multi-core CPU support, multithreaded generator, and multithreaded effects processing. This is the one that I expect most excites you crazy, synth-and-effects-routing mad scientists who have been pegging your CPU.
• Improved effects: sidechaining in the limiter, mid-side processing in the reverb, export and noise reduction in the awesome Edison and Slicex audio-editing instruments.
• Improved Playlists with “Clip Track” features
• A “Riff Machine” for automatically generating sequences in the Piano Roll
• Multiple controller support for defining different instrument channels. (Okay, FL experts – did I miss something? That wasn’t present before?)

For people looking to get into music recording and production on a computer, for the first time, there’s a bundle that says “Pro Tools” on the box that costs correction: as little as just $99. It really is Pro Tools software; it’s certainly streamlined (some basic track limits, no multitrack recording), but still with a serious complement of recording, mixing, and effects, and even some nice virtual instruments. Beyond that, your choice is which hardware you’d like in your “value meal”:

For vocalists: The Vocal Studio has a cardoid condenser mic – that’s a USB mic you can connect directly – plus a stand and a case.

For “recording:” The Recording Studio gives you a simple 2-in/2-out audio interface so you can connect your own mic/line/instrument input.

For keyboardists: The KeyStudio is a 49-key synth-action keyboard with mod and pitch bend, plus and an audio interface (the 1-in, 1-out M-Audio USB Micro).

Correction: $99 is the price for the keyboard and vocal bundles, $129 for the recording bundle with Fast Track. (I had an early press release that said pricing was $129 for all three.)

The target readership for CDM may not be in the market for this bundle — though it is a ridiculously cheap way to add Pro Tools compatibility to your rig, if you just need to trade session files. But I know we also have a lot of readers who offer expertise to other folks. Do let us know what they think – if they’re turned on, or turned off.

See additional analysis on what the larger implications of Avid’s strategic shift may be.

If you’re a beginning user, I don’t doubt that this software will get you started. You get over 5 GB of instruments and loops, 60 virtual instrument sounds, reverb / chorus / delay / flanger / phaser / compression / EQ effects, reasonable track counts (16 audio, 8 instrument, 8 MIDI), 3 insert slots per track for “up to 3 simultaneous effects,” buses and send/return routing, and 2 simultaneous audio inputs and outputs. So you can’t do simultaneous multitrack input or surround hardware, but you’d need a different audio interface for that, anyway.

Actually, so that you can email this story to your nephew or niece who’s just starting out and considering options, let me translate to English:

A young, aspiring musician walks into a consumer electronics store. (Let’s call it Big Buy, and imagine people wearing… red polo shirts.) They wander into the game aisle and muse at the latest music games in the video game section – $60-100 in price. But there’s an endcap with something else: a box of Pro Tools that’ll run on their computer, plus a ready-to-use audio interface, for $99-129. Instead of Guitar Hero, they leave with Pro Tools – a name they already knew.

See full details of the new lineup, with photos.

This idea is nothing new – for many years, it’s been possible to do great stuff with $100 on a computer. But the most powerful brand in music production (Pro Tools) has remained notably absent. Instead, that hypothetical consumer would find a smattering of consumer-only choices with names they likely wouldn’t recognize. Meanwhile, the name “Pro Tools,” and the software interface that made it popular, have been limited to more complex offerings sold through specialists.

Today changes all of that. Gone is the idea that “Pro Tools” is only for the high end. Gone is the iLok hardware dongle. (You still need either the Micro or Fast Track interface plugged in, but the target market for this product may not care.)

There are three offerings:

A vocal studio, bundled with a USB mic (similar to M-Audio’s Luna).

A “recording” studio, bundled with a simple USB bus-powered audio interface (the previously-available Fast Track.

The “KeyStudio”, bundled with a 49-key USB keyboard. The software comes with 60+ virtual instruments, says Avid, so you’ve got quite a lot to play.

The software included in each has some limitations – it has 32 tracks (16 audio, 8 instrument, and 8 MIDI), and more basic routing options (3 inserts per track, 2 audio inputs, and 2 outputs). The absence of multitrack recording is probably the biggest restriction. But you nonetheless get a range of virtual instrument sounds and effects, plus a full complement of editing and mixing features.

On the same day that people are rediscovering The Beatles through a video game, and video games are causing people to rediscover music making, you can buy a studio for about the same price.

Now, if you’re reading this site, that’s probably not news. But it could be news to quite a lot of people who haven’t discovered computer music making. And it represents a tectonic shift in how the titan of music making software treats its flagship.

Smule, the iPhone/iPod touch development house that has released an Ocarina and a Leaf Trombone to the iPhone, has now partnered with T-Pain and Auto-Tune to bring a T-Pain-branded app to the mobile platform. I interviewed Ge Wang earlier; he gets exceptional music geek cred for the creation of the real-time synthesis language ChucK.

But this app goes further. It isn’t just called Auto-Tune for iPhone, or T-Pain Presents Auto-Tune by Smule or something like that. It actually promises to turn you into T-Pain, sort of like the toys that make you sound like Darth Vader. And that means it has exactly one application – one essential application, I’d say. It means you can do amazing covers of “I’m on a Boat.”

Something has jumped a shark here, but I’m not sure which. Maybe it jumped over the shark onto the boat.

Two more serious observations:

One, this theoretically could be a useful addition to your mobile arsenal. Mike Una uses Auto-Tune to map the continuously-varying pitch of his “Beep-It” optical Theremin to a scale. Of course, the problem is that the iPhone lacks an audio input jack, though maybe someone has an idea for how to solve that.

Two, a question: just when, exactly, will we get basic audio DSP coding on a platform that’s not the iPhone? Sony’s PSP is arguably more powerful, but requires you to take your game system into a back alley to modify it to run homebrewed software. Google’s Android has more powerful hardware in the pipeline, at least, but there’s still not really official support for running native audio code (even though that’s how the phone’s own audio system was built). People are starting to simply say “iPhone app” when what they mean is “mobile app,” and that’s a shame.

GPS Beatmap from Jesse Stiles on Vimeo.

“Locative art,” the idea that somehow location will feed into music and visuals, has eluded culture. We have the technology, in the form of sophisticated databases of location information and highly accurate, publicly-available GPS satellites. But it’s one of those solutions in search of a problem, and begs the question, why?

That is, until you unleash a nearly 6-liter V8 Ford LTD Crown Victoria on the legendary Bonneville Salt Flats, and your driving gets translated to music. Now it makes sense. And sweeping through the salty dust in one of America’s greatest action-car-chase cars of all time, manipulating music on a Max/MSP software patch, all becomes right with the world. (That’s how it is in my head, anyway.)

The planet is your control surface.

Such is the project sent by co-creator Jesse Stiles, who worked with Rich Pell (and editor/documentarian Olivia Robinson) under the name Face Removal Services to perform this vehicular musical production. (Thank, as well, The Center for Land Use Interpretation / GPS Expo 2006. PS – I think we now know what to do with all those clunkers Americans are turning in for Cash for Clunkers.)

Now, this covers only X and Y axis. I think we need to add the Z-axis, for base jumpers. (I had a dream last night in which I was hang gliding from the rim of the Grand Canyon to the Colorado River below, a reminder that the Earth – and computer interfaces – do not have to be flat.)