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.

Point by point:

• Library access: Android’s standard, supported APIs provide access to the media library and user playlists. Clarification: this includes direct access to the files and the ability to read from the buffer of these files (with some effort), in public, documented, approved APIs, with no chance of having an app rejected for the use of these APIs. My understanding is that this is not exactly the case on the iPhone.
• File access: Users are free to put files on their SD card over USB, and off-load those files – neither possible on iPhone. And yes, these will be integrated with the media library; iTunes-style sync isn’t necessary.
• Included music / music distribution: Including songs is actually a bit of a challenge, but you can freely download content and store it on the SD card. Because Google doesn’t have an equivalent of iTunes, that includes creating your own alternative distribution methods – meaning a label or music store can do make their own outlet.
• Media decoding: Decoding technology is included on the phone, including the ability to decode the open OGG Vorbis format. Clarification: Some folks read this to mean that the iPhone can’t decode MP3s, which was not what I intended; the key point here is that Android has in-box support for free formats and byte-level access to the audio buffers they give you, by default, straight out of the user’s media library. That is not entirely the case on iPhone.

Beneath all of this is the major fundamental difference, which is that you can install applications for Android whether or not they’ve been approved for Android. There’s actually a checkbox in the Market that allows you to opt into installing other apps you’ve downloaded directly from a developer or from another source.

Again, I don’t mean to make a pro-Android argument. In fact, I believe many of these items are also true on Windows Mobile, Symbian, and upcoming Linux platforms; I just happen to be working on Android now, so I’m more familiar with it.

What’s important is that this represents an alternative approach to how to provide music as an application, one in which the user is free to load content on and off the device.

Specifically, this paragraph jumped out at me:

Another problem would be that Apple could see this as a means to circumvent iTunes as a means to sell and distribute music. This we also addressed. These songs can only be used within the App. They can not be removed from the app / device for use elsewhere (iTunes on the desktop, burning to a CD, etc).

Now, we hear from many developers that the iTunes integration is something that attracts them to the platform. Likewise, many content creators will want just these sorts of restrictions.

But what if you want fewer restrictions? Let’s say you’re an artist releasing Creative Commons-licensed tracks, and you want to encourage remixing, sampling, modification, and free use of your tracks. Or what if you’re a label or artist collective, and want to experiment with new ways of using mobile for distribution, beyond what’s possible with iTunes and Apple’s stores? The same qualities that may attract someone else should, I think, concern you. I don’t think that necessarily means you shouldn’t write an iPhone application with your music, but perhaps you should also consider trying an alternative platform.

There seems to be a growing sense that the iPhone Way is The Only Way. Obviously, that’s not the case. This very debate demonstrates just how much room for interpretation the distribution of content can produce.

A powerful DJ application for your iPhone or iPod touch may be a tantalizing prospect. But several would-be candidates aren’t available to you yet. Why? They’re languishing in Apple’s approval process, with no sign of whether they’ll be released or not.

For all the success of Apple’s App Store, some developers and users continue to express frustration at what they believe is a sluggish, unpredictable approval process, restrictive Apple policies, and Apple’s complete control over distribution and categorization. That now leads to two complaints from music developers. A number of music developers want more delineation from Apple’s categories, so that the flood of general music apps don’t drown out powerful, creative tools. Meanwhile, developers of DJ applications claim that Apple is discriminating against DJ apps, which they say has led to delays without explanation.

“Open” development is relative, without question. Game system makers require developers to prove to them why they should be “allowed” to create titles, leading to a tightly-controlled stream of approved titles. But the success of Apple’s relatively open development model has prompted many software creators to hunger for greater freedom. I’ve increasingly heard people enthusiastic about the more flexible distribution model on Google’s Android (and other Linux) platforms, which allow users to install apps they want. I even moderated a mobile music platform panel at the CMJ music conference at which a Verizon representative, no less, talked about wanting to be more open to applications. The benchmark was Apple, for being perceived as overly restrictive.

iPhone/iPod touch developers, however, aren’t simply ranting against Apple. They’re complaining because they’re enthusiastic about the App Store. They want changes from Apple and believe there’s potential to get what they want. That said, I think they also illustrate potential for rivals like Google to outdo Apple – assuming those rivals invest more time and effort into courting these kind of applications.

