Rounding up my catch-up-on-iPod/iPhone-stories, here’s one from the developer perspective – one that could face music creation developers on the entire platform.

The Apple iTunes App Store now faces the risk of becoming a victim of its own success. Music applications could be a big part of that, without some adjustments on Apple’s part. The problem is this: incoming music “fan” apps could flood out the music production apps that had enriched the mobile software platform since its debut. I think the need could be really urgent. Consider that part of the appeal of Apple’s mobile platform – yes, even in stark contrast to the Google Android on which I’ve been developing myself – is its spectacular real-time audio tools. Combine that with a disproportionately large number of Mac-using musicians, lots of ingenious apps build on Apple’s Core Audio platform, and we’ve seen a mobile platform with an extraordinary number of tools for music creation.

The problem now is that that unique set of powerful apps could get overwhelmed by essentially unrelated “music” apps. A developer who has asked to remain anonymous is already campaigning for a change. He does a good job of explaining the issue, and what might need to happen to fix it. If you’re a developer, you can add your support and feedback to the idea.

Here’s the full explanation:

So, you’ve seen lots of interesting looking iPhone apps, but most of them strike you as gimmicky. Others have interesting workflows, but limit you to working on the mobile device, not switching back to a computer. And maybe you’re perfectly happy with a phone running Windows Mobile or Palm OS.

Enter SunVox. This is not a mobile music making app for the timid. It’s a powerful suite of soundmakers and sequencers, baked together into a modular environment that lets power users tweak to their heart’s delight. It’s small, it’s fast, and it looks – and sounds – a lot like early computer music programs. It’ll run on iPhone now, but also on Palm, Windows Mobile, Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’ll run on your netbook, your MacBook, and your ThinkPad.

Incredibly, all this goodness is yours on all those platforms for ten bucks and on iPhone for $5, easily making SunVox the biggest steal in music software I think I’ve ever seen:

• Flexible architecture that adapts to slow and fast CPUs
• Synths and generators: FM, virtual analog, FFT-based “SpectraVoice”, Kicker
• Effects: Delay, distortion, filters, LFOs, reverb
• Sampler with WAV support
• WAV export when you’re done

http://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

And for fans of computer music in the 90s, it’s a chance to get back to some of the no-nonsense, powerful creation of that era, without some of the distractions you may find in modern apps.

The iPhone has become an almost absurdly-popular platform for music apps this year, even given more capable, more plentiful PCs. But to those who don’t yet “get” the appeal, talk to a mobile music addict: having the ability to be creatively musically in corners of time that would otherwise go unused, like a cramped bus ride, can be a beautiful thing. (Now, you start talking about taking away my PC/Mac experience, and I will start screaming in agony – but that’s a topic for a separate post.) The question is, what form should that app take? Today, I’ve got an iPhone round-up going as I clear out my news inbox, but that thread lies beneath all the stories…

I’m working on putting together a collection of truly productive, non-gimmicky/non-toy music apps now that the platform is maturing. But two apps released this week I think deserve special mention, and mention together – partly because of the different angle they take.

They’re both essentially handheld grooveboxes. They’re both relatively powerful, bringing desktop-style production to the platform. They’re both good options, and at this price, you might go buy both. But as I go off to test these two apps, I’m already struck by the contrast between the two.

One is the kind of app that we’re seeing a whole lot of on the iPhone, just as we once saw it in me-too apps on desktop computers. It assumes that the way to reach more people is to give them a whole bunch of canned loops that already sound like the styles they might want to play, and assume they’ll be pretty limited in their ability to do much with those loops.

The other of the two apps eschews the obligatory audio loops for real synthesis, and strips out the usual “let’s try to look like hardware” interface for something a lot more minimal and (I think) touch device friendly. That’s a design lesson that might well be applied beyond the iPhone, too.

First, consider the looped audio approach.

Showcasing amazing projects is a good thing. But we know that no creation emerges fully-formed. They start from nothing, with lots of mistakes along the way. You get help and ideas from other people. And you need time.

So this month’s Handmade Music in Brooklyn we’re declaring an Open Lab. Got a kit lying on your shelf, waiting to get made? Got a half-finished project that needs fixing? Just want to hang around some musical and visual DIYers and see what they’re up to? And just need a few hours to make some progress? That’s the idea.

Software projects, hardware projects, gear hacking, circuit bending, coding, patching in Reaktor or Pd or Max – it’s all welcome.

We also have a very special guest this month in the form of Morgan Packard, a talented multi-instrumentalist and computer musician (video at top, with live visuals by superDraw creator Joshue Ott). At 7:30p, Morgan will show off his free Ripple musical environment, built on the powerful open source SuperCollider code-for-sound platform. It’s a great chance to see what SuperCollider can do, how a scratch-built environment can open up musical possibilities, and what you can do with Ripple yourself.

Full details: Handmade Music Brooklyn: Open Lab, Featuring Morgan Packard’s Musical Code [handmademusic@noisepages]

Facebook Event Page

The whole event runs 6:00p-11:00p at 3rd Ward Brooklyn. As always, it’s completely free. Be sure to bring your projects and the tools you’ll need; we can provide power, a PA, space, and other folks to hang out with. And we can help give you an excuse to set aside a few hours of time.

We’ll also be taking notes on how the setup works, as we know this may be something other Handmade Music events want to try in your neck of the woods.

MetaSynth has long been something special, a rare tool beloved by sound designers and fans of unusual software for music. The creation of software designer Eric Wenger, creator of the 3D modeling tool Bryce, expressed his unique vision of how computer design could work for sound with interfaces to make synthesis, filtering, and effects more graphical. At the same time, you’d be forgiven for forgetting MetaSynth, as the independently-developed, Mac-only application has been out of the headlines a long time. Imagine my surprise to see Edward Spiegel’s announcement today of a new version.

Superficially, MetaSynth 5 looks the previous version, and I’m sure some people will balk at its US$599 price. But there’s plenty here that sounds truly promising, so I’m eager to give it a test drive in the coming days and weeks. And for MetaSynth loyalists, finally getting proper Intel processor support is a welcome, if long-overdue, development.

In MetaSynth 5:

• Universal Binary, multi-processor enabled — good news, as fancier effects do get CPU-intensive.
• New synthesis Phase distortion, Pulse Width Modulation among eleven new synthesis modes for the instrument framework. Parameters can now be controlled with envelopes and velocity, as well.
• Improved Image Synth: 14 new drawing tools and real-time swapping of instruments, tunings, and samples as you play back, plus batch rendering, which should make previewing and rendering much less of a chore.
• Convolution in the Effects Room: Hmmm… that sounds racy, at least for those of us with a sound design fetish.
• Spectrum manipulation: The Spectrum Synth now lets you select pitch range and adds – whatever this means, I’m stoked – “Time and Pitch Blur.”
• Big files: Render arbitrarily long files, and handle bigger files in the Sample Room.
• Mixing, file support: Mix 24 stereo tracks in the Montage Room, which works with their VTrack video montage editor. There’s also now “native support of .wav, .caf, .aiff and SoundDesigner audio files at resolutions up to 32-bit floating point and 96 kHz.”

As ever, MetaSynth isn’t going to be for everyone, and it’ll be interesting to see how it’s aging. But as one of the cabinet of secret sauce of computer sound tools, you can bet some folks will be taking notice of this new release.

http://uisoftware.com/MetaSynth/ [click the MetaSynth 5 tab for the most relevant new information]