Apple is getting into mobile music production with a US$4.99 version of GarageBand that runs on iPad. It looks very impressive for a $5 app – which could be bad news for other music developers trying to set higher pricing for more serious apps. On the other hand, it also validates the notion of the iPad as a music creation platform, and it leaves plenty of room for other such tools. Capabilities:

• Touch-capable drums, drum machines, keyboards, and synths
• Interactive chord layouts for guitar, keyboard, bass, and drum patterns
• Audio recorder (with some silly effects, like “chipmunk” and “monster”)
• Guitar amps and effects – some nine amp models, ten effects

It appears this requires the new dual-core CPU on the iPad 2.

Apple tells CDM that the software is compatible with both the original iPad and the new iPad 2.

The heart of the app, though, is a multi-track arrange window borrowed directly from desktop GarageBand. Some fancier features appear to be missing (notation may be missed, in particular, and I don’t see extras like a tempo track), but otherwise, it’s the MIDI and audio arrangement you know from the Mac. You can even take projects from the iPad into GarageBand for a mobile-to-desktop workflow. (The reverse appears not possible, which would make sense – the mobile version is a subset of the desktop version.)

The instruments are impressive, too. Whereas the first GarageBand emphasized using pre-built loops, this version is actually more suited to a songwriter’s sketchpad: you have automatic chord generation as you previously saw only in music workstation keyboards. The 4×4 drum machine, synths, and keyboards look fairly basic, but they don’t skip over basic editing features. All in all, it’s unquestionably the most we’ve seen for $5 in a mobile app. On one hand, that could make Apple’s developers nervous – but, paradoxically, I think that at $5, someone has enough pocket change left over to go buy your $5, $10, or $20 app.

It’s also an app that thinks through mobile workflows. You can send to iTunes, email songs, and on a Mac, open in GarageBand.

In fact, my only big question is how software with live instruments on a tablet is going to contend with running out of system resources. We’ll know soon; the app isn’t available as I write this, but is promised soon.

I’m also a bit unclear on hardware compatibility, but I’m told MIDI and audio hardware will work, which makes some sense. I’ll try to reach out to my contacts at Apple on some of these questions.

There’s also no question in my mind that this significantly widens the gap between iOS and everything else – notably Android. That’s a discussion best left for another post, but it’s hard for me to see any competitor making the investment in music – still a fairly limited market – that Apple has. At the same time, looking at music creation in general, the more visible software like this is – and the more successful it is, which remains to be seen – the more attention mobile music creation may get from the public and vendors alike. (Technically speaking, by the way, there’s no reason you couldn’t exploit horsepower on next-generation tablets like the Motorola Xoom. I’m sure we’ll make use of the extra cycles with libpd Pure Data patches for both platforms. But there are lots of other variables, technical and in terms of the marketplace, that make iOS friendlier than Android to commercial music development by an order of magnitude.)

I’m curious to hear from iPad owners, though: does GarageBand appear, on first glance, to offer tools you don’t have in other mobile workstations? Would it make you consider iPad music if you hadn’t before?

(And, in the meantime, we can dream of our tablet, touch-savvy tracker. I know some of you want it.)

Screen images courtesy of Apple.

http://www.apple.com/ipad/from-the-app-store/garageband.html

Music production once meant getting into a studio. Portable multi-track tape and later the computer liberated us from that, and the “bedroom studio” was born. When capable Palm handhelds hit the market, musicians imagined yet more mobile means of production, and everything from Game Boys and PSPs to phones, even before the iPhone, have been pressed into on-the-go music-making service.

In all that time, though, the way you actually make music in your palm has been a work in progress.

Intua’s BeatMaker was one of the first applications to demonstrate what might be possible on Apple’s handheld, and a radical new version looks like the new generation it is. A drum sampler, keyboard sampler, mixer, sequencer, wave editor, and effects combine into an integrated “studio” on your phone (or iPod touch, or iPad), and there are features for exchanging files with other apps, your desktop computer, and the Web (hello, SoundCloud). It’s a pocket workstation – maybe even a pocket DAW.

See below for an exhaustive set of features and more high-resolution images of the interface. Cost: US$19.99.

Whether you’d want to use this and nothing else to me is immaterial, novelty aside. If that makes you happy, do it; I’m sure for others, this will be more like a handheld sketchpad.

Intua’s Mathieu Garcia shares thoughts on what kind of working process this application might mean – and reflects on how the platform has evolved, and might continue to improve in the future:

We’re getting quite positive feedback on the workflow. BeatMaker tools such as the Wave Editor, iPod library import, and particularly the Chop Lab, are getting quite a lot of interest. It’s perfect for mashups, remixes, and overall sample-based composition.

Moving audio between 2 apps is still done via the iOS pasteboard, not very optimal, but it’s acceptable, and got better with iOS4 multi-tasking. People seems to consider iphone apps almost as portable DAWs. The market quickly evolved from the “casual” music app, to a pocket-sized version of their studio / setup. One of our featured artist, DJ Shag composed a full album entirely with his iPhone. People are definitely working around the limitations quickly, we are still astonished by what came out of BeatMaker 1.

SoundCloud integration is getting a lot of interest too, which is a must have for every music app, I think. Their API is clean and easy to implement, definitely a plus for software developers. It’s a timesaver for the end-users as the compression and transfer are done automatically. We’re looking into DropBox too (coming on the next update), as it’s just great for centralizing projects, preset and samples remotely.

Everything has evolved so fast in 2 years…. With the addition of OSC/CoreMidi some great controller apps were released. It proves once again that the iOS platform a serious candidate for bigger developers / companies. I will take as an example the Korg iMS20 app: the iPad is certainly getting a lot of interest. Audio connectivity / interfaces are also on the rise, with hardware such as the iRig, Alesis iO Dock Pro, Akai SS25, among others…

We’re implementing CoreMidi, which was recurrently requested in just 3 days. It was already planned when Apple dropped their beta iOS firmware. MIDI learning, velocity and a bunch of knobs will come out handy, that’s for sure. Still, there’s a lot to improve on the mobile / desktop interaction, especially when importing projects done on a mobile device. This should be seamless for people and not to have to manually export WAV, MIDI, etc.

We’d love to hear back from you and other dev’s, let me know what you think!

They also send the full-blown (long) feature list our way:

* FEATURES *

* STUDIO:
- Create multiple instruments with Drum Machine or Keyboard interface
- 10 effects to choose from: Reverb, Compressor, Filter, Delay, EQ, Flanger, Chorus, AutoPan, BitCrusher, Overdrive.
- 3 effect slots for each instrument, unlimited global effects racks
- Customizable Cross Controller for all effects allows you to manipulate multiple parameters at once

* DRUM MACHINE:
- Up to 128 trigger pads: 16 pads over 8 different banks
- Chop Lab: Slice audio loops to automatically create new sound presets
- Control sound parameters on individual pad: volume, pan, mute, output bus, semitone, fine tune, reverse and autoscaling
- Low/high pass filter per pad with cutoff and resonance control
- Choose between various pad trigger modes: one-shot, hold & loop
- Customizable envelope (ADSR) control for each pad
- Exclusive groups and polyphony management
- “Live” modes: trigger, mute, reverse, velocity and tune spreading.

* KEYBOARD SAMPLER
- 128-key keyboard with pitch wheel, double keyboard mode, note display and zoom controls
- Easily create your own instruments from any sample combination with the keygroup editor
- Volume and filter ADSR envelopes
- Low/high pass filter with cutoff, resonance and key tracking
- 2 LFOs with customizable amplitude, offset and rate (synchronizable), controlling volume, pitch and filter parameters
- Polyphony control, with up to 32 voices per keyboard sampler
- Legato play mode with customizable glide
- Keygroup controls: volume, pan, semitones, fine-tune, reverse and one-shot, hold, hold & loop trigger modes

* MULTI-TRACK SEQUENCER
- Create unlimited instrument and FX tracks
- Automations: Record, edit and replay instrument and effect parameters
- Record, draw, arrange and resize patterns along the timeline to build your song
- Compose and modify patterns with a piano-roll interface. Edit notes, parameters, and automations.
- Instrument and effect recording options: Quantize, take or partial undo, pre-roll, Overdub, note erasing.
- Includes multiple handy tools such as zooming

* WAVE EDITOR
- Full-fledged wave editor with intuitive pinch and selection for manipulating samples
- Basic edition tools: trim, cut, copy, paste, with undo/redo back to 8 steps
- High quality time-stretching and pitch-shifting algorithms
- Audio tools: normalize, silence, reverse, fade in and out, cross-fade
- Record new samples from device microphone or an instrument plugged into it
- Loop points and tempo/signature editor

* MIXER CONSOLE
- Realistic multi-track mixer with level meters
- Edit volume, pan, solo, mute and bus routing features for individual tracks

* LARGE SOUND BANK INCLUDED
- 68 Drum Machine presets from all genres
- 111 Keyboard Sampler presets, from synthesizers to realistic orchestral instruments.
- More than 1800 quality samples to choose from

