Musicians flex creative muscles on iPhones

seraph

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/09/MN0419DGFS.DTL

robsol · Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:59 am Post subject:

Interesting. As it were, I am posting this from my brand new ipod as a test.

I'm hoping to make use of it in the kyma environment and many other things besides.

So, er... Just testing. Smile

xjscott · Joined: Apr 25, 2007 Posts: 232 Location: Appalachia

Nice coverage. Reminds me of the other one recently I think on the BBC about musicians doing live code programming in Max etc. (Hm, can't find the article.)

I found Dave Smith's quote to be annoying though - "There are certainly people like Jordan who are always on the cutting edge and will take the time to do new and clever things with it. The average person may not have the time to invest in a new way of playing."

He seems to be suggesting that anything other than conventional keyboards are inaccessible to this mythical "average person", which I suppose is a stand in for the common man that the reader is supposed to relate to.

The BeBot is not inaccessible, it's the epitome of intuitive ease of use. Not only that but there are more people playing $2 Normalware BeBots right now than have ever played a Prophet 5 in history (that stat pulled out of my rear end since I have no access to BeBot sales data but is probably true since estimates of the number of Prophets is around 7000). The BeBot is also a more expressive and capable instrument in many ways. These sorts of devices are the future of music.

Dave co-invented MIDI itself and my Prophet VS is one of my favorite and best designed instruments, so I respect him much for those reasons, but as far as the future goes he should sit down and take a good look at the awesome stuff that is coming out nowadays.

seraph · Posted: Fri Sep 11, 2009 3:11 pm Post subject:

xjscott · Joined: Apr 25, 2007 Posts: 232 Location: Appalachia

And thank goodness for that!

I think that any argument that tries to discourage things by relying on claimed behaviors or perceptions of supposedly average musicians, listeners, audiences or people should be regarded with a skeptical eye.

I don't agree that instruments like the BeBot will never be "something used regularly by performing professionals", as is claimed. In fact, they already are used regularly by performing professionals. Dave must not get out much.

On another topic, looked up the last thing in that article, the six channel hexagonal path step sequencer mentioned at the end of the article. It looks fun: http://amidio.com/forums.html/iphone-music-apps/jr-hexatone-pro

seraph · Posted: Sat Sep 12, 2009 12:18 am Post subject:

GovernorSilver · Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 12:12 pm Post subject:

EdisonRex · Posted: Mon Sep 14, 2009 2:50 pm Post subject:

These apps get updated a lot. I notice the better apps seem to get a lot of small incremental updates. Certainly Jasuto has. There has been an OS update too, since those posts, at least for the iPod (I did my iPhone OS upgrade but I can't remember how long ago!)

I'm guessing if it was buggy, it might have a fix available now.

Monkeyfinger · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 8:45 am Post subject:

I've found the Hexaphone app to be stable.
I just need a manual!!!
How do you work this crazy thing?

rlainhart · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:18 am Post subject:

This should help:

http://www.youtube.com/rlainhart#p/a/u/1/yJj9nVXvnHQ

Monkeyfinger · Posted: Wed Oct 21, 2009 10:32 am Post subject:

Yep! That helps a LOT!
Thanks