Apple’s GarageBand music creation and amp simulation on iPad is now also on the company’s handhelds, with iPhone (3GS, 4, 4S) and iPod touch (3rd-generation and better) support. You only have to buy GarageBand once; the app runs on all those platforms, so if you had the iPad version and also own a compatible device, you can automagically add it.
The iPad is definitely the roomier device, so what can you do with the handheld?
Touch Instruments (pictured here) let you quickly tap out musical ideas.
Amp and stompbox models work. As I’ve said in the past, that makes the handhelds into usable practice amps or pocket-ready effects boxes.
Lay down multiple tracks (recording external audio one at a time), and edit in a simplified GarageBand track editor.
You can still exchange files – up to eight tracks of recorded or generated music – with GarageBand and Logic on your Mac. That makes this a usable pocket sketchpad.
In short, not only does your Mac have little to fear, the notion is that these handheld apps could actually give you added incentive to do production back on the desktop.
Also in this update are features that will be useful to the iPad version, too, but are clearly intended to make the palm-top edition more usable. “Smart Instruments” let you play along with chords – ideal if you can’t quite twist your fingers into strumming positions on your phone. And there’s a historical musical precedent for this, too: think autoharps and frets and capos, musical innovations intended to make playing an idea easier.
If you want a bit more sophistication, the instruments expand to provide features like glissando, Leslie simulation, tuners, and so on.
Our friend Jim Dalrymple of Apple-focused tech site The Loopspots other enhancements. If you discovered the previous version frustratingly didn’t let you change keys without transposing audio, or didn’t let you set 3/4 or 6/8 time signatures (“do I hear a waltz?”), those holes have been patched – useful in the iPad version, too. Also, you can export to AAC or uncompressed AIFF even without going via GarageBand or Logic, a helpful issue.
US$4.99 new, or free update for existing customers. (Fear not for starving programmers. It turns out that this “Apple” company also makes those “iPhone” and “Mac” things, too.)
But this is all feature talk. What’s impressive to me is the way Apple has boiled down the interface of GarageBand into a smaller space. What’s left is only what is strictly necessary – complete with some photo-realistic imagery, yes, true to Apple’s notion of polish and texture. It makes a stunningly clear and obvious interface design, and that to me is inspiring: not as something I hope other developers will copy, but the kind of clarity I hope they’ll find in their own voice. After all, GarageBand for iOS shares DNA with Logic, not just mobile apps, and therefore a far more complex heritage.
Playing the glass surface of your phone as a musical instrument is likely to be relatively limited – compare a tangible instrument, which feels fun to play. But as a sketchpad, and as a pocket reduction of other things, this has appeal.
Images courtesy Apple. (Check out high-resolution versions.)
Instruments like the Theremin may be trying to shake off their association with fear, dread, and the unnatural. But the synthesizer has no such concern: after all, the Moog is pretty much a rock star, literally. So, for anyone fiddling around with the Animoog – hopefully including iPad owners who are newer to synthesis – you can now grab a bunch of presets to provide the perfect sonic accompaniment to this Halloween. The sounds are the work of synthesist/sound designers Drew Neumann and Kevin Lamb.
And as if the app, currently on sale for $.99, weren’t already a steal for people who already have the iPad, the presets are free. Just move quickly: the price jumps to US$29.99 on November 18.
Of course, what would also be a lot of fun would be some sort of proximity sensor for your app, for use at a party… okay, we have a few hours left if anyone can wire up the Arduino hardware link on Android or the camera on the iPhone or the motion sensor or … something. Go!
Got other Halloweeny news for us? Let us know!
Installation instructions from Moog (by popular demand):
Native Instruments reveals some big news for Maschine that’s … well, smaller. A new package has smaller hardware and lower price, with the same full-sized software. And an iOS version lets you use Maschine on iPad or iPhone.
As their drum machine / drum sampler / groove workstation with plug-in hosting and doubling as plug-in matures, and becomes a focus of NI’s production and performance side, things are starting to heat up. And yes, this news comes just as we learn more about an upcoming analog drum machine. It’s a Labor Day full of drum machines.
Shrunken Maschine: Maschine Mikro is, for me, the best news. It’s cheaper than the full Maschine package. It’s smaller and lighter, with a more compact controller. You might expect NI trimmed down the samples set – nope, it’s the same 6 GB ibrary. Or maybe they added a “lite” version of the software – nope, it’s the same, full Maschine version. And you still get full-sized pads. The Maschine pads are some of my favorite currently on the market – controller or otherwise – so that’s quite nice, indeed. You do sacrifice some hands-on control: the Mikro lacks the big, beautiful screens on the full Maschine, and the additional knobs and triggers. The eight macro knobs on the full Maschine are pretty handy, as are dedicated group buttons.
So, why would I think Mikro’s a good idea? Simple: when you’re on the road, or performing live onstage in cramped spaces, the Mikro looks like a winner, and all with the same software and at a lower price. For studio use, the full Maschine is still your best choice. But I’m personally going to switch out to the Mikro, especially because – like many people, I suspect – it’ll ultimately be combined with another controller in my workflow. You can have a closer look at our two product shots from NI and decide for yourself. (Yes, there’s a Maschine Bag, and yes, I was just talking to King Britt about his on-the-go luggage setup with his Maschine, but I’m still partial to smaller and lighter!)
Finger drumming video: NI has also released a promo vid of finger-drumming virtuoso Jeremy Ellis tearing apart their new hardware. It’s supposed to make you want to buy a Mikro, or something, except it may make you feel somewhat … inadequate … with your own finger drumming, instead.
Really Shrunken Maschine: If the Mikro isn’t small enough – say, you’re on the East Coast “Chinatown” Fung Wah bus and don’t really have room for your knees – NI also has a Maschine coming for iOS in October. It seems eminently practical:
four tracks
sampling (perhaps the most fun part of having this be mobile)
“high-quality” effects (no reason that couldn’t just be ported from desktop)
instrument and drum sounds from the standard Maschine library
bring back your sketches into the full Maschine and edit them there
I’m only sorry it’s called iMaschine. Oh, well.
Komplete integration: As a footnote to this other news, NI notes that Maschine and Maschine Mikro each now support sound browsing and parameter mapping for instruments and effects in Komplete/Komplete Ultimate – the kind of tactile control originally in Kore, now entirely focused on Maschine.
Bottom line: For lovers of this workstation, it sounds to me like Maschine for iOS on the bus, Maschine software on your MacBook on the plane, Mikro in the hotel room, standard Maschine in the studio.
An example score produced with MuseScore’s new lead sheet features.