* SHARING & GLOBAL OPTIONS
- Export your songs to Audio or MIDI files
- Transfer and manage your files from your computer using the integrated FTP server
- Import any songs from your iPod library to create new remixes
- Share audio content with more than 20 other music applications using the iOS pasteboard
- User-friendly file browser and manager, with sample, preset and project tagging for quick lookup
- Supports BeatMaker 1 kits and projects
- Fully supports Retina display
- Native iPad version coming soon as a free update

Modularity is an interesting point. On a recent story, iOS developer Richard Lawler made an interesting point:

I too am a big fan of self-contained musical instruments. They are a nice complement to the essential attributes of a mobile device like the iPad. But I have to wonder if the bar isn’t being raised too high for many independent developers trying to participate. It’s also resulting a vast landscape of insular music apps.
Desktop music production has benefited immensely from modular tools and structures. Sure the pendulum swings both ways between plug-ins and buss protocols and then back to integrated suites. But it’s hard to argue that many advances in the state of the art of electronic music production haven’t come from focused special purpose plug in instruments, effects or hosts.
In contrast, modular music software is pretty much impossible on iPad unless you make the jump off of a single device. At that point a lot of the advantages of mobile devices get lost in a maze of cables and protocols. We are left with is less-capable copies of what has been possible for many years with TablePCs and Lemurs.

On the other hand, when you look at the popularity of some tools in both hardware and software, specialization – with a payoff in simplicity – can often be an advantage. In that event, it’s really a question of whether these mobile apps will be able to be modular in the way these other tools have. That raises lots of questions in engineering and design, but they could be engaging questions, whether you’re build an iPhone app, a desktop plug-in, a hardware synth, or an effect pedal.

With these questions about, you know, actually making music in mind, if you’re using BeatMaker 2, we’d love to hear from you. The novelty or popularity of one platform or another has never been nearly as interesting to me as discovering the different ways in which people use the tools to be creative.

Touchscreens? Good, old-fashioned faders, knobs, and pads? Why not just use what suits the job – especially when you can choose both on the cheap?

Nay-Seven shares some of his latest work with Usine, the brilliant, modular and touch-centric tool for Windows. It’s a futuristic rig that’s also down-to-earth. Touchscreen monitors can be had for around US$300 street, and the Akai LPD8 and Korg nanoKONTROL controllers each figure under a hundred bucks. Usine, the software, is a bargain for its depth at EUR120, and free and educational versions are available.

Cost aside, though, this also puts sound making directly under your fingertips. Even aside from live performance, that means making sound kinetic — essential in the studio, too.

I asked Nay-Seven to comment on how he’d thought through this particular set of controllers – coming just as we cover the work done on grid-based sample control with mlrv2 and fader-based control in Max for Live:

Yeah, was funny to see your article at the same time I was working on this video..

My actual reflection is about the best place of a touchscreen in a set. And I join you in the idea that software has added a layer to the hardware.

Here, I use the LPD8 and the nanoKONTROL as an instrument, because we all prefer to use real pads and push-buttons to play, but it’s so fantastic to customize those tools to our own needs. And it’s more and more easy and quick. I’m using here the next version of Usine (it will be public soon), which adds polyphony in sub-patches. You create a sampler with the switch, add the buttons you need, change the polyphony of this patch to 5 and it’s done — you have a 5-voice polyphonic sampler !

I suppose the future will be a balance of all this, some customizable tools for users, more and more easy-to-use, real pads, keys, and faders so we can feel our musical expression, and a touchscreen to provide new tools like graphics and physical models.

Heaven, in fact.

More from the video description:

Here’s a work where I use the sequencer of Usine not to sequence audio or midi but patches: patches appear only when I need them, an easy way to have only the controls you need on the screen. I also associate here works with faders and pads via personal patches for [Akai's] LPD8 and [Korg's] nanoKONTROL and the use of a touchscreen . Made with Usine ( sensomusic.com ) thanks also to Michael Ourednik for his great vst Argotlunar

Note: Argotluner is free and open source (GPL) and has both a Windows and Linux (32-bit + 64-bit) build. Someone could build it for Mac, too.

nay-seven also uploads some patch images, so I’ve included those here. The granular patch, top, controls Argotluner. LPD8 and nanoKONTROL patches, bottom, connect to hardware (see callouts on the Korg image).

All images courtesy Nay-Seven – be sure to check out his excellent Flickr account.

Bonus: here’s a nice video demonstrating the touch side of things, posted in September.

Deru – Peanut Butter & Patience from Mush Records on Vimeo.

