Finding exotic software instruments is rarely a challenge. A lot of users stumble more quickly when it comes to the basics. Cakewalk has unveiled a new set of soft synths called Cakewalk Studio Instruments, and a number of things about it are immediately interesting:

It’s dirt cheap. US$49.99 for the whole package.

It focuses on a few basics. There are four modules: Drum Set, Bass Guitar, Electric Piano, or String Section.

It’s available via mass-market outlets. Music tech stuff only trickles into the mass market, as a rule. Cakewalk says you’ll be able to pick this thing up at Apple, CompUSA, Fry’s, Micro Center, J&R, and Amazon.com.

It does phrases. There are included, pre-recorded phrases. Might be redundant in the age of GarageBand, but potentially useful to have.

It has a slick interface. The UI is pretty, provides lots of visual feedback (the bows on the strings even move), and puts controls where you’d expect them in the real world — so electric piano effects show up on a stompbox, for instance, rather than floating in softwareland.

I’ve been confused by a feature Gibson is touting on its new Digital Guitar: the ability to route each individual string to a separate surround speaker. Sounds a little like a nightmare surround mix to me.

Leave it to the work of an interactive artist to “reinvent the guitar” in the reverse direction: who needs individual string pickups, when you can get six guitarists and give each one a one-string guitar. Then, have them climb atop a giant tower, get a percussionist to trigger drum samples at its base, and load the whole thing into a complex Max/MSP/Jitter and Ableton Live setup with donated hardware and software from M-Audio, Steinberg, Mackie, Canon, and others. Brilliant fundraising, bizarre thinking — I’m sold. IK Multimedia, can you get these crazy kids some Stealth Plug digital guitar cables in time for the performance?

What is the sound of one one-string guitarist clapping?

Six String Sonics [Pixelsumo]
Project page

Now, to work on finding 88 pianists to play 1-note keyboards . . . one note jamming will never be the same.

Régine of Near Near Future has some more interactive strings, along the lines of last week’s laser harp:

Interactive strings

(Cellists out there are probably wondering why the idea of “interactive strings” is new. Well, clearly you don’t und. . . um . . . okay, you’ve got me.)

Anyway, this stuff is big business. Artist David Small got a gig here in NYC with cosmetics giant L’oreal; his poetry harp triggers billowing poetry.

As for the op_era, I’m at a loss. First, it claims to be four-dimensional. (Okay, it exists in time I suppose — so does a Calder mobile.) Let’s let them explain that: “If the interactor proceeds through dimensions 1D to 2D, the prior dimension is incremented to the next (2= 2+1), a rule that also correspond to the integration of the body.” Wait a minute, what?! Maybe the last line says it best: “In this dimension, space visualization and cognition is only possible through simulation.”

Yes, this gets at the real reason for designing this interaction: to make you get really, really dizzy. Think I’m exaggerating? Try the QuickTime videos. Help!! . . . I’m falling into a big spiral hole . . . aaaaaaaaaaa . . . .

Okay, I’m behind on Steinberg. But the summer lineup from them is just making me yawn, I’m afraid:

Steinberg Studio Case II: Status: just announced. US$299, Windows/Mac September, watered-down versions of everything Steinberg makes. For entry level users, this could be a decent deal: Reason, by comparison, costs $450 and has a lousy sequencer and no audio recording. Ableton Live costs around $400 and doesn’t have as many instruments. But there’s nothing here to write home about: stripped-down versions of everything? Spend the extra couple of hundred bucks and get what you really need.

HALion String Edition: Status: just started shipping. This one appeals a little more to the snob in me: 9 GB, nothing but strings. Haven’t heard it yet, but it sounds like it could be first-rate. Of course, you’ll be missing several sections of the orchestra, but . . . wait . . . that’s kind of a problem, isn’t it? Then again, strings are usually the hardest to sample, so if you need some violins to supplement your existing sample library, maybe this is for you.

