Still evaluating Live 8 – or want to learn more about how to use it? You can now read my review of Ableton Live 8 free on Keyboard Magazine’s site:

Ableton Live 8 Review [Keyboard Magazine]
See also (via comments) Nick Rothwell’s review for Sound on Sound June [subscription or US$1.49 fee required]

Keyboard doesn’t yet have comments, so feel free to discuss – or disagree – here.

I wanted to back up a little bit and consider Live as if for the first time. Now, I had also personally heard at least Robert Henke complain at one point that reviews of Live were uncritical. That to me would be a flaw as a reviewer, because all software designs involve compromises, so no software can ever be perfect. Here, I still feel there’s legitimate room for improvement in terms of the way Live handles interactive clip triggering and how it assigns control. Of course, we’re not just passively complaining about it – there’s also a community of Live users working to hack in functionality they need using the Live API, both via Python and forthcoming Max for Live.

Also for the review, I shot some quick video demos of features that were easier to show than describe, namely the new instrument Collision and the Vocoder effect. These are basically mini-tutorials on these creations. See Collision at top, Vocoder after the break at bottom. Fixed! Now the top video is actually the Collision video. (Oops.)

I’m a huge fan of physical modeling and Applied Acoustics, and Collision is one of the best percussion models I’ve seen. It starts to approach some of what’s possible in Apple’s Sculpture in Logic, but in a much more focused context, and with some unparalleled resonators (which you can also use on their own in the form of Corpus). See the top video for a walkthrough of the interface.

This is going to get confusing, isn’t it, with a product name like “Record”? (A “Record Tutorial”? A “Record Video”? Maybe it’s just me…)

Anyway, if you’re hooked up with the Record beta and looking to get started, Propellerhead have posted a video tutorial to get you going, with more planned. There’s also a new Record blog:

Record Blog

There’s an update on the state of beta testing, and you’ll find some notes from Props CEO/founder Ernst on why they’re creating Record:

When we designed Record we went back to our original roots, the drive that made us create Reason a long time ago. In 1998, when the Reason design came to life, there were already incredible synthesizers. You could already make music with your computer. There was immense power in the solutions that existed.

Now, I’m sure that won’t calm down any of you who won’t use Record because it has a dongle, or because it lacks MIDI output for talking to your hardware synths. But, then, that’s why we have more than one tool from which to choose in music technology, both commercial and open source.

For instance, since I know there’s a rabid Reaper community out there, I’m happy to see these two apps face off in an audio software slam.

Just to be contrary, I’m going to tag this post “DAWs,” because even if Record isn’t a DAW, I think it clearly can be an alternative to DAWs as a “piece of software that allows you to record and make music.” Really, while there’s no convenient acronym for that, that’s the whole point of all this software, right? (Then again, that’s all the more reason not to call anything a “DAW,” because “workstation” is a meaningless word that has little to do with actually using computers to make music.)

And, sure, if I had it to do over again, I might simply call this blog “Create Music.” Or “Music.” Or just “ate.”

Vocoding Voices in Live 8 from Bjorn Vayner on Vimeo.

Continuing our growing collection of Live 8 video tutorials, our friend Bjorn of Covert Operators sends over a terrific tutorial on making use of the vocoder. Now, unlike the “misuse” tutorials we’ve been running, this is actually how this effect is designed to be used. On the other hand, if you’re still interested in misuse – and you’re not terribly interested in conventional effects – this can be a great way to wrap your head around the tool’s proper function, before you start warping it in another direction.

I think it’ll be fantastic having a vocoder ready to use, and if you haven’t played with a software vocoder, Live 8 should be a nice place to start. If any of you take this in another direction, do let us know.

Covert Operators has a whole bunch of downloads, tips, and tricks some available cheap, some free.

For all the emphasis on learning how to use creative tools the proper way, it’s often when you misuse a feature that it really becomes a powerful tool. So, in the spirit of some of the “mistutorials” from Ableton’s own Dennis DeSantis, here’s our friend Michael Hatsis of New York’s Track Team Audio / Warper Party / Dubspot with a really unusual way to achieve scratching effects.

You know the Ping Pong effect for its clichéd, stereo-panning echo effects. But here, it goes an entirely different direction: now that Live 8 has added new delay modes, you can create some special effects that don’t sound like the typical effect. Mike manages to warp and bend Ping Pong into something that sounds a lot like scratching. He warns that “this is not meant to replace vinyl nor will it produce a totally authentic sounding scratch sound.” On the other hand, you start to get some sounds that are reminiscent of scratching but sound unique, which I think is a Very Good Thing.

Live 8 users, download the template:

http://www.trackteamaudio.com/videos/scratchtemplatelive8.zip

There’s also some nice discussion happening over on the Ableton blog. (Main request: automation / dummy clips for more sound-warping power.)

Video: Total misuse of a ping pong delay – scratch effects

(And those of you Pd/Max/SuperCollider/Chuck/Reaktor users out there, maybe this will inspire some DIY effects along similar lines.)

Previously:

Ableton Live 8 Creative Tutorial Videos: Using and Misusing Groove Extraction

Ableton Live 8 Creative Tutorial Videos: Misusing Frequency Shifter

(and, yes, much as I love Live 8, I welcome other tools, too – anyone interested in tutorials to request / tutorials you want to make?)

Chris Breen at Macworld does exceptional, tough reviews of consumer sound software. He’s tackled GarageBand ‘09 in depth in a review published this week at Macworld.com. If you’re a beginning user, this review is for you – and if not, Chris will help you understand what that perspective is like for countless typical Mac users:

Unless you have an active interest in producing podcasts or creating a musical score, it’s likely you’ve opened GarageBand once and then never bothered with it again. Of all the programs that make up the iLife suite, none is more overlooked than this application. And, given its original focus, that’s not too surprising. Making music requires a skill not common in the general population of computer users.

Review: GarageBand ’09 | Macworld

I’ve gotten to spend some time with this review as the tech editor for the story, and testing GarageBand along with it, I definitely agree. The new lessons are really terrific – they won’t teach you to play, necessarily, but they’re polished, and they can whet musicians’ appetite for additional training options and real music lessons. The guitar effects sound terrific. The UI has been improved in subtle but significant ways that make things easier to find.

The one real disadvantage of the new version is that these terrific-sounding guitar effects don’t support MIDI control. They do support automation, but you can’t control them with anything other than the mouse.

To me, that means you may actually struggle to find a reason to get this upgrade on its own – which would be a problem, except that you’re either getting the new release with a new Mac or are also getting major upgrades to iPhoto and iMovie. So, okay — there’s your reason. And for people with an older version wanting to get into something simple, I’d still easily recommend GarageBand.

If it’s video lessons that interest you, though, Chris has done a complete overview of video instructions options on the Mac. If you do get GarageBand 09, I think you’re likely to hunger for more than Apple currently offers, making this a useful resource. And if GarageBand 09 doesn’t interest you, this gives you some other choices for computer-assisted music learning.

Learn to play an instrument | Macworld

Incidentally, it’s too bad Apple doesn’t offer a way for musicians to build their own lessons in GarageBand; I think that’d be a big hit.

All of that said, I do think Apple is doing a whole lot to make music software more accessible to the first-time user. The fact that GarageBand is just there on a new Mac, and that steps in 09 make sure that if you click the icon you get something friendly and musical, really is significant.

Using the new GarageBand? Do let us know what you think of it.