I use a lot (actually way too many) music creation apps. This looks really nice, but there are a few things that made me turn away after only a minute:
1) In order to use any instruments other than piano I need to like or share. I haven't even had a chance to build a song. As a user, I'm not comfortable enough to recommend your app to friends or endorse it.
2) There doesn't seem to be much available in terms of drums / bass. I might be missing something.
3) This is more of a nice to have, but customizing sounds through effects or parameters would be amazing and add to the diversity of sounds.
I really do love the interface. I think with a few changes you could be on to something great!
1) We definitely don't want to force you to recommend an app you've just started using. Feel free to experiment a bit more. You can also download songs from Discover (the cloud in the toolbar) to see how the different instruments sound.
2) We have drums and bass in two different packs, the Rock pack and the Jazz pack. The drum kits come with pre-set loops as well as individual samples for making your own beats.
3) Right now we have basic echo and reverb effects (in the mixer) and we're working on adding more!
Dude, why would you weld a nice responsive interface to the sound and sensibility of a cheap plastic keyboard? Make it work with Audiobus, rebrand it as a sequencer, and sell it for $10 to musicians that actually want something that sounds good. Nobody needs another half-assed implementation of General MIDI.
Do you have a recommendation for an app that I can use to make basic music for a game (think Ludum Dare level)? I'm not a music creator, but I want be able to create some sort of music without having to learn much about music creation.
The easiest one I've used is Figure (http://www.propellerheads.se/products/figure/). You'll probably want something on your desktop/laptop to pull everything together. Feel free to reach out if you'd like help with workflow.
Neither are particularly easy in comparison to other tools but because they come out of the game design community basically all the tutorials online are geared toward vg tunes.
Renoise http://www.renoise.com/ (demo seems to be full-featured) is a little more complicated but pretty powerful. It took me a little while to get used to the UI but it's worth it.
hmm... that's interesting, we use chrome for our web dev, so I'll take a look at that. Thanks for the heads up. But can you tell us what system you're on?
Just downloaded it - beautiful app! I also love the intro video - slick and professional, but gets straight to the point and gives an excellent overview of how the app works.
Unfortunately you need a fairly new Android phone to be able to pull something like this off. I wish Android didn't take so long to fix the audio latency issue.
That's because it's chromatic; the smart thing would have been to let you pick a scale (a subset of the 12 notes that sound good together, and which are standardized)and then constrain your note input to that, using the inaccuracies in your drawing for expression.
Also, in-app purchases for individual sounds, no MIDI, and no audiobus? Sorry, total fail. No musician is going to buy this and no non-musician is going to be any better off with it.
Nsxwolf, I suggest a copy of Animoog (if you feel spendy) or Borderlands Granular (if not), either of which will allow you to enjoy a rich musical experience within certain limits by applying touch to other things besides chromatic sample playback.
We actually do have the ability to constrain notes to a scale (the default for new songs is in fact C Major Pentatonic, not chromatic). We're also working on MIDI and other import/export options for future releases.
Lovely execution. This is the type of app that I feel Bret Victor is talking about, allowing you to explorer and create in new ways with immediate feedback.
The disappointing part is seeing that this is an iPad only app.
I'm sorry that we're iPad only, but you won't believe how large SoundBrush is, and how small our dev team is (just the two founders). We're right now strained for resources, but hopefully that won't be so later on.
Nice app. I find the overall color of UI elements to be a little too dark. Right now with a little room light reflections on my iPad I find it hard to see some parts of the UI.
The biggest issue I have is, unless it supports CoreMIDI that leaves anything I create trapped in the app and makes it much less interesting and useful to me as a music creation tool. It also rules out using it in conjunction with all the other music apps out there. I would really encourage looking into this and it is something I would probably pay for to enable.
Also I don't (and won't) use Facebook so that rules out any sharing, etc... for me. I'm not opposed to sharing features at all, I just won't use Facebook to do so.
We're definitely planning MIDI export and possible CoreMIDI support, stay tuned! The new Inter-App Audio in iOS7 also looks interesting...
In terms of sharing, Facebook definitely isn't required - you can email the song to your friends or you can upload it to our Discover service and share the link.
ok, I see that Facebook isn't required now but it wasn't completely obvious to me. When I tapped "create", it still showed the login via Facebook button and that confused me that it was asking to create a Facebook account. Maybe a carefully placed "Or" would make it clearer.
Inter-App audio as well as Audiobus (since it has so much traction) support would also be nice.
I haven't tried your app, but from the video it seems you have those discrete notes. Have you though about having a sort of continuous time/frequency domain? I guess you could do that with an Inverse Wavelet transform or Inverse Short Time FT with logarithmic frequency scaling. I'm assuming your sounds are synthesized, not recorded.
Another idea - how about making a part of the app sort of "real time" (or short delay), like an instrument? Seems it would take the intuitiveness and freshness of gesturing to a whole new level.
Those are some great ideas. We actually do have a realtime component - the note labels on the left side can be played like a piano without messing up your drawing.
The app is free to download and includes all functionality and 1 free instrument. You can get additional instruments by liking us on Facebook and tweeting, or through in-app purchases
I would like to recommend it to my fellow electronic musicians, but with such restrictions it is literally not worth the time. Make a lite version that presents the interface and 2 or 3 instruments simultaneously, and a premium one that just unlocks everything. There's a huge variety of electronic music software on the iPad, and musicians don't have the patience to be nickel-and-dimed.
Well, it's less of the camera and more of the iPad 1's processing power and memory. We do have an iPad 1 in the dev office - but no matter what we tried, we couldn't get it to run properly on it. Sorry, but this is something we probably won't be able to support in the future.
That was my first thought on seeing the multiple time lines. An Oramics based drawing system would be great along with a Nancarrow inspired pianola system!
People may be interested in http://dinisnoise.org/ by S Jagannathan - not trapped in discrete pitch classes. Not for tablets yet but I'll bet that happens...
PS: I might just get a tablet to try some of these direct manipulation music apps...
The 'music' category is one of the very few places left in the app store where you can actually charge a reasonable price for your work and still get traction. It's a shame to see something like this show up as a free app, especially with such granular IAPs as separate 'synth pads' and 'synth leads'. It smells a bit of the worst parts of free-to-play.
Also, you're risking a future rejection by requiring the camera when the app doesn't use it. Apple has a long history of pulling apps which request specific features that they don't use.
The interface is nice, an appealing take on the piano roll.
What I would love: When tapping a note for the second time would make it disappear. Currently, when Im trying stuff, I constantly switch between the piano set and the eraser. Thats pretty tiresome.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 129 ms ] thread1) In order to use any instruments other than piano I need to like or share. I haven't even had a chance to build a song. As a user, I'm not comfortable enough to recommend your app to friends or endorse it.
2) There doesn't seem to be much available in terms of drums / bass. I might be missing something.
3) This is more of a nice to have, but customizing sounds through effects or parameters would be amazing and add to the diversity of sounds.
I really do love the interface. I think with a few changes you could be on to something great!
2) We have drums and bass in two different packs, the Rock pack and the Jazz pack. The drum kits come with pre-set loops as well as individual samples for making your own beats.
3) Right now we have basic echo and reverb effects (in the mixer) and we're working on adding more!
Thanks for trying it out
I made this using mostly Figure and Garageband (to give you an idea of what can be done): http://rickohalloran.bandcamp.com/
Looptastic HD is quite nice for putting something together with almost no effort.
Musagi and Sfxr were both created essentially for making basic game music and http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA022293/pxtone/index.html PXtone from the maker of cave story.
Neither are particularly easy in comparison to other tools but because they come out of the game design community basically all the tutorials online are geared toward vg tunes.
(Not that most people would notice.)
Also, in-app purchases for individual sounds, no MIDI, and no audiobus? Sorry, total fail. No musician is going to buy this and no non-musician is going to be any better off with it.
Nsxwolf, I suggest a copy of Animoog (if you feel spendy) or Borderlands Granular (if not), either of which will allow you to enjoy a rich musical experience within certain limits by applying touch to other things besides chromatic sample playback.
The disappointing part is seeing that this is an iPad only app.
The biggest issue I have is, unless it supports CoreMIDI that leaves anything I create trapped in the app and makes it much less interesting and useful to me as a music creation tool. It also rules out using it in conjunction with all the other music apps out there. I would really encourage looking into this and it is something I would probably pay for to enable.
Also I don't (and won't) use Facebook so that rules out any sharing, etc... for me. I'm not opposed to sharing features at all, I just won't use Facebook to do so.
edit: a word
In terms of sharing, Facebook definitely isn't required - you can email the song to your friends or you can upload it to our Discover service and share the link.
Inter-App audio as well as Audiobus (since it has so much traction) support would also be nice.
Another idea - how about making a part of the app sort of "real time" (or short delay), like an instrument? Seems it would take the intuitiveness and freshness of gesturing to a whole new level.
The restriction isn't letting people get a feel for the potential of your app.
0: http://www.binaura.net/stc/wrx/soundbow/
https://hyperscore.wordpress.com/
Though in the intervening years (6 shit!) it appears to have gone from a cute mit tech demo to a commercial application.
But I was expecting something actually interesting like being able to draw waveforms like oramics. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oramics
People may be interested in http://dinisnoise.org/ by S Jagannathan - not trapped in discrete pitch classes. Not for tablets yet but I'll bet that happens...
PS: I might just get a tablet to try some of these direct manipulation music apps...
Also, you're risking a future rejection by requiring the camera when the app doesn't use it. Apple has a long history of pulling apps which request specific features that they don't use.
The interface is nice, an appealing take on the piano roll.
What I would love: When tapping a note for the second time would make it disappear. Currently, when Im trying stuff, I constantly switch between the piano set and the eraser. Thats pretty tiresome.