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

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.

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.

It’s like musical survival training. Quick: you’re stuck in a hotel. Can you make some music?

Our friend Recue, aka Riku Annala, was unexpectedly being stranded in a hotel and made it into a musical opportunity. The results are damned fine listening. (Thank whatever act of God / airlines prompted this.) You can enjoy the results, free. Riku writes:

Dunno if you remember but some time ago I shared the little cheap tape head “saturation” thingy with you.

I was recently ‘stuck’ in an airport hotel room (for other reasons than music), but the good thing was that I had my mobile studio setup with me. The released set started out as this sort of a spur-of-the-moment, tongue-in-cheek live jam, as I was messing around with random hip hop/pop-music vocals on top of bits and pieces of my own projects. Eventually, it started to sound so twisted in a good way that I decided to record the whole thing. The set is split in half with the first part being a performance video and the second the complete set as audio. The tools and methods are exactly of those covered on CDM regularly (NI Maschine run as a plugin on Ableton Live and controlled by Liine Lemur on an iPad).

More:
http://www.recue.net

Sure, the accessibility and mobility of music making is seen by some as some sort of assault on civilization. (I think frankly those are the sort of people who don’t like food and hate joy, grimacing every time they pass a playground.) But if you’ve made an investment in some nice mobile music tools, put them to good use. Heck, hand-wash your underwear if you have to make more space for music tech. That next unintended layover (oops, thunderstorms) could mean a new album instead of a frustrated, wasted, lonely night. And I like to think that the beauty of modern music tech is that it salvages wonderful music we might otherwise not hear, allows it to come into being.

Have a listen to the full set, and give it a download:

How do you visualize the invisible? How do expose a process with multiple parameters in a way that’s straightforward and musically intuitive? Can messing about with granular sound feel like touching that sound – something untouchable?

Music’s ephemeral, unseeable quality, and the ways we approach sound in computer music in similarly abstract ways, are part of the pleasure of making noise. But working out how to then design around that can be equally satisfying. That’s why it’s wonderful to see work like the upcoming Borderlands for iPad and desktop. It solves a problem familiar to computer users – designing an interface for a granular playback instrument – but does so in a way that’s uncommonly clear. And with free code and research sharing, it could help inspire other projects, too.

Its creator also reminds, us, though, that the impetus for all of this can be the quest for beautiful sound.

Creator Chris Carlson is publishing source code and a presentation for the NIME [New Interfaces for Musical Expression] conference. But this isn’t just an academic problem or a fun design exercise: he also uses this tool in performance, so the design is informed by those needs. (I’m especially attuned to this particular problem, as I was recently mucking about with a Pd patch of mine that did similar things, working out how to perform with it and what the interface should look like. I know I’m not alone, either.)

The basic function of the app: load up a selection of audio clips, and the software distributes them graphically in the interface. Next:

A “grain cloud” may be added to the screen under the current mouse position with the press of a key. This cloud has an internal timing system that triggers individual grain voices in sequence. The user has control over the number of grain voices in a cloud, the overlap of these grains, the duration, the pitch, the window/envelope, and the extent of random motion in the XY plane. By selecting a cloud and moving it over a rectangle, the sound contained in the rectangle will be sampled at the relative position of each grain voice as it is triggered. By moving the cloud in along the dimension of the rectangle that is orthogonal to the time dimension, the amplitude of the resulting grain bursts changes.

You can see how Chris is imagining this conceptually in a sketch he shares on his site:

An extended demo shows in greater detail how this all works:

Chris is a second-year Master’s student at Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics [CCRMA] in California. The iPad version is coming soon, but you can get started with the Linux and Mac versions right away, and even join a SoundCloud group to share what you’re making. You’ll find all the details, and links to source code, on the CCRMA site. (And if someone feels like building this on Windows, you can save Chris the trouble.)

https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~carlsonc/256a/Borderlands/index.html

I also love this Max Mathews quote Chris shares as inspiration:

Max Mathews, in a lecture delivered at Stanford in the fall of 2010
“Any sound that the human ear can hear can be made by a sequence of digits. And that’s a true theorem. Most of the sounds that you make, shall we say randomly are either uninteresting, or horrible, or downright dangerous to your hearing. There’s an awful lot to be learned on how to make sounds that are beautiful.”

Beyond the technology, beyond this design I admire, anything that sends you on the path to making beautiful sound seems to be a worthy exercise. It’s a challenge you can face every day and never grow tired.

http://modulationindex.com/ [Chris' site, with more information]

Thanks to Ingmar Koch (Dr. Walker) for the tip!

