The site has a new look, and several added features. It also cleans us several annoyances like the awkwardness of attaching images to posts, like so (now trivial...click the little tree in the post editor):

All data and user accounts was transfered but please do let me know if you have any trouble with functionality. Use the site Contact or post in the Troubleshooting Forum for your class.

Enjoy!

I found a website to download free reason patches from for a good amount of the units in reason. Check it out.

http://www.reasonfreaks.com/

Wow, here it is, the first major release of Ardour (1.0 actually never made it out the door before a complete redesign, 2.0, was in the works).  I have personally watched the development of Ardour since the beginning, almost 10 years ago!  Mac and Linux users, enjoy.  Once JACK is available for Windows, MS users can also rejoice.

http://ardour.org/node/895

Here's the link to the information and videos I showed this afternoon in lecture.  Note the software section.  It should soon contain patches and other code to make this run.

http://www.popmodernism.org/scrambledhackz

History of Sampling

This site has a very cool, minimalist layout and effectively shows some of the sampling trends of mainstream and underground artists alike (i.e. things from Beastie Boys to Madlib's alias Quasimoto).

Apparently the data is taken from The-breaks.com which is a pretty neat site documenting what songs artists use for samples on their releases. 

You will note a few site updates, things I hope will begin to make this space more useful and connective.  First, I have added user avatars (note the picture at right).  These will be added to posts and comments automatically.  If you wish to display an avatar, simply add an image to your account profile.  Click above (or at left) on "account" and then "edit" and upload a picture.  The ideal use is in putting a face to a name, etc, and so I would discourage image "icons" or cartoons, etc...unless you really look like Betty Boop...If you are concerned about privacy, this is completely optional.

Second, note the "tag cloud" below (bottom of each page).  You have seen these elsewhere to be sure, but I am growing to like these dynamic site organization methods, the "semantic web", as they say.  It is, of course, nice to be able to access pages hierarchically as normal, but it's also nice to be able to cut across that structure to places of importance.  If you have not seen these clouds before, they organize content by tags (those you add to a post or image or audio or video ,etc), showing the most used/tagged in successively larger text.

Finally (and more directly pertinent to class), I've added two new links in the "free software" section, the first a link to PD-extended for various operating systems, and the second to something called JACK which we will get to very soon.

See you all in lecture.

P.S.  One more update in process, a live chat area (joining a chat pops up a new window).  Right now the system has no invite mechanism, but you can monitor portions of the chat from the main page.  Feel free to chime in.

One of the explicit goals of Music 120 is to incite users to develop their own working methods and creative procedures.  Part of this is accomplished through information provided in lectures and in your time engaging the software available in the studios.  But as time goes by you will want to build your own software toolkit.  Free software is an excellent way to do this and there are many powerful applications available.  Indeed, many represent unique compositional tools unmatched in the world of commercial music software.

Below is a recent compilation of recommended software for various operating systems.  All software is available for free to the user and most has source code available under the GNU Public License (GPL).  I tend to favor tools with cross-platform implementations.  This gives the user a further freedom, allowing them to use whatever operating system they choose (or are provided with).  Before listing items by operating system, it is useful to list tools which will "run anywhere".  As this list grows, the list of system-specific tools can, hopefully, fade away.  A "*" denotes tools which are available for Unix systems only such as Linux, Mac OSX, Sun Solaris, etc.

First, a few quick links to downloads directly pertinent to lectures:

PureData installers (for pd-extended, all operating systems)
JACK audio connection kit for OSX

Audio/video:
Ardour* (Multitrack recording/editing) -- http://ardour.org
Audacity (Audio editing/recording) -- http://audacity.sourceforge.net
Audicle (One-the-fly programming) -- http://audicle.cs.princeton.edu/
Cecilia (Uber-app) -- http://cecilia.sourceforge.net and http://www.csounds.com/cecilia
Ceres3 (Spectral editor) -- http://www.music.columbia.edu/~stanko/About_Ceres3.html
ChucK (On-the-fly programming) -- http://chuck.cs.princeton.edu
CLAM (Spectral modeling/editing) -- http://clam.iua.upf.edu
Csound (Uber-sythn) -- http://csounds.com
JACK* (audio signal control) -- http://jackaudio.org
JAMin* (audio mastering) -- http://jamin.sourceforge.net
Mplayer (play/view almost any file type)-- http://www.mplayerhq.hu
Praat (spectral analysis) -- http://www.fon.hum.uva.nl/praat
PureData, PD (Modular audio programming) -- http://www.puredata.org
Sndtools* (audio visualization) -- http://sndtools.cs.princeton.edu
SooperLooper* (Loops) -- http://essej.net/sooperlooper
Spear (Spectral editor; Mac and Windows only) -- http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/
SuperCollider* (real-time synth) -- http://www.audiosynth.com
Tapestrea (Sound design, analysis/resynthesis) -- http://taps.cs.princeton.edu/release
VideLANClient , VLC (play/view/stream anything) -- http://www.videolan.org
Xine (play almost any filetype, nice GUI) -- http://xinehq.de

