Cycling ’74′s Max 6 is now available. See our previous previews:
For Home-brewing Music Tools Graphically, Perhaps the Biggest Single Update Yet [Create Digital Music]
In Max 6, Big Banner 3D + Animation Features for Jitter, Alongside Usability Improvements [Create Digital Motion]

Along with the release comes an updated site, which does a really nice job of presenting different applications, from sound to physical computing to visuals and show control:
http://cycling74.com/products/max/

Pricing details:
US$399 retail (Max 6, now includes Jitter at last)
US$199 Max 6 upgrade
US$249 discounted bundle of Max 6 upgrade + Gen
Academic discounts, including a new annual subscription plan for institutions

Those academic plans finally cover a year instead of 9 months, just in case you want to patch through your summer break.

Gen is the set of low-level objects that allow you to create more sophisticated tools from scratch without coding externals. I’m a little sad to see it priced separately, even if it makes sense from a business perspective, in that users of Gen won’t be able to easily distribute their work to the rest of the user base. Scratch that – yes, they will; they just won’t be able to edit them. So that’s a good compromise! See the upgrade FAQ.

That said, for anyone thinking gen~ is comparable to Reaktor’s Core, here’s a good explanation:
Comparing gen and Reaktor core level [Cycling '74 forums]

(It certainly is in terms of goals, but the way it behaves is very different.)

Max for Live users…

So, what if you’re using Max for Live? Now that Max 6 is available, Max for Live incorporates the new release – if you have a separate license for Max 6. That should be especially useful to Jitter users, who will get all the new Max 6 stuff and a full-featured copy of Jitter that’s otherwise lacking in Max for Live alone.

If you have only Max for Live and not a separate copy of Max, for now, you’ll continue to use Max 5, until an updated Max for Live is available. (When that happens, we’ll be sure to carry the news.)

Of course, dropping in Max 6 may cause compatibility problems, so France-based Julien Bayle has a tip at top on how to switch between your licensed copies of Max 5 and Max 6:

Switching Max5/Max6 inside Ableton Live (max002) [Design the Media; see video, top]

Of course, the good news here is, if you want to use the new Max with Max for Live, you can.

“It must be a Thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays.” -Arthur Dent, in Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy

If you’re having any issue getting through your Thursday, it’s tough to beat some proper, good techno – the kind of techno anyone can love, even if they keep shouting about how they “hate” it.

Techno pioneer Carl Craig is still going strong, the kind of artist whose work seems to flow freely. He’s got the roots, having begun with Derrick May in Detroit, but he’s remained a font of new work and invention since, mixing his work with live and jazz music and even endeavoring to introduce young people to new music through a self-started not-for-profit. (Check the cat’s bio.) If you haven’t checked in with him lately, he’s touring … well, nearly everywhere, and is keeping the new sounds going through his Planet E label. Planet E turned ten earlier this year, accompanied by new a full-length and remix EPs, but here’s a quick test of what’s coming out of this label via SoundCloud.

Latest tracks by carlcraignet

I have Carl on the brain partly because I’ve learned King Britt (Saturn Never Sleeps) has new music with him. I owe King and SNS’ Rucyl Mills a good weekend hiding out during Tropical Storm Irene, where I got in to see King’s workflow – mixing MIDI with CV triggers, Mono/Poly with Maschine, analog sequencing with Ableton Live. (We maintained power through the storm. Can I please evacuate to a chilled-out studio session more often? I’m a very, very blessed person, and believe me, I’m grateful for those gifts, those moments.)

The resulting sound represents the best, most organic feel of the different generations we’ve seen of this music. Whereas once production was laborious, we now get to cherry-pick the most comfy tools, the looseness of live playing and analog gear twiddling and sequencing with the speed of a Maschine or Ableton setup on a laptop. And it comes out, with tracks that are improvisatory, relaxed, and naturally grooving. I think you can hear it in Carl’s new stuff, and I know I can hear it in King’s, having listened in and jammed as some things were made.

Remember handing burned CDs to DJs? In this case, Carl got hold of King’s tracks and King of Carl via email and Twitter.

For a glimpse, see the informal video. (I shot some video of King, too, but want to wait to get his and Rucyl’s word on their collaboration. Oh, and I need to, like, upload it. I’ll just ask my extensive video production department to– doh!)

Give King’s upcoming tracks on Planet E a listen.

