Peter Kirn

Warner does a deal with Suno, Udio; genAI isn't about "democratization" - CDM Create Digital Music It's Lucy and the football time with the music industry. Having led artists into a complete disaster with streaming, they seem poised to do it again, on a grander scale, with generative AI. Warner has...

Peace for our time.

I'm only joking, of course; what could go wrong? (Oh yeah, what was that environmental impact data looking like again?)

Here, if you like, get enraged with me, and then probably later this week buy a bunch of plug-ins/gear in a haze (sorry):

ah yeah, this seems like a question a bunch of people are going to have, too, so keep me posted!

Wait, really? What's the workaround?

Live 12.3 final is here: what's new that isn't Splice or stem separation - CDM Create Digital Music Ableton Live 12.3 is here, and that means built-in Splice support, stem separation, and... uh... well, there was the tremolo thing... and... need a guide? We've got you. Here are the rest of the best ...

Yeah, yeah, stem separation and Splice. What else is in Live 12.3 and the accompanying Push update? Here's your refresher.

Hint: all about the bounce. Anyway, we go from public beta to stable.

I mean sure, but good god, if I'd had a deliberate vision and strategy ahead of everything, I think I'd never have gotten anything accomplished, least of all music-making or improv. ;)

So yeah, there's a ton of music that's built around technological discovery and exploration, hence...

So, my problem with this is, it rules out improvisation with an instrument, which can also include inventing the instrument. I mean we don't always create in the way it works in the movie Amadeus. I mean just don't make *shopping* the main model for your creative vision, no argument there... ;)

Well, you're no fun. ;)

The new @sinevibes.bsky.social Cache sounds as terrific as the other Sinevibes plugs, but now it's *playable.* So you hook in a MIDI keyboard/pads, and all this massive buffer-mangling live effects power is right under your fingers. News/review: cdm.link/sinevibes-ca...

Making some simple examples for the VCV Workshop with CAMP tomorrow... @vcvrack.com

Straight fax

The punch cards were a royal PITA, actual generation was slow, cumbersome, and prone to failure... but the structure and design is so elegant, even by today's standards. It occurs to me that what I *should* be doing with students is having them make index cards for modules to help them learn.

Music IV Programmer's Manual : Max Mathews, Joan Miller : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive MUSIC IV was a computer music synthesis software package written by Max Mathews. The program was an expansion of earlier packages written by Mathews to...

The full MUSIC IV manual is online, by the way, which makes a great read!

archive.org/details/musi...

Oddly enough, it appears one reason why may be that she wound up leaving AT&T/Bell to go work in real estate! (Hey, why not?)

www.zillow.com/profile/joan...

But what happened to her? What else was she working on at Bell? What was her contribution to this essential evolution in the software?

Okay, here's a question -- why do we all seem to know bupkis about Joan Miller, the co-author of Music IV (and Music V?) as well as the famous Daisy Bell demo? She seems to have had a fairly significant impact on the evolution of the Music environment.

Happy birthday, Isotonik: here are some of the best Ableton Live add-ons - CDM Create Digital Music With Isotonik's Darren celebrating his birthday this week, we've got an Isotonik Studios shopping guide, with favorite Max for Live add-ons, CDM reviews, and sound demos. Now with a special CDM-exclus...

While you're pimping your Live set, it's worth mentioning our friends over at @isotonikstudios.bsky.social have their Black Friday-season sale going on. So while I work on wrapping some other news/reviews from Max for Live land, feel free to peruse these gems, too!

Make doodles in Ableton Live, then animate them, with Klottra - CDM Create Digital Music Were you the type to draw elaborate doodles in your math class margins? Well, great news: Science now says that letting your mind wander is good for you. And indie Swedish design studio Henrik & Sofia...

Go ahead, stick that doodle into your set, and watch it vibe to your tunes.

And it's all backed by science. (well, maybe... links)

I think you'll love this, then. It's different enough to be worth trying, but similar enough that it'll get to that same appeal...

Noir is part bass, part drum synth - a must-have iOS drum machine - CDM Create Digital Music Dark, crunchy, synthetic sounds, grooves that morph somewhere in the shadows between bass line and percussion pattern - Ruismaker Noir is exactly the sort of drum machine you'd want with you at all ti...

I mean, I can never get enough FM drum synths. But @brambosofficial.bsky.social Noir is great. It's 2-op ...similar spirit, its own character. Noir is your only choice on iOS of course...

cdm.link/noir-drum-sy...

I didn't find this as useful of a bass synth as Noir, either!

Motherly, sequencer percussion synth, is pure rhythmic happiness from @rainbowcircuit.bsky.social - just listen. Everything you love about the Mother/DFAM, but also really not a DFAM.

cdm.link/motherly-seq...

Nothing against this platform but I dream of a BBS-style place where we just have *only* this, there's no tech anyone involved, we don't even say all that much, and we just enjoy each other's work!

If you don't already, follow @dhlovelife.bsky.social and check the gorgeous sounding and looking stuff he's doing in Jitter (directly, not only with some m4l version -- we actually don't talk about the Jitter-direct workflow enough!)

@cycling74.bsky.social

Wow, epic. And end of an era. Big love to this from Berlin -- you better get there, London.

Vara Osiria Belich is taking Phase Plant to gestural, mangled frontiers - CDM Create Digital Music This is not granular. This is all sampler, unison. And so it sounds like things that even granular can't do. Vara Osiria Belich is this week's sound design inspiration, with her bonus gestural spell c...

This is not granular. Gestural sample manipulation (Leap Motion!) all with other parameters!

Holy shrimp it's good (and check her other stuff):

MadMapper, Queen of Mapping, adds timelines, clips, more in v6 - CDM Create Digital Music How far MadMapper has come. The tool, built as a collaboration between Swiss GarageCube and French studio 1024 architecture, helped define projection mapping for a generation of visualists. It has mat...

Why MadMapper v6 is big news for mapping and live visual production, how cave painting and Rococo architecture and Wayang Kulit fit in, and some reflections on what the recent integration of AI into the tool may mean:

thanks @drewdaniel.bsky.social ...

See, that was the sign that I had to write about it, that point...

Chatting Doom Machinations

Drew Daniel, aka The Soft Pink Truth, hits home talking strings and survival - CDM Create Digital Music "Mere Survival is Not Enough." Professor Drew Daniel, you had us on the title on this one. The artist, known for being half of Matmos, and being all of Dr. Drew Daniel, and being all of the solo proje...

Survival *and* string arrangements, new music and reflections on bigger things, a music video, a teaser, some thoughts on Louisville arthouse cinema history...

A free Winamp clone, for macOS, with FLAC and Milkdrop visualizations - CDM Create Digital Music It might be a funny intersection of interests. But developer Matt Greenwood built a macOS-native clone of the legendary Winamp in Swift, MIT-licensed, with MP3 and FLAC playback and Milkdrop visualiza...

Hey, so the Winamp for macOS project I reported on, that then was gone, now is back.

There are some other efforts here, though, some that even have wmz support. (I dream of Headspace from MS WMP 7, running on Mac ARM. Does it make sense? Is it a good use of time? Ask not such questions.)

I really love Arc. So, a funny thing happened: they put all their wild, wacky ideas into a new AI browser and switched Arc to maintenance updates and ... uh, that's perfect. It's gotten way more stable. Cleanest UI of any browser. (Firefox-based Zen is an alternative, but less mature.)

Yeah the VCV Rack module I mention has a 32-bit mode! heh cc @audiothing.net ... ;)