Delicate and dense, melodies and sounds from church contexts, found sounds of bells and voices, are set against crisp, sharply-solid, forward-driving electronic beats. And then, there are the visuals: an archaic architecture of mystical symbols and three-dimensional, evolving forms interpret the music in visual form.

Swedish-born artist and technologist Eric Wahlforss, in other words, has been busy. As the artist Forss, his album is an app, appropriately for someone who is the co-founder and CTO of SoundCloud. Eric showed me an early build over cheeseburgers. It’s reactive, perhaps, more than interactive, but there’s still a chance to use your hands to rotate both visuals and music, a bit like picking up a sculpture and viewing it from different angles – though with the added element of sound. What you get is a sense of an interwoven visual and musical world, and an aesthetic vision that Wahlforss has pulled together.

From the man who built the world’s largest online recording business, it’s little surprise that recording features prominently, in two threads:

Recordings of strings, choirs, organs and ambient noise from church concerts which have been cut up into fragments and rearranged into a new mosaic of music, and recordings of wooden, stone and metal objects which make up the beats and percussion. These are the plosive, rhythmical noises that provide the link between the traditional to modern electronica.

That musical combination sounds to me familiar, though also clearly comfortable to Mr. Wahlforss. The collaboration is especially intriguing, though, as a Viennese graphic designer (Leonard Lass) and German computer graphics artist (Marcel Schobel, Untouch) collaborate to produce an audiovisual experience. Berghain, that cavernous church of techno (and occasionally more experimental sounds), seems an appropriate setting in the city that also played home to SoundCloud’s founding. (The fact that the former power station has the acoustics of a church doesn’t hurt, either – even if it’s ill-suited to denser music for the same reason.) Ecclesia will get its launch across media: live show in Berlin, app on iPad, album. For now, you can hear the tracks streamed via – of course – SoundCloud, even shared directly from Ableton Live.

The live show premieres May 2 in Berlin at Berghain/Panorama Bar, with the app out the same day. The album itself releases on June 12.

http://forssmusic.com/

Visuals come from Untouch (Marcel Schobel):
http://www.untouch.fm/
…and Leonard Lass:
http://depart.at

Technology may be about the next Big New Thing, but as with music making in general, making music with tech is for many of us a lifetime vocation. So, it’s welcome news to find that time-tested tools, maturing over decades rather than months, are enjoying greater use than ever before. We saw Pure Data (Pd) attracting new interest as the embeddable libpd version allows use in a range of development environments and mobile platforms. Now, it’s about to be Csound’s turn.

Of course, before we get to that, if you’ve got an iPad 2 or “3″ (aka “the new iPad”), you can more or less skip this entire article and start making wild new granular sounds on your tablet. (Sadly, the original iPad is excluded here because it’s a resource-intensive application, though owners of that tablet – and other mobile devices – have plenty more to anticipate in Csound world.)

csGrain is a multi-effects processor that works its sonic-mangling magic live on sound, making use of something called “SyncGrain,” a real-time granular synthesizer. You can record from a mic or import tracks from the iTunes library (including, of course, your own music), or even use an included sample loop. csGrain then processes those sounds via a rich set of sonic tools, either live or to a recording, with sharing via AudioCopy, AudioPaste, email, and Dropbox. You also get setting randomization and a range of live effects, too. If you’re unsatisfied by the “finger against bathroom mirror glass” feeling of the tablet, you can connect an external MIDI input.

And, of course, it sounds amazing:

All of that is nice enough, but the bigger news is how this is all possible – and what is yet in store. Think Csound running everywhere, including learning about the tool and coding with it directly on an iPad.

csGrain uses Csound, the composition and sound design language that traces its roots back to the first-ever digital synthesis languages developed by pioneer Max Mathews. (It’s worth noting that Max’s ideas inspired the work of Miller Puckette on Pd and Max/MSP, too, meaning these are “all in the family,” as it were. Some even argue the model had an indirect influence on modular synths.)

csGrain is the first of a series of apps using Csound, including a massive, promising, everything-you’d-ever-want-with-Csound-on-an-Ipad app, covering documentation and code. This isn’t just an attempt to “cash in” on a geeky sound tool in the midst of the App Gold Rush — far from it. The application is as much a teaching opportunity as product. You’ll be able to use the application and its documentation to learn more about the sound processing technique, and discover the Csound code that makes the app tick. For some, it could be a first introduction to Csound, without having to be enrolled in an academic class. And for developers and sound artists who do want to make their own Csound creations, an upcoming SDK will unlock the power of Csound on other platforms (iOS being just one). That brings the power of “run anywhere” portability to text-based language Csound much as libpd has done for the graphical-patching tool Pd.

