iPhone users today started downloading the new iPhone OS, 3.0. One interesting feature of the new mobile software is peer-to-peer communication for collaborating in person. If you’re looking for an app that takes advantage of that, and can embarrass you in front of friends / workmates, Smule Trombone could be your answer. The touch-and-breath-controlled social music app/game from synthesis wizard Dr. Ge Wang has a special 3.0-only version. It uses the new iPhone push notification for achievements, but more importantly, features peer-to-peer Bluetooth for in-person “Duet Mode.”

I think these sort of networked features will increasingly become not only a game gimmick, but a necessity in music making. Why shouldn’t music devices instantly recognize the proximity of other music devices, automatically connect, and sync and share data, recordings, clock, and control messages? (One answer why not: because they’re reliving 1980s flashbacks by running MIDI. But that’s no reason software and DIY devices can’t lead the way.)

Meanwhile, whether you care about iPhone ocarinas or not, Smule are on a roll. The Leaf Trombone collaboration features have been racking up stats, with nearly a million sessions judged by other users in six weeks. They aren’t all covers of Nintendo game songs, fun as those may be: over 4,000 original songs from the composer mode have been contributed to the community. There’s cash involved in game achievements, too; you can win US$500 for being “loved” in a new contest.

I also find it interesting that “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” is the top melody with nearly 20,000 performances. It’s proof that some of the innocent joys of music may sometimes get overrated. (Although, let’s see, I still have an hour left to try to bang out a Stravinsky cover on his birthday.)

Go check out the Smule apps here – and here’s hoping we see smart networking in more music apps in general. (Ableton’s Share is one feature we’ll be looking at soon, though open communication standards would be great, too.)

http://www.smule.com/

By the way, on the Android side, it appears Google is planning to re-release the Bluetooth API, so we could get features there, too – and perhaps even Androids talking to iPhones. More on that soon, now that I have some time to get back to coding.

Updated – Bonus Video: Inside the “mind of Smule,” a duet from Legend of Zelda’s Underworld. Can your Computer Music teacher do this? Dr. Ge Wang can:

The iPhone 3.0 SDK is a fantastic update, bringing a lot of what was on developer wish lists for the device. But some of the early speculation – that the so-called “library access” would enable music games and DJ apps — may have been premature. Jordan Balagot writes to let us know that, at least in the current SDK, access to media is very limited.

The “library access” in the 3.0 SDK is only a player control API similar to that of the iPod; there is not even read only file access for MP3s nor any way to modify the output from the library. So no iPhone DJing, no BPM detection, no interactive PD or Reaktor patches with your library.

Unfortunately, this seems consistent with Apple’s desire to be the one and only media player on the device. I’m hoping that this is still something Apple plans to add – imagine the ability to add effects or run games based on the library (a la the PC game Audiosurf) or create DJ apps. I know many people who use iPhone or iPod as sample players or backups for live sets; having a custom player app could also be useful.

By comparison, Google’s Android has no such limitations on its MediaPlayer class – the fundamental difference being that you aren’t limited from playing media on your device. Unfortunately, Android has its own limitations: no real audio buffer access, which means it’s not possible to build effects or DJ apps or games on Android, either.

And that’s typical of the sort of situation the newest mobile devices present. We have the iPhone, more sophisticated technically, but limited, apparently, by design in order to protect Apple control over certain functions. Then we have the Android, philosophically unlimited but technically limited by some key missing capabilities.

My question is, which device will evolve first to give us the freedom to make use of its full potential?

No file or output access to iPhone MP3 library – 3.0 SDK still too restrictive

If we’re lucky, perhaps the 3.1 SDK? (Or something we’ll still see in 3.0 that isn’t done yet?)

The tech press stopped today to keep up with Apple’s new SDK, version 3.0. It is a huge overhaul, and let’s give Apple credit where it’s due: they’re relentless in improving their mobile software, and they do listen to complaints and respond. I don’t think you can classify copy and paste as news, given Apple is the company that popularized the concept eons ago. (How long ago? Not only was Reagan President, but MTV still played music videos.) But 3.0 is a huge upgrade. Most mobile devices develop some usability quirks and functionality holes and leave them for years on end; Apple is actually improving their device.

Synthtopia goes out on a limb and says iPhone 3.0 kicks ass for music.