Is Apple Blocking DJ Apps?

First, some developers believe that Apple is intentionally blocking DJ applications from being approved. Whether intentional or not, a number of potentially ground-breaking applications are unavailable after a significant delay. Kasabian Kasabianmeister writes:

Apple is deliberately not allowing DJ apps to the App Store

Something really strange is going on with the Apple review team. They now seem to approve all kinds of applications, even the ones that have been previously considered "unacceptable", but there is one kind of applications that are simply kept "in review" stage for months without any explanation.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVv4PY6st6Y

These are the DJ applications that have been developed with the idea to give the user the ability to mix his own MP3 tracks on the iPhone. Currently, there is no application in the AppStore that has such functionality. Of course, this wasn’t left unnoticed by the developers, but…

At least 3 applications: Touch DJ (www.amidio.com), Sonorasaurus (www.sonorasaurus.com), DJ Player (www.djplayer.fm) are not being approved since the beginning of September, hitting the 2-month "in review" mark. One of the developers even made a video voicing the frustration over the absolutely unacceptable behaviour of Apple:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDUS_2rcAjw

What is really weird and unprofessional, Apple doesn’t give any reasons whatsoever what is the reason of such delays. The developers are just told to "wait" without any explanations.
Meanwhile, the demand for the DJ apps is so high that people even started an online petition entitled "Apple, Allow DJ apps on the iPhone!":
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/iphonedj

One of the reasons for such attitude could be that Apple is working on its own DJ app, or is waiting for a DJ app from a "senior" player and keeping the possible "competitors" aside. In any case, it is quite possible that we will know the real reason soon.

It’s worth noting that, in the past, Apple’s application process has simply proved to be inconsistent and slow, which can cause people to see intention where there is none. But that doesn’t necessarily excuse Apple’s App Store approval process. The iPhone and iPod touch are popular largely because of Apple’s success at making media playback devices. Apple needs to document what it views as acceptable use of these devices. In the absence of information, developers are jumping to their own conclusions, possibly accurately, possibly not.

Obviously, aside from interest in Apple’s policies, I’m sure many iPhone and iPod touch owners are eager to see these applications, so we’ll certainly be following them to see if any are released.

In other rejection news… The App Store is currently just letting these DJ apps languish in limbo rather than providing a rejection. But another significant set of rejections is game titles built with the Unity game engine. There, the issue appears to be the presence of support in the engine for a private API call from Apple, whether or not the title itself uses the API, and …uh, yeah, that one’s complicated. Updated TUAW tells us via Twitter that Unity developers say they’ve fixed that issue, so… move along, nothing to see here.

Do Music Apps Need Better Categorization?

One potential danger of having a centralized store like iTunes and the App Store is giving control of approval to a single company (Apple), as seen in the DJ apps. The other is that such a storefront will simply not be categorized in a way that allows people to discover apps successfully.

Apple has been roundly praised for creating a store that encourages people to consume apps. Now, some developers want Apple to tweak their categorization to allow some of the most creative applications to stay in the forefront. Over the summer, Jokton Strealy, maker of the excellent songvoo music collection management tool, issued a call to fellow developers to try to get better categorization from Cupertino.

Side note: songvoo is just the sort of app that critics of the App Store might assume would be impossible. It replaces the existing playback functionality of the iPod and iPhone, the sort of replacement app that has sometimes earned rejection from Apple. Evidently, if an application is differentiated enough, it can clear Apple’s approval hurdles. (On the other hand, inconsistent policy and overzealous restrictions are at the center of some of those criticisms.)

But Strealy has no complaints about the App Store itself or the approval process. He just wants a more intelligently-organized store. Here’s his open letter from the summer, which has since earned a lot of support from fellow developers:

Recently, the Music section of the App store has gotten very busy with a new type of app — let’s call them Artist Apps or Fan Apps. Some of these Apps are great resources for fans and artists reaching out to their fans and potential fans, and some don’t live up to their potential.

However, they are joining a category that previously moved a lot slower, as the apps that had been populating this category were apps with a lot of development put into them and therefore sold at a higher tier usually- but were released at a slower pace. A look at the top 100 paid music apps illustrates this nicely.