Music notation software has long been seen as a two-horse race, a Pepsi versus Coke stand-off between Finale and Sibelius. But not only are there other alternatives, too, here’s one tool that’s making free and open source notation viable. I’ve spoken previously about engraving tool Lilypond, but it’s not entirely graphical, even with GUI front ends. MuseScore will look more familiar to users of something like Sibelius, and just as the latter released a major upgrade, it also had a big 1.1 release with major new enhancements.
MuseScore has a robust notation engine, capable feature set, and it’s even catching on in a number of academic institutions around the world. There’s an iPad-based score reader, which in turn is a revenue source (no reason open source software can’t generate income). You can enter music with keyboard, mouse, or MIDI, use the usual complement of symbols and layout features, and import and export both MusicXML and Standard MIDI files. You won’t find a big orchestral sample library as in Sibelius 7 and Finale’s Garritan-based sounds, but there’s still support for soft synth playback, and you can run for free on Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’s been translated into some 43 languages and counts more than 2500 downloads daily.
Given the coincidence of Sibelius and MuseScore getting their upgrades at the same time, I asked the MuseScore developers directly how they thought they compared. Let’s bring on the fighting words – after all, a little friendly competition drives better tools. (Ask the engineers on contests like Robot Wars.)
Improved interoperability also means you don’t have to choose sides. With MusicXML import/export in MuseScore and recently expanded in Sibelius 7, you can exchange files between the two tools – as you should. (After all, the whole point of notation is the ability for anyone to read it — for the exchange of ideas.)
First, here’s what’s new in MuseScore 1.1, with improvements like jazz and lead sheet functionality:
Lead sheet enhancements, including MuseJazz jazz font, chord symbols on bars without notes, keyboard shortcuts for moving between bars, more chord symbols, and slash notation (via a plug-in) … see the beginner and advanced tutorials, and separate blog post.
Connect is a Web-baed social feature for sharing scores, checking out tutorials, and following Twitter MuseScore discussion, all within the program. (Actually, I’m surprised more music software doesn’t do something like this.)
Improved stability and reliability, including 60 bug fixes. To be honest, that’s probably what has held me back from spending much time with MuseScore, so I’m intrigued. This isn’t a review, but I’ll have to do some scoring work so I can try it out.
MuseScore Connect adds tutorials and social and score-sharing features to the software interface itself.
MuseScore isn’t as fully-functional as tools like Sibelius and Finale. For may purposes, it will do the job; it just lacks some of their maturity and extensive feature set, which means you should research its current features if you have particular notational needs. But that’s changing. On the roadmap for a more significant version 2.0 are critical notation features like tablature, and linked parts so you can edit music simultaneously in extracted parts and full score.
Sibelius versus MuseScore?
I asked MuseScore developer Thomas Bonte to follow up on how MuseScore relates to Sibelius with news of the two coinciding:
Well first off all, we have to be honest about it, Sibelius is a superb product. Many of my friends use it and I dropped the ambition to convert them to MuseScore However I learned that every year there is a new group of aspiring musicians following music education. The way we see it, is that MuseScore is growing up together with them.
MuseScore strongest selling proposition against Sibelius and others is it’s price: $0. While that seems an unbeatable price, MuseScore faces very steep competition from pirated versions of Sibelius or Finale. When I go around in music conservatories and I ask who has a legal version, only the teacher raises a hand. So MuseScore needs to do better than just the price and that’s where the Open Source kicks in.
If you look at it economically, it’s all about reducing production costs. Translations, documentation, import & export filters, plugins, … The only thing we (the core team) need to take care off is that the contributor community can work together. To facilitate this collaboration, we invested a tremendous amount of time in building a full featured community website on musescore.org using Drupal CMS. It is the main reason why the contributor community around MuseScore has doubled every release, up to 150 people for 1.0. You may have an open source project, but without people, that means nothing. And that’s how we really compete. With our community of contributors and users. The former improves the product, the latter does the promotion.
It’s just a matter of time before MuseScore can handle professional typesetting work. Via initiatives such as the Open Goldberg project, we want to show that MuseScore is getting ready for more demanding work. Open Goldberg @ Kickstarter
One more thingy related to Sibelius: finally, Sibelius 7 has MusicXML export on board! A huge amount of users were asking us how they could convert their Sibelius files to MuseScore. (e.g. https://www.facebook.com/caleb.foreman/posts/10150374776437678 ) The Dolet plugin was obviously way overpriced to be a democratic solution. This is a huge relief now for e.g. educators, who have lots of material in Sibelius and wanted to convert it for their students who are using MuseScore.
Some of Sibelius 7′s features do have comparable features in MuseScore – and in some instances, MuseScore was first. Thomas observes:
MuseScore had a tabbed document interface (like a web browser) since the start of the project
MuseScore is of course native 64 bit (if compiled on a 64 bit machine)
PDF export has also been there from the beginning
Multi core playback is not available in MuseScore but the synthesizer runs in a second thread (so at least dual core)
MuseScore had import of SVG images since many years now
Upcoming MuseScore 2.0 has full screen support
Version 2.0 is likely to be the big release, in my mind; we’ll be watching. Thomas says they’re also working on improved branding and visual appearance in preparation for that release, and all of this is boosted, he says, by revenue from the iPad score reader. That makes an interesting new model for free and open source software.
A side note, as my biggest criticism of the free engraving tool Lilypond at the moment is its lack of two-way MusicXML file interchange. Thomas notes:
MuseScore exports Lilypond. It used to have Lilypond import as well, but that was dropped in 0.9.6 because it was better to spend out limited resources on improving MusicXML import. We expected to see MusicXML export in Lilypond anyway, but apparently that’s far from trivial since it still didn’t happen.
And what about compatibility for ABCjs, a JavaScript-powered, text-based notation format so simple it’s been implemented on mobile phones and Web browsers?
Yes there is. And the way this works is a very nice example of how hackable MuseScore is. It’s written out nicely in this post here but basically what happens is: a plugin in MuseScore let’s you browse for the ABC file, it then sends the ABC file to a web service at http://abc2xml.appspot.com which is made by one of the MuseScore developers, and finally that web service sends MusicXML back. Et voilà. (Note: as stated on the announcement: The webservice uses ABC4J. ABC4J supports ABC 1.6 only)
This may help you to get an idea where MuseScore is and where version 2.0 is heading.
One note: MusicXML export is not available in Sibelius Student or First. Only in Sibelius 7. Bummer.
I think it should be plainly obvious: there’s room for more than one notation tool. There’s room for more than two notation tools. Competition between tools can drive capabilities forward, and better motivate tools to match what users need. Free and proprietary tools can both learn from one another, and even exchange files – there isn’t a gulf between free and open source and proprietary as some may have found in the past. The availability of better tools means the expanded ability of musicians to express themselves.
And MuseScore is becoming a viable option for notation. That can only be a good thing. If you use it in your work – or you have anything you’d like to share about how you create digital … scores – we’d love to hear from you.
