Let’s get this out of the way: musicians are not a “niche” group. Recording has done some damage to the popular practice of live music, but still, you’ll find an astonishing number of people play instruments and sing. (New pop culture phenomena like Glee, the Guitar Hero/Rock Band games, and the resurgent TV talent show have helped, too.)

What’s “niche” is conventional music production software. While it’s a fast-growing segment, music making software remains elusive and befuddling to a whole lot of musicians. GarageBand for Mac was one answer to what software for the remaining group should look like. But pick up GarageBand for iOS, and you experience software that comes even closer to that vision. It’s simply one of the best-designed music tools for iOS, and would be so whether or not it carried the Apple name. It’s not the perfect tool for every iPad owner, necessarily, but it’s perhaps the best window into what a tablet can be for music. It realizes that original idea of GarageBand better than anything we’ve seen yet.

GarageBand has had just over a year on the iPad, and has gotten a significant revision. That’s left time to dive deeper into its features, for me, testing on the very first iPad and working now with the additional features Apple added more recently. Here’s why it could be worth trying (including if you’re an advanced iOS user or even music developer), why you might recommend it to beginners, and a few things about it that you might not know as far as more sophisticated functionality. (I’ll focus on the iPad functionality primarily, because for me it was the ideal form factor with which to produce music.)

I’ve spent some time with the software design. Here’s what makes I feel it special:

Design Strengths

I am your density. Density of touch controls is essential to design. Some iOS apps, while powerful, have so many controls that they can be tough on fat fingers and confusing to beginners. Others go to the opposite extreme, becoming so oversimplified that it’s hard to make the music you produce sound like your own (fine for toys or games, but not for creative software). Editing on GarageBand for iPad never feels awkward. Switching between editing modes can be a little disorienting at first, but the interface on each screen is crystal clear. The interface details (like woodgrain) that seem sometimes out of place on desktop also look perfect here, and they manage to add detail and texture without being distracting.

It feels naturally touchable. I still prefer hooking up a MIDI keyboard, but the touch instruments in GarageBand, and the editing interfaces, also feel natural. It really is possible to sketch out an idea with touch, at least in a broad sense. That immediacy is perfect for something that’s mobile, and for making music software feel like something you can touch directly. It overcomes the feeling both in desktop software and many iPad apps that the software is somehow at arm’s length.

It’s the most familiar to conventional musicians. Without being condescending to its users, GarageBand for iPad makes choices immediate and visually obvious. Rather than puzzling through a foreign interface, you find crisp text and images of familiar instruments, microphones, and other eminently musical metaphors. That extends to musical vocabulary on synth controls, keys and scales, and the like. People who have at least a little background in music will understand how to use this app, and without having to either learn a futuristic, alien UI (fun as those are) or be specifically versed in electronic music technology. There are a couple of confusing icons – the “Instruments” icon looks like you’re tying up a boat with a knot more than a patch cord – but by and large, this is a familiar interface.

Now, for a few details you might not know.

A showcase for the iPad’s tech

Initially, some third-party developers worried that Apple’s entry into iPad apps would crowd out independent developers. Instead, I feel GarageBand can be an effective showcase – and, given its price, it’s also a good entry for those of you curious about iPad music making, which could lead to other apps. You would hope Apple would lead in tech adoption, and in this case, they gladly do:

• It supports high DPI. If you do have a third-generation iPad (“the new iPad”), it should look especially nice. (I’m still on an original iPad; happily, it doesn’t look too shabby there, either.)
• It has some powerful wireless Jam Session features. You can communicate over Bluetooth or local WiFi with up to four total iOS devices. One device acts as a “bandleader,” and then other gadgets – including the iPhone – can synchronize to tempo, play position, and play controls. Smart instruments also follow shared chords, though you can play outside those chords if you like. You can also elect to turn off bandleader control.
• The coolest feature of sync, and the one that’s something new in “multiplayer” music making, is the ability to collect recordings on the “bandleader” device automatically. This suggests some real collaborative possibilities for music making that go beyond just syncing tempo, and it’s something I hope we see on desktop soon, too.
• You can use USB keyboards and the like, via Core MIDI support. So, cool as those smart instruments are with touch, you can also play conventionally. Some of the “smart” features are even supported via MIDI.
• You can use GarageBand with other iPad apps, thanks to Audio Copy/Paste. That could make GarageBand an ideal iOS hub for a studio of other third-party instruments and tools. It does work in just one direction – you can paste materials into GarageBand, but not out again – but that makes some sense, with GarageBand as your main “host” or editor tool.

I hope to get together with some other iPad owners in June to document how the wireless features work in video, and perhaps show off some of those Copy/Paste workflows; stay tuned.

Playability

The Instruments are an important feature for GarageBand. They won’t suit everyone – people wanting to make specific kinds of music should take a look through the diversity of what’s available for iOS in synths, instruments, and the like. But they do cover some basics. There are also some unique “smart” playability features.

