Create Digital Music

This isn't exactly a revolutionary concept. Onyx Ashanti[0][1][2] has built an entire performance around it (literally, the the whole system is custom built). And on a sort of parallel track, nerds like Herrmutt Lobby and DZA have done some really remarkable things pushing the boundaries of what can be done with off the shelf MIDI gear[3] as well as with game controllers[4].

Perhaps Mi.Mu will be the best execution of a MIDI/OSC glove to date—it will probably have to be if it's going to make it on stage with performers like Imogen Heap and Tim Exile.

I will say, sometimes an encoder is exactly what you need. Other times what you need is a long throw fader (to say nothing of the very particular engineering of crossfaders for scratch DJs). I hope designers and engineers continue to experiment in this space, but not every conventional interface needs 'disrupting', and they certainly don't all need to be made wireless. I always feel a bit annoyed when these developments are framed as a breaking down of walls between performer and audience, a paradigm shift away from the dark ages of electronic musicians hunched over banks of knobs and 'checking their email'.

It's a cliché, and I'm not even sure it maps to reality all that well. I'm fairly certain Miles Davis spent the majority of his time on stage looking at piano keys. And if not there, at his collaborators. Maybe occasionally a glance towards the audience. Maybe. Stevie Wonder never looked at anybody. It never mattered,…

I try to keep my subscription to an absolute minimum since I like to leave some time for reading books. After a lot of culling, I'm currently subscribed to some popular feeds:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/ (general web design / dev)

http://www.alistapart.com/ (long form web design / front-end)

http://dailyjs.com/ (Javascript / node.js)

http://createdigitalmusic.com/ (digital music / software)

http://www.creativeapplications.net/ (new-media art)

And a handful of unpopular ones:

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/ (absolutely my favorite blog in the world – self-describes as "refactored perception)

http://www.tempobook.com/blog/ (same author as above, posts related to his last book)

http://worrydream.com/feed.xml (not really a blog, but Bret Victor writes some of the best long-form articles on interaction design around – read all of them)

http://www2.technologyreview.com/rss/video_rss.aspx (Tech Review videos, sparsely updated – mainly because the editor's interviews are awesome/hilarious)

http://idlewords.com/ (breathtaking travel blog from the founder of Pinboard)

http://www.loper-os.org/ (awesome / hilarious posts by a software heretic on the general terrible state of things in technology – keeps me in touch with Alan Kay-esque thinking)

http://we-make-money-not-art.com/ (the only contemporary art blog I like from a very dedicated Italian writer)

http://vagueterrain.net/ (occasionally published digital art magazine, themed topics, guest…

The app was called "Orphion", and it had several methods for detecting gestures/articulations: a gentle finger tip touch, a tap, and a push down. Apple cited forbidden private API use.

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/06/hands-off-apple-wants-to-pull-orphion-music-app-over-touch-apis/

Apple just called me to nicely tell me I use a private
API function to sense the area of the screen which is
covered by the finger for its articulation gesture ([CDM]
wrote about it). This is crazy – thousands of users love
it for this and it makes Orphion so expressive.

The app will be removed from the App Store in two weeks
if I don’t submit a new version without it – and I
currently can’t think of Orphion without this gesture.

So what I can recommend is

1. Everyone who wants to have the “original” Orphion get
it NOW from the app store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app
/orphion/id495465097), it will be only be there for a few
more days

2. Backup the current version to keep it. (Michael Tyson
from Audiobus made this great tutorial)

3. Tell Apple to make this great function officially
usable in apps (Any ideas how to do that?)

So far… let’s see if this is really the end of Orphion.

...looks like the petition worked and Orphion was allowed to keep the gesture functionality; https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/orphion/id495465097

Yes, that is a better analogy, but the technical bar for streaming audio is very low -- far lower than understanding the music. You'll be seeing a lot more consumer oriented uses of our data in the near future that stream music.

Developers interested in making a 'pandora of the future' should read about our deals with 7digital, IDJ and play.me/dada that handle the content side of things:

http://notes.variogr.am/post/1373556723/the-future-music-platform-music-startups-imminent

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2010/09/when-data-and-music-meet/

http://mashable.com/2011/02/24/idj-echo-nest/

For example, 7D has many millions of songs available for on demand streaming -- and you can get their IDs from us in API calls. Here's a pandora style playlist for KFW with 7D IDs, sorted by increasing tempo and only popular artists that sound like KFW; when we say things like "we have more data, we can do more" this is what we mean

http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/playlist/static?api_key=N6E4NIOVYMTHNDM8J&artist=Keith%20Fullerton%20Whitman&type=artist-radio&artist_min_familiarity=.5&sort=tempo-asc&results=20&bucket=id:7digital&bucket=tracks

My "crap app" got rejected for being of "minimal functionality" even though it duplicates the functionality of a physical device found in many restrooms in Japan, so it seems Apple is indiscriminately applying their policies regardless of application quality, leading to some making it through and others not. Case in point:

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2009/03/16/apple-rejects-free-iphone-tool-for-artists-because-of-minimal-user-functionality/

I would hardly call this as having "minimal functionality". Yet Apple thinks so. But neither I nor Apple should have that call beyond apps that are illegal, overly resource intensive or malicious. The market should be able to decide. This behavior hinders development across the board, especially when you have no insight into why an app is rejected or what it will take to get it approved. Will Shipley has a great post on his blog about this very issue:

http://wilshipley.com/blog/2008/09/iphone-app-store-let-market-decide.html

One of the reason for the audio latency issue on Android is the complex power management circuitry (PMIC) implemented on most of not all Qualcomm SoCs. That's why to anyone with experience in regards to using Android device in audios production, most would agree that the older 2011 Galaxy Nexus is still the Android device to use. Unlike the the recent Snapdragon based Nexus device, the GNex is based on TI OMAP4460 (dual-core ARM Cortex A9). It might not be a coincidence the Apple kept the number of cores on its A series SoCs to a minimum (only moving to 3 with the A8X).

http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/05/why-mobile-low-latency-is-hard-explained-by-google-galaxy-nexus-still-android-of-choice/