Tapping Your Inner Clapton By JASON TURBOW October 1, 2009
There's something about an iPhone music app. For musicians, it's like having an instrument in your pocket. For nonmusicians, it's a way to coax sounds - often programmed to stay on key no matter what note one actually plays - out of what may be the only instrumentlike device they ever pick up. A main goal for many of these apps' developers is to introduce nonmusical people to music, and musical people to different kinds of music. And when taken less as a serious instrument and more as a sampler for the wide world of music, these devices are wildly successful. For those dying to shred, however, they leave something to be desired. The majority of apps in this category try to cram a fully functioning instrument into an interface that, while touch-sensitive, is still only three inches wide. It's about the same width as a guitar neck, so six strings fit reasonably well. Still, only a few frets can be covered at once, and even the simple acts of plucking a string and forming chords take a significant degree of finger wrangling. Similarly, while many apps offer recording features, synching up separate apps without external recording software is difficult, unless you spend a lot of time behind a mixing console. So the essential question becomes, are music apps real tools for artistic expression, or are they in the same league as, say, Bejeweled or other time-killing games? ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/01/technology/personaltech/01basics.html *********************************** * POST TO MEDIANEWS@ETSKYWARN.NET * *********************************** Medianews mailing list Medianews@etskywarn.net http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