Advanced articulations: try playing with some of the different instruments, and you’ll discover some nice features. Multi-touch gestures will often unlock certain instrumental techniques. The stringed instruments will respond when you play on the neck or use different voicings. Sections, as in grouped strings, will add swells or pizzicato, depending on how you play. These are features you’d expect of an advanced sample library, but not necessarily an iPad app – and it’s nice to be able to use your fingers on the screen to play them.

Also, while non-electronic genres definitely get a lot of love from GarageBand from the amps to instrument models, fans of electronic or dance music (or electro nuts, if you like) get plenty of synth bass and keyboard instruments. That’s what you’d expect from software that shares lineage with Logic, and it almost strikes me as a challenge to produce an electronic track entirely on GarageBand. (I’ll see what I can do; I’ve got a lot of travel coming up!)

My favorite current feature is the arpeggiator in the keyboard, which is a must on a touchscreen instrument.

In fact, while it’s also one of the more innovative features, I think my only disappointment is with the smart drum instruments. It’s a fascinating feature, letting you add different rhythmic parts by complexity, but it often falls a bit short of coming up with something genuinely musical, sounding a bit more like the auto-accompaniment it is. I think this really speaks to the demands we make of rhythm. It’s usable, it just may have you going back to editing to produce something original (not that there’s anything wrong with that).

Guitar and string parts, in contrast, do really shine; they cover relatively stock gestures, but that could be perfect when you’re sketching out a new song idea. You can always fill in more elaborate parts later when you work on a more complete track, more likely then in a studio or on a desktop machine.

Editability

Editing was a bit short in the first release, and in some music making apps, but here, those features have been fleshed out in a way that’s nonetheless intuitive and accessible.

A lot has been made of the comparison of the old tape four-track – like a Tascam – and the iPad. Here, you can create subs and bounce tracks together to make new tracks, so that basic workflow is possible. (In place of the four track, what you’ve got, basically, is an eight track.)

It’s also possible to non-destructively merge editor tracks.

Note editing is, of course, a major addition to GarageBand. At last, it makes this a usable production tool. You’ll also find, appropriately, different editing options for drum parts, audio, and instrumental parts.

It’s also important to note that your musical options aren’t dumbed-down. You can create custom chords, rather than being locked into certain harmonies. Triple time signatures are possible, too (3/4 and 6/8 – sorry, Elliot Carter fans, it does stop there). You also get basic options for features like swing and quantization.

The only editing feature I’d still like to see is notation. A notational view would open up GarageBand to still more conventional musicians, and a score seems a perfect editing interface on a tablet. Aside from force of habit, the score is literally designed for this form factor, making music easy to see and understand.

Sharing and workflow features:

Some people will choose to produce entirely on an iPad or iPhone, but to make that mobility an advantage, you need to be able to share directly, and for some of us, at least, you’ll want to use the mobile gadget as a satellite, coming back to your main studio for more.

You can now sync projects across iPhone and iPad, and so on, as well as back to your desktop Mac for editing in GarageBand and Logic. You can also save to an iMovie soundtrack directly on the iPad, so you can use this as an on-the-go scoring tool.

You can also share to Facebook, YouTube, and, as part of a growing trend, SoundCloud.

But most importantly, import/export support means you can make projects your own, and use your iOS device in conjunction with a desktop machine or full studio. You can import and export your own media, including MP3, AAC (up to 192 kbps), AIFF, WAV, and Mac Apple Loops. (Of course, lossless files are generally a better choice.) Just add the file to iTunes.

Which devices are supported? GarageBand works on iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad. You can use Jam Session on iPod touch (current models), but not third-generation iPhone or earlier and or older iPod touch models.

Conclusions

Part of the beauty of iPad music development, as the field matures, is that not every single tool tries to be all things to all people. But that doesn’t mean a tool shouldn’t feel meaty enough to be used over time.

On a variety of platforms, we’ve been waiting for a tool that can be an effective starting point. GarageBand on the iPad hits a sweet spot as far as that’s concerned. For playable instruments usable with touch – via the tablet, even if you’re crammed into a narrow seat on easyJet – it’s fantastic. Its interface is conventional enough that beginning musicians won’t feel as though they’ve just stolen a Klingon battle cruiser. But it’s also sophisticated enough that you can sketch out a song. For more advanced users, it’s still worth having around for that purpose, arranging chords and performing simple capture from other apps.

When do you outgrow it, what’s nice about the iPad is that it’s stupidly simple and affordable to add other tools. Want a more powerful song editor? Need a better groove machine / drum machine? Want to add vocal effects? You can simply turn to another app – but only to do what you really need, and only when you need it.

My only real regret is, even beginning musicians and songwriters often benefit from music notation. The absence of a score view/editor or the ability to see your music as notation seems a big omission.

Otherwise, GarageBand is a marvel – a perfect anchor from which to explore the outburst of developer creativity on this platform. In fact, far from portraying Apple as “consumer” company, it makes an excellent argument for the pro application development chops they’ve built up over the years – and could easily get people hooked enough to get into Logic Studio on a Mac laptop.

I hope we have at least opened some doors to finding new tools for users wondering what to do with their iPads (or iPhones, or iPod touches). And on that note, it’s worth revisiting the original GarageBand launch video, to see, with more distance, how Apple articulated their ideas for the app:

Ah, I remember March 2011…

Grab the app or review it yourself:
GarageBand for iOS @ apps.createdigitalmusic.com

Like a World’s Fair of all the invention in music technology, the big trade shows still gather many of the latest creations from around the globe. And while the NAMM show in California is big, Musikmesse is bigger: spanning some 11 halls (together with a live lighting and event show called Pro Light+Sound), it’s the biggest on Earth. Having covered NAMM for German publication DE:BUG, I’m thrilled to get to do the reverse and highlight the best of Messe for California-based Keyboard Magazine.

Musikmesse 2012 Gear Report [Keyboard Magazine]

Instead of trying to cover absolutely everything, this is the stuff I found especially significant – and I got the luxury of giving into my personal bias toward things with keys on them. Some of the highlights:

• RME getting 36 channels, 24-bit, 192 kHz audio … on a computer and on your iPad. (Also, thanks to RME for the delicious beer.)
• Mode Machines’ wonderful German x0xb0x, SID drum machine, and other treats.
• More accurate modeled pianos, including the epic ALPHA with its full-sized hammer action inside. (No, not what keyboard makers usually call hammer action – like, the whole hammer.)
• Roland’s clever mechanism for using your iPhone to record and jam along with their instruments, wirelessly. (See my hands-on video, below).

And, of course, there’s lots of gear to look at. It wasn’t new to Messe, but if my ethics circuitry were to short-circuit and I decided to hide something under a coat, I sure do love that Buchla modular and touch plate, for all its quirky strangeness. In fact, apologies to the folks at Moog, but I have to recount this story. Evidently a couple of Moog reps went over to the Buchla display to try out the new modular, and came back frustrated about the touchplate and the lack of a conventional keyboard. (Believe me, they’re not wrong: these can keep you from making useful sound if you don’t have a lot of time.) Now, I cut my teeth in analog on two modulars side by side, an original Buchla and Moog setup. I was charmed by the reenactment of the controversy over Buchla – its unconventional input, its creatively-worded labels, and its different approach to patching. I talked to others with the same split reaction, not just Moog. It’s all the more topical after my passing mention of a giant sphere triggered a minor flame war in comments. (And don’t get me wrong: as I said before, I love keyboards, and still favor them over other means of input.)

I always loved both the Buchla and Moog for their differences, and the fact that these philosophical difference survive decades later gives some hope for the longevity of what we do – sometimes even the longevity of our peculiarities.

Let me know what your favorite finds were from Messe, even if you were watching online. (In all honesty, your odds may be better than if you get lost on the giant show floors!)

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

The stream of iPad and iPhone apps for musicians gushes endlessly, but among that river of software, there are some visible trends. Demanded by users, features for sharing between apps – and other mobile artists – flourish.

Hardware heavyweight KORG has been one of the developers that’s been especially good at offering that kind of support. Their just-announced iKaossilator 2 app adds native iPad screen support (previously iPhone-optimized only), and a new “flex play” for fills and breaks.

But most notably, it offers options for sharing:

• Audio export for saving your audio – ideal for use elsewhere or sharing
• SoundCloud export (increasingly popular in desktop and mobile software of all stripes)
• AudioCopy for sharing audio between apps – adopted by many indie developers, this feature is becoming a demanded addition even if you’re releasing an app costing only a couple of bucks

This is addition to WIST, “WIreless Sync-starT,” Korg’s mechanism for syncing up multiple wireless apps. That’s ideal if you’ve got a friend with a device and want to jam. (It’s, unfortunately, iOS-only based on its reliance on Apple’s wireless sharing tech.)

The upshot of all of these features is, naturally, to help ease the tablet/phone app into the larger workflow, with desktop software and other tools. Korg’s other apps are similarly flexible – their iMS-20 synth works with MIDI and SoundCloud, for instance, and it and iElecTribe will wirelessly sync.

Korg iKaossilator

KORG isn’t alone. An updated Intua BeatMaker – more of a full-fledged beat-making and groove production workstation – added loads of similarly sharing-focused features.

Indeed, Intua goes further than KORG. Developers have been working together to route MIDI signals between apps with something they’re calling Virtual MIDI. (That deserves its own article, clearly, but worth mentioning in this context; see discussion on Google Groups.) As desktop apps have allowed collaboration between plug-ins and hosts, or multiple apps, this allows a MIDI app to control a synth app. It’s less powerful, arguably, on the limited horsepower of an iPad than it might be on a beefy desktop, but it can still be very useful for combining one controller or sequencer with something else that makes sound.

As reported on Synthtopia, Virtual MIDI is just one of a number of MIDI-centric features in the new version:

BeatMaker Getting All Sorts Of MIDI Love [Synthtopia]

There’s MIDI Out, yes, but also Thru and MIDI-over-WiFi for talking to other MIDI gadgets. There’s Virtual MIDI for communicating with other iOS devices. You can hot-plug MIDI and the app keeps working (essential onstage). And in place of SoundCloud support as in the KORG offering, there’s Dropbox file sharing support.

You can export and import MIDI – not just audio, but actual patterns – as well as read and write slice points in Apple Loops.

In fact, Intua even support Korg’s own WIST, so you could sync BeatMaker to KORG’s iElecTribe or the modulation of the iMS-20 and get synchronized rhythms between apps from different developers.

Intua BeatMaker @ iTunes

This is not to say iOS devices are identical to a desktop experience – in fact, their limitations and unique features are clearly part of their appeal. Instead, it seems part of an increased awareness that connectivity with other applications and other users is of growing importance to musicians. iOS developers seem eager to make these central design features, both emulating what’s been done right on desktops – and where there have been missed opportunities. It’ll be fascinating to see if other, non-iOS platforms follow the same trend.

Ready to cut the cord and go wireless? With mobile gadgets getting involved in music-making, it seems a logical solution – maybe not reason to throw away your MIDI cabling, but worth at least trying. Bluetooth could be an answer. In fact, it could work even without all those pesky, pricey mobile tablets and phones lying around, just with good, old-fashioned MIDI gear. (‘Bout time.)

Bluetooth and MIDI are a logical match; the big surprise is that these two haven’t paired off (cough) much earlier. We’ve seen the occasional implementation or paper or rant, but not much real-world usage. That could be about to change – that is, provided ample real-world testing.

Bluetooth mobile sync: First off, owners of Korg iOS software just got a Bluetooth-based update that provides sync. (See video below, shot by tipster and reader Danny Fluck.) Entitled “Wireless Sync-Start Technology,” KORG promises their Bluetooth feature now enables two iPads running iElectribe or iMS-20 to sync with one another with zero latency. (The update also includes perhaps more widely-useful features – SoundCloud support and AudioCopy, says Synthtopia.)

The name suggests that what the “sync-start” technique does is actually to match any latency between the two devices so that they start at the same time. That’s how multiplayer gaming typically works, and it applies easily to musical applications: you ping connected devices, then delay the start points of each of them to match the slowest device so that they sound together. (I think I’m saying that correctly and clearly; it’s Friday.)

Danny reports that it works perfectly and “instantaneously.”

Okay, so cool, as long as you only use iPads, and you’re lucky enough to have two iPads handy, and you only use KORG apps, you’ve got a nifty solution – but that’s a little limiting.

Bluetooth MIDI on Android or any hardware device. A bit further-reaching is something Peter Brinkmann, primary author of libpd, has been testing. (See video, top, which is much snappier than my explanation.) Now, Peter is no MIDI fanboy; when several of us talked about adding MIDI to libpd – an embeddable version of the open source patching environment – he described MIDI as a “plague upon humanity.” (I don’t recall seeing that quote anywhere on the MIDI Manufacturing Association website.)

But here’s the thing: MIDI is obsessively compact and simple, and absurdly easy to implement even on the cheapest microcontroller. That makes it ideally suited as a means of making inexpensive hardware inter-operate, and without using up lots of power or bandwidth – just as MIDI was designed to do.

Furthermore, as Apple tablets and phones demonstrated USB MIDI connections, it got Peter (and some of the rest of us) thinking. Yes, it’s too bad that Android devices lack key USB host capabilities that would let them talk to hardware. On the other hand, once you start attaching lots of cables to a device, you might as well use a (more powerful, more flexible) computer in place of the tablet. So low-power, efficient wireless – like Bluetooth – seems the way to go.

Like a good engineer, Peter went and hacked the solution he wanted himself. Partially inspired by Lady Ada’s own, well-documented Bluetooth MIDI experiments, Peter started documenting the process on his blog.

In his first blog post, he describes his hardware setup. (He later updated the rig and moved it off the bread board.

In part 2, he describes latency and jitter. Here’s what I’ve been told by mobile engineers to whom I talked: performance has greatly improved in Bluetooth implementations in recent years. That means that part of the reason Bluetooth MIDI may have been adapted is that, when people first began testing this a few years ago, the implementations weren’t yet good enough – and no one has checked since. (Until now, that is.)

Since then, Peter has released free software for the Android platform, all under a free Apache license, so anyone can try it out. And since it works natively with Pd for Android, this means you can very quickly hook up a Pd patch to Bluetooth support on any Android device. There’s even a sample patch and code to get you started!

As far as I know, Apple doesn’t let you implement a similar solution on iOS, so this would remain Android-only. (Hey, come on – iOS can’t have all the fun.) I’m curious to hear if I have that correct, though, so please do share.

The next step: refining the hardware rig and interface design and most importantly, testing. Correction: I claimed that the MIDI interface was not opto-isolated; it actually is.