Customers perusing the music section to catch that next great sound generating tool (for example), could check in on the new releases section perhaps once a week or even once a month and have the opportunity to check out all the great new apps that had been released, without worrying that one was missed.

Now however, these newer Artist apps have flooded this category, and great apps are getting lost in the shuffle. On one day last week, there were 21 pages of Artist or Fan apps, with a few "other" apps strewn in the mix here and there, very hard to pick out of the jumble.

I understand that this may be happening in other categories for other reasons, but I only concentrate on the Music section since I am a music producer and music App writer.

I propose that we all get together to come up with some suggested sub-category names for the music category. I will start the list off and hopefully some of you will chime in and give suggestions for other categories or add more definition to a sub-category that is already here.

Once enough input is received, I will compile it into one bug report for Apple. i will then post the bug# for everyone to include with any correspondence with Apple on this issue.

New sub-categories for the Music section of the App store.

Music Creation:
Synthesizers, drum machines, sound generators, scoring and notation, sequencers, DJ apps, recorders (multi track)

Music Utilities:
Lyrics apps, iPod interfaces, visualizers, iPod controllers, song recognizers, concert finders

Learning:
Metronomes, guitar and voice tuners, music slow downers, guitar tutors, chord apps,

Artist Apps/Fan Apps:
iLike apps, Deadmau5 app, PVD App, Underworld App, NIN, etc.

Radio Tuners:
AOL Radio, Pandora, Last.fm, individual radio stations

Please visit the Apple iPhone developer forums and voice your opinion/support!
https://devforums.apple.com/message/107989#107989

Sincerely,
Jokton Strealy., President
Elements2Dance.com

If nothing else, the explosion of development for iPhone and iPod touch is prompting some lively discussions about just what development should look like. A lot of what you hear is praise for the Apple model, but I expect some of the criticism of it – even down to minor details – could be productive, as well. I’ll certainly be watching the development of both of these issues, and we’ll see if Apple responds or not.

Updated: Jokton notes an additional change to the way apps are listed.

As for my original issue with categories and release dates, there has been a new development. Apple recently stopped listing “updates” in the “release date” listing of each category. Now the only way to get a listing there (which generates sales) is release a new app (1.0). Before that, devs were releasing constant updates to an app to keep it “on the radar” on the app store, even if the update were a simple as correcting a spelling error or perhaps even faking issues to correct. That in itself created a lot of “update spam”. Many developers are up in arms about these new changes because previously this was the only way to get your app seen by the masses. There has been no official word from Apple on the issue, so it is still unclear if this is a permanent change or some kind of error in the system. If this change is indeed permanent, then the argument for more subcategories is even more important now.

If you think culture has become too disconnected from the Earth, “Harvest” and the Terrafon instrument surely count as a shock to the system. A traditional ensemble picks up an enormous tone arm and transducer and, through back-breaking labor, drag it across arable fields. It’s part sound art and performance, part agriculture. But it certainly counts as a gramophone – it’s just a really big one that reads the grooves of the earth.

Beat juggling with two of these I’m guessing is largely out of the question.

One half of the artistic creative team, Olle Cornéer, writes with a description:

Harvest (2009) is a new art piece for the new instrument terrafon, traditional ensemble and cropland – by Olle Cornéer and Martin Lübcke.

In this performance Alunda Church Choir, conducted by Cantor Jan Hällgren, plays the soil of northern Uppland (in Sweden) on terrafon. Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör was exhibited at the Volt Festival in Uppsala the 6th of June 2009. Terrafon is a large agricultural version of the horn gramophone, amplifying the sounds in the track it ploughs.

There is more to come. There are still many croplands still untouched by terrafon. The only thing needed is a powerful local musical ensemble that can sweat it out. This is indeed a demanding piece.

Video illustrates what this all means in practice:

Harvest by Alunda Kyrkokör (2009) from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

The artistic duo behind the work is a fascinating collaboration. Olle is a producer and musician, while partner-in-crime Martin Lübcke has a PhD in theoretical physics, specializing in superstring theory. That has been the grounds on which their other work, Bacterial Orchestra, explores ideas both of biological epidemics and multi-celled organisms and neural networks. Of course, to make it truly multi-celled, they’ve made the piece an iPhone creation. (I think some folks have found the iPhone phenomenon to be viral as is, so this seems somewhat appropriate.)