This image of a developer build of Csound Touch should be enough to set Csound fans’ hearts racing. (Okay, not a huge segment of the population at large, but I’m fairly certain most of them read this site.)

Developer Dr. Richard Boulanger, who has been a driving force behind almost every element of Csound’s recent development from the stuff under the hood to the documentation and the community, is now taking that sonic energy and applying it here. (And I do mean energy: sonic whiz “Dr. B,” as he’s affectionately called by his students, practically bubbles with enthusiasm and ideas. I’ll have what he’s having.)

He tells us that even in its first day, csGrain has made a big impact – no small task for an App Store inundated with volume and an application most would consider to be pretty niche in appeal.

The launch of csGrain has been pretty exciting. At the App Store, on day one, in the Paid Music Apps Catagory, we reached the rank of #8 (out of 4000+ paid music apps). We had over 957 people view the csGrain video at the Boulanger Labs site, and we were contacted by Richard Devine and Jordan Rudess with praise, congratulations and advice. We got some pretty great reviews at the App Store such as this one…. (I have no idea who this is by the way… which makes it even cooler….

“csGrain is a must-have effects powerhouse for the iPad. The sounds, usability, and musicality of the instrument are at least on par with the Moog apps, but the the potential for extension and customization far surpasses anything else. If you want to blow your mind in two seconds flat with this app, just press and hold any of the parameters (esp the sync grain ones) and a randomization window pops up, change the parameters and get instantly out of this world sounds. I really like the integration with Dropbox and AudioPaste functionality. And while you don’t need it at first, the manual is very well written for when you want to dig deeper. My only complaint is that the app is not yet in Retina-display, but I am sure that will be coming soon. Another nice feature improvement would be to augment the midi capability, which is already awesome, to allow for automatic learning of cc messages based on input like the way Ableton Live works. All in all, this is most powerful effects application on the iPad. Good job!”

I should also direct owners of the first-generation iPad to Richard’s explanation of why you can’t have the app:

It really doesn’t work on iPad1. It’s optimized for iPad2 and the new iPad. In particular, the stereo granular processing is both efficient and amazing, but… it’s also pretty heavy for the iPad1 and we would get some
breakUps in the audio on that platform – so we just made if for the 2 and the new.

But let’s get to what’s coming next. Dr. Boulanger gives us the full scoop. I imagine him sounding like Vince, the Slap Chop guy (and with good reason):

[Last week] was the release of csGrain (one of Boulanger Labs’ focused/targeted “spin-off” apps) and there are others coming over the next few months. But Csound Touch – which is coming in about 1 month – is ALL of Csound on the iPad…

The Csound for iOS API and SDK will be offered in the next day or two with all sorts of working models…
It will blow you away… how “easy” it is to develop audio apps with Csound as the DSP engine.

our .csd files are all offered with the apps.

One will be able to incorporate Csound into their own apps, games, whatever.

csGrain is just ONE huge .csd file – running under the hood… and there is a button there to see the code and it’s in the manual that is included too.

- we are sharing many tricks right there. But there are also tons of tricks shown in all the models that come with the SDK

Csound Touch IS Csound – all of Csound – for the iPad.

It is built upon and synchronized with the latest version of Csound5

It supports the realtime “rendering” of any Csound “.csd” file.

It can render .csd files from within the Csound Touch App or from the Internet.

It includes realTime “Console Output” (for diagnostics and progress monitoring) and supports “OFFline Rendering” for the realization of the most complex and demanding of “orchestras and compositions.” (For instance, if you wanted to create a sound with ten thousand oscillators and five hundred reverbs and two thousands filters it’s not a problem. This is Csound… all of Csound… and with Csound the only limitation is your imagination!)

Csound Touch supports Realtime MIDI control of any Csound-based MIDI instrument.

Csound Touch supports Realtime iPad/GUI Control of Csound Instruments via custom OnScreen Sliders, Knobs, XY controls and a Piano Keyboard.

One can Save to Disk or Render to the speaker or any pro audio interface in RealTime or once can do both Simultaneously! Jam and Capture! Remix and Record.

Csound Touch supports Interapplication File Transfer on the iPad Import/Export via DropBox, Email and AudioCopy.

