One of the problems with touchscreens is that, even as they have become more sophisticated about tracking multiple fingers at once, they still generally don’t respond to pressure. To make touchscreens really useful for music, we need genuine pressure sensitivity.

For that reason, you may be intrigued to see this video of Zen Piano, a demo app for the iPhone and iPod touch. The idea: respond not only to the position of your finger taps, but also to how hard you’re tapping the phone That promises “velocity-sensitive” tapping, which would make touchscreen interfaces more powerful.

Here’s the somewhat overheated description by GreatApps, who say their “patent-pending,” “cutting-edge” technology is the result of “having gone through the research and development phases.”

TapForce^TM has been developed from the ground up to provide a completely intuitive way of interaction for users. It can detect more than a hundred different levels of force, and has an accuracy that has to be seen to be believed. And all this can now be done in software, no hardware modifications are necessary. Hundreds of millions of devices currently on the market can make use of the TapForce^TM technology today.

A whole new range of games and apps has just been made possible.

http://greatapps.co.uk/technologies/

Okay, so what is it doing, exactly?

Lemur 1.5 was announced today, bringing some significant improvements to this unique multi-touch display/control surface. Specifically, this update addresses a number of complaints about Lemur, including some I voiced in my review for Keyboard Magazine:

1. Easier mapping: MIDI and even OSC assignment was a bit of a chore in the existing Jazz Editor release, partly because it required multiple clicks to get to MIDI assignments, in particular. The new editor always has MIDI and OSC assignments visible in a tab, and there’s a new custom MIDI object for more complex, multiple-output assignments.
2. More templates, reusable components: While JazzMutant hasn’t released an exact list, the update includes more templates, which should help you get started out of the box. You can now also reuse components between templates, answering another complaint many of us had, since previously you had to duplicate work each time you built a new template.
3. 

   Knobs: The previous Lemur lacked virtual knobs. Now, knobs are available, both in endless rotary and fixed-rotation varieties.

4. Text: The surfaceLCD object lets you easily label tracks, etc., by feeding data from your computer. This basically acts as a virtual LCD screen you can add to your control layout.
5. More MIDI Control: You can now control the Lemur itself via MIDI, and use up to 8 input and output ports for some complex inter-gear configuration.

I’m still not convinced the Lemur is for everyone, but this is a major improvement on an already-innovative design. If you’re a Lemur user, I’m sure you’re in hog heaven. If not, and you don’t intend to be, there’s still a message here for manufacturers: make configuration as flexible and fluid as possible. It has an enormous effect on how a control surface is used.

Poor Monome, with just 64 buttons. Back in the 90s, Nicholas Fournel (who just sent us his MIDI tablet software) built a massive plexiglass touch-screen instrument called the Semekrys. Two of them were sensitive to a 1000×1000 grid. (Okay, not quite the same as 64 buttons, but then this is transparent and looks absurdly cool even in an age with more touchscreens.)

Proof that the search for expressive touch interfaces is still an ongoing one:

Semekrys

The Lemur multi-touch touchscreen controller is the rare kind of product that breaks entirely from convention, raising fundamental questions about how we make music. It’s comforting in a way, then, to see disagreement about just how well the finished product works. After over a year of buzz, detailed in-practice reviews of the Lemur are emerging, including my review for Keyboard Magazine, and Jonathan Segel’s review for Electronic Musician. The two reviews reach somewhat different conclusions. Neither review gives an unqualified endorsement, but both see promise in the device — just different promise. And I have to ask a question: are physical controls like knobs really as limited as people seem to assume?

I’m still partial to saving up cash for a full-featured, full-sized tablet, but in case you haven’t been watching discussion on my last story on the new Ultra-Mobile PC platform, there are some interesting musical uses for a portable tablet: