Last night i picked up an Amplitude iRig from Best Buy (about $40). It wasn’t too long until I had some old gear going through any music Apps that allowed input. The photo above shows a Boss Dr. Rhythm DR-110 into the Moog Filtatron app. iRig works as advertised and I was very impressed with Filtatron. I think that Moog hired some good coders because it sounds right. I also think it was smart of them to release this on touch devices and not as a plug-in that you would have use a mouse with. This thing begs to be played with. The feedback and tape delay effects are great. I tried to plug a Shure SM58 directly into the iRig but I think I need a pre-amp to get my signal much hotter before it will be of any use.
“Simply plug the iRig interface into your mobile device, plug your instrument into the appropriate input jack, plug in your headphones, amp or powered speakers, download ‘AmpliTube FREE’ version for iPhone or for iPad, and start rocking!” – ikmultimedia.com
For more info: ikmultimedia.com/irig
This entry was written by , posted on November 21, 2010 at 6:08 am, filed under apple, drum machine, iPad and tagged Amplitude, Boss, drum machine, feedback, Filtatron, filter, iRig, moog. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Back in May I had a post titled Make music videos with iMovie in 5 minutes. It lead to a Macworld article on Beat Markers in iMovie 10. Gary at MacMost has posted the above video tutorial of the same concept albeit with iMovie 11. Can you see how very it easy it is to make a competent music video? I really love this.
“Beat Markers allow you to set points in an audio track and then drop in video with cuts that match the beats. After timing out the beats in a soundtrack, all you need to do is drag and drop video or photos into iMovie and the video will be cut to match the markers. You can even add transitions that fit along with the beats.” – macmost.com
For more info: apple.com/ilife
This entry was written by , posted on November 20, 2010 at 6:27 am, filed under apple, video and tagged Beat Markers, iMovie, music video, video. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Derek Sivers is the man who created CD Baby. He posted an interesting article on his blog on some of what went on behind the scenes as Steve Jobs created iTunes. It shows another case of music industry battle. I think we are lucky that Tunecore was able to strike and promote a good way to get Independent music into the iTunes music store. I know there are other ways in but imagine if underground artists were locked out.
“I decided to refund everybody’s $40, with my deepest apologies. With 5000 musicians signed up, that meant I was refunding $200,000. Since we couldn’t promise anything, I couldn’t charge money in good conscience.” – sivers.org
Read the full article: http://sivers.org/itunes
This entry was written by , posted on November 12, 2010 at 5:10 am, filed under apple, business, political and tagged apple, CD Baby, Derek Siver, iTunes, Steve Jobs, Tunecore. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
This week Peter Kirn of Create Digital Music posted a great article on the upcoming full MIdi support in iOS 4.2. We are getting “WiFi Midi” which appears to be an Apple proprietary system for Apple devices to communicate wirelessly and official USB Midi support via the iPad Camera Connection Kit (Amazon link). It seems we will enter the next phase of music software and hardware on iOS devices once developers have the new Core MIDI goodness in their hands for a while. Is my Atari ST jealous yet? Read the full article on CDM here: createdigitalmusic.com/on-ipad-midi
“In iOS 4.2, best known for leveling the playing field between Apple’s handhelds and tablet, you’ll get full-blown MIDI support. It was clear in leaked details from earlier releases that Apple’s Core MIDI framework was finding new life on the mobile OS, but not directly what that would mean for hardware. Now, the hardware picture is clear.” – Peter Kirn
photo credit: ConfortModerne
This entry was written by , posted on November 5, 2010 at 6:15 am, filed under apple, iPad, iPhone and tagged apple, iOS, iPad, iPhone, midi. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
So as usual Apple has released a bunch of new items and previewed some tasty things. I like the new Macbook Air in theory but until they get a bit more quick they are useless as live show machines. Facetime in OSX is a no brainer if you have an iPhone 4 and a spouse at home. iLife 11 seems to be just a minor feature bump. It’s still killer software that makes all Macs even nicer especially considering the price. With regards to this blog any music instruction is good so if you get a copy please watch a few piano lessons in Garage Band ok? Lion is what has me happy. The new Mac App store is going to be great and bringing much of the iOS stuff into OSX is a win. Don’t kid yourself and believe what Steve said today about touch screen Macs. He’s lying through his teeth… they are coming 100%.
“We took our best thinking from Mac OS X and brought it to the iPhone. Then we took our best thinking from the iPhone and brought it to iPad. And now we’re bringing it all back to the Mac with our eighth major release of the world’s most advanced operating system. Mac OS X Lion arrives in summer 2011.” – apple.com
For more info: apple.com
This entry was written by , posted on October 20, 2010 at 7:06 pm, filed under apple and tagged apple, Lion, Macbook Air. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
A few days ago Tunecore sent me an email containing an Excel spreadsheet to fill out in order to procure my Apple Ping profile. Last night I received an email from Apple with set up instructions. The process only took a few minutes. I picked my preferred genres, uploaded my photo, typed a two line bio (they can be longer if you like) and picked ten songs I wanted to feature. That last part is interesting because I checked out a few other artist profiles and the hip-hop guys all chose some of their own music while most others picked a selection of music they were listening to. I went the later route to give fans a taste of my influences. All the songs have to be in iTunes and happily even the obscure music I searched for was there. To kick things off I uploaded a few photos from my recent live show and a video from my last show in Malta. The only real downer is when I went to find artists and people to follow I discovered most of the bands I like don’t have profiles yet. If you are on Ping please friend me there and let me know if there is anyone interesting you are following.
“True fans know it all: What their favorite artists are playing — and when and where they’re playing it. Set your inner groupie free by following your favorite artists on Ping.” – Apple.com
The Horrorist at Ping: click here
This entry was written by , posted on October 14, 2010 at 3:20 am, filed under apple and tagged apple, iTunes, Ping, social network, The Horrorist, Things to Come Records. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
As a musician the word to describe how I feel about the new Apple Ping social network is: exhausted. Musicians have become the tech industries guinea pigs. Why not? We try anything and work cheap right? After creating and curating profiles on MySpace, Last.fm, Imeem, Facebook and then Facebook Fan Pages and on and on now it’s time for Ping. Of course most musicians I know won’t be able to create and artist page yet will they? At this point in time indie artists will have to create normal user profiles and watch the Lady Gaga’s get all the love. As an Apple fanboy I’ll download iTunes 10, create my profile, share it with the world and friend a bunch of people I don’t know. Let’s hope the new network really does help music discovery.
“Follow your favorite artists with a click and become part of their inner circle. Get in on the action with artist photos and status updates. Even add comments to join the conversation. Find out what music an artist likes and pick up a few recommendations. Ping is built into the iTunes app on iPhone and iPod touch. So you can see artist updates from anywhere.” – apple.com/itunes/ping/
Download iTunes 10 with Ping: click here
This entry was written by , posted on September 2, 2010 at 5:32 am, filed under apple and tagged apple, iTunes, Ping, social network. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
Here are screenshots of the two pages of music creation Apps I currently have installed on my iPad. The apps are: Aeolian Harp, audio palette, bleep!BOX, Beat Counter, Bebot, DopplerPad, Dropophone, Everyday Looper, FunkBox, iElectribe, ImproVox, iSample, iStylophone, iVoxel, Loopseque, Jasuto, Magic Piano, Melodica, MorphWiz, nanoloop, NanoStudio, NESynth, NNN MONO, Radarhead, sampletoy, SongMaker, SoundPrism, Soundrop, SoundyThingy, synthPond, Tiction AV, technoBox, TOPLAPapp, TweakyBeat and VoiceKeyboard.
Some of the Apps are iPhone Apps but because of screen size are much more fun on the iPad. There are a few music creation iPhone apps I have that I didn’t put on my iPad because they work fine on the smaller screen. Interesting the combined total price for all the Apps above if you bought them today is $137.74. I think that’s pretty good for all the touch screen sounds and creativity you get.
“The iPad has two internal speakers that push mono sound through two small sealed channels to the three audio ports carved into the bottom-right of the unit. A volume switch is on the right side of the unit. A 3.5-mm TRS connector audio-out jack on the top-left corner of the device provides stereo sound for headphones with or without microphones and/or volume controls. The iPad also contains a microphone that can be used for voice recording.” – Wikipedia
If you have any questions about any of these or want my own review just let me know.
This entry was written by , posted on September 1, 2010 at 3:03 am, filed under apple, iPad and tagged Apps, iPad. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
My favorite device just got better. Videochat? Beam me up!
FaceTime. Retina Display. Multitasking. HD Video recording. – Apple.com
The WWDC Keynote is now online: click here
This entry was written by , posted on June 8, 2010 at 3:53 am, filed under apple, iPhone and tagged apple, FaceTime, iPhone, iPhone 4, Retina Display. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
I know just another iPad synth demo. But this one is uber Liquid Skyesque therefore it gets a post. Every Wednesday in the middle of hardcore Left Brain thinking it’s good to get a shot of the weird. There’s no reason to be all spreadsheet for five days!
“Left Brain… Logical, Sequential. Right Brain… Random, Synthesizing” – funderstanding.com
For more info: retronyms.com/synth
This entry was written by , posted on June 2, 2010 at 5:21 am, filed under apple, hardware, iPad and tagged apple, iPad, Kaossilator, Korg, Retronyms. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink and follow any comments with the RSS feed for this post.
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