To get you started with Csound; to inspire your creative spirit; and to support your study and exploration of Computer Music Composition, Software Synthesis, Signal Processing, Algorithmic Composition, Physical Modeling, and so much more…
the Csound Touch App includes:

Chapter 1 of Boulanger’s “foundational text” published by MIT Press – The Csound Book

The “classic” Boulanger Csound “Toots” from the Csound Manual

Boulanger’s “Mastering Csound” Tutorials

and there’s more!

We include the latest Csound FLOSS Manual (and all the Floss Instruments)
We include the Canonical Csound Reference Manual (and all the Manual Instruments)

and even more….

Selections from Boulanger’s Csound Instrument Catalog (30 years of Csound Instruments)
Selected Csound Compositions from the Boulanger Collection and The Csound Mailing List

Selected Algorithmic/Generative Compositions

A diverse and useful assortment of Dr.B’s favorite DSP Instruments
A varied collection of Dr.B’s favorite MIDI Instruments

A collection of OpenSource Audio Samples from the OLPC Sound Sample Archive.

Of course, this isn’t just about iOS: Csound is now in one form another either available or coming soon to Android, Ableton Live (via Max for Live), Max/MSP, standalone desktop applications, and the Mac AudioUnit plug-in format. I agree when Richard calls it “The Csound Renaissance of 2012.”

By the way, I think Richard has given those of us working on Pd, too, a real sense of what we could do with that tool (as well as an excuse to play with Csound anew). He tells us:

PS…. The Pd Rennaissance is also very very wonderful – the new book, the new code, the new possibilities…. all extremely exciting. After reading your blog on bit ago, I ordered the book and am very inspired by this initiative as well. So…. all cool and extremely important.

I couldn’t agree more.

So, once again, the timeline for the Revolution:

Coming soon (in a month)

Csound Touch – all of Csound on the iPad! Run any opcode, run any orchestra, run any composition. Run the entire Csound Book, Csound Catalog, Csound Manual. It all works and it’s all there!

and the a few weeks after that….

More Csound Apps such as:

csSpectral – Realtime vocoding, convolution, and spectral processing.

csFuzz – a rack of guitar effects.

csVoice – a vocal synthesizer, harmonizer, processor.

csGen – algorithmic, probabilistic, and generative composition systems.

csModel – a collection of Physical and Physically Inspired Models.

csClassics – a collection of synths based on the classic techniques – FM/AM/RM/WaveShaping/Granular/Additive/Etc.

The Revolution will not be televised, but it will be at:
http://boulangerlabs.com

You can find csGrain on our exclusive, multi-platform Apps section:
csGrain @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

An, as always, don’t miss the central repository for all things Csound:
http://www.csounds.com/

We’ll have an interview with Dr. Boulanger later this week, so if you’ve got questions for him, ask away!

Looking a bit like the love child of a Nintendo DS and a microKORG, the Miselu neiro is a different animal in mobile music. The upcoming device is powered by Android and has a touchscreen – a bit like a tablet – but it’s hardware dedicated to music-making, complete with a compact, piano-layout keyboard. The gamble is that people wanting to make mobile music will choose this dedicated device instead of a general-purpose gadget like an iPad.

Whether they can pull it off or not is a big question, but in the meantime, the specs are intriguing. And it’s worth mentioning now, because if you’re reading this from Austin, Texas, there’s still time to check out the Miselu in person at SoundCloud’s open house. (I’m in Berlin, so I just have to pour myself a beer, stare at the gallery, and munch on some barbeque and pretend.)

Here’s what we know:

• Connected: The creators call it a “network-enabled mobile companion,” so online connections and “social” interaction are part of the plan. That includes, out of the gate, SoundCloud.
• Internal DSP: The neiro will include the Yamaha AudioEngine Series Sound Chip NSX-1, a dedicated DSP for synthesis and signal processing. (Now, the creators say that “almost matches the sound of real musical instruments,” but while DSP chips add predictable horsepower, native processing remains competitive.)
• I/O: Product mock-ups show USB (2x), HDMI, audio in and out (stereo minijacks), and, in a nod to the Atari ST, dedicated MIDI DIN jacks. There’s also an SD card slot.
• Custom software: Retronyms, makers of the popular iOS modular app Tabletop, have already revealed that they’ll be doing a custom app for this platform; see their blog post on the announcement and image below. (Thanks to Freesoulvw for the tip!)
• Platform: The hardware is an “open platform environment” that will run custom apps and “solutions,” say the creators. Exactly what that means, we’ll have to see, but of course Android does offer application deployment possibilities (even outside of Google’s Android Market, now called Google Play).

http://www.miselu.com/products/

Before the Android aspect of this invites skepiticsm, the big challenge with Android has been unpredictability with OEM-delivered hardware. While the audio API doesn’t work in the way many of us would like, if you do have dedicated hardware with predictable performance, you can side-step many of those problems, so the possibility of music-focused gear has always been interesting.