King Britt presents Dynamic – Secret of the Stars b/w Things Take Time by planetedetroit

Here’s a look inside the session (and yes, that is a KORG vocoder):

King’s been doing this a long while, and his craft I feel is razor sharp, which lets him keep those tracks feel as loose as they do. He talks about how he tunes tracks in the mastering process on the Universal Audio blog. He definitely lets his UA fan side show, but he also gets loads of mileage out of some specific UA plugs – and the basic techniques here you can easily apply to any mastering plug-ins you like. (Readers recently brought up the excellent and underrated Samplitude, which is also a good choice with its integrated mastering tools.)

Give King talking UA and mastering workflow a read:

King Britt on Mixing “Bit by Bit,” by Saturn Never Sleeps [Universal Audio Producers' Corner]

More, mailing lists and blogs and whatnot:

King Britt.com
http://planet-e.net/blog/
http://www.carlcraig.net/

Artist Zack Wright, for a handful of followers of what we used to call IDM, will be a blast from the past. Recording as Deceptikon on labels like Merck and Daly City Records, Zack is back. His name is now Dkon, and the story is more than just him: in the absence of a Merck to release adventurous music, Dkon is helping launch a new label entitled Tokyo Ghost Island, with an EP to be followed soon by new records from Jemapur, Secret Palindromes, and an EP from Stockton & Malone, among other things.

Swimming upstream against gear fetishism, the 800 EP is proud to be cheap. The Korg Poly 800 on which the release is focused is a dirt-cheap eBay score, but as Dkon puts it, it’s also “one of the most underrated analog polysynths out there.” I’d be nervous about CDM driving up its value before I can get one – it’s been on my wish list – except that there are a lot of them. It was the first synth for many players.

With that spirit, Dkon sends along a manifesto of sorts about music making. He’s been coupling the Poly 800 with a production workflow entirely centered on Renoise, the modern tracker, for recording and sequencing. But tools aside, there’s a minimal philosophy here I think a lot will like.

Oh, and about the album: it’s raw, unaffected, with the sweet spare sounds of the Korg set to good-natured beats, as clean as your local Poly 800 in a garage sale probably isn’t. It’s not retro; it’s just … well, good. The synthesis is unabashedly front and center, everything perfectly machined in pure economy. Less is more, indeed. Have a listen: the full tracks are on SoundCloud:

Dkon – 800 EP by Dkon / Deceptikon

Grab the EP on iTunes

Facebook fan page

(I love this sound — but for a radically different side of the artist, be sure to hear some of his past work and remixes below; he’s got quite a range.)

For his part, Dkon is based in San Francisco, by way of Tokyo, Seattle, Washington, Eugene, Oregon, and Portland, Oregon, except I ran into him in Brooklyn at Percussion Lab.

Bonus points if you remember Deceptikon. And if you don’t, you know we’re not music snobs here; I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised to discover him through the new Dkon music. (See bottom for some Deceptikon music, too.)

But let’s see if you agree with Dkon’s philosophy, behind this record and DIY, economy-be-damned, do-it-on-the-cheap, make-it-great spirit. He shares those thoughts with CDM:

DKON’S TIPS FOR CREATIVE SUCCESS

1. Less is more.
If you read nothing else in this article, read this. Having more options is not good for your creativity. Learn what you have, use what you have. Having a limited set of options forces you to focus.

2. You don’t need expensive stuff.
There are a lot of people who think you need to keep improving your studio, and getting the latest, most expensive gear in order to have the ability to be able to make something good. This is nonsense. From an economic point of view, the 800 EP cost me about $125 to make. (Renoise license of about ~$75, and I bought the 800 on Craigslist for $40). I made my first several albums (*Lost Subject*, *Greater Cascadia*, and *Mythology of the Metropolis*) with very limited means and equipment. Make do with what you have. Buy gear secondhand, but only what you will actually use. Use free or cheap software. Use free or cheap plugins.

3. It doesn’t matter what software you use.
There are so many DAW options now, but they all do basically the same thing. The only real difference is workflow. Pick one that appeals to you, learn it as you go along, and you will succeed. I have been using mostly Renoise for the past few years because I like the workflow and relatively simple interface. It may look confusing if you’ve never used a tracker before, but once you get the hang of it, it’s incredibly fast to get your ideas down, which is a major advantage. When inspiration hits you, the faster you can start working, the better.

