Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has weighed in on early iPhone music apps. His verdict? You'd still do better to get a PSP or a Nintendo DS for handheld music apps. While the App Store has metronomes, guitar tuners and the like, there's nothing really exciting there yet.It's a shame, too, because the iPhone / iPod Touch seems made for doing cool future-y music stuff. I'd personally love to see an app that simply lets you put interface objects like sliders or buttons or X-Y pads on the iPhone screen and link each one to a MIDI control sent over Bluetooth to a host machine running a synthesizer. You could turn the iPhone into a far cheaper (though far smaller) version of the JazzMutant Lemur, using your shiny new phone like a Kaoss Pad or an Akai MPC drum/sample pad. Or you could use the motion sensors to scratch samples, ala Serato or FruityLoops. I even suspect that Apple may soon drop an app that lets you use the iPhone as a virtual mixing board / transport control for GarageBand and Logic like the now-defunct and frankly unlamented iControl. The ability to control Logic remotely from inside my vocal booth (aka my closet) would be enough on its own to make me give up my tasty Nokia futurephone and drop a couple of Benjamins on the iPhone.
I agree with Peter that it's early days yet; it's just a matter of time before you see groups of kids hanging out on the corner with their iPhones making beats in real-time, a high tech version of the guys who hang around in Manhattan making music with plastic buckets.
Heck of an expensive plastic bucket, though.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
7-11-2008 @ 10:47PM
ericdano said...
Peter is a git. Read his comments on 10.5, and other things. He's way off base most of the time.
Reply
7-25-2008 @ 7:41AM
samu said...
What was wrong with his comments on 10.5?
7-11-2008 @ 10:55PM
Tony Ward said...
Personally, I would love-- LOVE-- to see a Mobile Finale app (MakeMusic, are you listening?!) which would enable you to jot down a melody or brief passage when inspiration strikes you on the go. "Finale Motive" or something clever like that.
Reply
7-11-2008 @ 10:57PM
lakiolen said...
That app looks worse than the sample Metronome app from the SDK.
Reply
7-11-2008 @ 11:18PM
JClark said...
MooCowMusic's "Band" looks pretty good to me. It gives you a virtual keyboard, guitar, drums, and harmonica at least. It apparently also lets you record and overdub each instrument. Maybe it doesn't take full advantage, but it's certainly more than a metronome or guitar tuner.
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 1:14AM
Jesse said...
The people at PSP Rhythm (great homebrew music app) say they are developing for the iPhone/iPod Touch. I'm assuming this means another similar music app.
Q: Is the Rhythm Team working on anything else?
A: Yes! We are starting to develop on the iPhone/iPod touch platform.
http://psprhythm.com/
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 1:26AM
SpinThis! said...
Right.. the best apps are still coming. Geez, the store has only been out, what, officially less than a day? And the majority of eligible iPhone developers hasn't even been given a chance yet in the Apple store. The best apps have yet to be shown. It's an exciting time for iPhone/iPod Touch users.
I like the the midi controller idea. For those times when you just can't bring a midi keyboard along, having a virtual one on the iPhone could become useful or downright powerful for doing effects live in Mainstage or controlling EXS and other instruments in Logic—for example pitch bending and tweaking the envelope/cutoff., etc. via the accelerometer. Or just tweaking knobs with your fingers. (I admit, you can never have too many midi keyboards!) And more simply, just starting, stopping playback.
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 9:46AM
Joshua Ellis said...
@SpinThis!: Your point is quite valid, but devs have been able to write apps for the App Store for a while. It would have been possible to drop a killer app or two on the day of, if anybody'd really wanted to.
If Ableton makes a version of Live for the iPhone I'll sleep with it cradled in my arms at night. :-)
7-12-2008 @ 1:38AM
Just_a_guy said...
dude try moocow's band....
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 2:19AM
miniMusic said...
Give us just a little more time... music apps are coming.
-Chad
www.miniMusic.com
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 4:21AM
Dan said...
I can keep rhythm with iPhone metronome
iPhone metronome
iPhone metronome
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 5:10AM
ByronFortescue said...
I think there's a lot coming.. I've been playing with some very cool stuff on my jailbroken iPod. It's just a matter of time for those apps to come to the AppStore.. Or else, wait for a 2.0 jailbreak and happy jamming! :)
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 5:55AM
markqvist said...