I think the real challenge is whether this keyboard can stand up to an iPad in a custom keyboard housing. Akai recently demonstrated the clever solution of adding a 4×4 set of MPC-style drum pads just by designing them into an iPad case. In order to compete, Miselu will have to do something unique both with the hardware and software add-ons; they have to actually be better at what the iPad does, not just “as good.”

On the other hand, just looking at the ports they’ve got on the prototype could easily make you drool. If they nail the hardware and get this out the door, there could be some real possibilities with this.

Of course, there’s far more we don’t know than do know about this, but that just means it’ll be interesting to watch. See some pictures, teaser video, and check out the site.

I missed the chance to write about it, but I’d be curious to know if anyone is picking up a KDJ-ONE, a Linux-powered dedicated music-maker that seemed a bit like the love child of an oversized classic Game Boy and a tracker, as seen last year on Synthtopia. (They exhibited again this year at NAMM, as Chris Randall reminds me in comments.)

The iPad as a controller is at its best when it plays to its strengths, letting you use that continuous finger control do something useful. So that makes MidiPads worth a look. It’s a strikingly-versatile drum pad controller with all of the kinds of features you might want, and with a major version 1.5 release this week, looks even more useful as a control addition to your studio.

First off, it’s got all of the I/O you could want:

• USB MIDI (so, use the Camera Connection Kit and a class-compliant interface, or dedicated interfaces like iRig MIDI and MIDI Mobilizer II)
• Wireless MIDI over a WiFi connection
• Virtual MIDI, for connecting to other apps (we need to do a round-up of these soon, so give a shout if you have a moment, devs)

Once connected, MidiPads sets itself apart with flexible control on each of those pads. Just tapping rectangles isn’t much fun on the iPad, of course – you lack tactile feedback and pressure sensitivity found on a physical pad. So, instead, MidiPads provides other modulation to exploit the touchable surface for continuous control. In fact, thinking of it as a “drum pad” is almost a bit unfair. New in this release:

• Presets, which you can share with other users – which could in turn make a nice little community of users here
• “Bouncing mode” for touch pads and sliders
• Send multiple messages with each axis and knob
• Individual up/down messages for each touch pad and slider, if you so wish
• Enhanced views, settings reset, and MIDI connection settings
• Resize pads and pad area (essential for either fat fingers or getting more controls!)

What I like best of all is the integration of X/Y controllers on pads, so you can send continuous messages as you trigger a pad. In the video at top, you can see that in action with Traktor Pro. (Yep: you can use this for DJing, not just drum sounds.)

To solve the lack of velocity response, you can choose from a few options, including tapping with two fingers or setting velocity from the vertical position of your tap on the pad. Those ranges are scalable, and you can even set some randomization.

You get 64 resizable pads, and everything can be customized, both in terms of the MIDI message and appearance. You can also send MIDI to those pads for bi-directional feedback. With that, I’m just waiting for someone to come up with some awesome preset for Renoise or a drum synth or Ableton or what have you. Let us know.

Other features:

• CC messages, custom MIDI channels, definable ranges
• Faders that snap, fade, and bounce
• Incoming values can display on pads
• Pitch bend or modulation, via sliders or the touch pads or the drum pads
• Accelerometer control
• MIDI learn on the controller (which is something of a novel idea)
• Blink pads with MIDI sync
• Integrated help

Here’s how that MIDI learn notion works:

In fact, MidiPads is the only controller I’ve seen with robust-enough bi-directional control to put it in the same category as Lemur for iOS. It lacks Lemur’s extensive library of controllers, and there’s really nothing stopping you from scripting something similar with Lemur. But if pads are really what you care about, this could be an excellent shortcut at a fraction of a price. And put together, these two apps could really justify the use of the iPad as a powerful control surface. (More on Lemur next week – lots of developments there, and finally, a video I shot with the Liine guys.)

Congrats to independent developer Stefan Goehler of Germany for the great work! (I’m finding what y’all are drinking now that I live in this country, because it’s … working. I’m downing the Club-Mate, but my coding hasn’t improved yet.)

€4 / US$5.

You can grab (and review) MidiPads via the exclusive, multi-platform CDM Apps collection, as one of our highlighted apps:
MidiPads @ CDM Apps
Or try the free edition: MidiPads Lite

Developer site: Crossfire Designs