4. Work around the limitations of what you have.
If something is limited in some way, use it to your advantage. Why do you think things like the 303 and 808 are still universally adored? They are both incredibly limited instruments, but what they do, they do very well. Using a more concrete example in my case, the Poly 800. It’s horribly tedious to program, but has a great sound and a lot of character. If it was covered in knobs and sliders, I don’t think it would be as appealing in a bizarre kind of way. The limited nature of the instrument encourages creativity.

5. Treat everything as a sample.
Especially in regards to software like Renoise. Find a sound on an instrument you like. Record yourself playing a few chords or a sequence of notes. Chop it up, sequence it, and rearrange it. Usually, if I do this, the sequence that ends up being used is different than the one that I originally played. Move things around, play with the pitch, change the envelopes. Being imprecise with your editing gives it a more humanized feel, without resorting to adding “humanization” after the fact.

6. Fidelity is highly overrated.
Do you think anyone is going to care if your snares are amazingly compressed and EQ’ed if your song is terrible? No. Making your music sound “nice” should be an afterthought. Focus on content, not gloss.

7. If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.
Making music, or art of any kind, should be fun. Treat it as play, not as work. Don’t think of what you want to make before you start – let the finished product reveal itself through your work. Dive in and explore without conscious thought.

http://www.deceptikon.net/
http://soundcloud.com/dkon
http://www.renoise.com/

Inside the Studio: Gear and Renoise Session Screenshots

Click the images for a closer look; all images courtesy the artist and used by permission.

More Music

Remixes by Dkon / Deceptikon

Mythology of the Metropolis 12″ by Dkon / Deceptikon

Artwork for the Mythology of the Metropolis album is, I think, really beautiful:

The painting is the work of Philadelphia-based Richard Bailey, aka artist proem, who also did my album cover as well as the CSS work on CDM. This isn’t some sort of cabal we’ve put together; I keep running into these lads and the connections between them by pure accident. There’s a sort of diffuse, scattered community of people who are expatriated from a forgotten IDM nation. If IDM dies, CDM lives, at least.

And for good measure, the music video for “Broken Synthesizers,” via reader mikrosopht in comments, who worked on it.

Brilliant idea – hacking YouTube timelines to make an interactive 909 – though I can’t get it to work for me at the moment.

Thanks to Dkon for all these ideas.

Care to debate – or echo – his creative tips? Sound off in comments.

Let’s get together and play music.

The Morning Music & Coffee Consumption series, an informal gathering of artists, aims to do just that. The assumption about digital music production may be very different – the solo artist, holed up in a bedroom alone with a laptop is the default image. But instruments and laptops go together, and laptops can increasingly be played comfortably as instruments, so there’s really no excuse. And Jared Smyth’s mm-cc series, having already produced a volume of music and image, is both an inspiration and a potential model. Creator Jared says he’s hoping others will join in with similar events and share the sonic results – perhaps that’ll be you and your friends, wherever you are.

The series, shot in sumptuous macro video by Charlie Visinic, looked good enough in film that it made appearance on our sister site Create Digital Motion (where I erroneously described the series as being Charlie’s creation, an error I can happily now correct):

Meditative Short Films with Hypnotic Music, Made in the Realm of the Micro

With the aim of inspiring (welcome) copycat events, I asked Jared to tell us more about how this series is organized and how it works.

CDM: Tell us a bit about the idea behind mm-cc.
Jared: I started mm-cc as a ritual to reconnect with what made me want to play music in the first place: community. It’s getting together with friends with no pressure to create something marketable, and simply hanging out and creating noise together. mm-cc is my concept (though not that original … people have been getting together to make music and drink coffee long before I called it ‘mm-cc’). I host the website, create posts and also host occasional mm-cc sessions myself at my home in Florida. Charlie also hosts sessions in southern California. The idea is for more people to take part as Charlie does – hosting their own sessions, creating their own visuals and then letting me know about it so I can do a post on it. There’s even an upload form and a forum I built on the site for people to send in samples of audio, or clips of video to be used in other people’s sessions. I really want mm-cc to be as collaborative and eclectic as possible.

How did you organize people to do this?
Some of the time it’s by creating a Facebook event; other times it’s word-of-mouth. With Charlie Visnic and the California sessions, it just sort of happened that he wanted to host sessions at his home over the summer. We met through the monome forums and then became friends as each of us was working on a 365×1 blog goal. (On that note, I started mine over on January 1st, and am now on day 261 – see uprlip.com.

At what point does the coffee kick in?

7am(ish) – people show up around 10am and we play till noon…. I’m usually fairly wired before they show up. I try to buy really good, locally-grown coffee and make it in my French Press.

Are there any special moments or surprises that have happened through the various sessions?

No individual event springs to mind. But it’s always really special for me to look through my studio, where cables are strewn about and there are five or six people drinking really strong coffee and spacing out on their respective instruments, and then into my living room and see my daughter drawing, one friend hand-sewing something, and another knitting, all while listening to the music we’re creating. The chatter and movement of the non-musicians filtering into the room (and often the mic’s) where we’re recording serves as a very natural field recording to accompany us. I love listening back to a session and hearing my daughter giggling or friends talking faintly in the background. It’s a really ethereal experience when that sort of all comes together. That’s exactly what I want from mm-cc – togetherness.

Are you releasing the music separately? If so, where?

There are plans for that in the works. The session that John Keston, David Andree and I did in Minneapolis earlier this year (see video, top) has a much longer recorded form than what’s represented in the video, and we’re very much planning to make that the first (of many?) mm-cc releases. Josh Mason at Sunshine Ltd. has agreed to release it; we’re just not sure of a date yet.

How do you work across coasts?

Well, we’ve only done one session that was ‘trans-coast.’ (video above) For that one we defined a set of notes within a set key that both session’s players would play. I shot the video clips here in Florida and then sent them off to Charlie to edit as he wanted, and he sent me the audio from their session. I then mixed that with the audio from our session, and then sent the final mix back to him, and he cut the video to it. I would like to do more this way – it’s sort of a blind/deaf jam session. We had no clue what theirs would sound like and vice-versa. As for the other sessions that Charlie has hosted, they’re all him. I really have very little to do with them. He just lets me know when he’s going to have one and I then do a post for it when he’s done, and has a video uploaded.

Okay, if this has made you interested in becoming involved, here’s where to go to do it.

http://mm-cc.org/
Vimeo channel
Community / host your own session

Roland’s GR-55 guitar synth is one powerful accessory for guitarists – maybe a little too powerful. With its various modeling, effects, and synthesis powers hidden in layers of menus, navigating all those sonic capabilities can be a chore. Enter one user from the GR-55′s dedicated community of guitar synthesists. Marc Benigni used TouchOSC control software for the iPad and set up a template that makes all of that functionality touchable, direct, and accessible.

But wait — there’s more! There’s also a dedicated, free and open source editor for Mac, Windows, and Linux. (There’s even a fresh Lion build for Mac users.) So, score one for the Roland user community stepping in and doing more than the actual manufacturer (and I haven’t yet seen any maker do a Linux version, or, for that matter, release their editor as open source). Thanks to Marty Cutler for the tip!

“Yeah, sure,” you say, “it’s open source software. Probably looks totally ugly and primitive.”

Nope. Looks damned slick, actually:

And all this means you’ve got a powerful editor without the need for an iPad.
http://grfloorboard.sourceforge.net/
Project information

If you’ve got an iPad…

Marc writes and describes that project:

I recently developed a TouchOSC layout that serves as a patch editor for Roland’s GR-55. The GR-55 is an impressive guitar synth and guitar preamp, but it’s UI leaves *much* to be desired, and Roland has stated that they will not be releasing a PC-based editor for it. With this layout, an OSC interface, and of course a copy of TouchOSC, the user can easily and intuitively edit patches, or modify GR-55 settings in real-time during performance.

Details concerning development can be found in this thread on the VGuitar forums, with photos of the interface on more recent pages:
http://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=3205.msg30263#msg30263

The mind still boggles at all those controls, but now it looks far more usable. You can bet that iPad apps may soon be a trend for manufacturers, too, though sometimes – freed from any commercial aspirations – what the users come up with works pretty well on its own. I’m eager to try some layouts out for both iOS and Android touch devices; just because it’s fun as a developer, I’m toying a bit with the latter.

Of course, this tool is a great head start on iOS:
http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

Need a new mic to play with? Maybe you should raid your kitchen pantry.

London-based musician Leafcutter John writes us to share a detailed tutorial on cooking up new mics from common household ingredients:

Real Sound Cookery – Make a contact mic with baking soda and cream of tartar. [leafcutterjohn.com]

That in turn is inspired by a terrific, detailed video by our friend Collin Cunningham for MAKE:Magazine (Collin’s also been a regular at our Handmade Music series in NYC).

The result: you’ve got the material to do some field recording or experimental sound design. Leafcutter John shares a bit of hands-on experience working with the thing, and has a sample recording up on SoundCloud:
First recording using Rochelle Salt piezo crystal made from baking soda and cream of tartar by leafcutterjohn

Also, and I don’t say these words very often, here’s a brilliant YouTube comment:

wait… mounting the crystal in place… THIS IS HOW THE BLACK MESA INCIDENT STARTED! :O

(Google it if you don’t get it.)

More great info from Leafcutter John:
Leafcutter’s DIY Steel Can Hydrophone & Preamp. Step-by-step guide
Shit I’m a Geek / The joy of Piezoelectricity [good background on the above]

(Side note: preamp is the really important part of the hydrophone equation, which I managed to screw up recently. Stay tuned for my tale of how to do it right, after I actually do it properly. DIY electronics is no fun, anyway, if you don’t occasionally completely botch it.)

In the ongoing struggle to make a laptop into an instrument, there’s inevitably the scramble onstage (or even in a studio) to get everything primed and ready to play. You want to adjust settings, launch certain applications, and generally get your laptop ready for actual music making.

Wouldn’t it be nice to make all of that happen automatically, magically, instantly, and robotically? It is, after all, a machine. (They’re supposed to be working for us, I’m told, assuming they’re following the Three Laws.)

Martin Delaney, London-based Ableton Live trainer, has put together a nice tutorial for production education center Dubspot with one way of accomplishing that using Apple’s free Automator. I was always a fan of Automator, particularly in its use in the workflows for the Soundtrack Pro audio editor from Apple, but it seems like almost no one else (Apple included) seems to remember it’s there. So here’s a way to put it to some free, powerful use.

Of course, there are probably other ways of accomplishing this – shell scripts and the like – if anyone wants to suggest something. Automator has the advantage of some serious ease of use.

Have a look, and download this set of Automator actions free:
Video Tutorial: Simplify Your Ableton Workflow Using Apple’s Automator [Dubspot]

From the intrepid grid-playing monome producers comes a whole bundle of goodness: a free album, and along with it, a nice video that illustrates what’s happening on some of the tracks, some reflections on how 15-second samples can bind together a community of music makers, and even, as a bonus, some tips on running Windows software in Linux under WINE. (Whew!)

Via Joshua Saddler, who illustrates his music creation techniques in the video at top, we learn of the monome Community Remix Project album, available as a free download via Bandcamp. (Full track lineup embedded below.)

MCRPv10: MCRP​-​RP, by monome community [Bandcamp]

Josh explains how the “meta-remix” came about — by limiting to 15-second samples, and pooling results, an entire community of producers was able to work collaboratively:

I admit that this is slightly in my own interest, since I’m on this album (as “ioflow”). But even though this is the first album I’ve ever appeared on, being new to the world of electronic music production, what’s really newsworthy is that it’s another outstanding effort by all the monome artists. these guys are super-talented.

This MCRP theme: the meta-remix project. Each participant grabbed a 15-second sample from a previous MCRP track, and submitted the unaltered clip to the pool. the participants then used the pool to craft their own original tracks.

Man, what they did is crazy. I had access to the samples and I still can’t tell how they got those sounds. they’re a fine buncha talented
folks, so maybe this is a news item of interest: monomers around the world coming together to create a free album, created at least in part
with free software (i even used Windows software on Linux), using tracks previously made freely-available on other MCRP albums.

Thanks, and happy listening!

Here’s Josh’s track, too, via SoundCloud:

lines and angles by ioflow

Linux + WINE Tips

Josh also, after my prompting, shares some tips on how he works with Linux and, for Windows compatibility inside Linux, WINE:

I ran Max/MSP under Wine. I ran the “Ricochet” performance patch for the monome, which was tied to Linux-native Renoise via JACK (WineASIO transports audio/midi from Wine to the system JACK daemon). Renoise hosted the samples as sliced instruments, with some more open-source software DSSI plugins loaded (Calf Vintage Delay, etc.)

Ricochet is based on the Otomata website that’s been covered on CDM previously. You can actually see how it translates to the monome on my video for “lines and angles.” Press a button to place an initial “token,” with each subsequent press indicating direction:

http://vimeo.com/25748942 [seen at top]

More details here:

http://nightmorph.livejournal.com/235021.html

(and more monome/controllerism/software/music-related stuff on the “music” tag!)

The Max/MSP stuff, especially MIDI-outputting patches, generally works on Linux exactly the way it does on Mac or Windows. Occasionally I have to do some hacking to get audio/sample-based patches to cooperate, but only rarely do I find something that doesn’t work at all. mlrv1 and mlrv2 are the only ones so far. Most of the challenges stem from the fact that Wine’s handling of Bonjour is broken. The zeroconf layer that’s used by serialosc poses the most problems. For zeroconf-based apps, I got the man himself, tehn, to create a “static” serialosc.maxpat, for which I use a plain text editor to manually specify ports, then copy that .maxpat into each serialosc-based Max patch I intend to use. serialosc itself is developed on Linux, but it uses Avahi there, whereas other platforms use Apple Bonjour. Can’t have two DNS stacks on one machine, so I’m forever hacking on and around Wine to get it to cooperate with the system DNS responder. So far, there’s no way to bridge the app’s zeroconf transport and use it unmodified on Linux.

Workarounds like customized .maxpats are a small price to pay, though, for the pleasure of being able to run monome performance patches. I’m not a coder, so I have to work with what’s available right now. Maybe in the future I’ll try porting some of these things to Python.

I recently got Aalto running under Wine — I posted that to the CDM article a week or so ago. Rules of the MCRP being what they were, though, no external sounds allowed, so I couldn’t hook that in, much as I wanted to. I had a lot of fun learning how to make music with samples for the first time, anyway.

Good to know, I think! For more on WINE, see:
http://www.winehq.org/

But personally, I’m delighted just to have some nice music to listen to – and the price is right. Thanks, monome community!

Teenage Engineering’s hotly-anticipated synth / music-making hardware OP-1 finally got an official release last week. Early stocks promptly sold out, but new waves of deliveries should refresh availability. We’ll have more from TE on the launch and the instrument soon.

In the meantime, you can thank early-adopter Ludwig Mueller for being brave enough to post early experiments with the instrument. Ludwig is a proud owner of the beta release, one of a handful of people who signed up to get access to the OP-1 prior to its public launch – and even before functionality in firmware was entirely finalized. I’ve heard now from several readers who are beta users, and a variety of reactions to the instrument. Oversimplifying, they appear to break down to those who adore the OP-1′s restrictions and those who curse them (and those who do both). In the video at top, Ludwig shows off the process of layering beats and tracks; he not only plays the OP-1, but uses it as a production and composition tool. I asked him to share some further thoughts on how he likes his OP-1 — and what, exactly, it really is.

The OP-1 in short is a mixup of an [Akai] MPC, a pretty great synth, a radio, a mic, and a DAW [Digital Audio Workstation]. All of these components are rather limited looked at individually, but I guess what you can say here is that the sum is greater than its parts. It is the mixture of these parts and the device’s limits – recording is destructive, [so there's] no undo once you record two or more instruments on one track – force you to think ahead. But at the same time, the OP-1′s layout and abilities make you want to try out things you’d never consider in a DAW. So depending which takes over – your brain or your inner child – your results will vary from one extreme to another.

A thing that I really like about OP-1 is the fact that you can’t overtweak. In a traditional DAW, I’d EQ every track and add a little compression, etc., etc. On the OP-1, there’s no such thing. It either sounds good or it doesn’t – and if it does sound good, you keep going and building the track. At the end you turn up the mastercompressor, which BTW is quite amazing, and you’re done! Again: I love the mastercomp!

I can say that I finish a lot more projects / beats / tracks with the OP-1 than with a DAW. Granted, they feel more raw and have some hiccups here and there, but I’m willing to take that in exchange for the fun I have using that little device. And by now, quite often I actually prefer this rawness to the slick sound of my DAW tracks.

Of course there are times when I crawl back to the laptop, and do another track dissecting every element. But this doesn’t last for too long usually. With the OP-1, I can focus more on the music than on the technical side of things; it’s so immediate: No long boot up, loading programs, plugging in things. It’s just a switch and 5-second wait and you’re good to go. It also really fits the bill regarding the overall sound I want to achieve: it’s warm yet punchy. You can actually overdrive the output quite nicely using the mastercompressor within the unit. The achieved overdrive can be quite pleasing to the ear, I think.

I have heard many people say that TE should bring out an OP-1 iPad App. I am 100% certain that a touchscreen can not give you the same feel as a nicely-designed device with quality buttons and encoders.

