While we’re having a weekend of Live tutorials, here’s another one for you, this time using your iPhone / iPod touch. Now, I’m not sure I’d want to do a whole set like this, necessarily — but here’s a thought: you could use this to do some sound checks out in the house instead of stuck behind your laptop listening through monitors. I’m sure there are other applications, as well. Enjoy!

The secret ingredient this time is i3L (pronounced “eye thrill”), the MIDI bridge app from VJ superstar group artificial eyes out of Turkey. They note that Mexican audiovisual collective Nortec are also making use of i3L (for video triggering).

See our iPhone/iPod touch music tool round-up from earlier this week for other goodies to load up on your device. To me, the iPod touch is the real bargain here; it’s going for under US$300, with used/refurb models going for a bit less — especially given you don’t need a mobile phone contract. Now if only there were a hard drive model…

If we’ve learned one thing on this site, it’s this: if it’s a computer, big or small, someone’s going to find a way to make music. The iPod / iPhone, with their Mac OS-derived software guts and a multi-touch interface, are no exception — with or without Apple’s blessing. Here’s a look at what people are doing, including some apps you can download right now, and where this might go musically, whether it’s just a couple of fun toys or trying to make that pretty pocket device an instrument.

Background

There’s no question what makes the iPod Touch and iPhone significant: they are tiny, palm-sized Macs, running all the stuff that makes a Mac a Mac — Cocoa, of course, but even music-specific stuff like Core Audio and Audio Units. (For more details, have a look at the WWDC session highlights spotted by Palm Sounds, all of interest to audio specifically. It could easily be mistaken for desktop development. The Unity 3D game engine is on its way, too.) And even if you’re not planning on picking up mobile Apple hardware, this says something about the rapidly-advancing direction of mobile computing. There was a lot of talk about mobile convergence in the 90s and early years of this decade, but now it’s here.

Of course, there are strings attached. Apple was in no rush to get an official SDK and firmware out to developers, relenting only this year. And it strikes me as I see iPhones on the go that the coolest stuff is happening using "jailbreaked" phones — phones specifically hacked to get around Apple’s requirements. Even when Apple goes official, that’s likely to continue: Apple has placed some arguably onerous restrictions on development. Software has to be Apple-approved and sold via iTunes, and basic capabilities like multitasking are a no-no. Someone’s just called? Great. Your app just quit. (Bizarrely, even extremely low-end phones are willing to multitask, but not Apple’s far-superior hardware.) Whatever arguments you may make for Apple’s approach, my guess is the hard-core iPhone/Touch owner will remain outlaws to get the full capability out of their device.

Also, despite some common elements, the implementations of APIs on the mobile devices are not as complete as on desktop Mac OS. Chad from miniMusic tells PalmSounds that some features currently available in Core Audio on the desktop are missing on mobile — at least for now.

Then there’s the fact that the major Apple strength is Cocoa and Mac-based development — meaning I remain curious about what the Windows and Linux camps will do in this space, particularly Linux. Those folks do have a major, uphill battle to match Apple’s achievement here in terms of software. One would think, though, that Linux should have a bit of an edge because its comparative modularity, whereas Mac OS X was designed solely as a desktop OS — though mobile development is hard, either way.

For Mac-based development, though, iPhone and iPod Touch are here now (always a major advantage in technology). Its full-fledged Mac roots have led to the fanciful image at right and some heated discussion on CDM’s forums earlier this spring. But let’s have a look and what’s here now for the iThings, like MooCowMusic’s Band app (pictured, top).

Multi-touch controller goodness is now as close as your nearest iPod Touch or iPhone; all that remains is to hook it up to some creative music, visuals, or others. (I would prefer the iPod Touch for this reason; then you don’t have to worry about using it as a phone — draining the battery in the process — or needing AT&T service.)

Olle Holmberg has a new solution for using the Touch/iPhone as a controller, by translating input to OpenSoundControl (OSC) and, if you prefer, MIDI messages. He writes:

I was searching everywhere for a way to get my new iPod Touch to work like a wireless touch controller to Pd (and hence to everything else), but couldn’t find one — so I made one. It’s really just an OSC mapping for routing the default Mrmr “Performance.mmr” interface, but if you’re interested it would save you heaps of time, even though it’s not really anything difficult to make.

