The App Store is somewhat deluged with music-related applications. While I find many of the instruments to be novelties, the iPhone-based remote controls available for various Digital Audio Workstations have really caught my attention.

I've been playing around with the various musical remote controllers available for a while now. When the various iTouchMidi controllers were released, I got pretty excited. Problematically, I'm a fan of Logic Pro, and these intriguing but mostly Logic-incompatible controllers weren't up to snuff for my personal needs. It was a few weeks before I discovered the available OpenSound Control (OSC) apps in the App Store.

I've played with the lineup of controllers such as OSCemote and Mrmr (iTunes link), and both of those are a lot of fun with a good amount of potential. One stood out for me, though, and TouchOSC has officially become part of my home studio setup.

TouchOSC provides an array of control screens consisting of faders, rotary controls, buttons, toggles, XY pads, multi-faders/toggles and LEDs in various configurations. It communicates wirelessly with software and hardware which can receive and send the OSC protocol. I thought I'd offer a quick rundown of the steps I used to get from TouchOSC to Logic. I'm sure the same methods can be applied to other software, with a little variation.

An overview of the controller configurations in TouchOSC can be found in the gallery below. Read on for the lowdown.

The lovely and talented Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has posted a round up of music apps for the iPod / iTouch platform. The list includes tools for using your iPhone as a MIDI/OSC controller, making random weird digital art, visualizing your music and, er, listening to Snow Patrol's next album, amongst other apps. Peter's a thoughtful critic and his evaluations are pretty detailed and thorough.

If you're an aspiring iPhone musician / DJ/ sound designer, this is definitely a good place to start finding useful apps.