Sword & Sworcery, the iPad album-as-game, has gotten plenty of love from this site before, and recognition for friend-of-the-site composer Jim Guthrie. (See Jim open up about what happened behind the scenes.)

Now, it seems the Canadian songwriter and soundmaker will meet up with some of the biggest game composers from Japan in a unique remix album. In the lineup:

Michiru Yamane (Castlevania: Symphony of the Night)
Akira Yamaoka (Silent Hill)
Baiyon (PixelJunk 4am)
Mitsuto Suzuki (Final Fantasy XIII-2)
macotom3 (JP chip music artist)
Decasségui Hip

The release will be on iTunes and Bandcamp – the new havens for the indie artist (and certainly for game music).

It’s terrific to see this cross-cultural, international fusion. And the preview clips released, while brief, should whet the appetite of fans of musical invention in the game medium. Have a listen below.

Preview tracks:

00:00 Little Furnace (00:15 PostProduction Mitsuto Suzuki Mix) Mitsuto Suzuki
00:37 The Ballad of the Space Babies (00:52 Supernova Babies Mix) macotom3
01:14 Lone Star (01:30 Baiyon Just Walking Remix) Baiyon
01:54 The Maelstrom (02:09 Radiant Darkness Mix) デカセギ・ヒップ
02:32 The Prettiest Weed (02:48 *’s Ambition Remix) デカセギ・ヒップ
03:10 Unknowable Geometry (03:27 Symphony Mix) 山根ミチル
03:48 Bones McCoy (04:04 Akira Yamaoka Mix) 山岡晃

The remix project coincides with the Japan release for Sword & Sworcery. Remember, kids, localization is the future of everything. Teaser for that:

More:
http://sworcery.jp/remix/

We hear you: amidst the various music doodling tools calibrated for casual taps on a phone screen, you want something you can actually make your own with your own sounds. Here’s one example of that: triqtraq. It’s got the “tap it on the bus to improvise a pattern” feel of some of the apps we’ve seen lately, but without sacrificing the sort of control that might keep you coming back to it. And because it lets you include your own samples, there is some depth. (No Audio Copy/Paste, though, before some reader chimes in and points that out.)

Creators Sebastian Schatz, Olaf van Zon, and Joerg Peschel say that they wanted to scratch an itch similar to the one we’ve heard from readers. They write in the press release: “With this app, we (a bunch of friends that are crazy about electronic music) are trying to take music jamming on the iPhone to the next level. Instead of creating an app that simplifies the creation of music on an iPhone so much that you are bored with the possibilities within a week, triqtraq gives you a lot of flexibility.”

Features:

create musical patterns fast and intuitively, by programming live or by using the ‘step edit’-feature
automate parameters like pitch, filter, delay, decay and level in real-time
change samples or sample kits on-the-fly while jamming
edit multiple tracks simultaneously
store up to 16 patterns and 32 samples per session
specify the length of a sequence per track, or set the automation length for each parameter individually
switch seamlessly between patterns
use the loop range feature to create poly-rhythmic sequences
use sounds from the 350+ factory sample library
import your own sounds via iTunes file sharing

Find it in the CDM apps section:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/triqtraq-jam-sequencer

Among other information, the developers have loads of tutorials on their site:
http://www.triqtraq.com/index.php/tutorials

Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)

What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.

GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)

I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:

Design Strengths

I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting.

It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length.

It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.

Now, for a few details you might not know.

A showcase for the iPad’s tech

Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:

• It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
• It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
• The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
• You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
• You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.

I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.

Playability

The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.

Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.

Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)

My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.

In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.

Editability

Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.

A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)

It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.

Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.

It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.

The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.

Sharing and workflow features:

Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.

You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.

You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.

But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes.

Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.

Conclusions

Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.

On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.

When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.

My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.

Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.

I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:

Ah, I remember March 2011…

Grab the app or review it yourself:
GarageBand for iOS @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

luanna is a beautiful new application out of Tokyo-based visual/sound collective Phontwerp_. Amidst a wave of audiovisual iPad toys, luanna is notable for its elegance, connecting swirling flurries of particles with gestures for manipulation. I imagine I’m not alone when I say I have various sample manipulation patches lying around, many in Pd, lacking visualization, and wonder what I might use in place of a knob or fader to manipulate them. In the case of luanna, these developers find one way of “touching” the sound.

