For me one of the most innovative and fun apps to use is Oscilab and was thinking some year ago how great it would be to be able to control hardware or other virtual instruments with the playfulness of Oscilab when composing. Asked the developer and it was something they were considering at the time. Guess they decided to implement it, as here it is!
Control - Note, Velocity and CC messages with midi using the flexible sequencers. Unfortunately it is only for Android 6.0 so it is not too many of us that can take advantage of this yet... Think that Oscilab is one of the more exciting apps that came out this last year as it actually succeeds in bringing something new and useful to the table but have not heard so much music made with it that is good. A lot of things that kind of sounds good but musically just goes to a certain point. Anyway these tracks actually to my ears are taking Oscilab to another level. It is 100% Oscilab and so the mixing and mastering have been done in-app (?) and sounds a little bit thin and could probably have been beefed up a little bit but it showcases the possibilities of the app outside of making some loops of ear-candy. p.s Have one complaint about the app... the interface is too dark and in any kind of daylight almost impossible to read on a smaller screen. Well at least it something to look at if you are extremely bored! Like that both persons already on the respective Youtube descriptions say that it is going to be bad. Oscilab is a interesting and very good application that actually do something new.
So it is nice that they have released a free version that will let you see if the different workflow is something that you could get into. Does not hurt that the synthesizer engine sounds good to! At first glance it does seem complicated but it is just a matter of minutes to start to get into it. Can not see any reason not to check it out as it seems that save is enabled and the free version comes with enough goodies to be very useful as you can see here: __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Features in the free version: • 28 wave shapers: control FREQUENCY, Filter CUTOFF, AMP and PAN of 3 devices. • 3 Channel mixer, with 2 FX channels. • Live Mode: 3 pads to tweak the frequency and cutoff of the generated patterns in real time. • 8 high quality sampled instruments. • Drum Machine with 3 high quality drumkits. • Analog Synth • Global harmonic control: change all the arpeggiators tune settings from a single place. • Analog Synth with two oscillators, featuring ring modulation, frequency modulation and ADSR control. Additional features available in the full version: • 2 synth + 1 drum channel • 32 sample banks • 12 drumkits • Record and upload your mixdowns to SoundCloud or other installed apps ───────────────────────────────── The Internet permissions are only required to download the samples pack into the app. __________________________________________________________________________________________________ Play Store link: Oscilab Free Maybe the second most exciting new application to come this year after Yellofier would be Oscilab and to read what Palm Sounds have to say about it go here:
http://www.palmsounds.net/2014/06/my-impressions-of-oscilab.html As soon as there is time I will have to write my own review as it is a interesting approach and the sound is very good. It almost feels like cheating doing music with it as it is hard if you set it up right to do anything that sounds bad but do not get me wrong it is not one of those loop / sample put together by number applications it is truly your creations in the end and think that it has a lot of possibilities to push it and make some unique and great grooves with it. Highly recommendable and it is still a 50% of as a introductory price! Play Store link: Oscilab It is a good posting of tracks that are maybe not what you would associate with Oscilab.
Being less electronic dance music it shows another side to Oscilab so if you dismissed the app before as being too one sided it could be interesting to take a listen? To go and read and listen go here: http://main.iosmars.com/2014/06/10/oscilab-tracks-new-tunes-from-ios-musicians-and-a-sneak-peak-at-whats-to-come/ Play Store link: Oscilab Here is a new application that for sure is going to make some of you very happy. It came out on Saturday and did not have a much time to try it out but the little I did has all been positive impressions. First impressions being that it seems very well thought out and a lot of the design has been towards a different workflow than similar apps and on paper it can feel a little bit gimmicky but it makes sense when you sit down with it. Would say that it is very well thought out for making electronic music as it all revolves around the idea of flexible arpeggiations and manipulating the resulting loops in different ways. There is three different sound sources that being a synthesizer, 36 sample instruments and then 15 drum/percussion sets. You can use four tracks for the Synthesizer/sample instruments and two tracks for percussion. The percussion tracks with a standard sequencer the synthesizer/sample instruments with a different way of sequencing. You choose the notes you want to be used and then the steps you want the notes to be triggered on. Now comes the interesting and different part. It uses flexible oscillations to determine how the notes will be played. Making oscillators be the decisive faction of the arpeggiation/note sequence. It is possible that this is not totally clear but it will be when you use the application. So it offers a new way that I have not seen in any other application to compose music and being designed to be used as a groovebox it is very easy to change things on the fly. So for example decide on a scale and use the notes on the four melody/harmony tracks and just start to manipulate and almost everything that you do will come out good but without sacrificing the feeling that you are in control and that it is your own music being created. You could use this for making whole songs and there is already music that you can hear as examples here: As gets obvious after listening to the tracks is that the sound quality is very good. I do like the synthesizer a lot and it can be very gnarly in a good way and you have a lot of options to manipulate first and foremost the oscillators of course as everything is based on oscillation in almost everything you do. There is the possibility to combine and intermix oscillators in a many a ways and it does sound good right away without any help from effects. As said before there have not been much time to look into the app yet so I have not tried any of the sampled instruments or any of the drums yet but they seems very good to. All in all if you do electronic music I do recommend this application highly as you can use it for doing whole songs or part of songs to import into other applications but it is made for direct manipulation so it is great app to use as a part in a live setup. There is some concerns though- You will need a good device but if you have one that is good enough the app feels very stable and it seems hard to overload it creating nasty CPU overload which is a big bonus if you want to use it for live recording/performance. It has some limitations in sequencing as you will have to adapt to the specific workflow. Having said that, it is also one of the strong sides of the app. Finally screen size. Do recommend a 7 inch or bigger. I have tested it on a 4.7 screen and it is workable but to fully enjoy it think bigger and can not see it being enjoyable on smaller than 4.7 inches. It is half price for now as introductory price and it would have been better if they had a demo version to try first but I would say that if you like to make electronic music it feels that you are going to be able to use the app in one way or another and think that it can be a very good addition especially if you like groove boxes and direct manipulations. It is also a very nice addition to your synthesizer palette as you can get great tones out of it. I do like it and felt sceptic when it first got announced as it seemed to me that it was just a variation of existing apps but when it got tried and there was an understanding of how it is set up I got excited to start to use it in some of my music or even as a main compositional tool for some tracks. This is a very limited overview and hopefully next week after finishing some other projects there will be time to get into this deeper and take a look at the video and remember that it does add another way of thinking that is not totally obvious in the video. For anyone that have some experience in slightly more advanced music apps it is easy to figure out things intuitively and even though the application offers a lot of possibilities it did not take me long to figure out most of the functions. Here is a short review published by iosmars.com: http://main.iosmars.com/2014/05/30/oscilab-review-a-new-sequencergroovebox-from-2beat/ and remember it is half price for now... Play Store link: Oscilab For more sounds... https://soundcloud.com/oscilab |
Please, pretty please make a donation to
Musical android You can do it! It will feel amazing afterwards!!! MAIN BLOG
All
Archives
July 2020
|