The Gamelatron at the Chelsea Museaum Teaser

Handmade Music hits Brooklyn again Thursday night with a terrific lineup:

• Robotic gamelan instruments with the Gamelatron, created by Zemi17 and the League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots (LEMUR) – check the video above!
• Rescued PDAs and iPods making music, with the Linux-powered ReWare project (which even allows you to run Pd on an old iPod), by Hans-Christoph Steiner – expect a box full of handhelds making noise
• Gestural Android handheld music, as I demonstrate the possibilities of the Google Android platform and G1 phone for OSC
• The Arduino-based Hard/Soft synth, designed by Gijs Gieskes and built by MAKE’s Collin Cunningham

Full project details at:

http://handmademusic.noisepages.com/

Reware your PDA from Hans-Christoph Steiner on Vimeo.

Give a hoot – don’t pollute with your old mobile gear. Make musical creations with it instead, powered by Linux.

Sure, there are wonderful things happening with mobile music applications on platforms like the shiny, new iPhone. But remember how technology was supposed to democratize access? Lots of us don’t have the money for a new iPhone or iPod. And how many of us have outdated Pocket PCs and Palms collecting dust? How many of these highly toxic devices get thrown away?

Linux to the rescue.

One of the biggest hits of my talk at the OFFF Festival in Lisbon, Portugal was the mention of the Reware, a project by Hans-Christopher Steiner, who is doing research at New York’s Eyebeam. He has literally a box full of old PDAs – the kind a lot of people would give away at this point – which he has rescued in order to reuse as development platforms and musical devices.

There’s something just stunning about watching an old Pocket PC transformed into an interesting musical device. It’s like the feeling you get when you save a puppy with the help of a rescue / adoption agency, and instead of being put down, Buster turns out to be an agility champion. (Sorry. I really love dogs.)

Reware Project at Eyebeam

For a sample project, here you can dual-boot Linux on an old Palm:

Reware your PDA: dual boot Linux on a Palm TX from an SD card

Once you’ve done that, you can run your own creations and even Pd patches on your mobile. Even old iPods can work.

Don’t toss that Windows Mobile gadget yet. In fact, you might want to keep glued to Craig’s List for a used unit, if you like the idea of road warrior music production on the cheap, sans laptop.

Amidst all the hype around the iPhone and iPod Touch, Windows Mobile devices could actually win on power apps for on-the-go music making. Maybe that’s because of the similarity to developing Windows desktop apps, maybe it’s because of fewer restrictions compared to Apple’s SDK, or maybe some combination of that and fortune. Nonetheless, during this Summer of iPhone, the makers of powerful Windows Mobile sequencer/sampler studio Griff note on their new blog that Windows Mobile just got a new music app.

Yes, you read that right: a new app for Windows Mobile.

Wildly enough, MeTeoR is basically a pocket-able miniature DAW, boasting:

• 12 tracks of audio with stereo mixdown
• Audio waveform editing with cut, copy, paste, and processing (fade, normalize, reverse, etc.)
• Various effects (delay, chorus, reverb, phaser, filters, pitch shift, noise gate, graphic EQ, and more), with routable aux sends
• Metronome with live recording
• A mixer with full automation envelopes for each tracks (for the mixer lanes and effects)

The whole thing is basically reminiscent of an old version of Cakewalk for Windows, only running in your pocket. I could see it as fairly useful for doing some quick processing or pre-processing on a big project – load those extra files on the subway and keep working on that project, even if you’re up against a deadline.

Not only that, but because the system requirements are fairly flexible and used Windows Mobile devices are fairly worthless, you could easily rescue someone’s unused PDA and press it into service as a music device. They’ll thank you. The environment will thank you.

US$29.95, but unlike Apple’s iTunes store, you can download a demo version. (Imagine that.)

All of this is on paper (erm, pixels); no promises, as I haven’t used it yet. I have to brush off my Dell PDA and give this a try. I know there’s a charger here somewhere…

MeTeoR @ 4pockets.com [Demo download and purchase links, detailed features]

Despite my complaints, you will find some useful music apps in the iTunes App Store – you can at least get some fine tuners. (Andy Ihnatko was excited on Twitter that one of them helps him tune his ukulele, thanks to four string support!) We do expect more hefty music tools in the coming months, and via the jailbroken platform.

But some of the real stars on the iPhone – or whatever your favorite smart mobile device may be – have to do with simply storing ideas and keeping your life together. That means one of the best downloads so far for the iPhone is Evernote. As Graham English writes in comments on CDM:

The app I’m most excited about for music is Evernote. You can record voice notes, text notes, and it even recognizes the text in iPhone pictures. So next time you write a killer hook on a bar napkin, snap a picture and sync it. Cool.

I’m a huge user of Evernote on my desktops and, via its web browser, on my Blackberry. The iPhone app looks especially great, though; I’m jealous.

Evernote for iPhone

My friend Francis Preve has written a whole set of useful tips for DJs that apply to any gigging musician / artist (which he’s been refining since the first iPod, in fact):

Top 10 iPhone tricks for DJs [Beatportal]

Some highlights:

• Keeping email templates for gig announcements on your device so you can send them quickly. (Recognize this scenario? “Hey, what’s new?” “I’m playing Friday.” “Oh, really?”)
• Mapping: Some providers require you to enable mapping capabilities on your device. Do it. Both the “real” GPS (via a dedicated radio) and the assisted GPS can be lifesavers if you travel at all. (The iPhone 2.0 update adds this feature, in the assisted form.)
• Rescue tracks: The iPhone is a capable music player, so it can, um, save you when your laptop dies or someone steals your hard drive. It even has video out capability, for you Create Digital Motion readers.

And the fact is, you can easily apply these ideas to whatever phone / smart device is your favorite. These could also put you over the top as far as cameras with phones – not because you’ll necessarily be taking attractive photos (dedicated cameras are a must for that) but because they can aid visual memory. (Airport parking spot? Check!)

I especially like Fran’s idea of logging creative time. Invoicing aside, I find that it’s so often a fight to get time to yourself that I really like the idea of keeping track of that time, whether it’s in the studio or just sitting in the park thinking about a new song. It could help give you some positive reinforcement for setting aside some working time or even badly-needed quiet time.

Going back to my first Palm (the PalmPilot Professional, no less), I’ve always found even simple mobile devices can help reduce stress, particularly on the road. And that to me is priceless.

Other ideas that boost your productivity, in terms of gigging, travel, and creativity? Let us know.

Previously:

iPod Touch/iPhone for Music Round-up (which, surprisingly, isn’t all that outdated by the App Store launch – we expect bigger announcements in the coming weeks)

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

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

So what was the holdup? Building a secure platform:

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

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

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

Regardless, Apple: thank you.