Reader Szymon Kaliski has released a new microtonal music app for iOS, MicroTones.
MicroTones is a microtonal synthesizer, allowing simultaneous playback of up to thirty sinewaves set with accuracy to one hundredth of a hertz.
You can place new sinewaves by touching the screen, adjust volume (moving up and down) and frequency. Combination of multiple sinewaves lets you create drones and ambient atmospheres.
To adjust frequency range use scale displayed at the bottom of the screen – move to lower/higher frequencies, zoom in to adjust sinewaves with more accuracy, or zoom out and see the whole picture.
Remove one or more sinewaves just by dragging them to the bottom of the screen, or all at once by shaking your device.
MicroTones is available for $2.99 in the App Store.
If you’ve used MicroTones, let us know what you think of it!
There’s a promo video here: https://vimeo.com/41554820
I’m playing with it for 2 days now and I can’t stop !
My advise : plug your iPad into your DAW and add 2 delays (my choice would be Wave H-Delay but any delay will do the trick) a small amount of verb. A looper or two could spice-up the mix.
SPECIAL HINT : to clear all the sinewaves just shake your pad… isn’t that smart ?
i love this app, same spirit as Berna, one of my favorite.
need a little bit of work to enjoy, but the reward is worth it.
POL
Fine-tuned sinewaves are always nice.
Problem: 1/2 herz is actually a crude step when you get below 100 hz.
You can hear the pitch steps per pixel at low end.
And half-herz steps are not really useful above say 2000.
So why not set pitch to 1/4 cent instead? There’s nothing in the maths that would prevent this.
Secondly, it would of course be nice to have *some* control over sines apart from direct fingering.
Ie setting up paths or loops to play. etc.
The playground could also be marked at chromatic scale or something.
Now that we for once do get some fine control over pitch..!
But these things would kinda break the concept I guess, so can’t blame him for not having it.
Still, it’s a little limited.
But nice.