FL Studio Mobile, previously announced for iOS, is now available for iPhone, iPod touch, and, in an “HD” edition, on iPad 1 and 2. The biggest feature: if you’re an FL Studio user, you can take your projects and load them on the mobile version for on-the-go editing. That makes FL the first major, non-Apple studio app to do round-trip workflows between mobile and desktop.
The release is also causing some mainstream outlets to notice, like BetaNews, who suggest this breaks a 13-year, Windows-only FL Studio run. That’s not entirely fair: Image-Line have released cross-platform software. The issue is that the full-blown FL Studio desktop version is deeply tied to Windows. FL Studio Mobile is a ground-up app. But it’s still big news.
BetaNews notes that the round-trip isn’t as easy as you might like:
Like Garageband for iPad, pulling files off of the iPad is kind of a chore. In order to load FL Studio Mobile projects into FL Studio for Windows, users need version 10.0.5 or later of FL Studio, and files must be dragged and dropped from the FL Studio Browser (or Windows folder) to the desktop one by one. There’s not yet an easy export feature for fast file sharing.
That could change, though, if the application adds iCloud support – and even this, as described, sounds easy enough to me.
Other features:
Piano keys, drum pads with flexible layouts – so you can arrange, say, multiple stacks of keys or drums the way you like.
Instruments, kits, and loops included.
99-track sequencer, piano roll and step sequence editing.
Import/export not only FL Studio projects, but WAV and MIDI files, too. Unfortunately, sample loading isn’t available yet, but is coming.
An Android version is also in the works:
What about Android OS? It’s on the roadmap, stop nagging! We have a development team working on a low-latency Android audio-engine and there are many screen resolutions and device specifications to consider, it’s not as simple as you may think
FL Studio for Mac is still in the “forget about it and stop asking” category, so no change there:
Does this mean FL Studio on Mac OSX soon? FL Studio Mobile is not a port of the Windows version of FL Studio. It is the product of a completely separate development team, and code, so FL Studio Mobile, while compatible with FL Studio has no impact on FL Studio development and vice versa.
Just expect to read about this everywhere, thanks to a viral contest Image-Line is running. Guys, take it easy: I think people would blog your FL Studio Mobile without having an iPad to win. FL Studio Mobile News
On the road from futuristic instrumental concept to real-world product, the Yamaha Tenori-On as shipped lacked some of the functionality its creator, gifted media artist Toshio Iwai, originally imagined. Notably, wireless networking, which promised social music-making with other devices, was gone, replaced with a more-limited MIDI connector.
Now, in a surprisingly literal translation from the hardware to iPad, it appears the Tenori-On has added that feature – but lost some of its charm. An iOS developer notes to me that pitches don’t sound when you tap the screen, only when they are played in the sequence. That fundamentally changes the interaction with the sequencer: you can’t hear notes until they’re sequenced, and you would presumably lose the sense of playing an instrument. That report is happily incorrect; both the developer and I were mistaken from our video impressions. That makes this far more useful.
My reaction here should be taken with a grain of salt – this is only a demo video. But in observing what is new (networked features look terrific), it’s likewise worth saying that something is lost when you move to tangible hardware. To me, a lot of the appeal of the Tenori-On was tangible: the machined metal case, with curved edges designed to be comfortable to hold, and the feeling of running your fingers against discrete, round keys on the array of buttons. Those are lost by necessity. Yet, oddly, some of the Tenori-On’s features designed primarily for hardware – the menu system and navigation keys – are reproduced here, features necessary on a hardware design but not a tablet.
Yamaha Japan, apologies for going on a rant on a product I haven’t yet used, but I’m concerned at what seems to be a missed opportunity. And designer Toshio Iwai has already conceived imaginative touch-based interfaces that are designed for a screen, in works before iOS had even been announced, like ElectroPlankton for the Nintendo DS and interactive installation work going back some 15 years or so.
Simply translating hardware designs to a screen is novel, but rarely usable. Just ask Tascam, who were roundly (and rightly) criticized for making a Portastudio app for iPad that required you rewind every single time.
At least the good news is, some of the musical personality of Toshio Iwai’s work remains, and in a form that doesn’t require a costly hardware investment. Updated – also, via readers, there’s evidence of MIDI support.You’ll find other videos on Yamaha’s official Japanese channel.
Just mark my words: the hardware is still cooler, and there’s a lot of potential in hardware and software sequencers alike beyond this yet to be realized, whether by Yamaha or by someone else.
Updated: I want to re-emphasize that there appears to be auditory feedback as you press buttons for sequences, which is great news and vastly improves usability. And while I stand by some of what’s advantageous in hardware, I’m excited to learn that we may get both networked and MIDI functions here, as we’ve seen in apps from makers like KORG.
Reader comments are very positive, so amidst this hopefully constructive criticism, I think it’s encouraging that the software looks promising and people are eager to try it! (And being critical of some features does not mean you can’t eventually like the product – part of why I tend not to shy away from criticism.)
Two spacey ways of finding media: music collections, heirarchy, and images of planets in Planetary for iPad, top. Sound and loop collections, “magnetic” relations, algorithmic categorization, and rapid torchlight auditioning in Soundtorch 2.0 for Windows, bottom.
If your music and sound collections seem like outwardly-expanding universes, two new tools promise to bring order by representing media as virtual planets and stars. One works on albums and tracks on the iPad; the other uses computer-aided analysis of loops and samples (not just music) on Windows. One will make your eyeballs pop; one might help you manage gigs of samples for a game design project.
Built in the open-source framework Cinder by an all-star team of media artist-designers (Ben Cerveny, Tom Carden, Jesper Sparre Andersen and Robert Hodgin), Planetary should satisfy space nuts and eye candy lovers. The metaphor is pretty direct: artists are stars, albums are planets around the artists, tracks are moons around the planets, and you can filter “constellations” by letter. That means the actual structure is heavily hierarchical, actually, in the tradition of iTunes (and, before it, its predecessor SoundJam). I’m not sure what happens with, say, compilations. But let’s face it: the real draw is that it’s incredibly beautiful to look at. I’d be just as entertained looking at a visualization of my system folder if it looked this pretty.
For now, Planetary is some fascinating eye candy with at least basic playback capabilities, iPad-only. That brings some good news – Airplay wireless works, and since it makes use of standard media code, even features like Last.fm scrobbles function. It also brings some bad — while Apple added support for libraries to third-party apps, Home Sharing isn’t included, so you’re limited to what’s on your iPad. Playlists aren’t supported, either. But hook this up to a projector or large screen TV with some of your favorite music, and I don’t think you’ll be complaining. And as a free tool, it’s incredible.