As the developers put it:

luanna is an audio-visual application designed for the iPad
that allows you to create and control music through the manipulation of moving images.

The luanna app has been designed to be visually simple and intuitive, whilst retaining a set of rich and comprehensive functions. Through hand gestures you can touch, tap and manipulate the image, as if you were touching the sound. The image changes dynamically with your hand movements, engaging you with the iPad’s environment.

The interface is multi-modal, with gestures activating different modes. This allows you to select samples, play in reverse, swap different playback options, mute, and add a rhythm track or crashing noises. It’s sort of half-instrument, half-generative.

Phontwerp_ themselves are an interesting shop, descibed as a “unit” that will “create tangible/intangible products all related to sound.” Cleverly naming each as chord symbols, ∆7, -7, add9, and +5 handle sound art, merch, music performance / composition / sound design, and code, respectively. That nexus of four dimensions sounds a familiar one for our age.

Sadly, this particular creation is one of a growing number of applications that skips over the first-generation iPad and its lower-powered processor and less-ample RAM. Given Apple can make some hefty apps run on that hardware, though, I hope that if independent developers find success supporting the later models, they back-port some of their apps.

See the tutorial for more (including a reminder that Apple’s multitasking gestures are a no-no).

US$16.99 on the App Store. (Interested to see the higher price, as price points have been low for this sort of app – but I wonder if going higher will eventually be a trend, given that some of the audiovisual stuff we love has a more limited audience!)

Readers request Audio Copy and sample import right away. I think sample import, at least, could easily justify a higher price, by making this a more flexible tool.

Find it on our own directory, CDM Apps:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/luanna

http://phontwerp.jp/luanna/

Very similar in its approach is the wonderful Thicket, well worth considering:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/thicket

See our recent, extensive profile of that application’s development:
Thicket for iOS Thickens; Artists Describe the Growth of an Audiovisual Playground

See also, in a similar vein, Julien Bayle’s recent release US$4.99 Digital Collisions:

http://julienbayle.net/2012/04/07/digital-collisions-1-1-new-features/

http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/digital-collisions-hd

Tenori-On and iPad apps, hardware designs and visual creations: set against the beautifully-generative mind of Japanese/New York artist Yayoi Kusama, the flurries of dots and circles and patterns in musical interfaces take on a richer meaning. This video, from a workshop hosted at the Tate Modern alongside an exhibition of Kusama’s work, needs little introduction. Instead, the dizzying cuts of geometric abstraction, the array of visual ideas for musical interface begin to take on the same personality of her expansive creations. The galaxies produced out of the minds of musicians somehow overlap with this iconic artist. I hadn’t really made the connection before, even as a fan of her work, but with this workshop, the sympathetic vibrations – intentional or not – become clear. Description:

Sonic Kusama:
Workshop exploring connections between the work of Yayoi Kusama and creation and representation of new music & sound art through visual audio interfaces.
Presented by Simon Little and Kelvin Brown with Chase Lane.
Audio track by Capstone Music
Video production by Territory Studio

If you’re in London, Infinite Kusama is on view now at the Tate Modern.

Speaking of the iPad and music making, Japan’s Human Boot Project draw a music video release for their latest track directly from screen as they play, working in the app Tabletop. I really love the personality of the resulting sounds. There’s a rawness to their music, the dense downtempo jazz-inspired electronics, which you can enjoy on their new EP “Picture Over Picture.” It’s a Beatport exclusive from Greece’s V.I.M. Records:

http://www.beatport.com/release/picture-over-picture-ep/887326

The artists say it’s “Downtempo beauty to Jazz Electronica futurism !!” (Exclamation points theirs, but … I agree.)

Human Boot Project are a Japanese underground music unit. This is a genre breaker fusing Jazz with Rock and Drum and Bass and one to get the synapses twinging.

http://www.humanboot.com
http://www.facebook.com/humanboot
http://soundcloud.com/hbp

Tabletop is on sale now for 99 cents currently free, though note that a lot of what you’re seeing here requires in-app purchases of add-ons:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/tabletop

Artist Paul Salva consulted on the app, and in a video with the LA Times walks through the features in detail, if you want a closer look at the app. (Interestingly, he notes many in the LA scene are going iPad live.)