Hacklab and testing: With that spirit in mind, on Saturday April 2 from 1p – 6p, we’ll have a free, open hacklab in New York. It’s mainly an informal get-together, but there will be short demos as we go. It’s the first step in broader testing and experimentation with these ideas. If you’re in the NYC area, you can RSVP on Facebook. (just went up, so it may be quiet) The plan is to play a bit with hardware and software and different Android devices.

All are welcome to the hacklab, regardless of experience.

This isn’t just an Android thing, though. Part of the reason to use Bluetooth in place of WiFi is that it’s much simpler and cheaper to implement, and has more modest power requirements. As such, providing Bluetooth MIDI interfaces for other music gear is more manageable than it would be with WiFi.

More resources:

A 2005 IEEE conference presentation describes early work, though this research could use a modern update.

A 2003 open letter encouraging Bluetooth MIDI use.

Meanwhile, in the Land of WiFi

Synthtopia reports on iOS MIDI WiFi, in the case of MoDrum and Bassline, using Apple’s own network MIDI framework. I’m assuming it claims it’s the most extensive such implementation because of the sync functionality.

SoundPrism Pro, in the trailer below, also recently added network (as well as wired) MIDI compatibility.

Incidentally, there are already compatible frameworks for Windows and Linux (in addition to Mac, of course), and no reason Android couldn’t also do WiFi MIDI, too. The advantage of Bluetooth remains doing so with less power consumption, and as direct serial communication over the wireless link.

More resources on the WiFi side…

From January:
New Solutions for Wireless MIDI, MIDI+OSC; Developers Answer Questions

And yes, devices like The Missing Link provide this kind of functionality over WiFi – though the Bluetooth radio could be cheaper and more power efficient. (As for performance, we just have to do more testing.)

Just don’t forget, all of this is a plague upon humanity and an abomination, so try to keep that in mind. Have a good weekend!

To celebrate what in the US we call 3.14 or PI day, today I’m offering stories that deal with mathematics and circles. First up, an app named for the great philosopher who is credited – even if perhaps ahistorically so – with finding that ratio and ratios in harmonies.

Technology has long introduced innovations that make playing easier for specialists and non-specialists alike. Just ask anyone who plays an instrument like the guitar – frets, and the simplified notation that went with it, go back centuries as a means of allowing more people to make music.

Developer Rob Fielding wants to rethink frets, to bring their disposition and playability closer to the way harmonics work in sound. The creator of the microtonal iPad app Mugician, his next app in development, Pythagoras, offers some fascinating ideas. Forgive me getting a bit theoretical in the prose for those who do speak that language; the videos are always the best way of understanding what’s going on. (The vast majority of even untrained ears have the ability to perceive pitch with astounding accuracy, so you don’t have to be an expert. Usually when people claim to be tone deaf, the problem is that they can’t sing, not that they can’t hear, in my experience.)

I’ll let Rob explain:

Pitch

Pythagoras’ fretless mode uses geometry to mark the harmonically relevant points, not fixed frets. Where the lines intersect with strings, the notes are perfect ratios to each other. This helps you to locate and get to know the useful pitches that are used in world music. [See image, top for a beautiful visualization of how this works. -Ed.] That is explained here:
The Spectrum – Pythagoras’s interface

When you play a chord like a major third, you line up the blue notes to overlap perfectly, and you get shiningly perfect major thirds that way. Same for harmonically correct fifths and fourths. These are the pitches that you hear as overtones when you listen carefully to instruments with lots of sympathetics, etc.

I do want to respond to this one lamentation in Rob’s post: he frets (ahem) that MIDI doesn’t use frequency, and that OSC isn’t well-supported. I actually think MIDI isn’t far off – it just lacks precision. Perception of pitch is complex, but a logarithmic scale (in which 440 sounds one octave higher than 220) is reasonably close to how we hear. And that’s precisely what MIDI gives you; if you just wanted to number the piano, its solution of using a number like 60 for middle C makes perfect sense. (We can overlook for a moment that the definition of MIDI fumbled the octave. The basic idea was still right.)

Even outside MIDI, a numbering system like that in MIDI – mapping pitch space to a logarithmic scale to make them match intuitively what we hear – is not uncommon. The problem is that MIDI doesn’t have a rational way of dealing with what happens in between the notes, as it used integers for efficiency. Take MIDI’s logarithmic scale and set floating-point numbers (numbers with a decimal place, like 60.5 instead of 60), and you have a pretty decent solution. You could still, if you didn’t want integers to represent 12-tone equal-tempered pitch, apply different scales and modes. But I think if you wanted a decent way of communicating note values, unless I’m really missing something, sending floating point numbers that default to a 12-TET logarithmic scale can’t be too bad. I understand that most instruments don’t yet respond in any standardized way, but I refuse to believe this is an intractable problem. I’m happy to discuss in comments. Heck, if we just got Max and Pd patchers to agree on something, I’d be pleased.