Less pretty, but with greater facilities on the utility side, is the Windows-only Soundtorch. (Thanks to Kristian Gohlke for the tip!) Visually, it offers a similar metaphor: media assets live on a continuous plane. Functionally, though, it’s more algorithmic than hierarchic, using something called the Computer Aided Sound Exploration engine (C.A.S.E.). The set of algorithms, which the creators say were based on evaluation of human listening, performs a sophisticated set of extractions of some 600 features from each sound file.
Rather than limit itself to albums and tracks, C.A.S.E. is tuned for audio files and loops. It’s fast enough that it can plow quickly through gigs of material. So, if you’re on Windows and have amassed an enormous collection of loops, samples, field recordings, sound effects, and the like, Soundtorch will use C.A.S.E. to first map all those relationship, then visualize them. You can use the mouse to produce new collections of assets, map relationships visually, export those relationship to XML, copy sounds to the clipboard, export to WAV, or open them in Windows Explorer. That is, all that eye candy is a genuine interface, not a barrier between you and what you might do (as so often happens with these sorts of experimental interfaces).
In fact, you might argue that, despite outward appearances, Soundtorch is entirely different from Planetary, but they share one common conceptual assumption. Related media “orbit” or attract to common materials. The difference is that Soundtorch is relational. In Soundtorch, if you “magnetize” a file, it – and any similar files – become attracted to attractors called “magnets.”
As is appropriate searching for media, the “torchlight” metaphor shines a light through files. Everything under the light plays back simultaneously, so you don’t have to audition sounds one at a time. (That sounds slightly terrifying to me, but I have to spend more time with it in an actual library.)
The creators describe the magic thusly:
Have you ever listened to a sound and felt that there was a similar one somewhere on your hard disk? And the sound you can’t find would just work so much better right now? Well, Soundtorch also remembers all sounds that you ever listened to. Just select any sound on Soundtorch, and let the system suggest the most similar ones from your whole collection.
In other words, SoundTorch is as much about what you can’t see as what you can – the intelligence to determine similarity behind the scenes. Check out the tech talk in the video above for more information on how “aurally and visually-enhanced audio search” could also apply this technology. More research at: http://www.accessive-tools.com/
Finally, if you want to hear the “Optimist” track by Zoe Keating without that voiceover and just enjoy Planetary’s gorgeous visuals, here you go:
From innovation in the visual interface to the intelligence underneath that changes how the computer interprets relationships between files, finally, there’s hope. Music and sound might not forever be trapped in views borrowed from spreadsheets, tables modeled on the needs of accountants 30 years ago.
Apple users may not know the name – FL Studio, formerly Fruity Loops, is a favorite on Windows – but FL is a favorite music making tool of the bedroom computer producer everyman. (Everywoman?) So, its imminent appearance on the iPad tablet is eagerly anticipated, even in the aftermath of GarageBand. Developers Image-Line, an independent software house from Belgium, delivered the first hands-on video today.
It’s worth pointing to the work of stretta, to compare the sorts of things people imagined the iPad would do before it did anything. Formerly of MOTU, and best known as the creator of wonderful patches for the monome grid, he imagined the product demo below before the iPad had even shipped:
The software is a functional prototype running in MaxMSP which I recorded with a screen capture program. I composited this onto a foam core cutout of a picture of an iPad with After Effects. The finger touches are a complex choreographed dance that I had to memorize and perform in one take.
See his blog post today. The video is striking. Of course, I still wonder – what’s the next big idea?
Update – since I seem to be potentially misinterpreted here – yes. These are all ideas seen elsewhere, seen regularly on the Lemur. I’m not making any claim on the novelty of stretta’s original mockup – actually, I’m more amused by how hard it was to try to fake an iPad without one in hand! If there is a lesson here, I’d say it’s ship your ideas, and consider what sorts of ideas other people won’t ship.
In the blurring areas between gaming and creation, toys and tools, there’s certainly a lot of action, spurred on by platforms for sharing software.
Pulse is a new title for the iPad, an ambient rhythmic gaming experience with a unique interface centering around a series of concentric circles. The graphic design looks gorgeous in its abstraction, as much music visualization and animation as game UI. The developer, Cipher Prime, has done this kind of terrific work before – their work includes the ambient streams of colored particles in Auditorium, the Flash-based browser game, followed by the Mac + PC game Fractal. Items of note here:
The game combines melodic and rhythmic gameplay elements.
Pulse is as much interactive album as game, accompanied by a release of songs (including the single below).
Gameplay can be collaborative, not just single player.
The title is built in the awesome Unity engine, which means, by the way, Android development isn’t ruled out. Ahem. Let’s hope those OEMs get their tablets straightened out – I repeat my mntra, choice is good.
In addition to the existing tracks, the developers are looking for indie musicians in Philly looking to get in on the action. Game developers: the new record labels.
The title is already earning praise and recognition, including topping the charts and getting featured as iPad game of the week.
Interestingly, as the iPad morphs into game platform, that hasn’t stopped people from reconsidering game platforms as venues for music creation tools. So, by way of contrast and comparison – and in case your Xbox is feeling lonely with all the iPad news – it seems only right to counterpoint Pulse with a new Xbox 360 title also released last week.
Music Box is a Tenori-On-inspired music sequencer for Xbox Live Arcade. It’s fairly simple in conception, but makes clever use of the spare controls on an Xbox game controller, and at only a buck, it’s almost certainly a must-buy for music lovers with an Xbox.
Developer Vadim of Facetious Creations built Music Box with Microsoft’s XNA toolset, which opens up the possibility of Windows Phone, too. He says the response so far has been terrific. I find it fun to play with – and an interesting diversion for a game console.
For all our complaints about iOS and even Android, game consoles remain the most closed platforms out there. (Indeed, some of the anxiety over iOS I believe stems from concerns the game consoles locked-down model will spread to other computing hardware.) That said, Microsoft arguably does more than any other console vendor to promote indie game titles; amidst some noise, there are some real gems on the Xbox Live Arcade.
So, there you have it – two very different models for two different platforms. Let us know what you think.
Addendum: Many, many games have taken on the idea of games as albums, or at least with strong musical dimensions. There’s a nice list of inspiration listed in the sidebar of the blog for Cipher Prime, just to name a few that offer indie and ambient goodness:
Aether
Blueberry Garden
Eufloria
flOw
Knytt Stories
Machinarium
Osmos
Passage
Samarost 2
Windosill
The Molten drum machine meets MIDI and sync, via the Camera Connection Kit. It’s just one of a number of improvements that have made iOS tools more mature, more powerful – and easy to integrate with other, less Apple-y hardware and software. Image courtesy One Red Dog.
It’s nice to think software gets better, not worse, with age. And so it is that if you use an iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad in the studio, your mobile gizmos are getting more powerful and useful. Expanded support for MIDI – using both wireless and wired connections to interface with gear of the last couple of decades – and other features make these tools more musically productive. Here’s just a quick refresher on what recent updates are adding.
TouchOSC adds MIDI, improves documentation, support, and community. TouchOSC has been popular as a control solution – it’s simple, makes whipping up custom layouts fairly quick, and interfaces wirelessly with lots of tools. You can even use it with Linux or free tools; the documentation starts out with instructions on translating its network messages to MIDI for free on any OS, using Pd. In fact, while I don’t think TouchOSC’s layout editing is perfect – I’d like to see other ideas, too – I find creating layouts much quicker than it ever was on the pricier, now-defunct Lemur. (That was a complaint I made in the first review I wrote of the Lemur years ago, for Keyboard.)
Adding MIDI support to TouchOSC means a lot more flexibility. You can now connect over a network using Apple’s wireless MIDI implementation (which, incidentally, is not Mac-specific – ports are available for Windows and Linux). You can connect USB MIDI interfaces using the iPad Camera Connection Kit. And the new release even includes support for the MIDI Mobilizer, which works not only on iPad but iPhone and iPod touch, too – ideal for pocket-friendly control.
Updated: I’ve read user reports about 1.7 with custom OSC names and compatibility with Missing Link hardware. You may want to wait for a fix before updating. Feel free to discuss here in comments. (Thanks, Josh!)
This version also adds complete documentation and a forum. See blog post. Developer hexler also promises a library section for people to contribute their own layouts.
Speaking of layouts, I routinely see new ones in my inbox. Here’s a creative drum sequencer template; see video below:
Expanded MIDI Support for Molten Drum Machine Molten, the excellent drum machine tool for iPad, added MIDI support earlier. Version 1.1 seems to iron out some issues with it, however. Synthtopia gets the scoop here: MIDI clock sync and CoreMIDI configuration have all been improved. Clock alone is a reason to try out Molten, especially if you have computers or hardware you want to try syncing.
Virtual MIDI ports allow for the first time routing between iOS apps. Interestingly, with the combination of new background audio and virtual MIDI, you can use an iPad a bit like you would a desktop computer, with multiple apps working together. It’s not quite the main appeal of tablets to me, and you may max out the fairly lean computing powers of the iPad (especially the first-generation), but it’s compelling work.
The other cool thing about Molten is that some of these features have come from discussions with other developers, including on our own Noisepages group. Case in point: some cool network MIDI features, described in a blog post here — have at it, developers!
A new wireframe OSC controller. TouchOSC isn’t the only game in town for iOS controllers. WireGUI is a new, palm-sized wireframe controller for iPhone and iPod touch. ( There’s no iPad-native version yet.) What it does that TouchOSC doesn’t is allow you to edit controls directly on the device. I also love its retro graphical style and unique widgets, and updates are already in store.
Chris Jeffs made the release from Berlin earlier this month. I don’t normally like copying and pasting, but he sends a very detailed description, so I will quote it:
WireGUI is a new OSC controller App for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It features easy customisation of controller setups, with all editing taking place on the device. Groups of objects may be added simply by dragging and dropping a chosen icon, and they can be arranged with custom colors, resized and even rotated. Underneath the distinctive aesthetic is an extensive OSC message specification with many options for outgoing data. In an update currently in review, any group which stores values may also act as a simple step sequencer.
Features:
▪ An OSC controller App for iPhone and iPod Touch.
▪ Includes groups of controls: Sliders, Slider Bars, Arrows, Buttons, Knobs, Drum Pads, a mixer and an X-Y Touchpad.
▪ All groups respond to multiple points of contact.
▪ Quickly arrange controller elements on the device itself – no need to spend hours using complicated desktop editing programs.
▪ Groups can be resized, automatically arranged and even rotated.
▪ Arrangements may be saved on the device for later use.
▪ (forthcoming in version 1.3) Simple sequencer function allows values to be stepped through with adjustable tempo and ppqn.
▪ Distinctive, minimalist looks with customisable color schemes.
▪ Extensive OSC spec.
▪ Only $4.99
Compatibility Information:
▪ iOS 4.0+ required, 4.2+ recommended.
▪ Use of 4th generation iPhone or iPod Touch is highly recommended. Testing has revealed problems with the display of bitmaps in some older generation devices. A fix has been identified and is planned for release in a future version.
What can you Control with one free tool for iPad? (other platforms forthcoming) How about a giant wall of synths? Source: Pellegrini Synth Lab. I want to go to there.
New creations for the free and open source Control. I covered Control earlier this year. It’s a significant release: unlike other tools here, it makes use of Web rendering and HTML5 to build its layouts. That offers Web-style coding (JSON!) and far greater portability of layouts than native controls that use only Apple-specific tools. Developer Charlie Roberts has maintained a blog where you can keep track of development:
touchAble alongside Ableton Live – in a way that makes the visual relationship clear. Courtesy the developer.
Ableton Live controller touchAble makes full use of multi-touch. Last but certainly not least, multiple touch points (multiple dots or … if you can keep from snickering, multiple balls) now make full use of the iPad’s touch capabilities in a new update to touchAble. touchAble is Ableton-only, but as such tightly integrates with parameters in that tool.
Developer Sylvain Garcia from touchAble tells us:
This new module, up to 4 dots, can record, cut, loop & reverse motions of balls and play them back as automations in total sync to Ableton Live. You can create your own loops and save & restore them with just one tap. Each Ball has its own Gravity & bouncing settings – allowing for a variety of different movements and on the fly adjustments. The direction of gravity can be adjusted as well as gravity’s force. It also allows you to save snapshots + morphing….
We have worked very hard on this new update, and are very proud of the result.
It’s worth noting that, while Rana Sobhany has earned a lot of attention as an “iPad DJ,” many other artists are using devices like the iPad as remote controls for computers. I served on a panel with Rana at South by Southwest and got to talk to her a bit, and her technique focuses on making the iPads act like decks or looping samplers, with a crossfader in between. By contrast, acts like Andrew Andrew – who got started iPad launch week as did Rana – focus instead on using the device as a controller. At a recent party at New York’s Ace Hotel, that allowed them to freely wander the crowd. (They’re using TouchAble with Ableton Live.)
If the controller approach appeals more, here’s a look at touchAble’s official video:
I have to see, of all the controllers out there – for any application – touchAble is probably the most extensive in terms of the sheer variety of control layouts and the degree of integration. It’s worth a look, even if you find some friend with the combination to check out.
Here are images of the new X/Y functionality, courtesy the developers. Click for full-sized versions; you can see some of the assignment powers here. It’s not just as though they gave this a couple of balls and popped out for drinks.
Far-out Konkreet control. One of the most unusual tools to come out of the iPad software crop, in terms of design, has to be the stunning Konkreet Performer. It focuses on advanced parameter control via a multi-touch interface, but it really commits to that paradigm – no fake knobs or faders in sight. In the place of the virtual pots, you see gorgeous geometric eye candy that explodes around your finger touchpoints.
