For app store user bases, iOS has it the best no doubt and many big hitting companies with a legacy as old as 40 plus years and more are still engaging themaelves on the app market. Korg gadget is Mac and iOS only. Korg Electribe app is iOS only. iMPC app is similar. Beat maker 3 same thing. But FLStudio has an app version too. Not that it has to work directly with the desktop version but it certainly covers the market presence part. Gol who is like Taktik for FLStudio is from Belgium and also handles all marketing and development with his small company very similar to Renoise. Both are very successful in their staying power and have a competitive market. But in this theme Gol and FLStudio are taking a right approach as far as a drum machine is concerned. Their mobile app is not too interesting in my opinion but it’s a valid application.
A good quality tracker for either iOS or Android is sorely missing.
For note entry I agree SunVox is a pain to use but here is where a good UI research can be done as nice project that culminates to a store app. How do you translate the speed and intuitiveness of a tracker to a touchscreen device?. Keyboard mode is already expected via Bluetooth or OTG cable. So a UI which enables drag and drop of just 7 notes from C-B and then simple swipe motion for up down or octaves or double click to sharp or flat and so on…can be done as a simple but highly effective note entry method. Also because this app will do lots of other mobile specific entertaining features you don’t have to bank on exclusively for that classic tracking audience. As I said include a piano tool too. Include audio tracks too… Now is the time to implement all that and not on the desktop version by using Lua scripts. Apps will be welcomed far more widely and readily than the desktop versions.
Also cater to everyone, not just musicians with a hollywood film scoreing budget but new users, music enthusiasts, hobbyists, music students, looper users, finger drummers, regular DAW users who dont necessarily know about tracking but have that option to explore it from their mobile device and so on…
Csound which has a 30 year history originally written by Max Matthews and currently maintained by Victor Lazzarinni and community work done by Richard Boulanger and others…also have staying power and after years of APIs and academic oriented books…they also have a CSOUND app now bringing it to the more people. And it’s not like such frameworks are used by Junkie XL or Taylor Swift or Hans Zimmer…these guys are the original sound scientists and software experts who have the unique distinction that they also compose and produce music. How many people buy their books or tools(free btw) or watch their YouTube channel seminars, but they have a CSOUND community, Berklee courses for music technology, published books (4 books as of now), apps, a parallel academic career in various Universities of Arts and Sciences. Most importantly they have collectively built a highly extensible audio framework from the lab work at Bell Labs to a long lasting language like C where so many audio frameworks in the past have come and gone. And another most important thing is that they have built a body of compositions too and they keep working on it at an academic level and artistic level. They are also excellent programmers and technicians. I think it’s a unique community to learn a lot from and possibly even contribute to in future.
Back to Renoise, an app is most definitely worth it just like a video training series or a book is totally worth it too.
It’s the thing about this scene that academics can’t figure out…no one takes the initiatives to explore a few avenues a little further than our comfort zone.
Forget money BS, think community building and knowledge sharing and dissemination of a high quality software. Also make it a paid app btw…that settles all arguments.
NB.
(@Dblue: apriori, this is not an anti this or anti that post segment and it’s purely a side debate on a well constructed and written about intellectual topic that has its origins in Europe, you should have interest in this by all means…i.e. highly recommended topic)
I have been reading a lot recently about 17th century French culture and the history of its Bourgeoisie (and the significance of the the word) and its various connotations for the past 300 years or so till today. The fact that after monarchies and tyrannical rulers got over in the past few centuries, the age of the merchant or business man has taken over. If you read the analysis of Goethe and Nietzsche and other playwrights and political analysts you will find that they universally detest the ‘price mentality’ and terms like ‘conspicuous consumption’ or words like ‘philistine’ and ‘vulgarian’ come to fore. All these terms including Bourgeoisie are meant to denigrate a person or a class of people who/which is not of true nobility but rather aspires to be part of it by pretentious ambitions and no integrity to speak of, at the very least in the historical sense of the word. Notably such people are uncouth and boorish to never pursue or cultivate intellectual and artistic or creative endeavours but always want other people to follow their league of being mostly petty money minded. For the most part even the intellectuals have observed this trend and class of people or section of society who thrive purely to live off material gains and a rather hollow way of getting ahead in life. For an intellectual or a creative working on his defining roles it’s highly unlikely that any useful inputs would come from such demographics, which is reduced to mostly like a human ATM who can spit out sponsor money becos of the trade systems in place, with the added insult to injury that even the business classes understand their obvious limitations in these matters. Much like the ‘proletariat’ or the genuinely working class people who primarily have value based on their physical labour, the Bourgeoisie are good at not knowing the value or anything but are ready with a list of market prices to put onto anything. Oscar Wilde paraphrases that such people which is a large majority nowaydays ‘know the price of everything and value of nothing’, also labeled as ‘social cynics’. It seems that these patterns have long been deconstructed by the intellectual and privileged community. Both have noticed the pretentiousness and hollow nature of the business demographic.
By my extrapolation of the same idea say in the future we live in a military economy, does every single intellectual, creative, academic and nobelman have to kill people physically to survive so that the social system sees them as full of merit? Likewise I strongly suggest reading up on classic literature to get an authoritarive view of the the moral decay and massive debasing of human potential and promise done by the ‘money minders’ all around that have taken over so far right after the very strata of society(upper nobility and intellectuals both, one has power the other prestige, the businessman has neither and mostly everything else by proxy, becos of gold in his pocket) that they have had ambitions for, yet know in their own hearts where they actually belong. It also remarkably equalises everyone to a bare score where getting ahead in the intellectual world meant investing years of contributive research and output whether in the arts or sciences or even politics of the emperor varieity, the businessman can mostly just borrow some capital(from like minded folks and institutions) and trade items up or down to make a commission out of it. Such is the nature of his contribution. Now, in today’s world instead of young people pursuing contributory domains and without a doubt enriching themselves in parallel, they are getting suckered into thinking like the Bourgeoisie class and have made ‘money scoring’ and the subsequent ‘conspicous consumption’ their daily rigour and routine of life even raising it to ‘life defining status’. This is what happens when such parties are given uncurtailed permission to become ‘project managers’ of the world. But none of this has gone unnoticed btw, the concerned parties still know what has happened and who we are dealing with.
Btw this is not mine but the analysis of intellectuals for the past 400 years…I have similar ideas but it saves time to stand on the shoulder of giants for two obvious benefits:You don’t need to waste time reinventing the wheel and you travel faster ahead on their shoulders. Personal thanks to these brain power behemoths.
Taking cues from the legacy of intellectuals and creatives throughout the ages from the mists of time till today, rather than just aiming to be an entertainer, place art and your craft at the highest podium and it will enrich you and endow you with skill and wisdom till your late years and leave you with a legacy behind that you can be proud of. Be true to it and it shall be true to you. Be aware of the current ‘merchant system’ and do your best to survive and thrive with educated prowess, but also know what has been said and disseminated about it and burn that inner spark with full power. In my opinion don’t become a Bourgeoise if you are an intellectual or a creative (and if you are of true nobility then you have every reason not too as well…).
This period will get worse and die out…
Good place for starting research :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourgeoisie
Edit: Sarcasm: Pretty sure Aristotle and Plato thought about getting royalties before writing their treatises(aka let me not write it becos no one will read it… or pay me money to write it). The idea of political thought, oration and debate was born right out of Ancient Greece, in fact young guys were schooled on these skills by their mentors.