Public Epidemic No 1 from Olle Corneer on Vimeo.

Every cell listens to its surroundings and picks up sounds, trying to play together in a musical way. The musical material comes from the background noise, people talking or sounds played by other cells.

Every cell has a unique DNA. Only the ones that are musical fit enough survives. If
the surroundings doesn’t meet up to its conditions – too noisy, too quiet or no distinct
pulse – the cell dies and is reborn with a new, hopefully better, set of DNA.

The result is a musical organism adapting to and changing its environment, growing and evolving with other cells and spectators.

More on that piece:
http://www.bacterialorchestra.com

It’s nice to me that, while these works are both conceptual, you might not guess they came from the same team. I wonder what will come next.

Critics frequently attach the phrase “lock-in” to Apple’s iTunes Store – iTunes – iPod/iPhone combination. But, in the post-DRM age, what does that mean, exactly?

First, you have to recall that while for many of us the manual drag-and-drop music management is appealing, it isn’t so for many average consumers. They want sync. That means that music will be stored in iTunes and synced to Apple devices and nothing else. Apple is serious about locking you to their store and their devices, enough so that they frequently update their software with special keys that prevent the use of devices. iTunes is “free,” but Apple determines which mobile devices you can use and which you can’t. And Apple has gone after anyone who dares give you the ability to use your own music software or own devices, including efforts (ironically) to make their iPhone and iPod work with Linux and open source players.

These efforts don’t protect the music or prevent privacy – they protect users of Apple’s software and mobile devices from using anything but Apple’s tools. Yet Apple has used the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to take legal action over anyone who dares to even talk about how to use legally-purchased music and hardware:

OdioWorks v Apple

Perhaps suspecting their case was too thin to defend, Apple eventually backed off that particular claim — after, says the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “7 months of censorship and a lawsuit.”

Apple Withdraws Threats Against Wiki Site

But the software and hardware locks are unchanged. And Apple has won, in my view, an even more important battle: they have a monopoly over mindshare.

Here’s an example from a recent review by Gizmodo of the Android 2.0 mobile operating system from Google, as implemented on the Verizon-distributed Motorola Droid. They have some fair points about Android’s maturity and strong and weak points. But note what they say about music sync:

The only way to get your music and videos on the phone is to manually drag and drop the files. There is no syncing, no easy way to get your music library onto your phone. How are normal people supposed to figure this out? Verizon reps actually joked about how putting music on the Droid is sure to make for a lovely Saturday afternoon. What. The. Shit.

In fact, this is technically accurate, to my knowledge, only if you’re using iTunes. That incompatibility is engineered specifically by Apple. It’s a “feature”: other vendors could make other devices sync with iTunes, but Apple engineers regular updates to prevent them from doing so. In fact, while Apple was conceding defeat in its efforts to censor the Web over its iTunes lock, it was simultaneously busy blocking the Palm Pre from working with iTunes. This should be especially sad to long-time Mac watchers, who saw a Mac community railing against Microsoft’s effective office software and operating system monopolies in the 90s. Those Mac historians should also recall the early development of iTunes and shareware predecessor SoundJam, both of which worked with a variety of hardware. Now, some members of the same Mac community cheer market share numbers and anti-competitive practices by Apple.

But, engineering aside, it’s really the mindshare battle that’s most impressive. Gizmodo, in saying the Android “doesn’t sync,” really means that it “doesn’t sync with iTunes.” And given iTunes’ massive market share, Gizmodo is not alone – I’ve seen similar complaints from other press outlets and, anecdotally, many, many users.

In fact, Android sync is supported by a variety of applications. In my tests, it works with the open-source players Songbird (Mac, Windows, Linux), Banshee (Mac, Linux), Rhythmbox (Linux), Winamp (Windows), Media Monkey (Windows), and yes, even Microsoft’s own Windows Media Player. Microsoft may restrict the use of its Zune media player, but ironically its music playback software is far more open than Apple’s.

By “sync,” incidentally, I mean automatically – it’s no harder to use these applications with Google Android than Apple’s iTunes and iPhone/iPod. I personally find most of them more flexible and intuitive than iTunes. And I can show someone in a couple of minutes how to manage their device via the file system, too – even “normal people.” (I definitely don’t count as “normal,” so no argument there. But presumably “normal people” can learn to use the Mac Finder, right? Apple certainly argues they can – then locks users out of that tool when they connect an Apple mobile player.)

This is not a pro-Android argument, despite the screenshot. Any music player or phone that supports normal disk mounting will work the same way.

Why should all of this matter to musicians? The reasons monopolies are a concern in the first place has to do with pricing, and media monopolies add to that control of culture and speech. Even if your music isn’t distributed through iTunes, pricing and consumption patterns, and even the kinds of music people listen to and where they discover it are now being deeply impacted by Apple. Apple, in turn, by convincing users that there are no other options and engineering interoperability out of their products protect that control, just as digital music is growing by leaps and bounds. (For statistical evidence of the resulting trends, see today’s other story, linked below.)

I spoke to the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Senior Staff Attorney Fred von Lohmann in April about the paper-thin (literally) arguments from Apple, when Apple was trying to prevent websites from talking about the database lock between iTunes and mobile devices:

All Apple has told us about this is in the letter they sent to us in December, as posted on the website as an exhibit to our complaint. Apple simply cites the fact that the iTunesDB page authors said that the obfuscation mechanisms used to create the iTunesDB has “may reside” in the FairPlay DRM code.

…The important thing here is that the iTunesDB pages were simply discussions about what might need to be done to reverse engineer the iTunesDB hashing. There was nothing to indicate that the efforts had succeeded. So even if understanding the iTunesDB hashing mechanism somehow magically unlocked all of FairPlay (which would seem to be far fetched), nothing on the pages suggests that the authors were anywhere near that goal.

Note that at the time, the EFF did not claim Apple lacked the right to make these kind of locks. The EFF told CDM at the time, “They have every right to do – to try to block it. Apple can certainly try to block it. What they can’t do is use inapplicable federal law to use legal threats to get them to stop.” And Apple backed off those claims.

The issue is whether you should invest in a product that limits your freedoms to use it. And the issue for musicians is whether this kind of a behavior from a company with an effective monopoly is limiting the potential power of digital music listeners in the future.

This is not to say that there aren’t reasons to choose to use an Apple device or its iTunes software. As reader “low resolution sunset” says in comments on the previous story:

This is pure conjecture: but I tend to think that slick interface design, trust, and loyalty for the Apple brand identity is what’s winning them the dominant market share of downloads.

Indeed. So, why not rely on that design, trust, and natural loyalty? Why force loyalty through engineering? And even given these qualities, isn’t there a danger when one company becomes so dominant that people don’t so much as consider alternatives? What’s to keep Apple competitive on good design if they have no competitors?

I certainly can’t answer those questions. And in the meantime, I’m looking to other alternatives, alternatives that have made me quite happy.

More on what this can actually mean:

Digital Sales Up, But is Apple Monopoly the Price? NPD, Mint Data, Editorial Analysis

Commercial developers are now releasing music creation apps for mobile game systems, in the form of the KORG DS-10 for Nintendo DS and Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP. But some of the best ideas still come from the homebrew community.

What’s most impressive about ToneSynthDS is not so much what it does as its interface, fitting all its functionality into the DS’ two compact screens. Its minimal interface finds an elegant arrangement of everything you most urgently need, with a sequencer screen on one DS screen and basic virtual analog synth parameters on the other. A 4 x 4 matrix next to the main sequencer grid lets you switch between patterns, in a step sequencer reminiscent of the monome and Tenori-On. There isn’t a whole lot of depth to event editing in this early version, but it could be a lovely way to sketch melodic patterns. (And some of those limitations come from the DS itself. Note, though, that this app gets a full 16 real-time channels on the original DS hardware to the Korg DS-10’s paltry two.)

Developer Fanta/Hotelsinus Sound Design has been posting mock-ups, demos, and now builds as he goes. That means that he gets feedback from an audience of readers and incorporates those as he develops the app – another key difference between the DIY/homebrew scene and conventional commercial development.