A future update will let you project those visuals onscreen as you work. A couple of nice examples, among others:
Stephan Bodzin vs Marc Romboy are using the rig live onstage in their LUNA tour, with both the Visualizer and Performer modules. Extensive documentation below:
On the same lines, Reaktor house Twisted Tools has a series of custom layouts for their soundmakers. The first of these uses Konkreet; the others use TouchOSC and an original template, respectively.
Also, our friend Peter Dines has put out a mind-bending “ultra-Theremin” instrument for Konkreet. You can use TouchOSC, to be sure – but for a “freakish playing experience,” as Peter puts it, it has to be Konkreet.
And there you have it – real polyphonic Theremin, not a joke after all. I’ll leave it there, but let us know which controller apps you’re using in the studio and how they’re working for you. And I’ll keep saving up my pennies for a Xoom to see if I can’t give Android lovers some choices, too (both OSC and bluetooth MIDI are possible there – or sync to an iPad for a cross-platform, let’s-all-get-along lovefest).
The armies of the earbuds are everywhere, as people – since the dawning of the Walkman – tune out their surroundings. What if, instead, your surroundings became soundtracks? That’s the question posed by a mobile app research project, partnering between New York’s Times Square and a creative team at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
UrbanRemix invites users to capture geo-tagged sounds with a free iOS and Android app, then to string them together into sound compositions on the Web (as seen above):
You may have seen this project before – it’s been in trials for some months – but a contest to produce music with the tools is coming to its conclusion.
It’s doubly amusing as I expect New Yorkers are largely the ones focused on trying to tune out these very sounds. (Noise complaints are the most common calls to New York’s 311 city help line, by a large margin, and hopefully not just during CDM-sponsored Handmade Music events.)
It suggests some of the creative and practical use of geo-tagged, mobile field recordings. But I’m struck in particular by seeing paths drawn through the city map as a kind of interactive score – see my rant on the topic of notation’s future, or better yet, play with this interface as it makes the point better than I can in words.
Try it out, and let us know what you think. Field recordings and found sound are nothing new, but they still raise the question: can this change how you hear, or how you respond to your environment?
Connecting something to something else – it’s a basic principle of musical composition, of improvisation, of conversation. It’s therefore an essential feature of software, code, and digital music interfaces.
But sometimes, it’s awfully nice to turn a knob and plug in actual, physical cord.
Our friends Ben Hovey and Chris Stack are here with more freebies and giveaways for the analog circuitry-containing portions of your studio. This isn’t just for the deep-pocketed, either – they share free listening, ideas that can be applied even to free software patches, and techniques that work even if all you’ve got is a Moogerfooger.
First up, Ben Hovey shares a funky, free EP he made while beta testing the spectacular, capable Moog MIDI MuRF effect pedal. With MIDI-manipulated modulations, the MuRF is a bit like having a little analog effect computer. And since you can use anything as a source, it can make its textures from synthetic sounds or – as Ben does here – “on the trumpet, farfisa, wurli, breaks, and even as an echo chamber (feedback from speakers->mic->murf->speaker->mic->murf…).”
If you could only have one piece of Moog gear, or even only one hardware effect, the MIDI MuRF might be it. And, just as importantly, Ben’s music is itself as perfectly-crafted as a polished piece of North Carolina pine, filled with funk. Give a listen and download:
It might be considered blasphemous – part of why I like the Moogerfoogers is the feel of the knobs and faders – but Ben has also built a remote controller with the popular touch control tool TouchOSC for iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, in case you’ve been hiding in your analog modular cave – lucky you). This assumes an intervening computer, though; you need something like OSCulator to do the conversion. Going straight from mobile wirelessly to MIDI device is likely to be a topic of discussion here shortly, so that’s all I’ll say for now.
But the layouts look useful, and while I wouldn’t personally have any desire to duplicate the controls already on the Moogerfooger, having access to MIDI-accessible controls is indeed very nice.
Finally, Chris Stack, formerly of Moog Music but now doing all of this independently, continues his fantastic Experimental Synth series. I’ll say what I’ve said before, which is that you can borrow these ideas even if you aren’t lucky enough to have this (very fine) gear; if you have a computer and no pocket change at all, you can still do it in Pd. And if you can beg, borrow, or bribe your way onto the gear, now you’ll have lots of great stuff to try when you get there.
At top, the latest video and my current favorite, which shows all that’s happening in the wonderful world of modulars, specifically the imaginative Make Noise modules.
This video shows a Make Noise René sequencer modulating a Moog Voyager, Little Phatty and Slim Phatty. René is a Cartesian sequencer and brings a totally new method of control to the Moog synths. No MIDI cables were harmed during the making of this video.
But wait — there’s more. Continuing the MuRF theme, here’s a means of syncing that box via a gate output for some rhythmic fun:
Have a Moog MuRF, Bass MuRF or MIDI MuRF? Here’s a way to sync it to the beat using the Gate output from a Moog Voyager (w/ VX-351). This method should work with other Gate-producing gear as well.
Tuning has been a big interest area for many of us of late; here’s a lovely demo of alternate scales with the Little Phatty, something I hope to try on more synths in general.
An exploration of non-Western tunings with the Moog Little Phatty. In this example, the Arabic scale, Maqaam Husayni is given a workout.
And finally, a reminder that harmonizers don’t have to be used exclusively on vocals:
I can’t simply rip off every single video Chris does, so be sure to check out: www.experimentalsynth.com
And analog, digital, or … steam … keep the interesting music stuff coming.
Supposedly this computer and the idea of a QWERTY keyboard are dead, but you may have to pry them each out of someone’s cold, dead fingers in order to get them back. Photo (CC-BY) Tobias Carlsson.
The question of whether there will ever be any music apps for any non-iOS mobile platform is apparently bothering some people. (I don’t just mean one Synthtopia post, either – James is asking a perfectly reasonable question. But in the larger tech world, some people even wonder whether there’s any need for competition at all. And on the future of Android, without naming any names, I got one query from a print music tech mag – we’ll see how I’m quoted.)
Of course, there’s good reason to ask who which platform will “win” – once one platform is dominant, there are never any others ever again. Really. That’s what happened with the Commodore 64, once it hit two million units per year and became the most dominant single model of PC in history. (Look it up, kids, or ask your Mom and Dad. Or Goo… um, Commodore it. Or ask a chip music artist, as they might actually not find this ironic, which I find oddly comforting) But I don’t have to tell you that, as I’m sure you’re using a Commodore right now. Except for Chris Randall, who’s using an Apple II, but that’s just because he’s an Apple II fanboy. Come on, Chris. Get over yourself and get a Commodore like everyone else. The Apple doesn’t even have a decent synth chip.
