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.

Ten minutes. Four or five kids (or adults). Make a song. Go.

That’s the idea behind the Youth Music Box, developed by Silent Studios and Chris O’Shea. (Our friend Chris you may recall from various interactive projects and the blog pixelsumo; he sends this project our way.) The software is build in openFrameworks, the C++-based creative coding environment for artists.

With keys, drums, and yes, even a scratching DJ-style interface, the music box brings together kids for quick music making, inspired by the phenomenon of musical games. The experience is guided by genre, with some effort to make sure whatever they do sounds good, but it’s extraordinary how effective it is at conveying the experience of the successful jam. It’s a bit of a confidence builder, in other words, for a group musical experience, perhaps more so than those ear-splitting, cheap plastic recorder consorts I recall from my youth.

And oh yeah, those kids look super cute once they get rocking out. (See video below.)

Youth Music Box Experience from Silent Studios | Resonate on Vimeo.

All of this raises some fascinating questions, and not always with the answers you might expect. In a normal musical ensemble, you begin sounding like crap, amp up difficulty, and eventually sound something like this – at least as far as coherence goes, assuming you’re not aiming for experimental free jazz. But with the addition of technology, whether musical games or the presets on our favorite synths or the quantization and beat-synced loops of our sequencers, it goes something in reverse. You start out sounding like this, pull apart the mechanisms that make you sound a certain way, and eventually find your way to your own personal approach. (And at some point, you get some of the readers on this site, writing code to produce their own sounds and musical structures line by line.) In fact, one could imagine scaling difficulty of even this particular setup, gradually adding greater musical freedom and taking away the “training wheels” of all the rules-based restrictions that make the results sound a particular way.

Skeptical about the connection of music-based games and actual music making? Think again – even as music education unravels worldwide, games are actually encouraging real music. That revelation was the impetus of the music box project:

Research commissioned by Youth Music found that up to 2.5 million young people in the UK – or 1 million aged between 12 and 18 – have been inspired to progress into ‘real’ music-making because they have played music-based console games.

You got it – they hit those plastic buttons, got inspired, got bored, then decided to go to the real thing. And otherwise, they might have remained passive musical consumers: the game was a gateway drug. Of course, that means that any such interactive experience has to stand up to polished Guitar Hero and Rock Band-style games. But anyone who believes the music games genre has peaked and is on its way out may be dead wrong on many, many levels. On the contrary, this may only be getting started – and the real growth could come in music beyond the realm of games, as people graduate to the unlimited set of possible music experiences.

Chris sends lots more documentation of this project, if you’d like to learn more:

by silent studios and me for uk charity youth music to get kids turned on to music
http://www.vimeo.com/6210259

watch some bbc coverage here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_8160000/newsid_8168800/8168881.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8154449.stm

Ed.: The video at top doesn’t play outside the UK, because we don’t pay BBC license fees. What, all those Doctor Who videos I bought in the 80s and 90s didn’t make up for it?

here is a press release from roland. the box is ‘powered by roland’
http://www.audioprointernational.com/news/1329/Roland-unveils-Music-Box-for-Youth-Music

some launch pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/sets/72157621466657993/

making of pics
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pixelsumo/sets/72157621404410234/

this goes into some of the ideas and details about the musical kit
http://musicispower.youthmusic.org.uk/blog/24/youthmusicboxlaunchesatlondonssouthbankcentre/

on the website there is a very simplified flash version you can try out on a mini timeline, just click play online :)

its quite funny to read these comments on it
http://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2009/07/youth-music-box-democratizes-music-creation.html

And yes, you can try this yourself and play online! The official site:

http://musicispower.youthmusic.org.uk/youth_music_box/

The production company:

http://www.silentstudios.co.uk/

And Chris’ own site:

http://www.chrisoshea.org/

Roland is involved, and donated an E-09 Interactive Music Arranger to give kids some toys to explore.

And yes, I did notice a certain kindred spirit in the form of Moldover’s Octamasher. The underlying technology and its results are different, but to me what’s most interesting isn’t the superficial similarity of these projects, but the fact that they array the instruments in a circle. Computer production often simply orients a single person to a screen – not so ideal for collaboration. And even Rock Band and Guitar Hero, like an onstage band, line up artists for a (now nonexitent) audience. Perhaps the circle is about to make a comeback as music restores its social aspect.

Curious to hear other thoughts on these projects as they evolve.

Fritzcrate Project / lusidLearn Early Demo from Michael Schieben on Vimeo.

Knobs and faders can be rigid. Fancy multitouch devices can be expensive. But for the cost of a webcam and some spare materials, you can build computer interfaces with objects around the house, thanks to the power of open source software.

In just one day, a group of artists in the CDM community, from Austria and Germany to New York to Australia, got quite a lot working with tangible interfaces. At top, Michael Schieben and Christophe Stoll experimented with using soda bottles to control software like Future Audio Workshop’s lovely Circle. (Ableton Live works, too – as does any MIDI software.) As Precious Forever, these guys are responsible for some of the best UIs in music software, from FAW to recent Native Instruments designs, so it’s lovely to see them experimenting with this idea.

As you add more people to the mix, you get ideas you might otherwise never have imagined, from a game involving blocks of the Tokyo skyline to an interface built into floor toms.

We also got a lot of real-world data on what works, what needs work, and what causes trouble for beginners, which we’ll be documenting. (Adam and Martin from the Trackmate and reacTIVision projects, respectively, were both tuned in to see progress and provided lots of help – and are also collecting that data to improve their own documentation and libraries.) More commentary on all these side benefits, as well as a discussion with visitors from Argentina on the scene around the world, at Create Digital Motion.

Musical Resources

We also got some really helpful tips for working with the free, powerful, tri-platform synthesis tool SuperCollider:
Charles Martin wrote up an easy SC test script for receiving Trackmate messages (and also had the clever idea of using a floor tom)

And for connecting Trackmate to MIDI and working with Processing, lots of tips are available on Michael Schieben’s noisepages blog:
http://fritzcrate.noisepages.com/

Get Involved

More documentation:
Tangible Interface Hackday: The Projects (So Far)
http://hackday.noisepages.com/

http://trackmate.sourceforge.net/
http://reactivision.sourceforge.net/

So, what’s next? You can join discussion and brainstorming for how to proceed, and how to get in on another hackday (formal or ongoing), even if you missed the first. Stop by the Tangible and Multi-Touch Interface group on noisepages:
Tangible + Multi-Touch noisepages Group

Our noisepages community is still in “alpha” state, but it’s usable – we’ve just fixed avatar uploading, which was the biggest problem. We’ll have more features, functionality, and improvements down the line, as well as more extensive documentation for how to get started. But if you’re a bleeding edge sort of person, join up free and give us some advice on what you’d like out of it.

I look forward to more work on these projects. Stay tuned for more, including some additional documentation (I’m developing some stuff around my own project).