52 Reason and Record Tips Week 4 – Unlocking the Secrets of CV and Gate. from James Bernard on Vimeo.

Reason and Record may lack plug-in support, but what they do have – open-ended patching between the available modules, in the tradition of analog synthesizers – opens up plenty of creative possibilities. The only sad news is that many Reason uses don’t take full advantage of that depth.

Here are three tutorials to get you started, if you’re not familiar with how to do this (or if you need a video to send your friends to get them patching). At top, James Bernard continues his 52 tips in 52 weeks series with a general look at how the CV and gate connections work. From Propellerhead’s Matt Piper, we have two videos with guitar, one routing through Malström and the other through the Thor synth. Matt tells me that in the Malström vid, “once the patch creation portion starts (at 0:36), there are no edits thereafter– it is a ‘live performance’ that I hope is somewhat musical.”

It’s all good stuff, and of course it’s terrific to be able to combine Reason and Record in order to get audio routing through the modular system – “’bout time” I believe is the phrase I’m looking for. At the same time, I’m sure that doesn’t ease the frustration of Reason users who don’t like the idea of having to buy Record just to get audio. I can understand the perception there, though at least there are some crossgrade offers. It’s a tricky question: the Props could have added basic audio functionality to Reason, but then, once you do have audio, you might start asking for all the other stuff that’s in Record. (The mixer, more audio effects, audio track management and editing – work through that wish list, and you can see why they have another product.) To me, the interesting question now will be who will upgrade and who won’t.

Speaking of Propellerhead news, a number of readers have noted this announcement on the Propellerhead site:

“Do you want to help us test the music software of the future? Are you a Reason/Record power user? Can you keep a secret? If your answer is yes to all three questions, maybe you would like to join the Propellerhead Test Pilots?”

I don’t actually know whether this is Reason 5 or something else. I expect I will find out, at which point I’ll be sworn to secrecy. In the meantime, for anyone else who doesn’t know, feel free to commence the rampant speculation. And if you’re a current user, you can try signing up for the limited testing pool.

And here’s part two of using guitar and synth in Reason/Record, which also includes a downloadable Combinator patch.

Propellerhead Record + Reason: Playing Guitar Through the Reason Synths (Part Two)

Being a digital musician requires a new set of skills, a precise tack between the forces of engineering and creativity. Robert Henke aka Monolake is always someone I find thought-provoking, not only because he’s so open and articulate, but because he seems uniquely focused on balancing those two sides of his personality. As a media artist and producer, his work relies heavily on his own technological invention, but he is also able to keep true to his own aesthetic compass.

For acoustic evidence of where Robert’s mind is exploring, his full-length album Silence, released last month on his own Imbalance label, reverberates with clarity. To my own ears, its crystalline rhythms and finely-honed, always-foreground timbres and textures recall all the best of Monolake through the years, back to the early, pre-Ableton collaboration between Robert and (now Ableton CEO) Gerhard Behles. (For an eloquent review, see Fact Magazine’s take.)

As far as engineering in the sense of recording and production, Robert did a terrific interview with engineer/musician Caro Snatch for her blog; she gets some fascinating answers out of him and they even talk about his technique of avoiding compression on electronic sources. But I was interested in how engineering can work in the compositional sense: with open-ended tools like Ableton Live and Max/MSP, how do you create compositional systems? How do you wrestle with the potential of Max inside Live? Where do you draw limits?

As always, Robert has some sharp ideas – whether fodder for inspiration or disagreement, I think you’ll find things worth talking about. And indeed, while technology figures prominently, I think you’ll find some ideas that are really fundamentally about music, about compositional intent, thinking about sound, and thinking about rhythm.

PK: It seems that you’ve always had a really particular approach to timbre, and that it’s especially focused and evolved on this record. There’s a certain purity of tone to which you tend to gravitate, as I hear it. Can you talk a bit about how you approach timbral color?

RH: I can only nail it down to personal taste. I enjoy timbres with inharmonic content, and I like the contrast between very sharp transients and very lush, airy sounds.

I know that Silence, as with your other work, combines synthesized and found sounds. There is a sense that you get to an almost atomic level with each, however, that the synthesized are becoming organic and the recorded sounds are deconstructed to the point that become almost primitive and synthesized. Is there a different approach to each of these, or is that something that happens naturally?

The ambiguity of sonic events always fascinates me. That border between ‘real’ and ’synthetic’ is a quite interesting one, not only in sound design, but also in visual arts. Working with synthetic sound generation sharpens my senses for the real sounds around me, and often I am surprised by how much they can blend. We are not talking any more of sound generation with a single square wave oscillator and a lowpass filter, but methods that are capable of creating highly complex and rich timbres. Those methods’ sonic definition matches the complexity of real sounds and this is where the fun starts. I like to place a recording of a metal thing next to a physical model of a metal thing next to a processed sample next to an FM timbre and see how they become a nice ensemble of similar sounds.

What’s your workflow like now in Ableton Live? On some level, it’s a tool that does things that you have conceived or asked for, or that reworks things you’ve created. On another, of course, it’s also this commercial tool that has been adapted to a generalized audience. Are there areas of it that you tend to work in most? Are there areas or features you tend to ignore or even avoid?