It’s a relief that platforms win, in this way, because it means for developers, once you’ve found one platform, you’ll never wind up having to deal with the headaches of another. Not that any such headaches exist, of course – cross-platform development and testing is fun, like munching on cotton candy. Okay… irony filter off.
I made a plea, when the iPad came out, for certain ideas – like advocating open development, open source software, content creation and not just consumption, standard ports (USB, MIDI), and competition in how you get content like magazines, music, and media. I was far from alone in interest in these things, and a lot of people – some at Apple, some at Apple competitors, some developers, some users, some journalists – have built stuff that makes each one of those areas better, on Apple platforms and on non-Apple platforms.
I think that’s what we’re here to do – not carry the flag for one company or platform or another, but argue for ideas. We shouldn’t agree on all those ideas, or it’d be a really boring discussion. But one reason to focus on ideas and not just platforms is, I don’t think platforms last. (My first computer was a PCjr. My first gaming platform was a ColecoVision. I’m sorry I didn’t get a tattoo of one. The tattoo, at least, would have aged well.) (more...)
For everyone who imagined something just like this, here it is.
Apple is getting into mobile music production with a US$4.99 version of GarageBand that runs on iPad. It looks very impressive for a $5 app – which could be bad news for other music developers trying to set higher pricing for more serious apps. On the other hand, it also validates the notion of the iPad as a music creation platform, and it leaves plenty of room for other such tools. Capabilities:
Touch-capable drums, drum machines, keyboards, and synths
Interactive chord layouts for guitar, keyboard, bass, and drum patterns
Audio recorder (with some silly effects, like “chipmunk” and “monster”)
Guitar amps and effects – some nine amp models, ten effects
It appears this requires the new dual-core CPU on the iPad 2.
Apple tells CDM that the software is compatible with both the original iPad and the new iPad 2.
The heart of the app, though, is a multi-track arrange window borrowed directly from desktop GarageBand. Some fancier features appear to be missing (notation may be missed, in particular, and I don’t see extras like a tempo track), but otherwise, it’s the MIDI and audio arrangement you know from the Mac. You can even take projects from the iPad into GarageBand for a mobile-to-desktop workflow. (The reverse appears not possible, which would make sense – the mobile version is a subset of the desktop version.)
The instruments are impressive, too. Whereas the first GarageBand emphasized using pre-built loops, this version is actually more suited to a songwriter’s sketchpad: you have automatic chord generation as you previously saw only in music workstation keyboards. The 4×4 drum machine, synths, and keyboards look fairly basic, but they don’t skip over basic editing features. All in all, it’s unquestionably the most we’ve seen for $5 in a mobile app. On one hand, that could make Apple’s developers nervous – but, paradoxically, I think that at $5, someone has enough pocket change left over to go buy your $5, $10, or $20 app.
It’s also an app that thinks through mobile workflows. You can send to iTunes, email songs, and on a Mac, open in GarageBand.
In fact, my only big question is how software with live instruments on a tablet is going to contend with running out of system resources. We’ll know soon; the app isn’t available as I write this, but is promised soon.
I’m also a bit unclear on hardware compatibility, but I’m told MIDI and audio hardware will work, which makes some sense. I’ll try to reach out to my contacts at Apple on some of these questions.
There’s also no question in my mind that this significantly widens the gap between iOS and everything else – notably Android. That’s a discussion best left for another post, but it’s hard for me to see any competitor making the investment in music – still a fairly limited market – that Apple has. At the same time, looking at music creation in general, the more visible software like this is – and the more successful it is, which remains to be seen – the more attention mobile music creation may get from the public and vendors alike. (Technically speaking, by the way, there’s no reason you couldn’t exploit horsepower on next-generation tablets like the Motorola Xoom. I’m sure we’ll make use of the extra cycles with libpd Pure Data patches for both platforms. But there are lots of other variables, technical and in terms of the marketplace, that make iOS friendlier than Android to commercial music development by an order of magnitude.)
I’m curious to hear from iPad owners, though: does GarageBand appear, on first glance, to offer tools you don’t have in other mobile workstations? Would it make you consider iPad music if you hadn’t before?
(And, in the meantime, we can dream of our tablet, touch-savvy tracker. I know some of you want it.)
What can a new digital synth be in 2011? How will it work and sound? And given access to so many excellent tools, how can it stand apart? In place of a press release and some marketing-speak, developer Christopher Penrose (Leisuresonic, Cosmovox) sent us an extended essay explaining his thinking behind his just-released SynthTronica synth for the iPad. Aside from getting into the nitty-gritty technical details, it cuts to the crux of the issue: how to make something personal and new that nonetheless can work for other people, and how that idea can be tailored to a tablet.
As the geeks are glued to the latest iPad announcement, let’s look for a moment beyond platforms. Great ideas in synthesis endure long past platforms. The specific medium is wonderful in that it gives designers, engineers, and musicians the opportunity to realize those ideas, while presenting certain conveniences for developer and user alike.
All of this is worth reading in this case as it sounds like Christopher has a synth that isn’t like everything else out there – not at all. With audio files of your choosing transforming the timbres of synthesized sound in a graphical, spectrally-displayed filter, it looks like it could be a brilliant canvas for producing unusual sounds. That might help it find a place wired into your desktop PC or Mac for production.
In fact, it reminds me of the kind of creative synth we’ve seen all too rarely. The design feels heavily reminiscent of the ground-breaking U+I MetaSynth conceived by Eric Wenger (of Bryce fame). I was always disappointed other software didn’t run with some of those ideas; seeing it with some new twists, the take of a different artist, and touch input on the iPad looks terrific.
Christopher’s notes are quite long, but worth including in their entirety, especially knowing we have other developers in the crowd.
And, oh yeah, we could ramble on about this all day, but I think most of you will get the idea from this video below. It sounds great, and since you can input different audio files to get different filter content, you may be able to escape both overt recognizability and the disposability of many mobile and tablet instruments.
Here’s Christopher:
Notes on SynthTronica’s Development
Back in January of last year, I had been following the Apple tablet rumors with great interest. When the iPad was announced, I was surprised by both its name and its operating system. But it took me only a few hours to decide that I was going to design a synth for the new tablet.
Context
I have developed music software, with varying levels of attention, since 1988, and much of that effort has been spent developing idiosyncratic DSP algorithms for sound exploration. In particular, I focussed on spectral techniques for mating sounds — taking the characteristics of two (and sometimes more) sounds to create a new one. These efforts haven’t made it out of the Max/MSP, Pd, and Unix shell software ecosystems largely due to the limitations of audio plug-in hosts. “Side-chain” processing implementations are obscure and clumsy.