2010 is looking to be a terrific year for handmade computer music from Los Angeles. For one example of why, look to Deru, the composer and live electronic musician. His work continually grows more lush and more organic, drawing from musical strains as diverse as hip-hop and classical. And his upcoming album, “Say Goodbye to Useless,” takes all of that in. (Previously on Ghostly, Deru will release this disc on Mush.) I think it’s going to be a big year for warm, rich-sounding music.

Deru also has what looks like the CDM dream studio, neat, comfy, elegant, and packed with the best, most compact musical toys. If he doesn’t inspire me to work on my music, he may at least inspire me to clean my apartment.

Check out the exquisitely-animated video for Peanut Butter & Patience, top. Next, go into the studio to hear Deru talk about design, composition, and, perhaps inspired the California modernist institution of big glass windows, the picture-window frame as a metaphor for music making and sampling:

VISION NO. 3 :: DERU [Video by Mateo, at I am a Laser, which has loads of other goodies and free music downloads]

For more:
http://deru.la/ (too bad there is no such thing as a .ny domains…)
Deru press page, with a good summary of albums, shows, background, resume, etc.
TRASH_AUDIO interview + workspace tour

Side note: LA, you’re on notice. New York is going to bring it. Sure, our clubs don’t always have, erm, electricity, but – that only makes us stronger.

It’s the little things that keep you happy sometimes. The Sunday Soundtrack blog has an interesting idea for tracking work on the MPC — write it down. (I have to say, I miss having paper notes as I did when I was making hard-copy patch diagrams of my Moog and Buchla modular creations in college.) This fellow has a printable template you can use yourself if so inclined – and, of course, it’d work with any 4×4 grid, not just the MPC.

Post:
Music Production on the MPC
Full-sized image for use as a template

Keep anything on paper in the studio yourself – music notation? Lyrics? To-do lists? MIDI maps? Doodles of made-up creatures to keep you company? I’d love to hear how you work.

Previously: A Brief History of the MPC

Elijah B Torn was introduced to me at the Warper Party. Apologies to Elijah, but the gimmick was a microcontroller-manipulated light bulb. “Hey, come downstairs, you’ve got to see this guy — he’s got a lightbulb that flashes in time to the music!” Actually, maybe that’s perfectly appropriate: crowded on our feet in front of Elijah on his laptop, everyone stared into his bright, blinking lightbulb, like a uniquely retro rave. Elijah’s music can lend itself to that.

If there are any doubts about this connection we like to talk about between handmade music and handmade other things, here’s Elijah’s work used as the soundtrack to British artist Julia Pott for one of Etsy’s Handmade Portraits. (Warning: Julia has an animation of animals talking about their crushes; my guess is that you, man, woman, straight, or gay, may be crushing on Ms. Pott by the time you’re done with the video.) It’s funny to hear Julia talk about introducing the human hand into her art as Elijah’s electronic sounds echo in the background, but by coincidence, I think some of what Elijah’s doing is about keeping an organic element in sounds.

Elijah has just assembled a video showing off the techniques he’s put together for his new album, “You Are Lucky I am Not a Vigilante.” As seen at top, Elijah narrates it as though he’s a malfunctioning android. There are plenty of weird and wonderful sounds in there, partly through some abuse of Live clips. I asked him to share some more details of what he was doing, and got this semi-cheeky response. Some techniques will be very familiar to long-time Live users, but may have a twist on them that fits Elijah’s personal style; others may be new (click images for larger versions):

Since I have been performing electronic music live a great deal, I wanted to write songs that had a more natural flow. Working in what I felt was a less visual way of composing instead sequencing in the computer in the hopes the songs would lend themselves to being performed live more easily and have less of the “let’s put the drum brick here and then the bass brick comes in here” style writing. A great deal of “Vigilante” was created out of improvizations with the bass guitar and laptop recorded to 4-track cassette. From these “experiments”, most of these songs were both written “to tape” and were then sampled back into the Ableton Live and reprogrammed either with Ableton features, NI Battery, Kontakt, or the Akai MPC 3000 (see theycontrol.us’s “How To Making Beats” video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlnjb0xuuGQ ) and combined with various 8bit drum machines, sid emulators, air organs and other things. This included (but was not limited to) running everything through external filters, boomboxes, aged tape delays and spring reverbs.