I try to avoid ‘content’. I am not interested in ‘throwing beat loops together’. I do not use presets from other people when it comes to synthesis, this all is just not my way of thinking. Why should I leave that great part of composition which is coming up with interesting timbres, to someone else? I am also not using time stretching / warping as a tool to match beats. I don’t like time stretch artefacts, unless I drive it in the very extreme as a special effect. I don’t need factory groove templates, in fact I never you groove at all, if i want to achieve it, I move notes by hand.

Apart from that, I’d say I use everything Live has to offer. There is not typical workflow, it highly depends on what I want to do. The most significant difference to the old pre-Live times is to me that I can make lots of sketches without any special idea in mind, just let go, and save the result once I am bored with it. And much later I can open all those sketches, and see if anything in there is of interest. Then I grab that element and continue working on the basis of this. I have a lot of complex tree structures of fragments on my hard-disk, and this a great source of material and inspiration.

Recently, you shared some of your early, personal Max patches as Max for Live creations. Were any of these patches used on Silence?

I don’t mean to focus exclusively on the technology, but it seems that these Max patches – even more than any element of Live – really embody some of your aesthetic and taste, yes? They’re a bit like experiencing a Monolake album interactively. Do you conceive them in that way, as a sort of compositional thought formed into a tool?

The tools have a strong influence on the result. Take the Monolake PX-18 sequencer. Its way of expanding a one bar loop into something that repeats in longer cycles is based on such a rigid concept, that it enforces a quite specific rhythmical approach. Some patterns are simply not possible, some are very easy to achieve. This is exciting and this is very musical; a piano is an instrument which makes it very easy to treat all twelve notes of a well tempered scale the same. And it is an instrument which makes it impossible to play with any notes that do not fit in such a scale. This is exactly the same interesting tension between enabling and inhibiting expression as with the rhythmical limitation of the PX-18.

There is an interesting interaction going on between developing tools and achieving musical results. The whole process is far from being linear and entirely result orientated. The idea at the beginning is shaped by first results and experiences gained from playing with a simple prototype of a part of the functionality, this drives the further development of the tool, but also influences the musical idea. If I try to build a granular time freezer, and after initial tests I figure out that I need a lot of overlapping grains to get the sound I want, I can also start thinking in swarms of particles, and this might lead to musical ideas that shape how I try to improve the grain thing. Working this way often provides far more interesting results than sticking to an initial plan. As an interesting side note, this way of thinking also finds its way more and more into general software/hardware development and interface/functionality design. The tools of the future need to _feel_ right. One cannot design a multi touch screen application on a piece of paper, implement it and think it will work. It would, technically, but it might not be inspiring to use and therefor most likely not a success in a competitive market.

A few years ago, when you were in New York, you made a couple of comments that stuck with me. One was that you thought that the tech press sometimes wasn’t critical enough of technology, that, for instance, they weren’t saying critical things about Ableton Live. Another was that you felt like there was less need for Max/MSP partly because of what Live itself does. I’m curious if you have any new thoughts on either of those?

I find myself doing a lot of things in Max these days, since the integration in Live made it so easy and rewarding. When I made that Max statement in NYC, I felt that coding is a trap when it comes to actually creating music. One simply does spend to much time with non-musical problems.In many ways, Max 5 and Max for Live reduced the time needed to get results. And this makes the whole package very attractive again.

I started teaching sound design at the Berlin University of Arts a year ago. I can show my students how to create a simple two-operator FM synthesizer with an interesting random modulation within fifteen minutes and the result is a Live set including the Max for Live part, which I can save and send to the students as an email so they can open it again an continue working on it. If stuff can be done that fast, it leaves enough headroom to actually use it in a musical context. In retrospective a lot of 90s IDM music was way to much driven by exploring technology. At some point one has to step back and say: okay, now lets actually have a look at the composition and not only at the technical complexity of the algorithm.

So, what’s the role of the press in this? One experience I gain from reading the Ableton user forum and from talking with students is that there is a great amount of insecurity about which technology to use. It’s the abundance paradox. Which software sounds best? Which compressor do i need to use? Which plugins do I need for mastering housy dub music with a hint of pop and some acoustic guitar? Having the choice between 5000 compressor plugins whilst not understanding what makes a compressor really sound the way it does it pretty much my idea of hell. So often I have that impulse telling the world: hey, you can use the sidechain input of the compressor you already have in Live, and you can feed that sidechain with a slightly delayed version of the original signal. You could also apply saturation, filtering, or even reverb or again an instance of the compressor in that side chain signal to shape its timing and response to its input. This will have a result of the compression curve, and this means you can build anything from a very normal compressor up to the most exotic effect you can imagine. And you can store those structures for later re-use. You can automate every single aspect of it. You can use ten or twenty instances of it in a song. Are you guys aware that you have more power right in front of you than the best music producers and hardware designers just ten years ago would have dreamed off?

I simply do not want to read any more articles about new compressor, be it hardware or software, unless it provides insight into the amazing possibilities we already have. I don’t want to read anymore sound quality discussions that deal with the last bit of a 24-bit file in a world where people listen to mp3 over mobile phones and enjoy those artefacts.

