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.
Here we are with the long-awaited third part of my series on how to make music with your Mac. In the first installment, we looked at audio hardware; in the second installment, we discussed digital audio workstations. Today we're going to look at useful DSP (or digital signal processing) plugins and software synthesizers to help aid in your music making.
Again, a disclaimer: these are only a small handful of the options open to you. There are thousands of Mac-friendly synths and plugins out there, and you can spend as much time playing with demos and tweaking presets as you can making music. Having said that, these are a few tools I've personally found useful in my quest to become a halfway-decent digital producer.
Korg is introducing the nanoSeries line (Japanese link, Google translation) of digital music controllers. There will be three USB-powered models: a 25-key velocity sensitive mini keyboard (nanoKEY), a 12-pad mini drumpad (nanoPAD), and a 9-fader mini mixer (nanoKONTROL). As you can see they're clearly intended for use with a laptop running the Korg Legacy Collection synthesizer software or similar, and nicely integrate with the white MacBook.
The Korg nanoSeries is expected in October for around $100 - $120 each.
Developer Intua has just announced BeatMaker, a sampler / sequencer for your iPhone / iPod Touch that allows you to record and make beats on the go. It appears to function similarly to hardware like the famed Akai MPC sampler, allowing you to create loops and beats and play them back in real time. BeatMaker also includes a three-channel EQ, synchronized delay and a bitcrusher, for those of you who like to rock the 8-bit sound.
No word on availability and pricing yet -- Intua is, like almost everyone in the Apple world, waiting for more info on the iPhone App Store. Developer Mathieu Garcia also says that, though MIDI won't be in the initial release of BeatMaker, it's planned for inclusion in upcoming versions, along with Open Sound Control, the successor to MIDI that's becoming standard in more and more music-making apps these days.
Last time, I looked at hardware audio interfaces for getting sound into your Mac. But now that you've got it coming in, what do you do with it?
You need a DAW, or digital audio workstation. DAWs are to audio what Photoshop is to image processing: they allow you to layer, mix and manipulate your sound into something resembling music. Most DAWs also allow you to incorporate MIDI sequencing to drive your hardware or software synths.
DAWs vary in terms of feature set and usability. At the high end, recording audio is a highly technical process, and many DAWs look like the control panels for nuclear submarines. But don't be discouraged if it all doesn't make sense at first -- as you learn the underlying concepts behind recording digital audio, all those little buttons and windows will become second nature.
There are a lot of different DAWs out there, but we'll take a look at a few of the Mac offerings here. These are the main contenders in the field, along with a couple of interesting also-rans.
In addition to the otherupdates released today, Apple has also released an update to Logic Express 8. Software update gives us the following information about the update:
Logic Express 8.0.2 addresses specific customer and compatibility issues of Logic Express 8.0. This update is recommended for all Logic Express 8.0 users.
You can download this update by opening Software Update (Apple menu > Software update) or by downloading the installer package from the Apple Support downloads website.
It's well known that Macs have always been favored by musicians. And why not? Macs are the only computers that come from the factory with a starter-level digital audio workstation, or DAW as the hip kids call 'em.
Point of fact, these days it's entirely possible to make perfectly respectable, professional quality music with your Mac and some relatively inexpensive outboard gear. Gone are the days when you could only use your desktop or laptop for sequencing MIDI tracks and writing lyrics for songs that you'd have to take to a professional recording studio to realize. You may not be able to make a Dark Side Of The Moon or an OK Computer in your bedroom but if you're a singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist or if you're in a band making music with simple arrangements, you can skip the studio process almost entirely.
Of course, when it comes to music, most of the quality has to do with talent and skill, not technology: despite tools like Antares AutoTune, no amount of digital wizardry can make you a better songwriter. And you'll still need to understand the fundamentals of audio production, which can be as exciting as watching paint dry.
But if you're wiling to educate yourself a bit, there's no reason you and your Mac can't make beautiful music together.
In this four part feature, we'll look at what it takes to turn your Mac into a music studio.
A few days ago I posted about the problems that the 10.5.2 update was causing with audio recording hardware and software from various manufacturers. Today, in a follow-up post to his original roundup of the issues at hand, Peter Kirn weighs in on Apple's accountability.
Kirn's position is that Apple is responsible because all the evidence suggests that the problems lie with the 10.5.2 update, not any one vendor's drivers. "Problems haven't affected everyone," says Kirn, "but they have been widespread enough that we have a right to be disappointed. As a user, I think I have the right to be disappointed. As a writer, it's my obligation to point it out. And I hope they do better in the future."
Of course, as Peter points out, rumor is that 10.5.3 is right around the corner, so hopefully these problems will disappear and Trent Reznor can get back to making music instead of standing in for angry Mac-using music geeks in my music-related posts.
Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music (one of my favorite music-making blogs, by the by) has a post rounding up a lot of the issues OS 10.5.2 seems to be having with various drivers for audio interfaces, including those manufactured by Digidesign (aka the Pro Tools folks) and its subsidiary M-Audio. This is a pretty big problem, as Digidesign and M-Audio are two of the most popular manufacturers of prosumer/professional audio interfaces. Peter's post links to apologies and explanations from the manufacturers as well.
According to Dave Lebolt, general manager at Digidesign, the 10.5.2 upgrade may have actually broken fixes that appeared in 10.5.1. And Kirn goes as far to say that he "certainly can't recommend Leopard in its current state," at least for making music, which is why I haven't upgraded from TIger myself.
Does this affect you if you're not a music geek? Probably not. But when your psycho microhouse-obsessed beatmaking roommate starts swearing and kicking his MacBook and ProTools rig around in the middle of the night, at least you'll know what the fuss is all about.
Back in 1984, Roland released the TR-909 drum machine as a successor to their legendary 808. Over the years, the 909 became one of the most influential and widely-used instruments in the history of electronic music, right up there with the Minimoog and the AKAI MPC sampler.
Now you can pick up IR-909, a free iPhone / iPod Touch version of the 909 over at roventskij.net. It has the 909's 16-step sequencer, eight drum sounds, and four pattern storage.
The minimal, lovely interface is close enough to the 909 for aficionados of the original hardware without sacrificing usability on the iPhone / iPod Touch's small screen.
IR-909 may not be a full-fledged replacement for your software sampler or old-school hardware 909...but I'm betting it's fun to play with on the bus or the train. Or hook it up to a pair of portable speakers and get your "Planet Rock" on anywhere and everywhere. 'Cause I know you got the funk in you.
If you frequent the library (or quiet places) then Breakaway could be a god-send. You'll never be afraid of your headphones becoming unplugged when you have John Mayer playing loudly in iTunes. If you have ever used an iPod, then you know that when you unplug your headphones while playing a song it is automatically paused; Well, Breakaway does this for your Mac and iTunes.
You can choose from many different settings in Breakaway, including setting triggers and fade in/out speeds. The only downside to this application is that it doesn't work with USB headphones, only ones plugged into the audio out port on your Mac. However, this freeware is handy to have around.
One of the features of a lot of iPhone wannabes is a built-in FM radio so you can listen to your local stations. Why limit yourself to local stations? FlyTunes is a free streaming radio service that gives you access to over 375 channels of music, news, and sports on your iPhone or iPod Touch.
Most of the channels are EDGE-friendly, so there is no need for a WiFi connection. To sign up for the service, all you need to do is point Safari on your iPhone or iPod Touch to flytunes.fm, and then follow the on-screen instructions to sign up.
How well does it work? Pretty darned good! It took me a minute to figure out that I needed to tap on the play button twice - once to bring up a small arrow and another tap to bring up the QuickTime player and start the stream. It only took about 5 seconds for the stream to queue up and start playing, and I didn't hear a hiccup once during about 5 minutes of listening over an EDGE connection.
Head on over to flytunes.fm and get your fill of free tunes today!
Call me a curmudgeon if you must, but I am wary of any app that replicates a physical object with its UI. Isn't a large part of the power of computing come from the fact that programmers can transcend the limitations of the real world and offer up better ways of doing things?
In this frame of mind I started looking at TapeDeck, a new $25 Leopard only recording app from SuperMegaUltraGroovy and Toastycode. As the name suggests it looks like a cassette recorder of old, but it does offer up some improvements. Each recording is saved on a new 'tape' automatically, so you never have to record over a previous file (TapeDeck records audio in the AAC format, so the files are small, but you can make them even smaller by lowering the recording quality). It also allows you to annotate your tapes and then search your recording library using that information, and you can send your audio to iTunes if you prefer to organize your files that way.
The real question is: does the UI help or hinder TapeDeck? I'll have to spend more time using TapeDeck to fairly answer that, but at first blush this app is great fun to use (especially if you remember using tape recorders like these).
Back in the day before Ableton Live and Reason and all the other sequencer apps out there, desktop electronic producers made do with trackers: apps which allowed the budding Moby or Paul Oakenfold to sequence samples. They were basically software equivalents of legendary hardware sample sequencers like the Akai MPC. These usually had all of the usability of a 1957 Trabant and none of the good looks.
Renoise 1.9.1 sequences like an old-school tracker, but it's got loads more features: plugin and MIDI instruments, effects chains, a halfway decent mixer, and even internal sample editing. Everything a growing music geek needs to make bleep-bleep music (and maybe more). It's available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS 10.3.9+ as a Universal Binary.
At 49.99 euros (US$75.80 at today's exchange rate) for a license, Renoise is a helluva lot cheaper than alternatives like Live or Reason, and the ability to use a single license for versions running on multiple platforms is nice. The only drawback is that the interface appears a little complex for users unfamiliar with the conventions of sample trackers. Also, the demo version times out and doesn't allow rendering of your tracks out to .wav format.
I still have nightmares about using FastTracker on my old Pentium II back in the late '90s, so I haven't tried this one myself. If you have, drop me a line in the comments and let me know what you think.
Peter Kirn over at Create Digital Music has posted a great round-up of all the tools people have put together to make music with the iPod Touch and iPhone.
The post touches on some of the more technical aspects of music app development on the iPhone and iPod Touch, and there's a great list of links to cool apps you can download and mess around with.
Music apps are still in their infancy on the iPhone, but hopefully, as the SDK gets out there to more developers, we'll begin to see more robust and feature-heavy apps.
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.
In addition to the 
It's well known that Macs have always been favored by musicians. And why not? Macs are the only computers that come from the factory with 
A few days ago I posted about the 
If you frequent the library (or quiet places) then Breakaway could be a god-send. You'll never be afraid of your headphones becoming unplugged when you have 
One of the features of a lot of iPhone wannabes is a built-in FM radio so you can listen to your local stations. Why limit yourself to local stations? 
