WakeUpIPadDevs.mp4

This is my take on what iPad instruments need to do to be playable! If you are writing an instrument for somebody else, then please think about these issues during design.

Some of Mugician's evolution was guided by Jordan Rudess' Morphwiz, Roger Linn's Linnstrument, and the many things I learned working with Leon Gruenbaum's Samchillian (my Xstrument instrument is a derivative of it).

Please feel free to post video responses with the best iPad instrument playing out there.

Category:

Music

Tags:

• ipad
• pressure
• sense
• instrument
• mugician
• Xstrument
• Xtrument
• fretless

[harmono]

Wow. These ideas have been in my head, now I'm seeing them on video. Nice work. My QwertyChord invention is mainly just for a non-musician to learn to strum chords, without learning all the chord configurations. This is for a musician definitely who wants to express himself.

[rrr00bb]

@harmono Don't fall into the trap that a lot of iPad developers fall into. An instrument made for a non-musician is an oxymoron; and thinking like that is little more than a commitment to build a toy. If you can't place fingers for each adjacent note on the glass then you can't play fast, and if you can't quickly reach the octaves you have no range, and if it has latency then you can't do anything practical with it - or at least nothing a child can't do.

[harmono]

@rrr00bb I know what you are saying. Ultimately the instrument has to be flexible, and responsive enough to be used in a performance. However, not all musicians need to play melodies, some may want to strum chords. The guitar serves that purpose for millions of musicians who mainly sing, and strum a guitar. So why not apply this to an iPad or computer keyboard? I do agree. Any musical instrument would require skill, but the advantage of QwertyChord is the learning curve, and the ergonomics.

[rrr00bb]

@harmono it's a good thing to remove unnecessary difficulties when building tools (vestigal constraints). nobody is thinking about having extreme suitability for *any* particular task, which is the primary determinant of the usefulness of a tool. if everybody asks to control with an external device and run out to an external device, what they are usually saying is that the tool is actually useless in practice; and will plug that stuff together around your tool once the ipad-novelty wears off.

[harmono]

@rrr00bb who is "nobody". What is "run" out to an external device. I think I know what you are saying, but it's difficult for me to put it together. I think what you are saying is that there are a bunch of "lame" iPad apps out there that are just useless toys.

[rrr00bb]

@harmono that's basically what i mean. the irony is that these are great programmers, and they have great synthesis engines. but i don't get what anybody is trying to achieve. so you have this app that runs on an ipad, but the playability sucks because it's a tiny 2oct keyboard, or a 4oct keyboard with tiny keys (and no pressure sense), 80% of the screen is just knobs. so let's run midi in... and also midi out to use the knobs and sliders... that's my impression of a typical ipad music app.

[harmono]

@rrr00bb Yeah I don't understand it, but I assumed that because of latency and other restraints, all they could do was gee whiz stuff. I could not take it seriously. I don't own an iPad or an iPhone, I have an Android machine. All of the apps have terrible latency. The only think I could see them doing is building some cute sequencer, but they all seem so one dimensional, like you said you are stuck with one scale. There is so much more that can be done.

[kwaig0n]

@rrr00bb

I think it's good idea to do it with OSC+Pure Data I'm already using it with TouchOSC and really like it

[rrr00bb]

@kwaig0n Mugician's last update was back in September. I have been working on its successor Pythagoras, which is like this but integrates microtonality with MIDI has a resizeable playing surface, and Xstrument-like octave rounding for very fast soloing. There are some things about MIDI which just don't fit with any kind of fretless instrument, but you can come close enough for it to be useful.

[kwaig0n]

I thinking of the same thing since iPad came out, i really awaiting of something like Lemur or even more advanced stuff will be released on iPad