Mrmr is an “open protocol for mobile devices” for dynamically creating interfaces; we’ve covered it on Create Digital Motion, where vade has interviewed the creator, and we’ve seen it in action coupled with upcoming visual app 3L. Those solutions used proprietary software like Max/MSP/Jitter, though, whereas this works with the free and open source Pd. (We love Max, but having an alternative is good, especially if you just want to hook up your iPod Touch to Ableton Live or Reaktor, etc.) As far as I know, this should also mean compatibility with Windows and Linux, but maybe someone can verify that.

The Pd patch is below — homely but functional, and you can extend it if it doesn’t do what you need.

For more information and download of the first release:

PdiPod - Mrmr to Pd on iPhone & iPod Touch [on pissypaws.tumblr, Olle's blog]
Pd Forum Announcement and Discussion
Files/download

Alex le Lievre has built what looks like an insane custom controller for Pro Tools LE using an iPhone. He seems to have mimicked the look and feel of Pro Tools so successfully that some called the results a fake. There’s incredibly detailed feedback on track status, including live audio signal feeds and transport controls. It even uses iPhone’s tilt mechanism.

This is interesting for two reasons: one, those lusting after iPhone and iPod Touch have another reason to drool. But secondly, Digidesign has been pretty closed about their controller mechanism. If this is real, Alex did a pretty great job of cracking into it. (I only just heard from JazzMutant, by contrast, that their Dexter won’t support Pro Tools because it’s not possible.)

ProRemote 0.0.1 on YouTube (darned nice “0.0.1″ release!)

Alex’s video on his .Mac page

Thanks to Chris O’Malley for the tip.

Could Apple be working on a Control Pro? One commenter thinks so, and this patent evidence from last year at least suggests they’ve thought about it. (Keep in mind, though, sometimes experimental ideas don’t become products, and patents are hard to read.)

Updated: How Alex Did It

Alex wrote in. He’s in fact a very experienced programmer with background in Pro Tools plug-in development, software architecture, and Macromedia’s multimedia architecture (pre-Adobe), among other things, and he’s kind enough to share with us how the whole thing works.

The iPhone and iPod Touch have big, pretty screens, plenty of space for touch control, and fit in your pocket for lots of other useful things (like, you know, calls or music or whatever these things were invented for).

So, why not put them to use in performance? Just this week, Create Digital Motion has picked up two new solutions for doing just that, free:

MIDI Control with iPhone and iPod Touch: i3L MIDI Bridge

Mrmr : iPhone + 10.5 + Quartz Composer = Wireless VJ Nirvana

Mrmr’s support of OSC is geared for VJ apps, but something similar could be applied to OSC-supporting music tools like Max/MSP, Traktor, Reaktor, and others. And i3L’s support of MIDI, of course, will work with anything. I could see it cuing up scenes in Ableton Live or changing instrument patches, etc.

No iPhone? No problem. One quick note: if you don’t have the cash for a new iPod or iPhone, there are always alternatives. Jason Kramer’s Bluetooth MIDI solution works just fine with that free phone you got with your plan — maybe even one you recently retired. Much as we love all this flashy new stuff, there’s nothing quite like giving your toxic technological leftovers a new lease on life!

Control Music Software with a Bluetooth Cell Phone / PDA (Ableton Live, Pro Tools, Logic Pro)
LiveController [Jason R. Kramer]

Mobile music creation week continues! Happy Valentine’s Day, a few months early. This February, you’ll be able to light some candles, pour a bottle of wine, and start developing real applications for the iPod Touch and iPhone, fulfilling a dream a lot of us had when we first saw the iPhone last January. (And yes, this means that iPod Touch interface for MainStage you’ve been imagining can now be a reality.) Sayeth CEO Steve (on Apple Hot News; no direct link yet):

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

So what was the holdup? Building a secure platform:

Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

To some of Apple’s defenders who claimed this was the plan all along, this will be a “told you so” moment. They may be right, they may be wrong; it’s impossible to know what’s going on inside Apple. But either way, I think it’s safe to say that months of criticism from the developer communities and Mac community as a whole sent a clear message to Apple that open platforms and open development are important. Whether it influenced the decision to build the SDK, increased its priority, or simply prompted this announcement, it did have an effect.