The most exciting new music comes from young kids guys running some audio software in a bedroom, listening to the result over a shitty hi-fi and use Melodyne all the way wrong. Those folks do not read gear magazines, they could not care less about yet another mastering EQ, but create the most stunning beauty. If people talk too much about gear I usually do not expect too much good music. I am often trapped in this twilight zone between engineer and composer too, so I know what I am talking about here…

As far as your own music, do you find you need some critical distance from a tool as an artist? Or does that fall away once you’re in the process of actually making the record? (It seems, after all, we’re all a bit spoiled by the various excellent tools we have at our disposal.)

Deadlines help. If I know that a project needs to be finished, I simply stop investing time in technology at some point, and instead use what’s there. Its a question of discipline and experience too. I try to teach my students that if they are working on a technically challenging project they need to define a deadline for the technical side. If not, they might work till the very last moment on technical stuff and loose focus on the artistic part. At the end, the result counts, not the beautiful MAX patch, which could possible create a nice result.

And have you ever considered trying to return to just building something simple in, say, Max, and limiting yourself to that? Or are you able to find necessary formal limitations in the tools you have?

I am constantly limiting myself. I set up a multi-dimensional network of constraints and bounce off its walls. Exhausting but it helps getting stuff done. A typical constraint: No more patching in Max till that project is finished, or try to get all Melodyne processing done in one afternoon and use those results.

I’m particularly interested in how you conceive rhythm. It seems like some of the ideas about sequencing rhythm in ATOM are also present here. Some of these rhythms are relatively symmetrical, pulse-like. Then you have these stuttering rhythms, as though a vibration has been set in motion and is naturally playing itself out in space. How do you work rhythmically?

I contrast totally straight 16th grooves with material that itself constitutes a rhythmical quality off that grid. In ‘Silence’ obviously I often used gravity driven processes with their inherent accelerations. Or I played notes with an arpeggiator that is not synced to song time but where I control its rate with a slider. Something Gerhard already did on the very first Monolake track ‘Cyan’ in 1995. Silence offers quite a few hidden connections to Monolake history. My general approach to groove is simple: I change things in time till it feels right.

What was your compositional process like, generally, for these works? Did they start with some of those sounds? With a rhythmic motive?

There is no general rule. I often just open Live to explore an idea, and end up doing something else because I found an interesting detail along the way. Or I have to work on a highly specific project, and have to discard a lot of the results because they do not work in a given context. Instead of throwing them away, I keep them and this might form the basis for another composition.

The title, “Silence,” certainly recalls John Cage. Was that intentional? Were there other meanings here? In an album that’s not silent, what is the role of silence?

Silence is such a great concept. There is no silence, unless in a vacuum, its that great mystic world which cannot exist in our world. Also, in music the time between the musical events is as important as the events itself. But I really leave it up to the associations of the listener to make sense of the title. And of the liner notes and the photographs and the music. I think there is a lot of room for all sorts of connections and connotations.

When we talked at the end of last year, we got to reflect a bit about winter. I’m editing this as I watch a snowstorm here in Manhattan, having come from snowstorms in Stockolm. It seems that winter is again a thread on this record. How did winter play into the album?

I grew up in the Bavarian countryside. Winter there equals silence, introversion, deep thinking, and general inwards focus. I like this.

http://monolake.de/
Free Max for Live patch downloads: http://monolake.de/technology/m4l.html
Silence: http://monolake.de/releases/ml-025.html

How to do mpc pad finger drumming from Brandon Murphy on Vimeo.

Composer, musician, and drummer Brandon Murphy has put together a how-to video on playing and programming beats with a 4×4 grid. One reason to pay attention: he’s a real drummer, and had been just as skeptical about the value of all this as you probably are:

I’ve been using an MPC longer than I’ve owned a computer and something that never appealed to me was “finger drumming”. It evoked thoughts of s***ty 80’s outdoor music festival wankery, dudes with offensive looking devices strapped around their necks and lots of synthetic “tom tom” fills. Even recently speaking, “live MPC” usually implied super played out “battle” routine style stuff. Fortunately, a new generation of talented producers and performers decided to reclaim the drum machine’s potential as a realtime performance instrument (right around the time MPC’s were kind of running out of steam I’ll add).

What changed his mind? Artists doing things drummers can’t, and making production more productive in the process. (Check out the video and his full blog post for more.)

The resulting technique he uses isn’t so much about the MPC or even his tool of choice, Ableton Live, as it is finding a comfortable mapping that makes composing and performing beats more ergonomic. After sharing various tips at the Chicago Ableton Users Group, Brandon has put together the technique above.

To me, it suggests ideas not only about making quick drum breaks, but also assembling pitch generally into arrangements that help you play. Coming from a piano background, I do believe that arrangement and layout of keys can be important, and that even a simple (12-tone equal temperament? black and white?) configuration can turn out to have incredible potential. Of course, this does also reveal why a 4×4 grid is valuable, even as 8×8 or larger monome-style arrays catch on.

Got tips or techniques of your own? Find you can play Javanese slendro a whole lot faster on your custom hexagonal keypad on your dodec-o-phone? Let us know in comments. (Comments currently under moderation, but they’ll appear after a short delay.)

Working with music production today is a bit like science fiction. It’s fitting that visions of technology’s promise, menace, and humanity would inspire electronic music.

Create Digital Music, XLR8R, and Pitchfork got to join together with TV network SyFy to curate a free, 13-track compilation of “Music for Our Future.” Inspired by the world of SyFy’s new TV series Caprica, which is set just before the recently-concluded Battlestar Galactica, this is science fiction as the familiar. It’s the near future, not simply fantasy.

Download the full compilation for free, exclusively at:

http://www.xlr8r.com/musicforourfuture

The lineup, curated by the three publications, includes the likes of Lusine, Willits & Sakamoto, The Field, and Richard Devine, to name a few regular favorites on this site, with exclusive or previously-unreleased tracks by White Rainbows, Nice Nice, and myself.

In addition to the music, several of those artists share with CDM their techniques and process.

The full tracks:

Lusine, “Gravity” – this cut comes from A Certain Distance, a CDM favorite album in 2009. Lusine aka Jeff McIlwain is on Ghostly Internationaland, whether it’s  “abstract” electronica or downright electronic songwriting, always manages to put a unique sonic stamp on his work.

Atlas Sound, “Walkabout (with Noah Lennox)” is by Bradford James Cox of Deerhunter fame, from his album Logos.

Hudson Mohawke, “Fuse” – the Glasgow-based artist just debuted on Warp with Butter, including this track.

White Rainbow, “Raw Shanks a Million” comes from Kranky artist Adam Fornker of Oregon. It was my introduction to his work, but see more on this track below. I love its spare, pulsing beats; it sounds like what I’d listen to while jogging to Caprica City’s cybernetics research institute.

King Midas, Sound “Outta Space (Slow Version)” comes from a project started by London’s Kevin Martin, the man behind The Bug. It’s a future-dub track for people who believe space is the place.

Low Limit, “Turf Day” is by San Francisco producer Bryan Rutledge, whom I knew as half of Lazer Sword, and who seems to be right at the center of the good stuff happening in electronic music in California.

Willits & Sakamoto, “Toward Water” comes from 2008’s “Ocean Fire,” the collaboration between experimental guitarist and composer Christopher WIllits and master composer-musician Ryuichi Sakamoto. If you don’t know that full album already, it’s well worth owning.

The Field, “I Have The Moon, You Have The Internet (Gold Panda Remix) revisits the track off The Field’s latest, “Yesterday and Today” – another top pick for 2009, and nicely reimagined here. You can check out Gold Panda, too; his mixes have become big Internet hits, and I love the quality of his work.

Tyondai Braxton, “Uffe’s Woodshop” is off his solo album Central Market and premiered on Pitchfork. The Battles singer is a Warp artist, composer, looper, and yes, indeed the son of Anthony Braxton. It’s an explosion of acoustic sounds amidst the other works here.

Untold, “Luna” is by London’s up-and-coming Jack Dunning, familiar on dance floors both for his original productions and remixes.

Nice Nice, “See Waves” will be a 7” from Warp Records in February, but you get to hear it here first. I love that it brings an entirely different rhythmic feel to this group.

Richard Devine, “Matvec Interior (Feat. Otto Von Schirach)” really is science fiction, an intricate set of colliding sonic forms from the composer and mad-scientist sound designer. It’s a favorite from his 2005 Cautella, but Richard revisits his sonic process for CDM here today.

Peter Kirn, “Anaxagoras” is my own track, premiering here, named for the Greek philosopher who attempted to explain astrological events through science, and fled after being called a heretic. The music, with some sounds of viola da gamba and others synthesized (or resynthesized), fall on that boundary between re-processed past and imminent future.

Now, some notes from behind the scenes:

White Rainbow

CDM: Tell us about the inspiration for this track. What was the process like?

I don’t get inspired to make something in the sense of looking at a butterfly and then writing a song. For me, it’s more like the act of making inspires where things go. The sounds as they come out inspire me to react and create on top of them.

This track was made by recording about an hour of live improv and then editing and cutting down and doing a few overdubs. My set up is:

INPUTS:
mic, computer running ableton using drum racks to trigger samples with a padkontrol, various iphone/ipod touch drum apps (beat maker, idrum etc), synth, electric guitar

MIXED/OUTPUT:

delay, multi –fx, dd-20 giga delay as looper, kaoss pad kp3 as multi-fx and looper

…and this all getting recorded into ableton on another computer in the studio.

I let that sit for a few months, then came back to it, cut things down and added vocal (with the Ableton Looper…one of the only times I’ve used that) and weird synth pad overdubs.

I’ve been making looper based music for a really long time now (going back to the original boomerang pre turn of the century). It’s really tough to keep it interesting… so I’m always looking and searching for new ways to keep myself interested and inspired to make new music in new ways.

I also play in an improvised electronic group called Rob Walmart, wherein we get very wrong and stupid and on tons of crappy gear. Tons of Casio keyboards, MicroKORGs, iPod Touches, Nintendo DS, microphones, etc.A new 3xLP of Rob Walmart will come out on Marriage Records early this year.

People probably still brand me as a new age or psychedelic ambient guy, and that’s cool but to me there is a direct line between synth future funk from the 70s and 80s and say, tangerine dream or Klaus Schultze. Just technology inspiring different people to make wild, "out there" space sounds. I would like to continue along that line.

Richard Devine

CDM: What can you tell us about this track?

I originally produced it in 2005, in collaboration with my good friend Otto Von Schirach. I was a going for something very alien, futuristic, scifi, scientific and unusual for this piece. The sonic timbres and textures are a combination of hybrid computer synthesis and field recordings. Think Aliens vs. Predator happening inside the world of HR Gigers head=)  The track initially started out in Logic Audio, I began cutting up sections and pieces of various field recorded bits. I went to many locations to get some of the sound sources. Many of them quite unusual and disturbing.

CDM: Your work always has these extraordinary layers of sound. What was the production process like on this track?

I started out on this farm near my house here in Georgia. It was during fall, and we went to this Halloween festival pumpkin patch place with my girlfriend. It was a huge field that had a petting zoo, and various other farm animals. I was intrigued by this fairly large turkey they had in a small metal wired cage. I record several takes of him frantically moving around as I got closer with my microphone. I also recorded the sounds of pigs, breathing heavy into the microphones.

I had a pair of DPA 4060’s Miniature Body Microphones clipped and tucked into my shirt sleeves to capture the animals up in close proximity. I also recorded sounds of water, sand, rocks, trees, leaves and debris in my backyard. I used a lot of these sounds and then imported them into the computer for heavy processing and manipulation. One of the main processing engines was the Kyma system by Symbolic Sound. I took a few sounds and converted them into spectral analysis files in which I morphed and re-synthesized some of the acoustic sounds into synthetic grains, or partials. Creating these very alien artificial sounding sounds to the mix. I also did a bit of FM synthesis for some of the percussion. Lots of intense programming in hundreds of layers of processed bits. You will notice that each bar in the composition never repeats, the same sounds or sequences. This was completely intentional. I wanted the entire sonic experience to be kinda like a roller-coaster ride of audio frequency dynamics. I also tried to experiment with interesting new breaks, and redefine what could be considered song structure adhering to no rules or constraints.

CDM: Given the complexity, structurally, of this music, do you tend to iterate through a track over many layers?

I spend weeks, months sometimes designing the sounds, and trying to get all the pieces to work together. Almost like a complex microsound jigsaw puzzle, but the pieces are very fractalized and tiny. Each sound I painfully program by hand. I take each sound as if it was a sculpture piece. I look at the sound in 3D structure. I often compare the sounds to architectural shapes, structures, and manipulate them one section at a time. I read the waveforms and sculpt them into what I want. I then add the pieces together to work into a composition as a whole. This is the most difficult part in my work in making everything seem fluid and natural. It is often difficult to make the transitions work within a short amount of time especially when you have so many sounds and textures you want to squeeze into a 5 or 6 minute track.

Lusine

CDM: What was your process like, creatively – particularly in regards to the vocals?

It was a very long process. It started off as something totally different. Some sort of downtempo disco type track with much more lyrical vocals. But, after several months I realized it wasn’t working for me, so I approached the whole thing from scratch, resampled everything and made a more minimal downtempo track out of it.

The vocals started off a lot more obviously upfront, but I decided to use them more as a musical layer, so I resampled the completed vocal track and started shuffling the bits around. It felt better to me, like the musical layers in the song weren’t competing with the vocals as much.

Ed.: I’ll be curious to hear your thoughts on the compilation, especially since it represents three very different musical perspectives (which to me wound up making the experience richer). The TV show Caprica, for its part, premieres January 22 with another great Bear McCreary soundtrack (I’ve been listening already, as a fan of his scores).

Trifonic: Editing Beats – Part 1 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

No more secrets: that could well sum up the zeitgeist of music making in 2010. So it is that Trifonic, aka virtuoso beatmeister brothers Brian and Laurence Trifon of San Francisco, share their technique for chopping up and glitching out audio. Their new blog, Next Step Audio, is entirely dedicated to sharing their production techniques:

http://nextstepaudio.com/ [site slightly erratic response-wise for me at press time]

The video tutorial on beat editing, published by Next Step Audio, starts out generically enough: grab the ubiquitous “Amen break” as a sample, load it into Apple’s Logic Pro, slice it by beat and adjust to transients, gate… but Trifonic explains how they take the results further, drawing envelopes for modulation and winding up with something far removed for the original. Of course, if you’re fatigued of the “Amen break,” you could apply the same technique to samples of your own playing, and you could substitute your DAW of choice, from Live to Pro Tools, for the editing.

Part of what makes this tutorial compelling is that the duo has a distinctive musical identity, rather than being the anonymous, all-knowing voice music tech instructors had tried to be in the past. It’s worth checking out their music, too. Digitally-distorted, glitching beats had threatened to become a tired cliche years ago, but Trifonic combines those sharper digital timbres with rich, warm layers of sound. The shifting textures of the video for “Parks on Fire,” a big single for them, matches that musical structure perfectly in visuals. (The video is the work of the terrific Scott Pagano, an LA-based visualist.)

There’s plenty more music to share, too, and you can even grab a free Trifonic bass patch for Logic’s EXS24 and Native Instruments’ Kontakt 3 (or compatible samplers, which includes just about everything).

You can grab a free MP3 of Trifonic’s “Transgenic” in the “Rust Mix”:

And Trifonic are regular contributors to ccMixer, the Creative Commons-licensed remix site. They’ve got loads of work under an attribution / non-commercial license. That has, in turn, encouraged a crop of remixes of their work, which seems in keeping with the techniques they’re espousing.

(See my rant last week for some concerns about the non-commercial license relative to images. It’s less of an issue, I think, with samples, but I do hope to connect with the CC folks soon and talk on CDM about the relative advantages of Non-Commercial versus ShareAlike or some combination.)

http://ccmixter.org/people/trifonic

In part two of the beat editing tutorial, Trifonic go further with glitching and special effects.

As noted by commenter Bryan Gilstein, “It doesn’t matter, we’ll go nuts with it.”

Amen, brother.

Trifonic: Editing Beats – Part 2 from Next Step Audio on Vimeo.

Trifonic have a bass patch sample that they share for free, too, in EXS24 and Kontakt 3 formats. It’s a wobble bass, yes, but with a few nice twists.

Good music, good production tips – I’m sold. (Now, is anyone else aside from me thinking about how these techniques could become real-time / live instruments?)

Lots more Trifonic at the artists’ website:
http://www.trifonic.com

See also:
Tirfonic @ rcrdlbl [free music]
Trifonic @ Last.fm

…and I’ll see them next week in LA, where I’m sharing a big bill with them at the unofficial NAMM afterparty (more details on that soon):
http://whambamthankyounamm.com/

Laptop musicians are feeling out of sync — literally. But we can work together to help the situation.

Computer music making can be an isolating experience. But when users try to use their eminently-mobile tools to play together in the same room, they often find that the technology resists. MIDI, as a serial protocol, isn’t designed for networked environments. Software interfaces are designed to be visible to only one user. Sharing between users rarely figures into designs. Input points are made to be single-user only.

And most importantly, just getting a couple of computers to sync can be a Herculean task — one that seems to have gotten worse with advanced computer software rather than better. In short, for all the technology we have today, we’ve actually regressed from the state of interoperability 20 years ago.

I’ve been hearing more and more frustration over sync, as people begin to collaborate with multiple computers as they would with a small ensemble of instruments. Ableton Live is the most frequent example, but it’s only one case – and I suspect part of the fault is that people are more likely to try to sync multiple copies of Live. When I spoke to Depeche Mode’s Martin Gore in the spring for Keyboard, Martin complained that they had trouble syncing his Apple Logic sessions with other band members using Pro Tools and Ableton. This weekend in Los Angeles at the DubSpot sessions, Glitch Mob’s Justin Boreta talked about the issues that group has had with multiple copies of Live.

Synchronization is, by definition, a tough thing to do. But musical engineering is replete with challenges; it’s no longer acceptable to simply say “live with it” and walk away. It seems we need both better shared knowledge about what sync is how to make it work, and better engineering solutions on the software and protocols side to support the way users want to work. And yes, we need a new sync standard that goes beyond what’s presently available in MIDI alone.

Focusing this discussion, I just got an essay in my inbox that I think focuses the issue. I will try to speak to Ableton’s engineers about the matter, but this isn’t really about Ableton alone, so I’m posting it here first. We could use more data about how you’re working with various software and hardware, what techniques you’ve developed, and what frustrations you’ve had. We have a wide community here of users and developers (and a whole lot of you are both).

Mark Kunoff writes:

I’m writing to you today about an issue which I believe has been a sore spot for many Ableton Live users – *reliable* syncing of two or more computers – particularly for those of us who are attempting to sync for the purposes of *live performance*.

My musical partner Patrick Petro and I (together we perform as “Othership”) have been struggling with this issue for several years now. At present time, we have a decent solution using midi time code. Initially we attempted to use Midi “clock” but our friend Steve Duda (partner of Deadmau5 in BSOD) informed us, “using Midi clock is as reliable as syncing to a boat motor.” He informed us that in BSOD, he and Deamau5 have reliable sync between their 2 laptops using MTC, although the main drawback is the inability to fluctuate tempo – you must run at a consistent tempo the whole time. (You may be aware of this already, but Steve is the person responsible for ‘Molar’ the incredible step and loop sequencer for the Monome, was a programmer for Devine Machine and has worked for many renown artists in the music industry such as Trent Reznor. We are very fortunate to benefit from his consultation!)

Currently we are both using Macbooks and syncing via Ethernet with Audio File Engineering’s “Backline” app to generate MTC. This method has been about 95% reliable, but after reading an article on Ableton Tweets (http://abletontweets.com/post/126300941/why-midi-sync-over-ip-may-not-be-a-good-idea and our response – http://abletontweets.com/post/224247258/midi-sync-in-ableton-live-why-so-complicated) we are going to acquire a dedicated external device to generate MTC such as a Motu Timepiece.

I feel strongly that Ableton has not addressed these issues sufficiently and could do a better job of educating their user base as to the challenges that face performers in achieving reliable sync. I’m not expecting a walk in the park, but as of yet Ableton has not provided comprehensive documentation regarding these issues and places most of the responsibility on users to figure it out for themselves. We are (and have been) perfectly willing to educate ourselves but for the most part this issue remains elusive to the majority of Ableton Live users.

The Ableton Live forum posts regarding sync are fraught with dissension and are excruciating to read to say the least. I feel I’m empathetic to the complexities of programming audio applications, but in my estimation Ableton tech support’s explanations toward this issue have been mostly open ended. Many users report these issues only to report back that Ableton’s tech support doesn’t respond. I have experienced this as well. Certainly there are enough customers who want a better solution.

I feel it’s time to launch a concerted effort to organize users and demand that Ableton addresses this issue once and for all. Perhaps this solution wouldn’t even involve midi at all. Ideally this would be an open protocol such as OSC, but I wouldn’t be opposed to a proprietary solution – just as long as there is a reliable one.

The main purpose of this correspondence is seek your and CDM’s assistance in sponsoring an effort to encourage Ableton to address this issue once and for all. I feel CDM could be quite helpful in garnering leverage toward this effort (a simple blog post, or ideally a dedicated section) to organize users and to demand better sync ability between two (or even multiple) laptops running Live – even from unlike computer manufacturers. I’m sure you know artists with valuable expertise in this area.

Even if the issues regarding sync via midi are insurmountable, there have to be CDM readers who have developed reliable methods of two or more persons performing with Ableton Live and it would be great to have one centralized portal where discussions of working methods can be discovered.

Thank you for your time.

Again, my personal intention is not to single out Ableton — I’ve heard similar complaints about other scenarios, and moreover, I think the “open-ended” tech support response occurs when there isn’t an easy solution. Tech support alone often can’t deal with something as multi-faceted as sync, so it’s time to engage other users in this, as well.

I’ve also spoken to Owen Vallis and other folks about how sync could be executed more effectively over network protocols, and specifically how the time stamp feature in OpenSoundControl might be used in conjunction with MIDI clock messages.

To kick things off, let’s comment here, but I’m also setting up a special Noisepages group for users to share experiences and tips:

Sync or Swim Group [noisepages]

(Incidentally, CDM contributor Matt Ganucheau is joining me Saturday at a WordPress developer intensive here in New York, so we’ll be picking up development techniques to work on the Noisepages community, too.)

Jump in, say hello, and let’s talk about how we can make sync work in real-life musical situations.

I’ll also be talking to more artists and developers about their experiences and suggestions, and will pass along your feedback, so expect a report back. In the meantime:

1. Are you routinely trying to sync multiple musicians?
2. What software (and hardware) tools do you use?
3. What have been some frustrations?
4. What techniques have worked, or what have you learned you might want to pass along to other users at various skill levels?

Designing Sound, as the name implies, focuses entirely on the craft of audio from film to games. While there are industry-driven sites devoted to the topic, this blog is entirely the labor of love of composer and sound designer Miguel Isaza, whose writing has also appeared on Spain’s Hispasonic and Monofónicos. (Miguel also tweets to Reaktor aficionados as reaktorlovers.) That personal perspective has imbued the site with the feeling of artists talking to artists.

http://designingsound.noisepages.com/

All week, Designing Sound has focused on Rob Bridgett, who has worked on numerous sound designs for games. Despite the massive growth of the game industry, most top artists have worked largely in obscurity – even less so in sound. There isn’t an equivalent of Ben Burtt, Randy Thom, Walter Murch, or others. (Those greats have been featured in Designing Sound specials, too.) Gaming is a young industry, to be sure, but that’s no excuse for simple ignorance.

In this week’s interviews with Isaza, Bridgett talks frankly about every last detail of what goes into sound production. He’s frank not only about what can go right in a game production – Scarface, pictured above, gets special treatment – but also what can go wrong. The brutal deadlines, fluid production parameters, and tangled production process of games can exact a toll on sound in gaming. The high point of this: Bridgett has gotten to employ the full resources of Skywalker Sound and has been at the forefront of bringing Hollywood-style sonic treatment to gaming.

I’m sure many readers here are curious about the games industry. There’s still time to forward your own questions to Miguel to pass along to Rob Bridgett.

Exclusive interview

Rob Bridgett Special

Ask your own questions

Incidentally, this is beyond what we even imagined for our fledgling noisepages.com, which we’re readying for a full launch as a community and blogging platform. Miguel created Designing Sound without prompting or assistance – it’s entirely his vision. It’s great to have people sharing information in this way. I can’t wait to see what’s ahead.