I am also a composer, and, until recently, my software was largely designed to aid my personal music-making. I can honestly say without pretense that my music is idiosyncratic; even Illegal Art, a label which has released one of my albums, regularly characterizes my music as being on the “challenging” end of the spectrum of their musical offerings. I think that SynthTronica has been a good project for me. While developing it, I have been challenged to corral and focus my motley DSP technologies into a broadly-accessible musical instrument. I took a music making process that combines synthesis and sampling, which I used often in my music making in the last decade, and put it at the core of a keyboard synthesizer. Hopefully, I have been able to distill an elegant instrument design from my personal composition practices.
Synth Architecture
SynthTronica is a hybrid instrument; its synth engine combines characteristics of virtual analog synthesis and digital sampling. For most “traditional” synthesizers, sound evolution is controlled by parametric filters — combinations of VCFs and LFOs. Instead, SynthTronica uses time-varying filter data to provide spectral evolution; an instance of such data is called a “formant”. Formants can be created in several ways, through the iPad’s microphone, importing audio files, and capturing performances of SynthTronica’s multitouch filter. While formants are currently played in strict loops, the maximum formant duration is fairly large — just over 60 seconds — providing potential for significant, albeit prerecorded, variation. The benefit of formants lies with their generality. A formant can be made from sources as disparate and varied as Nord percussion, cellos, choirs, braying donkeys, or the chorus of Katy Perry’s latest single. The latter example is an interesting consideration: a formant can reflect much of the rhythmic and sometimes vocal characteristics of its source sound, while effectively obliterating its pitch. Pitch is instead provided by SynthTronica’s synthesizer front-end. When readily-discernible formant sources are used, SynthTronica provides a unique musical space that lies between the boundaries of pure sound synthesis and referential sampling. Formant synthesis is not explicit like sampling; you play through the Katy Perry groove as if it was your avatar. With SynthTronica, a performer needs to make pitch choices for any sound to be heard.
Multitouch Filter
The iPad’s large touch surface was a serious attraction for this project. The idea for the Dynamic Multitouch Filter immediately came to mind. SynthTronica’s multitouch filter serves as a live and expressive counterbalance to the static character of formants by providing fluid gesture-controlled filtering of the synthesizer’s output. Given the spectral architecture of the synth engine, adding up to eleven touch-triggered filters (eleven per voice, technically, though they currently are used synchronously) does not overwhelm the processor resources of the iPad.
Hold Mode
Perhaps an ambient musician’s dream, hold mode simply allows notes to sustain by a single touch. They can be released singly by an additional touch, or released en masse via the “all notes off” button. Hold mode is an excellent counterpart for the multitouch filter, as the filter can easily be the focus of both hands when notes are sustained automatically.
Multiple Keyboards and Scale Patterns
While there are several ways keyboard control could be further developed in SynthTronica, I took advantage of several possibilities made available by the tablet design of the iPad. It is clear that a touchscreen does not offer tactile feedback, so I sought to implement interface dynamics that would make up for this lack in several ways. I choose to support multiple keyboard designs providing two piano style formats and a unique grid-based design.
From my iPhone app Cosmovox, I had a large database of musical scales available. I repurposed these in SynthTronica by providing selectable scale mappings for the keyboards. The piano keyboard has a particular design pattern which is accentuated by the contrast of white and black keys. Being a mallet percussionist in a former life, it was clear to me that this color contrast is optional and the key arrangement itself provides enough information to discriminate notes on a keyboard. Thus musical scales can be represented on a keyboard by changing this color contrast pattern. I often desire to escape my habits when creating music, and altering the keyboard scale pattern can be revealing for me. Further, the scale pattern facility allows for the use of a more radical keyboard design: the grid keyboard. The grid keyboard alters note relationships in interesting ways. The keyboard is compact, allowing one hand to access a two-octave range. Large intervals are no longer as physically distant from a given pitch. The keyboard can be bewildering to play if you play by note (which is a positive feature for me particularly as the keyboard is optional), and can reveal fascinating characteristics of scale architecture.
Design
I went with a modernist design aesthetic as I believe that SynthTronica does not have any appropriate analogs in gear. I find that creating interfaces for software that imitate gear introduces problematic usability issues. While I can understand the desire to have every useful performance control accessible on a single screen, there are practical limits to the number of interface elements that can coexist and still remain effective. Virtual knobs use less screen real estate, make a reference to audio gear, but are more difficult to use than sliders. I chose a slider-only interface using color and orientation for contrast. SynthTronica’s multi-screen design may reduce the accessibility of parameters during performance, but I think the architecture of the synth favors pre-performance sound design and emphasizes use of the Dynamic Multitouch Filter for expressive control in live performance.
Christopher also includes some frank thoughts on limitations of the synth for the time being, including some of his concerns about third-party audio interface support generally. This is beyond my area of expertise, so I’ll leave others to reach what conclusions they will – and I suspect we’ll hear some other developer views.
Limitations
While the preset architecture is robust from a database perspective, it can be frustrating for performance in its current state. The design of the reverb processor is one of the culprits. If reverberation time is different between two presets, changing from one to the other while the synth is sounding can produce awkward glitches. It is possible to ignore reverberation settings from presets by adjusting a SynthTronica parameter in the iPad’s settings application. I would like to improve preset change behavior in a future update.
Some goodies that the electronic music literati would desire — MIDI, audio interface support — have yet to be developed. MIDI is actually very high on the list now, as Apple has provided SDK support [Core MIDI] and I have purchased two Akai LPK25s and an Emu XMidi 1×1 for testing. OSC support is minimal at the moment: there are no supported in-bound messages yet, but a few outbound messages are implemented. Full class-compliant audio interface support will not be added until SynthTronica migrates to an iOS 4.x-only architecture, and even then there may be a performance reduction for many interfaces. A rant could be placed here which would be directed at audio interface manufacturers.
What I will say is that SynthTronica is less flexible with respect to audio buffer sizes as it is a spectral synthesizer; it uses power-of-two FFTs. But this is not unheard of in the least for audio processing; there probably isn’t an MP3 player that does not use them. To support audio buffer sizes that are not powers of two would cause a significant reduction in performance for SynthTronica (namely, a 50% reduction in usable polyphony due to CPU spikes). While there may be an audio interface that works out of the box with SynthTronica, I can’t name one at the moment. The class-compliant audio interfaces I have tested refuse to provide a power-of-two buffer when requested. While I am sure their engineers can come up with an excuse, they really should understand that power of two constraints are ubiquitous in computing, particularly for digital audio signal processing; it is bizarre that their hardware forces applications to perform additional buffering to support powers of two.
Check out the sites for more. It was a bit unorthodox to include all these thoughts, but I enjoyed reading it and it made me want to spend some time with the synth. Let us know what you think.
However I learned that every year there is a new group of aspiring musicians following music education. The way we see it, is that MuseScore is growing up together with them.
