wire to the ear

One of the things I miss the most about vinyl records is the nice large artwork, inner sleeves and lyric sheets they came with. Compact Disc booklets forced us into reading lyrics in font sizes only really meant for legal fine print. When the MP3 took over on the original iPod we were left with nothing to look at all.

I’ve always said that technology will save us. Man will end up using solar power, curing cancer and inhabiting other planets. Technology will also bring back album art. Next month Apple will release an interactive album application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The application will add artwork, lyrics and behind the scenes goodies to music.

“The new app also highlights an important point: CDs may lose one of the advantages they have clung to in their losing fight against digital downloads. Now that iTunes albums will offer the extras already found in CDs, the latter is quickly becoming even more irrelevant.” - TechCrunch

I know your thinking that, “Oh wow that’s nice but an iPhone is only 2.5 x 4.5 inches. That’s way smaller than my old 12″ albums!” You know where I’m going with this right? Time and tech will fix this issue too. Surely you can bet multi-touch tablet computers with large screens and nice speakers will be in our hands within 48 months. If someone makes a 12″ square tablet my credit card is done for! I can imagine tablet computers will get as thin as old 12″s too.

I hope independent artists will have a way to add their own interactive album artwork. Tunecore are you working on procuring that deal for us? So musician friends it’s time to start brushing up on your Photoshop skills!

photo credit: ntr23

via MusicWeek

Cid from Ohm Force sent me this video. How can I not try this out during my live show?

I share with you a video we shot this morning, testing the iPhone application iTM Midilab and using it to play/control a VSTi plugin.. - Cid, www.ohmforce.com

Oh wait… what if someone calls?

Here’s a nice and short video review of Last.fm for the iPhone from AppVee.com. I truly hate AM/FM radio so these new net radio apps that go with you via iPhone are just plain incredible. No more getting stuck in traffic and having to hear the same commercial repeated 50 times! Sorry radio you guys have been torturing us long enough now go to your grave please.

Here’s another tidbit concerning cars and the net: Chrysler in-car internet coming Aug. 25th, pricing revealed.

iDrum for iPhone from Art Gillespie on Vimeo.

“iZotope kicked Beatmaker’s ass” was the title of a forum thread at Ableton.com by user beats me that made me click and read further. After I watched the video above I think beats me may be right at least as far as usability and interface are concerned. I’m a superfan of Izotope Ozone and Trash and this new iPhone app sure looks like fun.

The most interesting thing here is the interface. The way you move from loop to sequencer, pattern edit, then pattern record is all well thought out and how can I put this? Fun and swooshy!

For more info head to Izotope’s iDrum for iPhone page:
www.izotope.com/products/audio/idrum/iphone

Do any of you guys have an iPhone and music apps yet?

The iPhone is a device that can combine and replace so many useful tools. Today you can add another tool to that list: an SLM (sound levelmeter). Faber Acoustical based out of Utah has been making signal analysis software on Mac OS-X for a while and they have just ported some of their sound measurement code to the iPhone. You no longer need to break out the a RadioShack SPL meter to prove your neighbor’s sex antics or too loud. Here are some of the features of SoundMeter:

• Measure time-weighted and equivalent sound levels.
• Employ Flat, A, or C frequency weighting.
• Time-weighted measurement options include Fast, Slow, and Impulse weightings.
• Keep track of peak and maximum sound levels.
• Save high-resolution sound level display images to the iPhone’s Camera Roll photo album. Descriptive text may be added to the image before it is saved.
• Calibration controls enable automatic calibration, relative to a calibrated sound level meter, or manual entry of the microphone sensitivity.
• SoundMeter supports rotating the iPhone upside down, so the built-in microphone sits on top of the device when measuring sound levels.
• With the iPhone’s built-in microphone, SoundMeter can measure peak sound levels of up to approximately 105 dB. With the iPhone’s included headset microphone, SoundMeter can measure peak sound levels of up to approximately 100 dB.

SoundMeter is available via the iTunes App store for $19.99. So far the reviews from people who bought it are positive.

Be sure to also check out SignalScope and SignalSuite at the FaberAcoutical website: www.faberacoustical.com

Once upon a time devices did not have multi-touch interfaces. Technology is moving at a blistering rate. I hope when Apple releases the Macbook Touch or whatever they call it they license “Touch Me” by Samantha Fox for the TV commercials.

The video above is the PacklSound1 iPhone app.

via gizmodo

Remember my post about “Webcam music and effect controllers” where I mention Seesmic? This morning I came across Igor and his message “I hate iPhone”. Considering I added an iPhone category to this blog I thought it relevant to show the other side of iPhone love… iPhone hate. Igor is hilarous but we all agree to some of his points I’m sure.

My friend Rich who happens to work at Apple Cupertino (yes I have friends in high places!) wants me to get an iPhone. He knows to appeal to my vanity so he sent me the screenshot you see here of my MySpace page on the iPhone. Once you install the free app you can do pretty much most of the things you can on the real site including send and receive messages, browse friends, bands, share photos and post bulletins.

However, all is not well with this application. You see my dear friends there is no Flash on the iPhone hence you can’t play videos or MUSIC. You can look at this with the half full or half empty mentality… The app is free and you can accept new friends and messages which is great. Or… What? It can’t play music? Isn’ this supposed to be a mobile MySpace? I suspect we will see an update when the Flash, Silverlight, SproutCore war settles down.

Get MySpace Mobile: click here

Well the iPhone killer app is here! Who thought it would happen on day one? You know when your with friends and someone sings a tune and everyone is like, “What the hell song is that? I know that one! What is it? Dam I can’t remember!”. Next you all stand around grinding you teeth frustrated your brain can’t come up with the answer. Well if you own an iPhone just tap the Midomi icon and then get this amazing fact: sing the tune into the phone OR hold your phone to the song playing and after a few seconds Midomi will identify it!

If you know the name of the song or artist you can also just type it in or say it into the iPhone’s microphone. But the crazy coolness doesn’t stop there. Once your song is identified the app will take you to either YouTube to watch the video or the iTunes Store so you can buy it.

Does it work? I don’t know I don’t have an iPhone yet. It’s free so if your an iPhone owner load it up let me know please.

Go get it now: link

By the end of today Steve Jobs will most likely announced newer, better, cheaper iPhones. In addition to the hardware the iPhone application store will launch. Being a gorgeous hand held device with a touch screen makes it perfect for music software. I suspect over the next few months we will see dozens of touch screen sequencers, synths and drum machines. Will we see any power players like Ableton jump on board early on? I doubt it but you never know.

Today a company called Intua announced BeatMaker (what a unique name!) which will be one of the first “for sale” apps. It’s a “Sampler Interface” which leads me to believe it can’t sample via the iPhone yet but I could be wrong. BeatMaker is also a sequencer and has eq, delay and bit crushing capabilities. Here’s a screenshot:

Another music app for the iPhone ready to launch is Moo-Cow-Music’s “Band” (oh god another great named app!), This has a virtual band of drums, bass, guitars and keyboards ready to play. The key feature of course is, “Multitouch - press up to five keys at once for complex chords.”. Here’s a video of “Band” in action:

photo credit: tnkgrl