There’s some SoundPrism in there…

How to disable iOS notifications panel for music apps.

New Video: Asturias by Albéniz - Part 1 

by Sebastian Dittmann

Attention is one of the underlying currencies of the web. Every piece of information on the web receives some amount of attention. This amount can be zero, but most of the time it is not. Attention can be converted into nearly anything of value. Action, monetary units, fame and depending on the nature of it and its recipient - even happiness.

Attention needs to be treated like the precious resource it is. Collect it whenever it is offered, use it responsibly and direct it to the cause you think it is worthy of.

In my last blog post I promised to explain why I tried to get you to sign up for the email newsletter that goes with this series of blog posts. That’s because it’s one of the best methods to contact people when they want to be contacted.

Emails get read whenever people feel like reading them, messages sent through email are not going to get lost in your timeline on Twitter or Facebook and they don’t require recipients to log into a special service or visit a website.

I’m not going to go into any detail about how important Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and even MySpace are because if you’re reading this you most likely know that already. Until Google+ gets its act together and allows accounts for bands and corporate entities I wouldn’t recommend using it unless you’re releasing your music/apps under your real name.

Instead I’m going to suggest you add a list of ways to follow you to every email you write, blog entry you’re posting and to your Twitter info as well (you do have a Twitter account, don’t you?). You’d be surprised how many artists email me links to their tracks and how few of them mention any way to find out more about them in their email signature. Make it easy for your fans and followers to keep up to date with whatever you’re doing.

They’re offering you their attention by reading your mail, why not treat it responsibly?

If you have a blog it should feature these bits of information in a prominent place:

Pick the most important ones and add them to your email signature as well if you feel comfortable doing that. If you have a ‘business’ email account then I’d say this is mandatory as well.

If you still have some time left, you can create your own email newsletter using Mailchimp.

Let me walk you through that:

First, go to www.mailchimp.com.

Sign up and click on Lists, then on ‘Create List’.

Then go to ‘Create Forms’, click on ‘share it’ and copy the URL displayed on the left side of the screen. You can use that in your email signature, on your blog… you get the idea.

That concludes this episode of Marketing for iOS Developers and Musicians. If you liked it, sign up with your email address here to be notified of new episodes.

Of course you can follow Audanika on Facebook and Twitter to keep up to date with everything else that we’re working on.

See what I did there? :)

by Sebastian Dittmann

Everybody is busy, few people have the time for it, few have enough experience with it and the people who do are using their know-how for Evil(TM).

I’m talking about marketing and promotion.

If you’re an iOS developer or a musician then marketing and PR usually is an afterthought for you. You’ve got more important things to do and you’ll do this Facebook and Twitter stuff when you’re done with your new track/album/app.

You’ve got three minutes every day to spend on it and whoever has your attention should better make it count.

You know what? You’re right.

I’m going to make it count.

Sign up with your email address here to be notified of the next episode of iOS Music Marketing.

Here’s a preview:

• I’m going to explain to you why I’m not asking you to follow us on Twitter or Facebook.Yet. (Spoiler #1: Emails aren’t going to get lost in your Twitter timeline.)
• Also I’m going to provide you with a short list of feasible und understandable steps that you can do in less than 5 minutes to push your product/brand/band/app. (Spoiler #2: One of them will be to make your users/fans sign up for your newsletter.)

Sounds good?

Then sign up already.

Thanks for your time.

UPDATE: Episode 2 is online. Click here to read it.

I’m tihinking about making a series of blog posts for iOS Musicians about marketing and promoting their tracks and themselves. Anyone interested?

/Sebastian

Ladies and Gentlemen, we give you: SoundPrism 2.0

by Sebastian Dittmann

… with multiple Fingers … at the same time. It’s like a double rainbow! With MIDI!

And Gabriel has made a video about it (immediately after getting out of bed):

To find out how to set up the MIDI connection in SoundPrism Pro, check out our new interactive manual, especially the sections about MIDI in Windows and on your Mac.

by Gabriel Gatzsche

The pitch class shifter is a new feature introduced in  SoundPrism Pro for the iPad. The iPhone does not support the pitch class shifter at the moment. The pitch class shifter is located directly right of the BassSection. 


Using it is quite simple: Touch the pitch class shifter at the pitch class (e.g. C) you want to change and slide the finger towards the top. The pitch class will be changed by one semitone (e.g. from C to C#). If you instead move your finger towards the bottom the pitch class will be lowered by one semitone (e.g. from C to Cb).

Changing a pitch class means that all pitches of that pitch class (one horizontal stripe) are changed. The bright bar right of the c# in the next figure indicates that the pitch class is raised by one semitone. 

 To neutralize the change of a pitch class simply tap the pitch class shifter at the shifted pitch class again.

by Gabriel Gatzsche

This blog post is part of a series about the musical theory which SoundPrism is based upon. You might also want to read the next part: SoundPrism Pitch Layout II

 Or check out the previous: Audanika Our Vision

The key related circle of thirds

The circle mentioned before is called „key related circle of thirds“. Figure 1 shows the circle for the keys C-major and a-Minor. The black points represent the actual pitch classes. The grey points show how many semitones are between two  pitch classes, e.g. between the pitch classes C and e are three semitones. The circle as shown in Figure 1 is full of musical semantics. E.g. it shows which tones build which chords, visualizes the wellformedness of a cadence and outlines the musical functions of chords geometrically. Additionally I discovered a strong relationship between psychologically measured data and the geometric positions of the pitch classes within the circle. I will explain that in more detail in another blog posts.

Figure 1: The key related circle of thirds for C-major / a-minor

SoundPrism and the key related circle of thirds

If you look at SoundPrism you will wonder where the key related circle of thirds is. Originally the interface of SoundPrism was circular. But we realized that a rectangular version is much better to control, although the circular version is easier to understand. Figure 2 shows the relationship between the SoundPrism interface and the circle. The first and last pitch class at the SoundPrism (Figure 2, left) are the pitch classes d and b. Within the key related circle of thirds (Figure 2, right) these pitch classes are next to each other. So it is possible to bow the upper and the lower edge of the SoundPrism such that a cylinder arises (Figure 2, middle). The order of the pitch on that cylinder exactly correspond to the order of pitch classes within the key related circle of thirds. 

Figure 2: From SoundPrism to the key related circle of thirds

But now we were faced with the problem that the most interesting chords of a given key (the dominant seventh chord G-d-F-b, the diminished b-d-F, or the Sixte ajoutée d-F-a-b) are apart on both ends of the interface. To solve this we used the “Pac-Man-paradigm”.

When you move the pitch selection over the upper end then it will appear at the bottom. So it is possible to play all the chords within the key related circle of thirds. 

Navigating the Circle

Up to this this point we’ve only talked about pitch classes. But the pitch class C exists on several octaves. You do not have only one C on a piano but 8 Cs.  So we had to find a way to put different octaves of a pitch class  on the surface of SoundPrism. I’m going explain how we accomplished that in my next blog post.