More good news: this DS app should also run as a PC VST in a forthcoming version, opening up the fun to folks using netbooks and laptops instead of the DS and creating a nice mobile-to-computer workflow.

http://ndscomposer.blogspot.com/

In related Nintendo DS news: If you’re thinking about getting the new DS-10 Plus Limited Edition of the KORG DS-10, you’ll need to get it for the region coding of your DS. (In other words, you probably won’t want to import it.) The “Dual Mode” functions are region-locked, so North American and European users can’t use the Japanese DS-10. That’s not such a big deal, as North American distribution was announced, and other regions are expected to follow, but it’s good to know. See details on the All Things KORG DS-10 blog. (Thanks, DS-10 Dominator!)

Check out some demo videos and a quick run-down on specs, and if you’ve got the capability to run homebrew, you can give this a try. Thanks to Art/toitoy for the tip!

• Two oscillators with fixed oscillators, ADSHR envelopes
• Filter section (in development)
• Ring modulation and “cross” mixing (cross-fading between oscillators)
• 16×16 step sequencer, 4×4 pattern selection

Clearly, there’s a lot of work still to be done, so test this build at your own risk. But it’s already good fun, and the coming roadmap looks logical, with filter options, disk rendering, song mode, and more in store. It’s also an interesting read as far as wrangling with emulators and some of the challenges of DS development.

The iPhone’s glass touchscreen may be a thing of beauty, but despite its multi-touch capabilities, it would seem this device is incapable of responding to how hard you tap it. But the developers at Wave Machines Labs apparently didn’t want to take no for an answer.

The iGOG drum suite for iPhone provides drum pads and sample triggering in unique ways, most notably in its velocity-sensitive VelAUcity. How do you get velocity response from a device that’s supposedly not pressure-sensitive? Presumably there’s additional data in the touch events that makes this possible, but for now Wave Labs aren’t saying:

iGOG’s proprietary VelAUcity technology does the unthinkable and turns the iPhone’s screen into touch sensitive drum pads. Play loud, play soft, or play a full-blown crescendo on a crash cymbal, iGOG will capture every nuance of your performance. Just plug in your headphones and start playing.

Here’s the interesting twist: generally, when any of us say “iPhone,” what we really mean is “iPhone or iPod touch.” That’s not true in this case: “NOTE: VelAUcity is only available on iPhone devices. if you’re using an iPod Touch, VelAUcity is disabled.” That seems to suggest that the trick is the built-in mic, or at the very least some private API that’s iPhone-specific. (Audio triggering is most likely, as this app comes from a developer with drum replacement experience.) That would also suggest to me that you might be able to pull this off with non-Apple mobile devices and controllers in the future.

As a result, though, I can’t test it – I have only the iPod touch.

Unconvinced or uninterested? iGOG has some other approaches to how the small Apple handheld can be made more useful as a set of pads:

• Multi-positional pads that assign articulation based on location
• A mic trigger mode — which may be more useful than the VelAUcity. This mode assigns any nearby sound (like rapping a table) as a trigger. (That’s possible, of course, with a variety of software, but having the device itself be portable could be handy, so to speak.)
• Multi-samples, file management, and sequencing for doing more with the samples.
• No, real multi-sampling — 384 multisamples per drum!

Even if you’re skeptical of yet another iPhone app, I think there are some great ideas here for music software (mobile and otherwise). Here’s a look at the mic trigger mode in action:

Oh yes, and speaking of all this audio triggering, the same developer makes the superb Drumagog drum replacing plug-in. With pricing at US$199-379, you have to be pretty serious about drum replacement, but I know people who are who swear by it. There’s really nothing stopping you from whipping up your own solution, but Drumagog has a lot of niceties that make the process easier, quicker, and more powerful.

http://www.drumagog.com

If you are a Drumagog user, you can bring those files into iGOG. That makes this app all the more interesting – it can be both a fun toy for someone new to the idea, and a companion to a more serious (and more expensive tool).

More on iGOG:
http://www.wavemachinelabs.com/igog/

Today was full of good news for people interested in carrying pads in the palm of their hand.

Fans of the Nintendo DS in North America, the Korg DS-10 Plus synthesizer for Big N’s game system is now coming to your side of the Pacific Ocean. (That also bodes well, I think, for other parts of the world.) The DS-10 I think really deserves some credit for making a straight-up music title a hit on gaming platforms, and its success certainly surpassed my own expectations. It’s not a game, it’s not an interactive experience, it’s not a music game – it’s actually a synth and music workstation that happens to run on a game platform. The DS-10 Plus beefs up the original’s features, though it now has a commercially-available rival in the form of Rockstar’s Beaterator for PSP.

