Apple added the ability to connect custom hardware to its iPhone and iPod touch platform last year, so it was only a matter of time before someone made a music hardware interface. Ion Audio, the budget brand of Numark/Alesis/Akai, gets there first, with the Ion iDISCOVER Keyboard. It docks your Apple mobile into a case with a 25-key MIDI keyboard, pitch and mod wheels, and preset buttons for patch and octave changes.

http://www.ionaudio.com/idiscoverkeyboard

It’s just what many of us wondered when we first saw Apple’s hardware SDK; David Battino even suggested this very idea.

Of course, there is a slight problem. Part of the whole advantage of the iPhone is its mobility, which a huge honking dock tends to kill. (For less money, you could just plug a keyboard into your Mac, or buy a low-end CASIO or Yamaha keyboard.)

A traditional music score can fill reams of paper. But make music generative, and a tiny amount of musical DNA can breed musical events. How little DNA is needed? How about 140 character worth – enough to fit into a single Twitter post?

That’s what’s possible in Mixtikl 2, which dubs its Twitter musical “vectors” “tikls” – pronounced “tickles.” There are three platforms, each priced separately:

• Mac / Windows desktop + plug-ins (standalone version, VST plug-in for your favorite host, and even a plug-in for playing and customizing mixes right in your web browser). Cost: US$19.99.
• Windows Mobile: smartphones and PDAs (yep, an eBay purchase could be wise right now) for playing and customizing mixes. Cost: US$4.99.
• iPhone / iPod touch: Mobile generative playback and synthesis, pricing TBA. This version isn’t available this instant, but is expected for approval in the upcoming days.

There are numerous improvements, but it’s the “vector audio” concept that’s the most evocative in the new release. For examples of what works in Twitter, here are some links from the developers, including some holiday-themed picks: (Updated with new link; previous code was for RC1, not the final build)

Mixtikl 2 : the Tweet Music Maestro

Mixtikl actually binds together a range of musical materials, from pre-defined tunes and audio assets to generative files and custom mixes of the two. There are other powerful features, two including the Partikl multi-synth and a built in “network” effects system.

There’s more work to do for Intermorphic: right now, Mixtikl, as the name implies, is a mixer. If you’re interested in producing your own musical patterns, editing rules, and the like, these features will have to wait for an upcoming release. But right now, you do get a taste for some of what they’re working, and if you’re not yet interested in investing, 30-day trials are available.

Intermorphic Mixtikl 2 Announcement

And yes, you can bet this will get the attention of those in the know in the Tweetosphere. None other than British celeb geek Stephen Fry is playing around with it.

Max for Live is a fantastic product that treads on genuinely new ground. Its level of integration with the user interface and operation of the host reaches a new high, it comes with a rich selection of instruments, effects, and tools to use as examples, and, in combination with Max 5’s re-vamped interface, makes a comfortable development environment. It does all of this inside a host that, true to its “Live” name, provides a unique workflow.

But Max for Live also comes with some significant strings attached, and it confirms some of the disadvantages to Max as a proprietary, vendor-specific development solution for music and performance. That means that it’ll be a superb choice for certain applications, but will fail to be a viable option for others.

Technology is about trade-offs; understanding those tradeoffs is essential to making informed decisions. There’s never a “right” choice; only a right choice for you. I think the music tech community will embrace Max for Live, but it’s also important to have alternatives. The DIY creative music community likely won’t – and certainly shouldn’t – simply make Max for Live and Ableton Live its tool for everything.

In summary:

1. Max for Live doesn’t have a free run-time, which means it’s not your best option if you want to reach a wide audience with your creations.

2. Max is no longer an option for people wanting to develop plug-ins for multiple hosts, a change that didn’t go over well with all developers partly because it was only revealed after Max 5 and Max for Live.

3. Jitter output while editing is crippled in Max for Live if you don’t also own Jitter.

4. Max isn’t an open source tool, which has practical implications, including -

5. You’ll want to choose something else if you’re interested in mobile music making.

You’ll want to weigh these options when considering Max for Live, even before considering the technical specifics of the tool. You may determine it’s still the perfect tool for the job, or you may not; it should simply be part of your equation.