It’s a collision between a twenty-first century tablet and some of the most iconic analog instruments ever produced. It’s MIDI and digital meeting up with control voltage and analog. It’s our friend Chris Stack, endeavoring to find the path that allows him to take the best pieces of his studio and put them together, pushing all that gear to its limits and finding a sum that exceeds the parts. In short, it’s music making, how a soloist can make an ensemble out of their tools. On ExperimentalSynth.com, Chris has been very interesting indeed. But it’s nice to pull together a few of these recent episodes to get a sense of the larger theme.

First, let’s have a look at Moog’s Animoog synth as it’s crossed with the Moog Voyager. Now, some will recall my original criticism of Animoog and iOS synths in general was the lack of tactile feedback on the iPad. But that makes Animoog’s support of MIDI significant. And put these instruments together with your hardware instruments, and something very different happens. (I find it interesting that the most active users of Animoog I’ve met all have it as an addition to a conventional hardware studio – it’s all pieces of the puzzle.)

Chris tells us this video has gotten an especially-enthusiastic response. The video demonstrates “some of the many possibilities when using the Moog Voyager as a MIDI controller for the Moog Animoog app and feeding the iPad audio back into the Voyager’s filter.”

What you may not have seen is the “extended,” “noir” version of that video:

But that’s just one direction to go with combinations of gear. Here’s a look at what happens when you augment a synth with outboard effects, also in this case from Moog Music. Chris writes:

These next two are a pair showing how to use the Env Out CV from the Moog MF-101 filter and MF-107 FreqBox to bring tempo-synced filter effects to the Voyager (which is somewhat limited in that regard compared to the LP and SP which have MIDI synced LFOs and arpeggiators). First the MF-101, then with a bit gnarlier and more complex setup with the FreqBox.

One thing you get out of computing platforms versus analog gear is worlds of sound that are impossible in the analog domain. That’s why it’s especially nice to see Chris combine csGrain, the out-there granular effect in Csound’s new incarnation on the iPad, with a Moog guitar:

But just as with desktop computers, a terrific role for mobile and tablets, particularly the MIDI-equipped iPad, is as a sequencer. The tablet interface becomes as natural an editing and composition tool as the gear is for tweaking and performance. Chris offers:

Here’s a really quick and dirty one I shot on my Droid while playing. It is on my other YouTube channel. Here I used the Koushion app to sequence the LP. The LP has the CV Out Upgrade so I sent the Pitch CV to the CP-251 which inverted it, then sent it to control the Voyager’s filter cutoff. As the LP note goes up, the Voyager Filter Cutoff goes down. This was all tied together through Ableton which was sending the same clock to a Line 6 Echo Pro so all the echos were synced to the same clock…

Of course, there’s a strong Moog Music emphasis in all these videos, but they all demonstrate more broadly where the productive overlaps of digital and analog can lie, adaptable to much humbler rigs and combinations.

If you find this sort of thing inspiring in your own music, you can follow Chris’ site directly:
http://experimentalsynth.com/

And give Animoog a try, or visit Moog Music:
http://apps.createdigitalmusic.com/apps/animoog
http://www.moogmusic.com/

We’ll be watching.

Mobile computing has already had an enormous impact on music making. A modern phone or tablet (and yes, most often, these come from Apple) is capable of out-performing a lot of dedicated hardware and easily runs the synths and workstations that required state-of-the-art desktops just a decade or so ago.

But what if this same computing power – low-energy, low-cost chips – could be in other music gear, too? They could offer significant advantages. Bare boards, while on their own not quite road-ready, can wind up in music-friendly housings. (Think stompboxes – without stomping on your phone, or buying a big, silly dock.) You’ll never have to sign a contract with a phone company to get one, or stop your latest song sketch to take a call. And they could be significantly cheaper: the Raspberry Pi isn’t quite ready for mass consumption yet, but it has already begun shipping at US$25, meaning the entire computer costs what a phone car charger might.