In Plus for both the DS and DSi:

• MUTE/SOLO built into the SONG mode
• EDIT/PLAY enabled for all modes within the SONG mode

Apparently DSi-exclusive (as I had speculated in the original story on the new edition):

• Twice the analog synths (4 of them, instead of 2)
• Twice the drum machines (8 instead of 4)
• Twice the tracks (12 instead of 6)
• Expanded song mode: programmable track mute, realtime editing (that is, edit parameters inside the song mode
• Two effects layers instead of just the usual effects routing (the equivalent of running two instances of DS-10)

(Previously: Korg DS-10 Plus Coming, with Beefed-Up Features for Nintendo DSi)

I’m also pleased that, if the Joystiq story confirming North American distribution is correct, only the extra effects layers require the newer-model Nintendo DSi. It sounds as though the rest of this functionality works just fine on other DS models.

Correction: As Liam notes in comments, and as I’ve clarified above, many of the new features are indeed DSi-exclusive. That means this is probably worth upgrading if you have a DSi, and a reasonable purchase if you don’t already have DS-10, but something you’ll ignore if you have a pre-DSi system and the earlier DS-10 title. Joystiq apparently mis-interpreted the press release, which is easy enough to do; it’s confusingly written.

XSEED press release

Via Joystiq’s David Hinkle:
XSEED bringing Korg DS-10 Plus to North America

It’s drumming, the multi-player game. The Drummer is an open-source application for the Nintendo DS handheld, developed by Andrea Bianchi and Woon Seung Yeo and presented alongside a paper earlier this year at the NIME Conference (The International Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression). As with any Nintendo homebrew software, you’ll need a special DS cartridge capable of loading software from flash memory – though if this app were developed more, it could make a terrific DSi app.

The idea is this: while making a handheld game system into an instrument, why not take advantage of its networking features? Grab a friend (or friends) with the Nintendo DS, whip up a drum kit that’s to your liking, then play along.

Oddly, while we live in a networked, Internet age, the client-server model rarely gets applied to music. One of the things I try to explain about the protocol OSC (OpenSoundControl), aside from the fact that it doesn’t have to be about sound, is that it’s really a collection of best practices in open networking communication. It’s not simply about connecting devices to one another in serial fashion, as with MIDI, but forming a network – an idea familiar to anyone who uses instant messaging online. True, latency considerations and other complications can add another dimension of challenge. But I think there’s plenty to explore when it comes to networking devices, and it promises to make computer music a less solitary experience. The Drummer is a good step in that direction.

The Drummer project page + NIME paper
Google Code page

Thanks to Andrea for sending this our way!

Part of the beauty of the iPhone from its launch date was the notion of a Mac you could fit in the palm of your hand. That makes it ironic that, for so many developers, mobile platforms in general have turned into a way to fragment software, to make it run fewer places instead of more. There’s something to be said for designing to a specific mobile device, but on the other hand, how many developers would want to restrict where their creations run? And particularly in music, isn’t the appeal of mobile creation the ability to have your tools work in more places? Maybe targeting just one gadget is the right choice for a given tool, but it shouldn’t be the only choice.

On the iPhone, the application Thump has plenty in common with a range of mobile music making tools. It’s simple but fun, a groove box with sequencing, subtractive synths, drums, and a set of basic effects, plus the ability to load your own samples and export songs.

Thump also demonstrates how simplifying sonic capabilities can produce musically-beautiful results, by focusing on the essentials and creating something with personality. Here’s a track by its creator showing off its sounds:
thump soundreel by mazbox

Well worth checking out the app on your platform of choice:
http://www.mrkbrz.com/thump/

What might not be immediately apparent is that under the hood, Thump makes use of the open source environment openFrameworks. As a result, the same code runs on iPhone, Mac, and Windows, as well as Linux. (It’s not distributed for Linux, but it could be. Hint, hint.) Creator Marek Bereza gives back, too – he ported the openFrameworks audio library to the iPhone, where it’s available to anyone.