"I'd personally love to see an app that simply lets you put interface objects like sliders or buttons or X-Y pads on the iPhone screen and link each one to a MIDI control"
This is already possible :) Personally I've been using my iPhone like this for several of the dj sets i've played. You can use an app called Mrmr on the iPhone to run the interfaces, that you create yourself. For the MIDI connection, I use PureData (an opensource version of MAX/MSP) to collect the OSC data Mrmr sends over the WIFI network, convert it to MIDI signals, that are passed on to Traktor DJ Studio.
So, to sum up, what you are talking about is already possible, and working sweetly :)
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 5:44PM
sonictim said...
Or you could just go with this:
http://thrill.artificialeyes.tv/i3L
7-12-2008 @ 1:16PM
Matt said...
MooCowMusic did have the Drummer app for jailbroken devices which acted pretty much like an MPC, but the problem with Apple's setup, is that it would impossible for you to import your own samples, and a sampler with a few useless, preset sounds *ahem* Soundboard *ahem* would just be plain boring.
To say that the iPhone has no great music tools is right, but I see Apple itself as being the limiting factor, not any developers will or ability. Tell Steve to open up the device, and believe me, the possiblities would be endless.
Reply
7-12-2008 @ 8:57PM
Peter Kirn said...
@ericdano: Uh, thanks, mate, obviously saying anything critical makes me a "git." Unfortunately, most of the things I write about music software tend not to be platform specific, because so much of the development is cross platform. The essence of sound programming tends to be at the DSP level, so not particularly platform-specific, either. That means that, usually by the time we're talking about a platform, it's because there's some shortcoming.
But the other comments here are absolutely right -- we have every indication that better things will be coming. I just had to say something, because I *will* get excited when those apps arrive, and it simply hasn't happened yet. And there are platforms that the mainstream tech world just hasn't heard anything about that remain of interest to musicians (like the hacked homebrew gaming scene).
The conventional wisdom that the iPhone/iPod Touch would sweep away all other platforms just doesn't apply in the strange, strange world of music development. How else to explain that the most popular platform for homebrew mobile music apps is the Nintendo DS? They're basically all free, running on a platform that isn't built for the job, isn't very powerful, and is actually quite difficult to develop for -- and then has to be hacked with specialized hardware just to run apps. If nothing else, part of what *that* demonstrates is that the advanced music programmers will find a way around whatever obstacles they encounter.
I have every confidence that the situation will improve on the iPhone / iPod Touch. It may take some time, because developing music apps is considerably harder than some of the development scenarios Apple has described. The music crowd will be watching ... and they'll find something useful to do with the Windows Mobile and Palm PDAs everyone else is discarding. (That has advantages, too -- if you're using it for music, your battery life is then dedicated to that while your phone is, well, a phone / music player / PDA / app platform / everything else.)
Reply
7-13-2008 @ 3:40PM
nda said...
If I may I'd like to point out there is (and has been for a while) some interesting and useful audio stuff for iPhones and iPod touchs:
http://www.nezmar.com/a-guide-to-itouch-audio-apps/
nda
Reply
7-19-2008 @ 5:36PM
concept10 said...
Everyone, including the poster of this article has MISSED THE BOAT _BIG TIME_ !!
Everyone is raving about the BeatMaker app. It's like an MPC in your pocket. Even Timbaland has posted a video of him making a beat on the iphone. This thing is a real sequencer!
Reply
7-25-2008 @ 7:49AM
samu said...
That would be the BeatMaker not released until two days after the last of those comments?
8-05-2008 @ 10:32AM
Ilya Tretiakov said...
Actually there is a real synth developed for iPhone/iPod Touch. It is called Noise.io (http://www.noise.io)
Noise.io offers ESFM (Enhanced Subspace Frequency Modulation) synthesis that is capable of producing all kinds of noises and sound effects. Making iPhone sound is simple: user slides his fingers over the device surface, that
produces sound that changes in realtime, delivering a unique sonic experience. The resulting sound can be synced to BPM via TapBPM function and can be even more enriched with sound effects like chorus, delay, flanger, etc. Noise.io (http://noise.io) comes with 81 presets and a user-friendly preset editor that allows creating user presets in no time.
Reply