In fact, much as the original personal computing revolution took computing to masses of new audiences, this could extend music computational power worldwide. We’re not just talking strange DIY software, either – these boards run Linux, meaning a lot of off-the-shelf music software will “just work,” including even some fine commercial entries.

If you’re ready to stop dreaming and start making music, now’s a great time. CCRMA at Stanford in the United States and STEIM in Amsterdam, NL have each been working on development. STEIM even has a workshop scheduled for June, taught by Edgar Berdahl (CCRMA) and Florian Goltz (DE):
Satellite CCRMA: Interactive design with open embedded computers

The instructors offer some great inspiration about what this is all about in their description:

These small computers combine the connectivity of a laptop with the computational power of a high-end smartphone; however they are less expensive than either and fit inside a cigar box. We will dedicate much of the workshop to prototyping new functional artworks, for example: musical instruments, effects processors, interactive installation works, and anything else you can imagine that requires high computational power in a small, inexpensive footprint.

In the broader sense this workshop deals with interaction design: What happens when human behaviours meet those of machines?

But even if you’re not able to get to California or Holland, you can give the software a try. The BeagleBoard is now supported by a custom distro; the Raspberry Pi seems a logical next frontier once it starts shipping. With Pd (Pure Data) included, you can even copy-and-paste instruments and effects like synthesizers, step sequencers and drum machines, and granulators built by a broad community – even without necessarily being a master patcher yourself. (And then, when you do want to modify the way it functions or sounds or gets controller, you can.)
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~eberdahl/Satellite/

It’s not all beginner-friendly yet, but these hacklabs seem the perfect way to begin to move in that direction, as more people test the solutions, gather data on how different patches perform, and make tweaks and write documentation.

Equipped with MIDI, a phone or tablet can communicate with a vast range of standalone hardware and computer software for music. So, what to do with that power? Two recent applications show just some of the breadth of possibility, one from Japan, one from Ukraine. One provides an array of powerful tools, combining into one application a lot of functions that have otherwise been available only in separate apps. One takes a more novel approach. Each demonstrates Apple’s increasingly-ubiquitous iPhone and iPad to be a surprisingly-indispensible musical tool.

Let’s look at the more whimsical of the two first.

From Japanese media artist and developer Masayuki Akamatsu (known as aka), MIDIWriter is a bit unlike MIDI tools you’ve likely seen before. It sends MIDI notes not from a piano keyboard or more familiar musical interface, but from the key entry you’d usually use to type in messages. That means the on-screen keyboard – even, as pictured, in another language – can become a musical instrument instead of input method for SMS and the like.

Where things get even more interesting is when you add a Bluetooth keyboard or keyboard dock, for iPad or iPhone. Then, those gadgets become physical input devices. (In the oddest example, a projected keyboard even works.)

http://akamatsu.org/aka/ios/apps/midiwriter/ [lots of great documentation, in both English and Japanese]
MIDIWriter @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com [View, install; US$0.99]

It’s all quite peculiar, but I can think of one particular advantage to doing something a bit unusual: sometimes, the best way to break out of tired musical habits is to face an unfamiliar musical interface.

In the more conventional and practical end of the pool, we have Wiksnet’s MIDI Studio. With rather lovely, refined-looking interface design, the Ukrainian app treads in the competitive waters of iOS MIDI controllers. What it does that those apps don’t necessarily do, though:
1. It adds velocity senstivity, via vibration, as seen in Apple’s own GarageBand but less-commonly in MIDI tools.
2. It combines layouts into convenient configurations, coupling, for instance, knobs with MIDI keys.

And it looks nice. A future version promises editable templates, but for many, having some nice stuff up and running without any additional effort could be a draw. From the developers, a feature list:

• Essential MIDI compatibility (Core MIDI, over WiFi and USB)
• Drum pads with modulation across X/Y axes, velocity
• Two keyboards, each with a different key size, and customizable key/tuning mappings
• Built-in arpeggiator
• Easy mapping of ADSR, etc. to knobs on the keyboard layout

http://www.wiksnet.com/
MIDI Studio @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com [View, install; US$10.99]

There’s no official view, but here’s one fan-made entry:

The Ukrainian developer has done other commercial work, they say, but this is their first unique iOS music app. The next release will have, alongside editable templates, velocity sensitivity, and will fill other user requests.

