So i bought an Android based tablet recently and this is all pretty new to me, never used Android before. I’m looking for some cool apps i might use. Here is what i have found so far which might be worth trying.
Should i decide to venture into Android development, what would be some nice choices if i don’t like Java. Corona SDK is LUA based and PhoneGap uses JavaScript with other web stuff. Any more choices?
Feel free to also recommend some good everyday apps, either paid or free, but please not ad infected.
I have Caustic and SunVox on my Galaxy Note phone and they’re really good apps, but somehow I did’t make it any further than playing with them, not making any real music. Huge Android latency didn’t help either, although I’ve heard this is improved on latest Android versions - which one is on your tablet? Ipad is much stronger here with some really great music apps which I actually use and really low latency.
About developing, I think native environment is the best option, except maybe if you want to go multiplaform. PhoneGap is supposed to be pretty good on this area, and there’s also Delphi/RAD Studio, which compiles to native code, although apps can be pretty large in size. But Delphi is quite expensive.
Caustic and Sunvox are both great theoretically but I have the same problem as tha_man where I just never finish anything on them, I just play with them. Caustic and Sunvox for desktop is free, lightweight, and can easily open whatever projects you start on your mobile device, so if you want to hard commit to them are your DAW they’re great solutions. But when I’m on my desktop, I just want to use Renoise and Reaper and I never finish anything I start in Caustic and Sunvox. So as cool as they are I don’t think they’re going to be too terribly useful to anyone unless they decide to hard commit to them as their primary DAW.
While I like SunVox I find myself using the two PixiTrackers much more often. SunVox has yet to feel intuitive to me, and the gaps between usage mean I forget a lot of what I figured out. Basically, each time I use it I have to relearn a bunch of things.
But the PixiTracker apps are just stupid easy to use. I find them handy for playing around with beats or rhythmic noises, stuff I can export as a wav file and then use as samples or loops in Renoise.
Many is the time I wait in the car while my wife does some shopping, and I hook up my phone or tablet to the car stereo and crank up some noisy beats and riffs.
For app development I’ve heard good things (but have not used) Android Studio (http://developer.android.com/tools/studio/index.html).
I get the dislike for Java, but if you can get past that I think you’re better off coding as close to native as possible. The other tools (PhoneGap, Cordova, etc.) might be better if you are targeting multiple platforms.
Thanks for all the suggestions, def something to keep me busy a bit. I would never switch to a tablet for fully making songs, just want to toy around with it and especially use it also as control surface. Found this handy tool Caffeine also which is useful when having the tablet connnected to PC or with PSU and prevents dimming of the screen. For development i didn’t know Cordova yet, this looks interesting and bookmarked it for later. Not even sure what to code yet but might come handy at some point.
Like the others have said, I also use Caustic 3 and Sunvox on my Nexus 7. I’ve bought an iPad Air 2 a few weeks back, which I prefer for making noise (really quite in love with Samplr, Sector, and Loopy HD), and I bought Caustic 3 a second time. Obviously, I enjoy it! FL Studio Mobile isn’t half bad either (only tried it on Android) and it seems to coming along nicely. Doesn’t hold a candle to Caustic, but nothing else does either.
If you want to use the tablet as a control device, definitely check out Lemur. It’s very popular on iOS and was recently released for Android also. It’s very good, super customizable, and complex.
FL Studio Mobile isn’t half bad either (only tried it on Android) and it seems to coming along nicely. Doesn’t hold a candle to Caustic, but nothing else does either.