Images/office/publishing:
GIMP (Photoshop replacement) -- http://www.gimp.org
GIMPShop (Photoshop replacement) -- http://plasticbugs.com/?page_id=294
Hugin (Panoramic image stitching/editing) -- http://hugin.sourceforge.net
Inkscape (Illustrator/Freehand replacement) -- http://www.inkscape.org
OpenOffice (MS Office replacement) -- http://www.openoffice.org
Scribus (High-quality publishing) -- http://www.scribus.net

Web:
Drupal (web management software) -- http://drupal.org
Firefox (web browser) -- http://www.mozilla.com/firefox
Gallery (online photo gallery software) -- http://gallery.menalto.com
GAIM (multi-protocol IM) -- http://gaim.sourceforge.net
GoogleTalk (IM) -- http://www.google.com/talk/
Nvu (free WYSIWYG web editor) -- http://www.nvu.com

Other interests:
Celestia (a 3D celestial browser) -- http://www.shatters.net/celestia
Stellarium (a virtual planetarium) -- http://stellarium.sourceforge.net

Mac-specific Recommendations (often Mac version of above apps):

Adium (IM) -- http://www.adiumx.com
AudioMove (Audio conversion) --  http://www.lcscanada.com/audiomove
Colloquy  (IRC client) -- http://colloquy.info/
ffmpegX (play/encode/decode anything) -- http://homepage.mac.com/major4
Fink (software management) -- http://fink.sourceforge.net
Fire (multi-protocol IM) -- http://fire.sourceforge.net
Gentoo (software management) -- http://www.metadistribution.org/macos
Handbrake (DVD to Div/X) -- http://handbrake.m0k.org
Hymn (iTunes DRM help) -- http://hymn-project.org/download.php
JackOSX  -- http://www.jackosx.com
MplayerOSX (OSX GUI) -- http://mplayerosx.sourceforge.net
PVCX (OSX PVC) --  http://www.waveformsoftware.com/PVCX/pvcx.htm
OpenDarwin (Unix core) -- http://www.opendarwin.org
SoxWrap (Audio conversion)--  http://www.waveformsoftware.com/SoX_Wrap/soxwrap.htm

Windows-specific software recommendations:

Mobius (Loops) -- http://zonemobius.com
(others coming soon...offer your suggestions)

Linux Applications:

Unlike Windows and Mac, Linux is not an "app-by-app" world.  Installation is automated within the operating system.  WIth a base system in place, one can simply ask for applications and Linux will find them, download them, and install them for you.  This has led to application "bundling" (when it's so easy to ask for one, why not create ways to ask for lots of applications at once?).  Below are several audio/video-specific bundles of this kind.  Follow the directions on these pages and you will have a full-blown music environment running under Linux (for free) in a few hours.  One or two even run directly off of a CDROM (see below), just pop the disk in the drive, reboot, and you are ready to make music.

Linux will run on any hardware (PC, Mac, Sun, Xbox, toaster, etc) so you might consider adding it to your machine alongside your curret operating system.

Audio Bundles (install on Linux)
PlanetCCRMA: http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/software/
AGNULA: http://www.agnula.org/
Turnkey Linux Audio: http://tkla.sourceforge.net/
Thac pages: http://rpm.nyvalls.se
64 Studio: http://64studio.com/
Dave Phillips Pages http://linux-sound.org

Bundles which run from CDROM (no install required)
Dynebolic: http://dynebolic.org/
Plus24: http://www.plus24.com/m-dist/
Studio to Go: http://www.ferventsoftware.com/ (commercial)
Apodio: http://www.apo33.org/apodio/mediaw (in French)