When Apple released its I-Phone SDK , developers around the world had a free pass to create anything they could imagine for the multi touch interface. Not surprisingly there has been a small gold rush of apps that allow you to make or manipulate tunes with the newest must have consumer gadget. Here is a short list of some of the interesting ones and not so interesting.
IPhone Midi Controllers Apps
Thanks to Bento-San for pointing out that I forgot to mention there are some apps that allow you to use the I-Phone as a wireless midi controller. There is one package in particular that has a nice X/Y interface, sliders, buttons AND a monome type interface (video)
i3L (pronounced “i thrill”) is Freeware, and was developed using Max/MSP from Cycling74 and is a support application for akaRemote by Masayuki Akamatsu, i3L receives pre-defined UDP messages from akaRemote.app running on the iPhone, scales the values to MIDI, and allows you to configure the sending MIDI channel and control change message number. While this software was developed to work seamlessly with our Real-time 3D VJ software Thrill, ( http://thrill.artificialeyes.tv ) you can use this program with any audio or video software which receives midi messages.
Midi I-Phone Link
The Iano (now re-named moo cow music pianist)
Want to jam out on the piano while djing but your too lazy to get a real midi keyboard? No problem just whip out your Iphone. It may not exactly create a rock star moment but some girl is bound to give you her phone number afterwards.
Moo Drummer
The same people that brought the piano app let you add a vintage beats, samples and drum machines to your sets. Dj Solomon claims the 808 really thumps in the club. If I was at a club though and you played that damn air horn every 10 seconds the crowd would most likely riot. You can also load your own samples
Idj-
the creatively named app thats not out yet.
MixMeister Iphone App
As far as I can tell this is just a branding ploy and serves no functional purpose. Then again perhaps it does. Check out the youtube video
TapTap revolution
Develop your controllerism skills while riding the metro. Youtube demo.
And the photo above?
Its a photo shop mock up. no such app exists yet. Besides, there is no way you could accurately press the right controls. Typing on these things is hard enough. Not to mention there may be one serious deal breaker for any Iphone application. Here is a quote from one of CDM’s readers:
” One problem that will initially inhibit iPhone-based DJ tools is that the iPhone SDK doesn’t currently provide access to the iPod music database. And the provisions of the development agreement are that 3rd party apps may only use officially published API and may not directly access other applications’ data. On the other hand, there are Jailbreak-ware apps currently available for the iPhone that do access the music database (e.g. Tap-Tap-Revolution). So an iPhone-based DJ tool is clearly possible, but not currently by Apple’s rules. ” Richard Lawler March 19, 2008 @ 11:50 am
