Month: November 2011

What can I tell you?

Updated 12-7-11

I haven’t forgotten about the topic or the great comments, tweets, and questions I recieved. I’m just low on time these days with album promotion, the holidays, and my day job. I’ve been backed to the wall with things to do, and many that I want to do are falling off the plate. It’s temporary, and I’ll be back at the blogging the first chance I get. My first priority is to get this process thing rolling in a way tat can be beneficial for us all. New questions are always welcome, emails to me directly are as well. Thank you for your support and great ideas.
Happy holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and all that.
Back soon.

I promised a while ago that I would write about my process for making ambient electronic music using only my iPad. This has been a bit of a struggle for me. Sure I know it, and I understand it completely, however putting that in sensible writing has proven to be a whole process of its own.
I have started writing it out, but I keep finding that trying to make sense of it all…well…doesn’t always make sense?
What I have so far is somewhat instructional, but also very philosophical. Thing is, that while I understand my philosophy or personal take may not be very helpful, it is ultimately a large part of my process.
So I thought I’d just reach out and ask you what it is that you would like to know specifically?
That should help me keep things on track and also answer the most concerning of questions you might have that I may otherwise overlook. Make sense?
I admit, at first I didn’t take it very seriously, and felt like it could look arrogant on my part to write it all out. Now, I better understand that some people really do care, and really do want to know. I’m honored that anyone would be interested at all in how I do what I do. So I sincerely want to be helpful.
That said, I ask that anyone interested in picking my crazy brain on the topic of making music on just iOS devices please post your questions here in the comments of this post.
If you’d prefer, go ahead and email me as well at: SmiteMatter@comcast.net
Tell me what you want me to write about. How’s that sound?

iDensity App Review
A Granular Playground

Review is based on use with iPad 1 iOS 5.0.1

 
There are a lot of apps around that can do a lot of crazy things with audio files for effect. Something I’ve noticed though is few actually perform well in all aspects and features. Students of many, but masters of nothing syndrome, in some cases I suspect.
iDensity is a strait up asynchronous sound file granular synthesis tool. It’s a suite of specific controls and features to warp audio in subtle to wildly creative ways. At first look it seems it doesn’t really do a whole lot, but that’s just not true. It is deceptively simple in appearance with a highly complex, and sophisticated engine that clearly has this type of audio design mastered.
iDensity has all the tools you need on one screen to make adjusting audio files you can easily import via audio copy paste (Just added ACP in most recent update!) and or record directly through the iPad mic. It also supports iRig Mic as well. Real time scrubbing, pitch shifting, time jitter, stereo width, grain size, are a few of the main on screen functions controlled by simple sliders to increase or decrease effect. There are 8 grain envelope shapes, and 9 preset sample files. The real fun is when you bring in your own audio files and just play around with all the sliders, setting and scrubber. If things sound too loud, or need a boost there is a nice normalize wave amplitude slider as well.

Recording is a snap, and copying to other compatible apps is just as easy.
My only gripe is the recording time is a bit limited, but not badly.
You can easily mix down your recordings for quick sharing in iTunes.

Supported audio are .wav, .aiff, MP3, .caf and M4A
For more details and information visit the apeSoft developers website.

iDensity is a lot of fun, highly useful, and a quality granular FX suite producing outstanding results in a professional and clean interface.

5 stars

Available in iTunes