These aren’t entirely black and white issues, so I’ll be specific:

You’re now approved to DJ with your iPhone. Or at least the app is. I’m not sure if I can take credit for getting Apple’s attention, but Apple has approved the TouchDJ application from Amidio. That’s big news, partly because developer Amidio has consistently been at the forefront of musical development on the platform, including their Noise.io synth and wild hexagonal JR Hexatone Pro.

This also is a big blog to the theory that Apple is intentionally blocking DJ apps — and a big boon to the theory that the App Store is just plain clogged, even if it may be disproportionately affecting more sophisticated applications.

Features in the release:

• “Visual mixing,” with a clever interface that uses overlays atop side-by-side waveform views
• Pre-listening using a special left/right adapter
• Faux vinyl and spin effects
• Real-time scratching, looping, positioning, EQ, effects, re-pitching
• Onboard sampler with 3 WAV sample slots, recording from the mic
• Uses a separate MP3 library with companion apps, since it isn’t possible to DJ from the library you sync from iTunes

Now, to me, that last point is a fairly significant one. You have to load tracks you wish to DJ separately, in MP3/M4A format. And I’m sure that this will start various debates about whether you’d want to DJ on your iPhone in the first place. But don’t look at me — I just work here. I’d be remiss if I started out the week talking about apps stuck in iPhone limbo, only to ignore them immediately becoming available. And I will say, Amidio is one of the smartest mobile music developers out there, so it’s worth checking out the range of what they’re doing.

Whether petitions and news stories did help this app to get to the top of the queue or not, I have no idea. I think maybe I’ll start running screaming headlines with things I want in them, if only for good luck.

Tomorrow on CDM: “You Know What Annoys Me? The Fact That We Don’t Have Unicorns. Magic Unicorns. Who Speak OSC.”

Yesterday, I talked about two complaints of music developers writing applications for the iPhone. These come from developers who are really iPhone fans, who just want to get their software released and (for many music devs) better categorized on Apple’s store. Pajamahouse Studios, maker of the new Sonorasaurus remix application, follow up with a more detailed explanation of their situation.

These are not rejections; at least rejections are generally accompanied with some sort of suggestion of what would need to be changed. They represent the dreaded iPhone developer “limbo,” in which an application is neither rejected nor approved. For Sonorasaurus, that’s been the state of affairs for over two months. As the developers explain, there seems to be nothing unusual about their app:

• Library access: It doesn’t access the iPhone/iPod music library. (no application is allowed to do that, which incidentally limits a lot of the DJ app possibilities of the device) Clarification: The status of the music API itself is unclear; some developers report just this sort of approval delay when trying to use it. [Source] Also, access to files inside the media library is not directly possible, which can be compared to the status of Android.
• File access: A separate http server is provided, with a parallel library, for users to store their own tracks – again, something found on numerous other approved applications. This doesn’t use the included library.
• Included music / music distribution: Five included songs are for testing only – something found in a number of other, similar applications that have been approved. The application is not an alternative to iTunes for distribution.
• Media decoding: Custom MP3 decoding technology – something not provided on the iPhone – was separately licensed. Clarification: This was not meant to imply that you can’t do MP3 decoding; the developers meant to make the point that they were not violating patents or licensing by using their own decoding, which presumably they did for the purposes of building a DJ app.

Of course, whatever the reason, we’ve seen in past applications suddenly approved after weeks or months, so who knows what will actually happen with this app.

Read the full explanation:

In Limbo Pt. 1 [Sonorasaurus]

While reading that, though, I also have to observe how significant these workarounds are. Without launching into an Android versus iPhone debate – believe me, there are many, many things to criticize about the Android as a platform, especially relative to music –  none of these is an issue on the Android. Forget platform wars or fanboys. Alternatives are good. I’d hope that we do have more than one approach to how to do this. These approaches should have to compete with one another, as they offer different tradeoffs and advantages.

If music is becoming an application, this kind of freedom is important.