So, you’ve seen lots of interesting looking iPhone apps, but most of them strike you as gimmicky. Others have interesting workflows, but limit you to working on the mobile device, not switching back to a computer. And maybe you’re perfectly happy with a phone running Windows Mobile or Palm OS.

Enter SunVox. This is not a mobile music making app for the timid. It’s a powerful suite of soundmakers and sequencers, baked together into a modular environment that lets power users tweak to their heart’s delight. It’s small, it’s fast, and it looks – and sounds – a lot like early computer music programs. It’ll run on iPhone now, but also on Palm, Windows Mobile, Mac, Windows, and Linux. It’ll run on your netbook, your MacBook, and your ThinkPad.

Incredibly, all this goodness is yours on all those platforms for ten bucks and on iPhone for $5, easily making SunVox the biggest steal in music software I think I’ve ever seen:

• Flexible architecture that adapts to slow and fast CPUs
• Synths and generators: FM, virtual analog, FFT-based “SpectraVoice”, Kicker
• Effects: Delay, distortion, filters, LFOs, reverb
• Sampler with WAV support
• WAV export when you’re done

http://warmplace.ru/soft/sunvox/

And for fans of computer music in the 90s, it’s a chance to get back to some of the no-nonsense, powerful creation of that era, without some of the distractions you may find in modern apps.

To see SunVox in action (and start to make sense of how to use it), check out the YouTube videos from Alex Zolotov (among others). They’re not the best video quality (I wish we had iPhone screencasting software, darnit), but they will give you a sense of what the app is about:
http://www.youtube.com/user/NightRadio2007

The videos made their debut on the excellent PalmSounds Google Group:
http://groups.google.com/group/palmsounds?hl=en
CDM isn’t exclusively about mobile apps, so check out PalmSounds the blog, too, if you like your music making handheld – the site has been on fire lately with updates.
http://the-palm-sound.blogspot.com/

Here’s an example of how SunVox can be used for live playing:

Here it is being used to produce lovely FM synthesis noises:

If you’re new to trackers, especially, you’ll want to brush up on the tracker workflow in SunVox:

As seen in the video from last month’s Music Makers event, LittleGPTracker is a tracker for Linux-based GP2X and GP32 systems. The GP-series boxes are terrific little game machines that, unlike proprietary commercial game systems from Sony and Nintendo, are completely open. (Well, even if there is a certain pleasure to hacking PSPs, Game Boys, and DS machines to play homebrew anyway.)

LittleGPTracker’s interface is modeled after LSDJ, the cult favorite tracker for Game Boys. That interface can be archaic at first if you’ve never seen trackers, but with adjustment, many swear by its unique approach to structuring patterns — it can push users in less linear directions than more conventional sequencer interfaces.

Because the GP isn’t a Game Boy, though, you get some major extras. There’s sample playback, in the form of 8 monophonic 16Bit/44.1Khz stereo sample playback channels. And you can drive external hardware (or even computers) using MIDI.

If you want to try out LGPT before you buy a GP, or if you want some tracker action at your desk as well as on the go, you’re in luck. There’s a desktop version available for Windows, and now even one entering testing on Mac; Linux might follow. Of course, you get made fun of by the developer for running the Windows and Mac releases instead of the mobile versions.

LittleGPTracker Home
LGPT on the GP2x Wiki

There are two basic ways to approach computer music making: work with a system that’s already built for you (think traditional sequencers), or build your own, modular, unique way of working. Both approaches can be valid, but for a small but dedicated band of hard-core computer musicians, only the latter will do. The Buzz project for Windows attempted to merge modular capabilities with a tracker-style sequencer. (Buzzmachines.com isn’t working for me at the moment; see also the Buzz Wikipedia entry.)

There’s a new hope, however. Linux-native but build-able on Windows, free, and intensely powerful, early versions of the new Aldrin software for Windows look very promising. Formerly called Mute, Aldrin offers tracker capabilities, modular features, planned “1:1 compatibility with Buzz,” and integration with the Freesound creative commons sample library.

I can do better than a static screenshot here. The developer has just posted a video of the program in action. Let the techno commence:

Heck, you can even use DSP sources directly in your projects. Andy Selby writes with more:

… You should mention Aldrin (another clone of Jeskola Buzz – but only for Linux), because the latest version shows off its potential really well. It’s already been Computer Music’s [Linux] software of the month. It’s now got the promised Freesound integration and does many of the things that are difficult or impossible using Buzz under Wine [Windows emulation] on your Linux setup (audio input, MIDI control, JACK…)

To top it all off, you can extend the interface using Python and it lets coding-people include DSP sources in their song modules. The only downside is not many Buzz plugins are ported yet (for generators there’s only one synth and a tracker so far). I haven’t started using it in place of Buzz as some of my favorite plugins for Buzz aren’t ported yet (not many plugins are so far) but I’ve been testing it for quite a few versions and the host is developing really fast.

Looks interesting; as more modules appear, this could be reason to boot into Linux.

Aldrin wiki
0.10 Release Announcement, which could be considered the first major mainstream release (beta-wise, anyway)
Leonard Ritter blog [developer]

Elsewhere:
The Buzz About Aldrin [Linux music guru Dave Phillips, in Linux Journal]