On to another very cool idea:

Octave Rounding

Pythagoras is using octave rounding in its latest incarnation when you press the “Auto” button for the octave switch. What this means is simply that it doesn’t care about what octave a note is in, it will pick the closest octave to the last played note. This allows for astounding feats of arpeggiation and pentatonic scales – even when playing fretless. Here is the more popular video:

And here is the improvement upon it the next day (much less viewed video) where you can slide up or down a fourth:

This octave rounding is an idea I implemented a few years ago in my Samchillian derivative called Xstrument. (Both Xstrument and Mugician are open source projects on github). This idea is very applicable to 2 octave keyboards as well.

Here is the idea with a trivial Pd program:

It’s really great stuff. As it happens, I’ve been exploring new geometries for music making myself, interested along similar lines. And musical inventor Roger Linn has had a lot of things to say about it lately, too, including his respect for Rob’s work.

So, I’d love to have a discussion. What interesting interfaces have you seen for music? Are there any you find playable in practical circumstances? And why can’t we just solve this issue of how to transmit pitch information between software and hardware once and for all? (I don’t yet know how HD-MIDI will address the issue; that’ll be interesting to see.)

And don’t miss Rob’s blog:
http://rrr00bb.blogspot.com/

Finally, here’s Jordan Rudess rocking out with Mugician, Rob’s (currently-available) app.

TouchOSC has become something of a standard on iOS for touch control, thanks to desktop editor apps for custom layouts and high-contrast, Lemur-style controls. Last Thursday was all about wired MIDI on iPad, so it seems only fair to show what people are doing with wireless and OSC. I’ve got a few good selections from my recent inbox.

DJing with Traktor

Above, the latest version of Traktor Pro templates, for iPhone or iPad, from Milos:

http://androidosc.blogspot.com/

It’s got some extensive functionality, and since Milos used Pure Data (Pd) to translate to MIDI, you can use it with both the Mac and Windows versions of Traktor. Milos doesn’t yet have an iPad, so he’s collecting money to invest in one.

Arovia has their own Traktor layout, aptly titled “nano” as it’s fit into a small area.

From over the summer, here’s a different approach to using Traktor with touch, turning instead to one big wheel.

Ableton Live

Malaventura has assembled a “kitchen sink” approach to working with Ableton Live, with a do-everything Live template.

A touchOSC layout for iPad that contains a step sequencer monosynth & drum machine, a ambient generator, a psychedelic fx unit & operator synth controller. All designed for works in iPad with touchOSC, OSCulator and Ableton Live in your computer. The layout and all the files necessary are zipped in this link:
http://www.archive.org/details/MalaventuraTouchoscSuite

It’s a really involved set of layouts; it’s not quite as sophisticated as something dedicated like Touchable, but then again, since you can run both, you may just give it a try and use it for certain editing workflows.

The one caveat – and this is a catch on a lot of these patches – is that you need Osculator in order to use it. More on that gripe in a moment.

As seen on Synthtopia

Working with Hardware

Last week, I showed my preferred means of editing MIDI devices – using, you know, MIDI cables. But I can see the appeal of wireless control, too, in certain situations. Using The Missing Link wireless hardware adapter (see our detailed look at two wireless solutions last month), you can work with conventional hardware.

Via Matrixsynth, there’s a nice template for the Waldorf Pulse.

Palm Sounds points to a Yamaha DX7 editor, complete with SysEx. (Isn’t there supposed to be an actual link there somewhere, though?)

Some Friendly Criticism of the State of OSC Touch

I do see opportunity for progress in all of this, however. Constructive criticism, for all of us:

• The lack of native OSC means way, way too many kludges. Osculator is a cool little app, but you shouldn’t need it to do OSC; the whole point of OSC is that it’s a simple, universal networking protocol. We either need native support in apps like Ableton Live, or we need to use something else – period. Having to use go-between apps makes it a step backward in these applications from MIDI.
• Why not edit on the device, or even generate layouts automatically? Part of the beauty of touch layouts is on-the-fly controls. There’s plenty to explore here, from layouts that generate automatically after an exchange of information over OSC to on-device editing. One of my criticisms of the original Lemur was having to use a dedicated editing app, and that was more than five years ago.
• Why not use the browser? Wouldn’t it be great for editing and control to move seamlessly between desktop browser and mobile, or between mobile platforms?

I’m burying this in this article just because I’d rather spend time working on those things than complaining them, but it’s worth saying, partly because I’m sure others are thinking the same way. (And developers thinking that way have the chops to do something about it.)

Also, in answer to everyone griping about a good Android solution, I’m personally waiting for a usable Android tablet and not just handhelds. That means I’m seriously bummed that the Motorola Xoom may cost US$800. Sorry, at that point, I spend money on synths instead.

Knobs rock.

All of that said, I do think there are some great solutions here, and they work right now. Looking forward, we can build the next generation even better.

In the meantime, go grab TouchOSC. It’s fantastic software, and supporting it means an increased likelihood of developer hexler getting to continue to iterate on his own great work. (He’s a really nice guy, to boot, as well as a talented developer; I know he isn’t exactly getting rich on this thing, but sales really do support developers working on apps they care about.)

http://hexler.net/software/touchosc

What layouts are you using? Got any you want to share? And what do you want to see in touch controllers?

Going wireless has long been a desire of musicians, but solutions have been slow to catch on. Two new products add wireless capabilities to your existing MIDI gear; I’ve talked to the creators to explain a bit about how their solutions work.

AirPower from Starr Labs uses proprietary 2.4GHz communication for wireless MIDI communication. The Missing Link takes a different approach, receiving OSC communication over a standard WiFi connection and translating to MIDI. Each approach has some potential advantages. The Missing Link you can use out of the box with wireless support from a mobile device, like an iPad or Android OSC controller. AirPower’s approach solves a serious reliability problem, by working with a more robust “no-dropout” connection link.

Starr Labs AirPower

Don’t knock cables – wireless can pose problems. Wireless MIDI solutions have to contend with dropped connections lasting just a fraction of a second. AirPower appears pricey – a US$425 upgrade or MIDI-only $250 adapter, each sold as a complete kit – but what you get is a more reliable connection. (Starr Labs has designed AirPower to work with their line of guitars and controllers, but with a MIDI connection and the $250 model, you can use whatever you like.)

Starr Labs’ Scott Caligure answers some of CDM’s questions; they’re also interested in collaboration.

On wireless MIDI and resistance to dropouts (partly quoting from their product literature), Scott explains:

The AirPower system is designed to recover from momentary dropouts in transmission without stuck notes or shutting off notes needlessly. Other MIDI wireless links often will shut off a note if the link goes down before a Note-Off message can be sent. Often the link only drops out for a small fraction of a second. Some manufacturers of low-cost Wireless MIDI wireless systems rely on MIDI Active Sensing being sent from the keyboard to the Receiver. In that case, if either the transmitting keyboard or the receiving synthesizer does not support Active Sensing, or it has been turned off; a disrupted wireless link will not be detected. That’s not a problem with the AirPower wireless.

The AirPower can be embedded easily within a Ztar, while embedding into a keyboard/synth does take some obvious aptitude. Of course it’s small enough to simply attach to any instrument.

The communication method is proprietary, but in this case, that’s a good thing, as it’s more resistant to external interference in the otherwise-crowded 2.4GHz band – a must if you’re using this onstage and not just in your studio:

Yes, we are doing our own proprietary communication. We utilize the extreme edges of the 2.4ghz range not only the ‘fat’ of this frequency.

There have been few isolated instances where a Verizon smartphone would cause limited interference. Otherwise, it tested convincingly in extremely ‘noisy’ environments i.e.; multiple RF mics, smartphones, other midi wireless units, on stage and in crowd etc…

What about interoperating with what they’ve done? Scott says Starr are very open to collaboration, and are particularly interested in talking to you here in the CDM community.

With concerns to other manufacturers wireless MIDI, this is an area we would love to connect/collaborate with people/companies. Of course, one could have 16 AirPower rigs running on stage or in studio at once. We offer a simple mod that makes the Airpower bi-directional allowing transmission from computer/laptop out to any MIDI device. We see this being used in multi-media installations, and gallery/museum settings where discreetness and/or site specific aesthetics are desired. Could also be used creatively with MIDI lighting rigs!

Product info at Starr Labs

Starr has otherwise wireless news; I’ll put that in a separate story.

The Missing Link, Wireless OSC + MIDI

The Missing Link takes a different approach. It uses a standard WiFi radio, and translates OSC messages to external MIDI. Result: any computer, tablet, phone, or other wireless device that can send OSC messages it can understand can be connected to standard MIDI devices. This does just use a standard WiFi connection, so if you’re playing large gigs, I’d still be a bit wary of connection problems, as with any WiFi device. But for a lot of applications, I can imagine it’d be fantastic.

Price: US$150, available in a limited first production run of 100 units (meaning if you really want one, you may need to act quickly).

Specs:

802.11b WiFi
- adhoc or infrastructure modes
- open, WEP, WPA or WPA2 security

OSC via wireless UDP
- OSC to MIDI
- MIDI to OSC
- accepts multiple simultaneous connections

MIDI
- MIDI IN/OUT (standard DIN-5)
- class-compliant USB MIDI IN/OUT
- configurable internal routing with soft MERGE/THRU
- all MIDI commands fully supported, including SYSEX

POWER
- 9V-12V DC, tip +/-, >=250mA
- or via USB

PHYSICAL
- 3.3″ x 2.2″ x 1.6″

The project is produced by a small Portland group that came out of the local Dorkbot community, Jabrudian Industries. I asked Hans Lindauer about whether he’d considered open sourcing it (since, unlike the AirPower, this is a standard WiFi interface), and if he’d tested performance:

We have considered making it open source, and will likely do so in the future (but no promises here). We’re all big proponents of open source, but we also very much value a well-thought-out and finished product that “just works.” I’ve talked a lot with our programmer about it, and we both feel like the proper time to open the software is when he feels like no longer supporting it. At the moment, we’re very interested in seeing how people use the Missing Link and are motivated to honor feasible feature requests. From a hardware standpoint, if you look closely at the video you’ll see that the initial prototype was actually built from off-the-shelf Arduino components without modification. The magic here is in the firmware, which allows a huge amount of flexibility in controlling MIDI output based upon OSC input.

I’ll be doing a more scientific test of the latency as soon as we get back from NAMM, but subjectively there’s no noticeable latency. I’m actually having a difficult time figuring out how to measure when a finger contacts the touch screen, do you have any info on how that has been done by others? My idea is to amplify the tapping of my fingernail on the screen to one channel of a scope, and to measure the MIDI output on the other channel and compare the two, but even that introduces error because I can’t guarantee that the fingernail and fingertip will hit at exactly the same moment.

I’m, incidentally, very sympathetic to the first paragraph of that answer. All in all, it looks like a great project and potentially very useful indeed. If you pick one up, let us know.

An earlier version from September got a full video treatment:

And looking at both these solutions, it seems just as important will be opening up a conversation between everyone working on wireless devices of this kind, for better testing and discussion about implementation. That could help people improve performance in live and studio settings, and standardize implementation in such a way that devices can easily talk to each other. If you’re interested in such a conversation, let us know!

Made In Iron 2 from Matti Niinimäki on Vimeo.

Matti Niinimäki of Finland has combined a common household chore with music control. He transforms an iron and ironing board into a wireless music controller, capable of generating wobble bass, slicing beats, sampling, and anything else he might devise.

The ironing board itself is self-contained, sensing grayscale values on the surface. (That might mean you’d have to calibrate it to your shirt patterns if you really did use this to do your ironing, or at least put a marker between the iron and your shirts.) There’s also an accelerometer, and the device gives you feedback with vibration and LED. See also a second video.

Believe it or not, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen a musical ironing board. Ranjit Bhatnagar brought his “Midi Ironing Board” – inspired by a coincidental meaning of the word “midi” in French – to an early Handmade Music. His model really does work with any shirts, as the sensors are underneath the board. (Photo below.)

I’m sure someone in comments will declare that all of this is old news, and I missed a shirt-ironing performance with John Cage and Nam Jun Paik in 1963 at St. Mark’s Church. Or no, not even – turns out the Italian Futurists did an early Explosive Shirt Pressing Ratatatatatat Bang Bang Boom!! performance before even the First World War, perhaps inspired by Erik Satie’s Shirt Flattening and Melodic Production Instrument, To Be Operated By A Cigar-Smoking Monkey, as specified in an obscure sketch from one of his notebooks. (I’m making this up. I think.)

Now, I’d just like to see techniques for combining all our chores – laundry, dishwashing – with music production. Let’s make it so. A few sensors and contact mics should do the trick.

This is just one of the many wonderful things Matti makes, which extend to robotics and a kind of digital puppetry and live visuals. There are a number of free tools to download on his site, as well:
http://mansteri.com/

Oliver Chesler and his Wire to the Ear blog have long been among my favorite reading on the Web. It turns out he and I have both been pondering the idea of doing an audio podcast to talk about trends in music and technology. After we did a panel together, the idea was irresistible. Sure, podcasts have exactly none of the hype they once did, but both of us listen to spoken word content voraciously.

So, here’s the first experiment. We get a chance to speak, uncensored and off the cuff, about mobile apps for iOS we’re actually using, how MIDI might work on those gadgets, Rock Band 3, the MeeBlip, and items currently in the news. Expect very different topics in future. Audio below, on SoundCloud.
Music Tech in Review – Episode 1 – Podcast Chat by cdm

We’ve also assembled links into a handy Bit.ly link bundle; even if you don’t care for listening to us chat, this will give you a hint as to what’s on our radar.
http://bit.ly/musictechtalk1

This was entirely impromptu, but we do intend to plan ahead and do it right and make it a regular thing. That raises a couple of questions. What would you want in such a program? (High on my list: adding some actual music and music discussion, guests, interactive Q&A…) And on a more technical level, I found that there wasn’t an easy way to simply host audio that would work in podcast form. Ideally, you’d want something easily digestible by iTunes and non-iTunes players (I subscribe with Banshee and Google Listen, too), and I’d love to have something we could recommend to bloggers, perhaps even helping them get set up on Noisepages. Any suggestions, readers who have been paying more attention than I? (If you don’t know, let us know how you listen and I’ll keep researching.)

Updated: SoundCloud have added subscription links for podcast readers; you’ll find them on our profile! It’s an experimental feature, but give it a go and let us know how it works. More on this stuff to come…

And, of course, if you prefer words or video, we’ll have more of those.