Right now, I am on the latest OS (the one that is also available for download on TE’s site) and I didn’t have any problems at all since upgrading to that version.

If you visit www.soundcloud.com/yellow-tangerine there is a set on my page called “OP-1 Stuff”. All these tracks are exclusively OP-1 and nothing else.

Let’s give that OP-1 Stuff a listen, indeed:
OP-1 Stuff by YΞll❍W T∆ΠgΞriΠΞ

Thanks, Ludwig, for the thoughts. Plenty of design and workflow thoughts to chew over here, I think, even if you aren’t using an OP-1 – some of these same ideas about limitation can be applied to other hardware and even to software. So I’m curious to hear people respond to the musical ideas here, and not just the issues specific to the OP-1.

I welcome any reactions from OP-1 users — praise and criticism alike.

For the latest from Teenage:
http://now.teenageengineering.com/

Reforge, an iPad audio editor, has gotten a major update with version 2. It’s a ground-up rewrite with a new audio engine, and adds support for Sonoma’s increasingly-popular AudioCopy/AudioPaste API, which provides clipboard functionality for sound between iOS apps.

The novelty of running an audio editor on a tablet is clear. But how would you actually use it, in practice? I asked Tib Horvath, Reforge’s developer, to answer that question. He responds to CDM with some tips. It’s a pitch for his product, of course, but then that’s true if you describe the utility of any tool, and he has some nice ideas about what makes Reforge unique and how you’d work with it in production.

Tib writes:

Let me preamble that with what I believe Reforge is good at: Reforge modifies waveforms nondestructively. So copy, cut, paste, crop. But [it's also good at] also splitting stereo files into two mono files, or a mono file into a faux stereo file.

Then there is automation for volume, stereo balance, stereo widening and low and high pass filters, [as well as] time stretch or pitch (each is independent, but not yet automated).

You get all of this with a feel for actually touching the waveform and directly working with it.

So how does it fit in a production workflow?

1) None of the multitrack [iOS] apps support automation to the extent that Reforge does. So, if you need a sweeping low pass over a drum beat, copy the beat into Reforge [using AudioCopy, if you like], do the adjustments, render the file, and copy it back to where it came from.

2) Some apps work with mono files, but [what if] you have recorded/generated this great sounding stereo loop? Import into Reforge and split it into two mono files to copy over to your multitrack of choice.

3) Some multitrack apps do not work well with loops that just don’t fit. Get the loop into Reforge and make it fit by time stretching it. Clean up pops and other problems at the same time with the automated filter features.

4) Adjust the pitch of a voice recording — for example, if it is off-pitch or if you are looking for a special effect.

5) Podcasters tend to generate long recordings. They can now (since long audio files are only supported with Reforge 2.0) split and splice them. Or import podcasts (any other audio except audiobooks, [since they have DRM applied]) from the [iTunes] Library [accessible in the iPod app], and chop it up for easier digestion or further processing.

All of this is familiar to those who use dedicated audio editors on desktop. While many tools, such as DAWs, incorporate waveform editing, having a dedicated tool can be useful in assisting everyday audio tasks, making the drudgery of dealing with audio files take up less time.

Putting this on a mobile platform has a number of potential benefits:

• Form factor and interface. It’s just easier to pick up a tablet as a representation of your audio and carry it around, show it to others, and edit by touching the interface. You could manage some waveforms over a coffee before heading back to the studio or other workspace, in a way that involves different sorts of interactions than you’d have with a laptop.
• For the all-iOS producer, a tool like Reforge means you can work between other iOS apps more easily, producing sound and music all on the tablet without having to resort to the computer.
• For the person on the go, Reforge of course means the ability to do this editing in the field, as it were, without carrying along a heavier computer.

I do wonder, however, if this kind of easy audio copy-and-paste couldn’t come to desktop environments. Computers and hardware have long borrowed ideas from one another; it seems inevitable that traditional computers and tablets will do the same. And that means, even if you don’t ever touch an iPad, you could see positive benefits in the tools you use.

So, that’s what the developer says — and my speculative take on matters. Are you using Reforge, or other related tools? Let us know how you work.

Also, if you’re an iOS user who doesn’t already use Reforge, and you can tell us something useful about your workflow, I’ve got a promo code for you. Just be sure to leave a real email address in the comment field; only CDM administrators can see it, and we will only use that address for your code.