And that’s a message not just to Apple, but other hardware makers. We’re living in an age of developers. JavaScript is great. But real apps are great, too. Developers want open platforms they can build upon. Savvy users are increasingly able to hack unusual creations to customize the hardware they buy. And non-programmer users very often want to choose how they use the gear they invest in. The iPhone and iPod Touch are already terrific devices, but they’re likely to be even better when users can use them the way they want.

Regardless, Apple: thank you.

Way back at the Apple iPhone introduction, I said I thought people would want to use the phone as a musical instrument. Well, here you go: meet BeatPhone, a clever code hack from a chilled-out Spanish mobile musician. Feature set:

• 9 one-shot pads
• 6 loop-pads
• Samples in “any” format : WAV, AIFF, …
• Output at 44.1kHz, 16-bits
• Up to 256 samples polyphony

BeatPhone Project Page [I-lusio]
Via: BeatPhone [appSafari.com]

The project will be open, and more cool features are planned:

• Strudder pads (stop previous playback and start again)
• Metronome, BPM detection on “tap”
• Loop stretching
• Record samples and live mixes
• Landscape sequencer
• Tactile effect box

Updated: There appears to be unrelated project called MPC500, which at least has a pretty, iPhone-style interface. Of course, it function as an MPC about as much as those cardboard cutouts of the iPhone do a real phone. But more music apps are promised. (Thanks, Steve! Now, when will people start doing more multi-touch?)

Interesting, though of course none of this is new on mobile devices; Palm and Windows Mobile phones have a broad variety of music applications, with mobile Linux and Java I expect on their way — and those makers actually let you install applications. That’s not to take away from BeatPhone’s general coolness.

The day the iPhone was announced at Macworld, some of us immediately wanted to use it as a simple multi-touch controller for music. It’s no substitute for a dedicated, large, expressive multi-touch controller like the JazzMutant Lemur. But it’s also far less expensive, useful as a phone/Internet device/media player, and could easily be a simple, multi-touch controller. Basic multi-touch gestures could be a powerful tool for controlling music. Then, the sad news came that development wasn’t going to be open. Hearts sank.

Good news: Masayuki Akamatsu, the brilliant Max/MSP developer who first bridged the popular modular audio and multimedia environment to the Wii remote (see aka.wiiremote), is on the case. It’s still early in development, and for now is an extremely simple implementation: it only routes buttons and text on a Safari webpage to a Max/MSP patch. What’s cool is that it uses the OpenSoundControl (OSC) protocol to do it (with PHP on the Web end), and it works (you can even use it now if you’ve got an iPhone):

aka.iphone Preview
Discussion on the Cycling ‘74 Forums

Let’s talk about what this is not: it’s not multi-touch.

You know I’m often (well, sometimes, anyway) a reasonable, rational, measured person. And you can probably guess that, as a fan of design and elegance, I really appreciate the iPhone’s elegant design, the fact that it pays attention to user experience. I think it’s a major innovation, one that will have far-reaching effects. Yet, something about walking out the door of my apartment building and seeing a hundred people waiting in line just because there’s an AT&T Wireless store on the block — one of many here in Manhattan — is setting me off.

I miss computers. Remember computers? Remember the Apple II, which came pre-installed with BASIC so you could start programming it out of the box (in stark contrast to the closed nature of iPhone)? Remember the Newton, which you could turn into a drum machine if you wanted? Remember how Steve Jobs’ first product, with Steve Wozniak, was a device that actually ripped off AT&T? That sounds like fun. It’s just sort of hard to see the iPhone being the landmark 50 years from now, even if Steve Jobs told Apple employees they’ll tell their grandchildren about the iPhone launch. (I have a feeling their grandchildren will respond, you used THAT?)

I like devices that can make music, not just listen to it.