The Grand 2: Status: shipped in July. I missed this because I was busy with Native’s new product, Akoustik Piano. The Grand has a strong reputation, but also a lot of competition: aside from Native’s virtual piano, there’s the renowned PMI libraries, cheap offerings from M-Audio, Ivory, and basically a zillion sampled pianos everywhere from Logic to Kontakt to MOTU Mach Five. What’s cool here: key click, pedal and hammer sounds and four-channel surround implementation. Upgrades are just US$99, and the whole thing runs US$299, so it’s bargain priced, and unlike some Steinberg products, it supports VST, DXi and AU (though Digi fans, you’re stuck with ReWire — no TDM/RTAS). Only time will tell: I want to get The Grand and Akoustik Piano and others together and see which sounds best.

Bottom line:

Studio Case II: Diet Steinberg? Ho-hum.

HALion String Edition: Why not a full orchestral edition?

The Grand 2: Verdict reserved until the Akoustik Piano shootout.

“The dream of a violin that can play itself has tantalized inventors for over a century.” Well . . . mad scientist inventors, maybe, along with dreams of self-cleaning carrots and ironing boards that can go into battle.

Nonetheless, here it is: I give you the Gulbransen Virtuoso Violin, a QRS Pianomation Player Violin. Put on a violin piece, and it sounds like the violin is really there — because it is. Ain’t no digital samples here, just a MIDI-controlled bow hacking away at a real violin.

List price, $20,000, but for some reason it’s at a fire sale bargain-basement discount bin price of US$12,500.

I’d love to feed it some unplayable Max/MSP patch, but they’ll have to let me get my hands on it first. And if there are audio samples there, I can’t get at them. Anyone else know about this bizarre invention? You’ll also find other instruments on the site, like the . . . hold on, this calls for another post. Thanks, LeMel!

Rope and Sound is an installation that uses rope tension to control sound. Pull on a cord, and the change in tension triggers electronic thuds and mellow chimes. The trick is conductive fibers braided into the rope; as the tension changes, the conduction of the rope changes, as well.

I got a chance to try out the installation at New York’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. The show is up through October 30 and well worth a visit if you’re passing through town. The installation is beautiful and the concept brilliant, but the sound aspect was somewhat disappointing. The sounds themselves were compelling, but the ropes act like simple buttons: sounds are triggered as you cross a set threshold. If the whole point is the ability to monitor stress, why doesn’t that translate into sound? A velocity-sensitive keyboard is more expressive. That said, I think the underlying concept is terrific, so expect to see more use of conductive fibers in new sound interfaces.

If you’re near Emoryville, California, you can meet up with the Squid Labs folks who built this and other projects. (via O’Reilly Radar) And you can even one-up them by showing your own project. If you go, let me know what goes down!

[UPDATE:] I went to the source and asked Ben Recht (MIT Media Lab) about why the strings weren’t sensitive. In fact, they were! The reason they modulated timbre and not velocity was that he felt velocity was too hard to calibrate for different visitors. (And, obviously calibration is an issue, since I didn’t notice the timbre modulation.) This certainly demonstrates the challenges in designing new interfaces. And it also suggests that even with new designs, you need musicians to become adept at using the interface expressively.

Ben Dove’s String Thing is a cello-like instrument with four metal bars that can be struck or stroked. Like a fretless instrument, pitch is continuous.

Building String Thing: Laser Pointers and Vibrating Rods: What’s great about the String Thing is two-fold: first, it’s an ingenious design, and second, Ben rigorously documents how he did it, including some false starts. The steel rods are a “stroke” of genius: using magnets, the rods “vibrate” as you play them for physical feedback, while a sophisticated combination of laser pointers and webcams calculate your finger position. There’s plenty of expressive control, as well, though the limited Max/MSP-based demo video doesn’t quite do the sophistication of the controller justice. Ben has an impressive resume of other projects, as well.

See also: Haken Audio’s Continuum controller, which also works from the premise of providing continuous pitch control instead of the limitations of a keyboard. Via Regine / WWMNA.