Well … sort of. The thing that makes the iPhone special for music is that it has Core Audio and can run C/C++ code. Google’s Android, by comparison, currently has a limited set of APIs and, as near as I can tell, no easy way to get a real synthesis or effects library going. That’s allowed the likes of Pure Data and ChucK to run serious real-time synthesis and audio processing, in the guise of consumer-friendly apps. Think this doesn’t matter to non-CDM readers? Tell that to the zillions of people who bought Ocarina for the iPhone as a toy. This is, mark my words, a very big deal. It just isn’t any more of a big deal in iPhone 3.0.

The other improvements still have the caveats that the iPhone has always had. The iPhone still has a closed ecosystem that’s dependent on iTunes, plus restrictions on hardware and software that keep it from being, well, as open as your Mac or Windows computer is, or even many mobile devices. Now, what you do with those limitations is up to you. I believe in dissent and disagreement on the Web, and I think the iPhone has no shortage of cheerleaders. I’m not a fan of Apple’s model. That’s my bias, and I’m upfront about it, I think.

But my opinions aside, let’s talk specifics.

News may filter through Boing Boing, Slashdot, and Reddit – and certainly, this story already has. But oddly, I learned of this item when I happened to meet up with the blog item’s author in Somerville, Massachusetts. He has digital analysis he believes may prove that a track was recorded to a click track.

Paul Lamere is a developer at Echo Nest, a brainy think-tank of music geeks developing new ways of processing musical metadata in the cloud. Whereas services like Last.fm focus mainly on content and community, Echo Nest’s API wants to make the computers in the cloud smarter about how they listen to your music. We’ve had a look at their work twice before:

All Christmas Music, Boiled Down to Sixteen Droning Singles
Musical Brain API: An API for Music on the Web – And it Makes Pretty Pictures

The Remix API crunches data about rhythmic information at a number of levels. Since we first saw it, that API has led to an SDK (read: something you can program more directly), all assembled in Python. The Python-based SDK is now capable of creating the world’s most unlistenable mash-ups, among other things – some oddly compelling. On Friday, I got to listen to tunes with every other eighth note removed and Michael Jackson crossed with tunes – that is, until the programmers in the office started to complain because they were about to lose their mind. (Echo Nest uses a Sonos system to pipe music office-wide. I hope we can give you a preview of those clips soon.)

Remix SDK (currently Python)

But perhaps the most interesting thing this team has done so far is Paul’s work on plotting rhythmic analysis. Plots of tempo deviation, measured in beat durations, yield two interesting revelations:

In search of the click track [Music Machinery]

1. Much of the music you know has a lot of rhythmic variation. (Dizzy Miss Lizzie by the Beatles, anyone? No Ringo Starr jokes, please.)

2. A lot of the other music has disturbingly little rhythmic variation.

For those of you who are interested, Apple’s WWDC keynote has focused today on the iPhone 3G and the iPhone SDK. Macworld has a nice live blow-by-blow.

Here’s the bottom line for me. First, Apple has done an incredible job of demonstrating the potential of rich media apps in general, mobile and otherwise. They’ve showed off a powerful set of third-party applications that go beyond what most people think of on phones, including rich 3D, positional 3D audio (via OpenAL), and music apps. And it’s nice to see those rich media apps alongside things like push messaging. We’re seeing phones as mobile creative devices and not just as phones or even game systems. Music apps in particular prove to be massive hits with mainstream audiences, not just “pro audio” audiences. See our round-up of iPhone/iPod Touch music apps for a glimpse of what this can look like. Band, a set of software instruments, made an officially-sanctioned appearance right in the keynote to widespread cheers from a non-musician audience. And the fact that it’s official means you’ll get great new apps even without hacking your iPhone in the near future, as we hoped.

And this is, of course, what musicians and live visualists have been saying since the iPhone’s release: third-party software development, far beyond what Apple alone can imagine, is what really makes mobile devices interesting. Here on CDM, we’ve seen novel applications like VJs running live visuals in clubs and Pro Tools controllers, among other things, and now a lot of that is likely to become official. And given music apps for Nintendo portable game consoles and Palm and Windows Mobile PDAs, this should be no surprise. But what is a surprise, perhaps, is that mainstream audiences are excited about these things as we are.

We also now know the iPhone 3G will be US$199 and available in more countries, which means volume is likely to increase fast.

I don’t need to hype up the iPhone, though — I expect you’ve got the whole blogosphere for that. But platforms are about tradeoffs; there’s no such thing as a perfect platform. And with all the iPhone lust, we seem to be missing some of the downsides of Apple’s approach: