buzz muddleheaded: Music Goes Mobile: Making Music on The Phone

Music Goes Mobile: Making Music on The Phone

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There is a faint hypnotic tune ringing hauntingly in the distance. It is pulling you into a blissful trance-like state; slowly it blends with your senses and takes you into this inexplicable high, up to the seventh heaven. Can?t figure out where it is coming from? Look closely; there is no sign of an instrument nearby. For all you know, this idyllic piece of music may be coming from a smartphone.

With approximately 4 billion cell phones around the World (inclusive of 25 million iPhones), there is a lot of potential in mobile creativity, that is, using mobile phones for a host of unimaginable purposes. Perhaps, it all started when Ge Wang, a Professor of music at Stanford CCRMA, with an aim of bringing about a ?mobile renaissance?, founded the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra, popularly named MoPhO. Says Wang,

?It levels the playing ground in some ways because everyone has a cell phone. Further, they are communication devices. So inherently, they connect people.?

Transform the multi-touch screens, built-in accelerometers, built-in microphones, GPS, data networks and computation into powerful and yet mobile chamber meta-instruments ? transforming the phone device into a grand instrument is not as complicated as it just sounded. Devise a quick code and the cell phone turns into ?one of the most intimate and personal devices man has ever known, but also one of the most ubiquitous.? In 2008, Wang co founded a company called Sonic Mule (SMULE), exploring interactive sonic media. With this began an array of music making mobile applications. Not your regular touch and play apps, but more comprehensive, interactive, sound centred applications that pave a promising way for music making applications.

http://bit.ly/NPaGem

The trendsetter in this category is Ocarina, an app that converts the iPhone into a 12,000 year old clay wind instrument called ocarina. The app enables users to blow into their smartphone devices? microphone to play flute like music. Available for 99 cents on App Store, Ocarina creates sounds in real time, based on gestures, tilt, wind input and finger placement on the four holes displayed on the touchscreen. Another part of the app shows the globe of the world with glowing points of light on different parts of the globe, each of which showed someone somewhere who had just used the app. You tap on a glowing point and a tune played by someone in that part of the world will be heard by you, wherever you are.

?This is connecting people musically that was not possible with formal performance,? says the founder. Perhaps this is the first instrument that connects and lets others having the same instruments hear what they are playing. ?One of the most magical programs?, as put by the NY Times writer David Pogue, Ocarina is among those very few music making apps revolutionising the mobile applications category.

I have listed below some other apps in the mobile music making category that have gained widespread admiration, owing to their unique features:

http://bit.ly/OvJiRF

iBone: It is a phone trombone which lets the user touch or blow into the mic to play a sound. Pitch can be changed by sliding the finger on the touchscreen and volume can also be adjusted. This app is available on Android as well.

Gliss: Gliss goes beyond the method of music making, uniting different human senses and skills. It lets you create music by drawing on your smartphone. The app sort of lets you draw what you?d like to hear. There are 5 colours in the palette, each representing a different type of sound. A cursor on the screen interprets your drawings. Tilting the phone left and right enables you to play the music backward or forward, fast or slow. The tilting also leads to the drawings falling to the either side, thus changing the sound?s pitch.

http://bit.ly/O9rBd7

Drum Meister: If you are someone who likes loud music and huge instruments, then this iPhone music making app is for you. It allows you to play drums on your phone using fingertips. It includes 10 drums, all on the same screen. Perhaps the coolest thing about this ap is that it lets you rearrange the position of the drums which influences the sound produced, through the 3D surround effect. It is available for $1.99.

So many apps focusing on enabling users to make their own music through their smartphones makes me wonder if everyone owning a smartphone will soon turn into a musician. It is truly a mobile revolution. As Ge Wang says, ?A mobile marching band isn?t far off.?

References:

Wired

Mashable

Stanford University News

Feature Image: http://bit.ly/P6iVjV