Updated Marek notes in comments just what this means. The video below is, essentially, the same app. In place of the iPod screen, he has used a massive lattice of physical controls. A separate installation at the same show used a large touchscreen and simplified interface. And this really demonstrates what cross-platform means. Guy Kawasaki in the 80s mocked “ports” as a cheap wine. The idea is not to simply dump your code on a different platform and hope for the best – in fact, in this case, the changes from one platform to another were radical. The key is maximizing what’s essential, what really is not specific to a single device.

Physical Sequencer from Marek Bereza on Vimeo.

Creative Applications has a detailed write-up of the installation with more documentation.

If you’re interested in creating your own projects, oF has an elegant syntax based on Processing, but adapted to C/C++ coding paradigms and libraries.

I would recommend trying desktop development first as you’re learning, but when you do want to go mobile, setup is absurdly easy:

Setup instructions for iPhone

Having this as a foundation means more freedom for users and developers alike, the ability to run where you want, and a shared community of artists helping one another out. It does not mean sacrificing revenue, either – which is important, because revenue is often what enables (and encourages) developers to make new things. Here, we see a commercial mobile tool and distribution via the iTunes store, with free-as-in-beer distribution of desktop apps. But even the Free Software Foundation actually encourages charging for distribution – and to many people, the FSF is the most extreme example.

The bottom line is, you’re free to create what you want, where you want – and it doesn’t even have to have a price of free.

The use of openFrameworks is possible because the iPhone allows the execution of native code. Apple does not allow the Java virtual machine, which locks out many useful platforms and tools — including Processing. Naturally, that should not be the case with forthcoming non-Apple platforms based on Linux; more on that soon.

Thanks to Memo Akten for the tip — and for his exceptional documentation of iPhone openFrameworks development.

GPU-tiful and Cross-Platform

Updated Another framework I left out is the lovely libnui. The tagline says it all: “C++ API, multiplatform (Mac OS X, iPhone, Win32, Win64, Linux), 3D hardware accelerated GUI and more…”

On the iPhone, Intua’s elaborate Beatmaker software and David Wallin’s bleep!box have both been made with libnui. I want to single out bleep!box because of its UI – note how UI elements are simplified and scaled to the size of your fingertip. That’s something that, speaking of multiple platforms, could be equally important with touch hardware coming to Mac, Windows, and Linux platforms (some of it here already). I saw a huge fan of Windows tablets loving Propellerhead Reason on a tablet. He probably would be less enthused running Reason or Record on a touch interface; the UI elements are way too small.

bleep!box is also worth a look for the same reason as Thump: elegant UI, simple functions, and a lot of fun.

Pd, too

Pure Data, the open source patching cousin of Max/MSP, can also run on mobile devices. It’s currently powering the application RjDj, but because Pd is free, that could be just the beginning. In May, I wrote about the work being done by Hans-Christoph Steiner, who has been porting Pd even to ancient PDAs and iPods – including those, notably, without native floating-point capabilities (the kind of number crunching usually associated with sound).

Well, now Hans-Christoph is looking toward other, current-generation devices, too, kicking off with a workshop on making interactive sound on the iPhone using Pure Data. Here’s a taste:

OK, kids, you won’t believe how easy this is. Once you have Pure Data installed on your your iPhone or iPod-Touch, creating and uploading your own sound-processing and sound-generating patches is as trivial as copying a text file to your device! You’ll still need an Apple Developer License, but because Pd patches are treated as media files, they don’t have to go thru Apple’s elaborate code review — so, you can just dive right in, turning your phone into a pocket synth within minutes. In this 3-hour hands-on workshop, interactive sound whiz and Pure Data developer Hans-Christoph Steiner will lead you through all the steps.

Hans-Christoph will be talking Pd on the iPhone at a conference next month at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. That will also include Memo Akten and Zach Gage talking about openFrameworks. And for nearly-entirely open source hardware, there’s a tantalizing-looking workshop combining Android with Arduino, too.

http://artandcode.ning.com/

There’s quite a lot more to say about this, but I hope this whets your appetite.

And, of course, riding the train to Pittsburgh or your nearest university or open source workshop, now you’ll have Thump which which to make some thumping tracks on your iPhone.