Imagine a nightmarish, dark-world, alternative-reality version of Wii Music, one that sends Miyomato-san screaming. That’s what you get from tokoloten, in a very un-Nintendo noise performance, as found on comments. The Wii is just one of his tools:

tokoloten uses a variety of objects such as magnet motors, infrared devices, game controllers… in order to hide his lack of conventional technic. Depending on the venue, the show might be ambient-like, experimental or electronica with weird cinematographic references. But it most often combines all of this.
tokoloten is based in Lausanne, Switzerland.

It’s proof that the controller – any controller – is in the hands of the creator, and what it sounds like is entirely undetermined.

Mapping a hardware input to a sound means making an abstract connection between one physical action and another sonic reaction. What that relationship is is entirely up to you. I was honestly a bit surprised by some of the impassioned critical reactions to yesterday’s brief mention of the use of the Wiimote as a studio recording. Of course, that proves the creed of the blogger – post first, ask questions later, and when in doubt, just post. Amidst some of the frustration, there are some good discussions, though I do dream of an Internet on which we criticize content without name-calling.

But the reality remains: controllers are always abstracted from the sound, by definition, and whether they’re satisfying to you depends on how you’ve mapped them. I don’t know what qualifies as innovative, but then, there have been times when I’ve very much enjoyed turning a knob, so “innovation” isn’t always what matters to me. I tend to fall back on Duke Ellington – “if it sounds good, it is good.” For controllers, that means “if it feels good, it is good.” You’re the one with the controller in your hands.

For an alternative example, musician/artist Kassen has an excellent session on improvising with custom software and game controllers. Below, you can catch some of his talk from Amsterdam’s famed STEIM research center, which has a long history of researching the controller-music connection. After all these years asking that question, what we have is …more questions. But that’s a beautiful thing.

Kassen (DJ, performer, ChucK programmer) from STEIM Amsterdam on Vimeo.

Part of the reason I’ve never liked “controllerism” as a term – sorry, Moldover – is that there is no clear technique, no clear sound, no particular discipline. That is, I understand the case for the term and I’m glad there’s a discussion. But it seems to me that part of why controllerism is interesting is that there is no such thing as controllerism. The beauty of digital music is that you do have wide-open, blank-page possibilities. You can create your own system. It is abstract, simulation, ungrounded in physical reality. But while that is at odds with millenia of acoustic instrument-making, it’s also in tune with centuries of compositional and notational tradition, which are abstract. For the first time, the systems of how we conceive music can themselves become physical.

That to me is an exciting thing.

So, here’s a question — let’s take the example of sensors that handle orientation. How would you want to deal with them in music software, if they could be standardized, if any accelerometer or tilt sensor could announce its orientation? How do you decide which is the x, y, and z axis, for instance? How would you want the data normalized?

Seeing a tracker interface for the first time can be intimidating. But dive in a bit deeper, and you’ll discover what’s actually a very efficient interface for programming in musical sequences and working with samples. With just ten days left in the Renoise – Indamixx music production contest, there’s still time to get up and running using even the demo version of Renoise (into which you can import samples). And this could be a great excuse to learn a new tool.

Dac, who’s a big part of support and community for Renoise, has put together a nice tutorial showing off the workflow in the tool. It’s nothing all that unusual: bring in samples, assemble patterns, make music. Some of the voice over is hard to hear, but this is a good start. Now, I still like reading and writing better than video just in terms of how I learn, so I may try to work on a written version for the end of the week; feel free to shout encouragement.

For more Renoise inspiration, forum regular djnick sends along a PsyTrance video made in Renoise – so, yes, you can make PsyTrance with a tracker, too, if you like. He samples Peter Jennings talking about ecstasy. Yeah, whatever – as if you can make Peter Jennings any more trippy. Watching Jennings is the ultimate natural high.

And here’s the original jerk beat tutorial. (Hey, who are you calling a jerk beat? Sorry, that just can’t sound not strange when I hear that phrase…)

Enjoy. Got specific requests for how-to’s, other tips or tutorials you’ve found useful, or questions you’d like answered? Do let us know.

My own President Obama is this week off making his pitch for why Chicago should host the Olympic Games. Correction. Oops. I need to read the news. Chicago was eliminated first. But look out – our friends at Antipop (slogan: “antipop music for a pop music”) are using a different tool in their arsenal: music.

Watch the video for some fun gear spotting, plus one vintage arcade cabinet. I could point out stuff I see, but that’d spoil the fun. Shout out in comments.

There’s definitely a commercial gloss on this, but it’s nicely executed, and felt so absurdly Olympic to me that I actually couldn’t help but smile listening. (In fairness, either Chicago or Madrid ought to be able to do better than New York did with 2012; I recall dignitaries in traffic while rowers paced the polluter waters of Flushing Meadows. Yipes.)

Here you go, probably the most commercial music we’ll ever run on CDM:

Makes me want to, like, train or something.

Updated: From comments, I like these alternative suggestions by safd in place of “anti” pop:

superpop, poppypop, hippop, popcore, purelypop, universapop

Popcore is something I need to work on. It was worth posting this for that word alone.

Background: “Antipop is the Antonio Escobar music production personal studio, one of the most awarded Spanish producer and composer.” [sic]

Update: Superpop or antipop, the song alone couldn’t melt the hearts of the Olympic Committee. Congrats to – Rio!