If we’ve learned one thing on this site, it’s this: if it’s a computer, big or small, someone’s going to find a way to make music. The iPod / iPhone, with their Mac OS-derived software guts and a multi-touch interface, are no exception — with or without Apple’s blessing. Here’s a look at what people are doing, including some apps you can download right now, and where this might go musically, whether it’s just a couple of fun toys or trying to make that pretty pocket device an instrument.

Background

There’s no question what makes the iPod Touch and iPhone significant: they are tiny, palm-sized Macs, running all the stuff that makes a Mac a Mac — Cocoa, of course, but even music-specific stuff like Core Audio and Audio Units. (For more details, have a look at the WWDC session highlights spotted by Palm Sounds, all of interest to audio specifically. It could easily be mistaken for desktop development. The Unity 3D game engine is on its way, too.) And even if you’re not planning on picking up mobile Apple hardware, this says something about the rapidly-advancing direction of mobile computing. There was a lot of talk about mobile convergence in the 90s and early years of this decade, but now it’s here.

Of course, there are strings attached. Apple was in no rush to get an official SDK and firmware out to developers, relenting only this year. And it strikes me as I see iPhones on the go that the coolest stuff is happening using "jailbreaked" phones — phones specifically hacked to get around Apple’s requirements. Even when Apple goes official, that’s likely to continue: Apple has placed some arguably onerous restrictions on development. Software has to be Apple-approved and sold via iTunes, and basic capabilities like multitasking are a no-no. Someone’s just called? Great. Your app just quit. (Bizarrely, even extremely low-end phones are willing to multitask, but not Apple’s far-superior hardware.) Whatever arguments you may make for Apple’s approach, my guess is the hard-core iPhone/Touch owner will remain outlaws to get the full capability out of their device.

Also, despite some common elements, the implementations of APIs on the mobile devices are not as complete as on desktop Mac OS. Chad from miniMusic tells PalmSounds that some features currently available in Core Audio on the desktop are missing on mobile — at least for now.

Then there’s the fact that the major Apple strength is Cocoa and Mac-based development — meaning I remain curious about what the Windows and Linux camps will do in this space, particularly Linux. Those folks do have a major, uphill battle to match Apple’s achievement here in terms of software. One would think, though, that Linux should have a bit of an edge because its comparative modularity, whereas Mac OS X was designed solely as a desktop OS — though mobile development is hard, either way.

For Mac-based development, though, iPhone and iPod Touch are here now (always a major advantage in technology). Its full-fledged Mac roots have led to the fanciful image at right and some heated discussion on CDM’s forums earlier this spring. But let’s have a look and what’s here now for the iThings, like MooCowMusic’s Band app (pictured, top).

Multi-touch controller goodness is now as close as your nearest iPod Touch or iPhone; all that remains is to hook it up to some creative music, visuals, or others. (I would prefer the iPod Touch for this reason; then you don’t have to worry about using it as a phone — draining the battery in the process — or needing AT&T service.)

Olle Holmberg has a new solution for using the Touch/iPhone as a controller, by translating input to OpenSoundControl (OSC) and, if you prefer, MIDI messages. He writes:

I was searching everywhere for a way to get my new iPod Touch to work like a wireless touch controller to Pd (and hence to everything else), but couldn’t find one — so I made one. It’s really just an OSC mapping for routing the default Mrmr “Performance.mmr” interface, but if you’re interested it would save you heaps of time, even though it’s not really anything difficult to make.

Mrmr is an “open protocol for mobile devices” for dynamically creating interfaces; we’ve covered it on Create Digital Motion, where vade has interviewed the creator, and we’ve seen it in action coupled with upcoming visual app 3L. Those solutions used proprietary software like Max/MSP/Jitter, though, whereas this works with the free and open source Pd. (We love Max, but having an alternative is good, especially if you just want to hook up your iPod Touch to Ableton Live or Reaktor, etc.) As far as I know, this should also mean compatibility with Windows and Linux, but maybe someone can verify that.

The Pd patch is below — homely but functional, and you can extend it if it doesn’t do what you need.

For more information and download of the first release:

PdiPod - Mrmr to Pd on iPhone & iPod Touch [on pissypaws.tumblr, Olle's blog]
Pd Forum Announcement and Discussion
Files/download

The DS’ stylus and touchscreen make an ideal pocket-able interface: they’re coupled with friendly, conventional arcade buttons, but provide precise control of visual interfaces without using a mouse. (Touch with fingertips is not nearly as accurate, especially on tiny screens.) That’s already inspired quite a bit of music software, but GrooveStep earns extra points for employing a friendly interface for easy, quick pattern sequencing.

To celebrate Yuri’s Night, CDM is organizing a big design challenge. Bring your craziest, most futuristic musical interfaces / hardware projects / custom synths and controllers, and face off with other designers to win a Yamaha Tenori-On and other prizes.

Musical expression and space, after all, go together. The record above carried a special mix of great music made by humans around the world into space, via the Voyager spacecraft. Good thing it launched when it did: I imagine alien life would have been shocked if we sent a CD or cassette or 8-track or SDflash memory card, but LPs are cool again in other parts of the galaxy, too.

