iPhase; a generative music toy
Hi, my name is Mikael Holmquist – a member of the mutantspace arts co-operative – and recently I released my first iPhone application on AppStore called the iPhase. I’m writing here today to share with you the process of how it came about.
I became a member of this skills exchange last year during my ERASMUS exchange with UCC, Cork. I studied Computer Animation, Programming and Experimental Music. Inspired partly by those courses and partly by numerous sound art- and experimental music events I went to in Cork city I came up with an idea and started to experiment with sound programming.
During my course in Experimental Music I got particularly interested in the work of composer Steve Reich and eventually created a flash application that I named “phase”
It basically consist of a grid where you, with your keyboard or mouse, can place small bouncing dots that go back and forth playing tones of different frequency. The application explores the phenomena of phase, a recurring theme in much of Reich’s work. My idea was to use the application to create a number of dots more or less randomly – there is even a randomize function – and then listen to/discover the melody as it changes due to phase shift.
This summer I moved back to Sweden and during the summer I took a course in iOS programming. I was determined to try and make the phase application for iPhone since I thought it would perfectly suit a touch screen.
During the developing process the original idea grew and changed a whole lot. Partly because of the limitations of the iOS platform and partly because I felt I needed to commercialize it a bit if I wanted to get my $99 (the cost for putting apps on AppStore) back from Apple. So then it turned from being a sound programming experiment to a multi-instrument/beat-machine/generative-music-toy in which you can create beats and melodies choosing from 6 different instruments and 5 different drum kits.
If you have an iPhone/iPod touch/iPad and think it sounds like fun, take a look in AppStore for a further description or watch the video in which I play around with it.
Best of all you could download the app and let me know how you get on
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