This also led to my streamlining my Ableton Live set to be more utilitarian. One of the main things I incorporated into my set was a “dummy” master track. All tracks are set to “Send Only” and sent to a designated Send which functions as a master track but allows me send all of the tracks to an external effect and be rerouted into an audio track input in the same set (then going to the main real Master track) without causing (the bad kind of) horrifying feedback. This more or less allows me to process everything through external effects and making new loops of the whole track with the flip of a switch.

some of the bizarre techniques from my video in further detail-

For the interference with Electromagnetic Scalar waves in “Gun Music 1″ sound-
I am running my bass guitar into an audio track in Ableton Live 7.
The audio track is set to “Monitor In”. I have various “dummy” clips (or clips containing no audio information) but that contain a lot of clip envelope information. (For more on Dummy Clips check out the CovertOPerators) This allows me to automate modulation of anything from FX plugin in my audio fx chain to individual plugin parameters to control over the mixer including volume and panning information on the live input, in this case the bass guitar. This can be used to create anything from step sequencers to hands-free tempo synced filter freakouts. I also use Dummy clips to switch between different fx plugins as well as changing midi instruments when playing live.

For the echolocation of dolphins sounds in “Dangerous”-
I am a instance of Simpler on a instrument track. Sorry, I HAVE an instance of Simpler.
Simpler has the loop setting on with a very very short length (in this case 0.40%)
The start of the Loop has been midi mapped to a fader so that what is being played back and triggered can be within the piece of audio.
There is also a delay set to a momentary switch on the output of that instrument as well as having control of routing the instrument to an external delay (that is then run back into Live intro another audio track with the monitor set to input. I usually place a sweep-able filter on this track).

more information soon, I’ve already said too much!

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For something somewhat … trippy, here’s an animated GIF of what Elijah’s Live set looks like:
Elijah B Torn, Animated

I think it’s nice seeing artists sharing what they’re doing rather than treating digital techniques as trade secrets — there’s genuine pride in technique, for one thing. And there’s also the suggestion that just using the same techniques doesn’t have to yield the same results. Maybe computer-generated art doesn’t have to be as anti-human as Julia suggests above. Let us know what you think.

And certainly, it’s worth acknowledging that Elijah is one of an army of Live users who, rather than complaining about its limitations, decided to hack in what they wanted. For a great series on Dummy Clips, here’s the awesomely-powerful Bjorn Vayner:

Dummy Clips Revisited

Here’s the idea: the interface is split into a docking station and mobile FireWire interface, so you can eliminate cable replugging and carry only what you need.

For studios, the docking station includes talkback and monitoring switching functions, vital to studio recording but often left off audio interfaces and requiring another piece of gear. (Sure enough, Mackie makes a piece of gear for just that purpose, the Mackie Big Knob.) The docking station also includes the extra I/O you probably don’t need as badly on the road: XLR, two balanced line ins, 1/4″ instrument on each channel, and insert points for outboard effects (something that just got taken off Digidesign’s mBox). Powered via FireWire bus or a power brick.

For mobile use, the Satellite Pod is pretty simple: Neutrik combo connectors for XLR or 1/4″ ins (with both instrument ins and 48V phantom power for mics), plus control room and dual headphone jack outputs. (I’m not sure if that headphone jack is independently assignable; I’ll check with Mackie.)

But what’s really nice here is, if all you need is some simple I/O on the road, you can dock the little Pod in the Base Station when you’re in the studio and pull it out for mobile use, all without repatching cords.

The whole package comes with Mackie Tracktion, the highly-underrated, simple DAW, plus Mackie’s Mastering Tools. I haven’t gotten the chance to try the Mackie Onyx line in my own studio yet, but I’ve been hearing great things about audio fidelity and reliability, and the price looks right. I keep walking into setups, particularly in academia, where someone blew all their cash on a huge Digidesign audio setup that can’t move, is tough to upgrade, and is far more than they need, thus leaving them with no cash for software and other equipment they do need. That’s nothing against Digidesign, but you do wish you could get people to think about their other options and find what’s best for them. This could be a perfect, flexible solution for people on Mac and Windows, and I’ll bet many people don’t consider their options beyond one or two brands.

As always, we’re glad to know what you think, though, particularly if you’ve had hands-on experience (positive or negative) with the Onyx equipment you’d like to share.

Mackie Satellite FireWire Recording System

This week's Gizmodo installment from me highlights the Smart AV console,
the intelligent control surface shown at AES and appearing again next
month at NAMM. If you haven't seen this yet, it's a futuristic computer DAW control surface that uses touch-sensitive and
light-sensitive surfaces to allow a limited number of physical channel
strips to virtually access many more. The inventor is a former
magician. Sure, it costs up to $150,000. But it's also a marvel of
interface design, worth observing for anyone working with interactivity
and control surfaces or just interested in a glimpse of the future. See
the Gizmodo story for more details.