Scratching began as a practical means by which DJs could cue records. (So say originators like Grandmaster Flash; if you’re interested in the history, check out the fantastic documentary Scratch — trailer above.) But something about the gesture, the mechanical feeling of scratching, and all that history has made the turntable compelling as a controller. It’s even taught as an instrument at Berklee.

So, what if you want to scratch for purposes other than conventional DJing?

Getting at Timecode

Digital vinyl systems like Serato Scratch LIVE and Native Instruments Traktor Scratch are designed for DJs. Part of the whole advantage is that you get an integrated system with vinyl, decoding capability, audio interfacing with the computer, and software for DJ functions. If you want to take the turntable to other frontiers, you have to find a way to get the timecode data from the vinyl directly and do something different with it, like control an instrument or scratch visuals. (Only recently did a big-name, mainstream DVS, Serato, take on visuals, as seen on Create Digital Motion, and even then it makes some assumptions about what you want to do.)

We’ve seen a few examples of how to do this:

Musicians have generally had to shy away from slim, light portable PC laptops, but watching the specs on these machines, I’d say that’s finally changing. Take the upcoming Lenovo IdeaPad U110. Like the Apple MacBook Air, you have to rely on an external optical drive, but otherwise, this machine comes pretty close to being a worthy mobile music machine. If shedding pounds and size is important to you, there’s no question you could make this box work on the road.

Lenovo IdeaPad U110 [ Early Specs at GottaBeMobile.com]

• There’s not that much of a price premium: it’s US$1899.
• The specs look good: a 1.6GHz Core 2 Duo ("Merom") plus up to 3GB RAM — not high-end specs, but more than enough to run SONAR, Ableton Live, and the like. (Similar to the equally-capable specs on the MacBook Air side)
• Lots of ports: 3 USB 2.0 ports, so you don’t run out of ports when you plug in, say, a keyboard, an audio interface, and a high-speed USB storage stick. (Here’s where it bests the Air.)
• Lots of slots: Express Card supports high-end audio interfaces, and having an onboard card reader is nice for your camera and mobile recorder
• 2.4 lbs, .66 inch thick (actually slightly thinner and lighter than the MacBook Air) … and super small, meaning this is easier to tote and keep inconspicuous onstage

What’s the catch?

Cycling ‘74 have updated Max 5’s pricing and streamlined a bit in the new release. (That means Max for MIDI and basic data crunching, MSP for audio, synthesis, and signal processing, and Jitter for video, 3D, and advanced data processing.) Since this impacts a number of our readers, it’s worth going over this.

Updated: The story now reflects a clarification from Cycling ‘74 over which Jitter objects work in Max/MSP.

Hidden as an extra, Mario Paint Composer was one of the first software creations to meld music creation with game. It’s been a novelty favorite among 8-bit fans — not really a serious tool, but a curiosity nonetheless. But that requires a copy of Mario Paint. Now you can get the Mario-infected goodness on your Mac or Windows machine, free. (Thanks, Wally!)

Mario Paint Composer [unFun Games]

The Mac software link is broken, so here’s a direct Mac download link (thanks, Hunter!)

It’s not really about Mario Paint Composer the tool, though. For some strange reason, this creation has inspired endless musical oddities, uploaded to YouTube. Witness, for instance, a somewhat randomly-chosen musical cue from the TV show Lost. (Composer Michael Giacchino’s work is lush and brilliant, missing out on the Oscar this year for Ratatouille. Here, however, in 8-bit glory it sounds like a theme from a B-grade action adventure game for SNES. I’m fairly sure I was lost in a jungle playing that at one point.)

The pièce de résistance?

Mario’s rendition of John Cage’s 4′33".

If you have any source of stress this weekend, any difficulty sleeping just keep watching … Mario … run …

All is well.

I wonder which compression codec they used to upload the sound to YouTube? The silence is really pristine — almost sounds analog.

Via our forums, April 22 is the magic release date for Max 5:

Max 5 release date [Create Digital Noise]

And if you’re lucky enough to be near Bellingham, Washington this week, you’ve got pretty good odds on winning the upgrade, plus a 100% chance of checking out some cool stuff. Atomic Afro, CDM regular and maestro of affordable Windows software, will be there.

Max 5 has been a long time coming, and it’s exciting to see the direction the software is taking.

In other news: the cycling74.com site is down possibly not down. So, we’ve learned the entire CDM readership was just sitting at their computers, waiting for the moment that the date got announced. Erm, that or it’s an unrelated bug, but I like the mental image.

As a result, we can’t look at videos of Max 5. We can look at the Monome, however, which runs on Max. What’s Max 5 like? It’s totally like Brian and Kelli’s cat. Just watch the cat. Max is like that now. Softer, more independent. Feline. Four-legged.

Site is back up, so you can check out the sample videos. Thanks, 7oi!

Everywhere I go, people bug me about when they’ll see better support for OpenSoundControl (OSC) in applications. Why use fancy-schmancy OSC when MIDI does the job? Well, OSC supports higher resolutions of data when needed, maps variables elegantly (when you’re controlling something like visuals and descriptions like musical pitch or filter cutoff make no sense), and plays nice over networks and with multiple computers. In other words, go ahead and use MIDI when it does the job — but we need something else when it doesn’t.

Here’s one way to get OSC from your favorite app: hack it in. Spotted today as Gav tells Create Digital Motion about gluing together Isadora and Ableton Live, the OSCGlue plug-in is a simple VST insert that listens to MIDI and sends OSC.

Here’s a phrase you won’t hear often on, say, Download Squad:

"PS The AmigaOS port will be up in a few days."

Welcome to the wacky world of trackers, the music production tools time forgot. While the rest of the world frets over the environmental impact of computing and the cost of digital tools, the music community has a solution: recycle that garage sale / $50 eBay computer as a powerful music tool that might even be better than what you’ve got now.

If you have something with a CPU, odds are pretty good MilkyTracker runs on it. That includes Mac OS X (PowerPC and Intel), Windows Vista and XP — oh, and 2003, 2000, NT, Me, 98, and 95, Windows CE, Windows Mobile, FreeBSD, and emerging builds for popular Linux distributions and, yes, AmigaOS. It’s not just cross-platform. It’s pan-platform. (Hey, just for old time’s sake, anyone want to start a Mac versus Amiga flame war in comments? Go for it. Be brutal.)

MilkyTracker has some other good news: as of this weekend, it’s fully free and open source (GPL).

The new release (unceremoniously titled 0.90.80) has new features, too: tabbed modules so you can see up to 32 modules at once on the desktop version, playing simultaneously and copying-and-pasting between, new resamplers (even including Amiga-style resamplers) for better sound quality, direct rendering, and lots of other goodies.

So, this means MilkyTracker is the tracker to beat, right? Wrong. Tracker preferences are personal and nuanced, and competing tools offer subtle, unique workflows, plus features like the ability to run as plug-ins or support ReWire, and support for gaming platforms and other devices. But if you’re looking for a tracker to try, this should definitely be on your list. And soon you may be able to get that Amiga out of the closet. Reusing beats recycling any day.

MilkyTracker

Proof in pictures that MT can run on lots of different platforms

My friend Ilia, aka Tonearm, has released his set of Windows XP-compatible shortcuts for Ableton Live. (Got to play out with Ilia last month and hope to do it again.) Ableton, if you’re listening, here’s another argument for more customization of the program.

Even if you’re not on XP, it’s worth having a look and even downloading the ZIP and readme for some inspiration as far as what could be possible with Live shortcuts.

Install the executable for Windows, and you get:

Sure, what with it being 2008 and all, “plug-in” to many people means audio processing. But what if you want an arpeggiator? Or something to harmonize incoming notes, or match them to scales? Or … well, just about anything else you can do with pitch and time with MIDI, from utilities to music effects? And what if your host’s built-in options are letting you down?

The good news: you’ve got lots of options. The bad news: a lot are on Windows.

We saw Chirp, a Mac/Windows utility for assigning QWERTY keyboards to MIDI input, earlier this week. But that’s led to some other discussions.

The MVelope MIDI Toolkit includes a whole range of free MIDI plug-ins for Windows VST hosts. There’s already MKey, a very nice, mature QWERTY keyboard (similar to Chirp, but a little simpler and functioning as a plug-in). In beta or “teaser” form are some other interesting utilities: a pattern-based arpeggiator (pictured, top), filter/router, chord generator, and eventually a Control Change-powered LFO you can drop anywhere you like. (I’d love to have that last one in Ableton Live, since I miss the readily-available LFOs found in tools like FL Studio.) Thanks to Peter for the tip on this one.

But ready to jump down the rabbit hole?