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…
More Challenging
Having managed to get halfway through the “10 Weeks – 10 Sounds” challenge with an interesting collection of new tunes, the time has come to step it up a little. February is home to two musical equivalents of NaNoWriMo that…
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.…
