Instruments
Some Loose Ends
The challenges may be over, but the music keeps coming! The weekly deadline to the challenges meant that some pieces that I started were left incomplete, so that I ended up at the end with 8 or 9 tracks in…
Sound Brush and Rührtrommel
I thought this last challenge was going to be more fun and less challenging than it turned out to be. A quick glance at SoundBrush gives the impression that it could be quite a usable application, a more visual take…
Piano, Ocarina and Rainstick
The piano is certainly the least unusual of all the instruments used in this set of challenges. We have a digital piano (a Yamaha Arius), which can technically also produce string, organ and choir sounds, but I wanted to try…
Launchkey and Thai Gong
We’re back in iOS land this week, with a fairly new instrument application from Novation (who normally specialise in hardware synths and MIDI controllers) called Launchkey. Unlike the other apps I’ve used in this challenge, this is not a music…
MeeBlip and Busilacchio Organ
In late 2011 I received and built a Meeblip synthesiser. This is an open source synth that you build yourself (though a pre-built version is now available). It only costs $50 (for the kit version) and is very well supported…
GarageBand and Egg Shaker
Garageband for the iPad is a ridiculously specified application. I can’t compare it with the regular version of Garageband, as I have never used that, but it certainly seems to possess the hands-on ease of use that I have heard…
BeatPad and Mouth Organ
BeatPad is another iOS drum machine, but one that is quite different from DM1, being perhaps more like a variant of the Akai MPC series (though I’ve never used one of those, so I can’t say for certain). Like DM1,…
Alto Recorder and Whirlie
Of all the ten challenges, this is the one I have been expecting to cause the most difficulty, as it is all about wind sounds, with little opportunity for contrast. This could easily have resulted in just being a wailing…
Kalimba and Celtic Flute
The kalimba is one of the newest instruments in my collection; it’s a traditional African instrument with metal tines attached to a resonator (in this case a coconut with a wooden top) and came from the Christmas market at Wilhelminenberg.…
NodeBeat and Clarinet
The second challenge for ‘10 Weeks : 10 Sounds‘ is a little more complex than the first and resulted in three long pieces in a fairly laid-back smoky jazz-club sort of style. NodeBeat is a graphical sequencer for the iPad…