In the case of MIDIWriter, there’s not a lot of comparison to be made – desktop software has often mapped standard input and keyboards to music, but not necessarily iOS apps. With MIDI Studio, of course, we’re overdue for an overview of MIDI apps.

Let us know how you use these – or other tools, including things that don’t begin with a lowercase “i” – to produce MIDI events in your workflow.

What would you want in your pocket for DJing? How about some key recognition and tracking, key mixing aid, BPM tap — and a flashlight (torch)?

For the DJ who cares about mixing songs together in key and precise tracking of BPM, automatic recognition may just not cut it. One DJ and developer, Pete Simpson, decided to solve that problem – and like a lot of software ideas, initially built that solution for himself. He turns the ever-popular iPhone into a handheld, pocketable companion for DJ sets. I asked Pete to explain not only what the software does, but what it means in his DJ workflow.

Whether you’re obsessive about mixing in key or new to some of these ideas, the answers reveal what this app might do for you, as well as how Pete DJs. (I can also imagine this being useful to remixers tracking a lot of tunes, as well as DJs.) Pete writes:

I’ve recently published an app for the iPhone called DJ Tools. It is something I wrote for myself maybe a year ago, and I use it so much, I thought it might be useful for others. I found automatic key recognition software to be too inaccurate for my needs. D JTechTools did a recent article, and their tests [found] between 20%-40% accuracy for the three products tested. I also note that Beatport and other sites supplying key information seem to use the same automatic software to do so.

Ed.: That’s en excellent DJ TechTools write-up, covering Mixed in Key 5, Rapid Evolution 3, and BeaTunes 3: Key Detection Software Showdown: 2012 Edition

I used to key my own songs with a synth to act like a tuning fork. I wrote an app that does the same, in effect: it will play a chord from any of the 24 major and minor diatonic scales so you can compare with a song you’re listening to. It has a standard tap BPM button. It also displays the other musical keys that will mix with the selected key with the least number of discordant notes (based on the circle of fifths). It gives the standard music notation and the key code notation used by some DJ software. I put a torch on it — bit random I know — but I always forget to bring one, and end up groping around plugging my kit into mixers in the dark. [That's a flashlight, for you fellow Yankees.]

Its a niche app, but I think DJs who are already manually keying their new tracks could find it useful.

So, how does he use it, in practice?

I use tool primarily when I buy music. I will get the tunes into my DJ rig, and play the first tune. I move the track to a part of the music score that has easily identifiable tonal information (a melody line, or bass line) and compare the tune playing to one of the tunes played by hitting the key buttons on the app.

Once I’ve identified the musical key I’ll tap the screen to get an accurate estimate of the song tempo which I use to warp the track.

Once done, I’ll mark the key in my tune’s metadata. Once complete, I don’t need to use the tool (I know the circle of fifths) but if I didn’t I can also use the tool to inform me of harmonic keys that will match the key I’m pressing. For example, I’m spinning a track in A Major, I know the most harmonious key would also be A Major but I would like to shift into another key (I have a lot more songs in other keys, and I’m running out of A Major). So, I press the A Major button and the display informs me that the keys E Major, F Sharp Minor, and D Major all share similar harmonic frequencies and will blend smoothly without disharmony.

That’s about all there is to it. It is a tool for DJs with a basic music training or understanding, who wish to add more depth to their sets by actively considering the keys the tracks are in and mixing coherent keys with it.

The technique sounds great, most decent DJs already do this subconsciously. There are a couple of tutorials on my website that explain the theory and how to use the tool. I’m working on writing more articles but also run a full time job and DJ when I can, so time is precious!

To learn more…
How to use the app:
http://operandlabs.com/tutorials/item/6-how-to-use-dj-tools

And if you’re not familiar with the Circle of Fifths (or, if you like, the Circle of Fourths), get schooled:
http://operandlabs.com/tutorials/item/1-the-circle-of-fifths

Website: http://operandlabs.com
DJ Tools on CDM Apps (read, install, review): DJ Tools @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com