If you have any means of getting to the Bay Area on April 12 and you have something cool, we’ll want to see it. (Naturally, I’ll be one of the judges … but we should have some other judges to announce soon.) Even if you don’t win, I’ll be covering the projects on yuricdm.com.

Enter the Futuristic Music Design Challenge

Got any questions? Drop me a line.

Planet-wide futuristic design projects, too: While we won’t be able to judge them for the prize, if you have any futuristic design projects and can’t get to California — particularly if they’re inspired by space, exploration, or Earth and ecology — contact me and we’ll cover them on the yuricdm.com website and CDM as part of the global Yuri’s Night celebration.

Deadline: 11:59pm Eastern Monday, April 7

Performance/Competition: Saturday, April 12; Time TBA @ Yuri’s Night Bay Area

Official Site: yuricdm.com

For an increasing number of artists, data is becoming the raw material for creative work. Most of this has focused on visual media, but in the digital space, you can just as easily use sound. Sometimes the results are aesthetic only; sometimes they tell you something about the numbers being sonified. But either way, sound is a powerful medium.

“Weather Report” is a multi-touch instrument that makes music out of surface temperature data. The results feel a bit like US weather agency NOAA gone IDM. Fire up the multi-touch table, and you can “read” temperature data as sound. Co-creator Jordan Hochenbaum writes us:

I just wanted to turn you guys onto a multi touch interface I have been developing with a friend of mine here at California Institute of the Arts (his name is Owen Vallis). We had out first installation a couple weeks ago at Sea and Space Explorations gallery in Los Angeles and will be bringing it to Yuris Night Bay Area in April. The table is called “Brick,” and our first piece of software for it is called “Weather Report.” Were trying to use the table as a playable and meaningful musical instrument, so Weather Report uses Brick to sonify real-time U.S. surface temperature information into ambient and melodic mini-compositions. You can check out the website (we just put it up so it will constantly be updated shortly) for more information and photos, or check out our first youtube video @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45p_TPtQjR0

Are current plans for the table is making it more stable, and getting multi-touch finger tracking working nicely.

It was custom built and uses custom software written in Max/MSP/Jitter and Reaktor, as well as Reactivision (like the ReacTable).

Hope you like it so far! We are finding out new ways people like to interact with the table in order to refine how it is used, so the more people see and use it, the more usable and interesting we will be able to make it as a musical instrument.

brick: A Multi-Touch Sonification Instrument [Project blog]

CDM will be at Yuri’s Night, the global space party, in a very big way, so expect more!

Before I start talking about the fact that there’s a full-featured, stylus-controlled, vintage-gear sampling, officially-sanctioned, drool-inducing Nintendo DS synth plus drum machine plus sequencer reimagining of the classic Korg MS-10 analog synth, I have three words you really don’t want to hear:

“FOR JAPAN ONLY”

Correction: Despite what the website says, the DS-10 is in fact getting an international release!

Product info, specs, samples [AQ Interactive; English]

Blog [Japanese only]

Music sample

Via Music Thing and CDM comments (thanks, Thomas)

Features:

• Dual dual synths: Two patchable virtual synths, with two oscillators each
• Drum machine: Four-part drum machines loaded with samples of the virtual synth
• Sequencer: 2 synth tracks, 4 drum machine tracks, 16 steps
• Effects: Delay, chorus, flanger
• Input methods: Touch-control screen with real-time sound control, a keyboard screen, and matrix screen

Once the domain of the few, creating and customizing sophisticated DIY controllers is now more accessible than ever. That means, if you can’t find what you want, and you’re ambitious and knowledgeable enough, you go make your own. Josh Boughey was impressed by the Monome enough to buy one — but the Monome, a grid of on/off buttons, doesn’t provide any kind of variable control. So Josh built his own, combining a series of parallel touch strips with LED indicators. (The lights are the tricky part, requiring an obscene number of connections.)

The creation, dubbed “Stribe” by Josh, could have been a one-off. But instead, he’s working on making it into a tool for others, with completely open source hardware and software. The whole system is built on the popular Arduino platform, making it uncommonly easy to modify. It’s a work in progress, as you can see lacking an enclosure. But ten have made it out into the wild, people are already programming custom software, and more are coming.

I got to hang out with Josh while he was in town this weekend. Luckily, he’s a fan of early music, meaning we met at a concert of a viol consort that was playing my music — an unusual collision of 15th and 21st Century music technology.

Josh gave a demo of the Stribe, for myself plus Phil Torrone of Make and Limor Fried (aka lady ada), creator of the x0xb0x open-source 303 clone. It’s still a project in process– there’s more to be done in firmware and support software and documentation — but it already shows some real promise. I snapped some shots, studied the Max patches, and mostly listened to Limor and Josh talk about the challenges of starting a DIY hardware business. (I hope that DIY builders start to share experiences, even informally, as they work to make the business end work so they can keep building.)

Just what can happen when you let your baby go? Someone else can do stuff with it you didn’t expect. Here’s musician Stretta developing music ideas-in-progress with the Stribe (see blog post, Stribe forum thread):

A Brief Conversation Resulting in One Less Child from stretta on Vimeo.

Some tidbits from the hands-on session: