Cool iPhone/iTouch gadget alert

[Jeff Larson <jeff.larson@sailpoint.com>]

My wife gave me spiffy new iTouch for Christmas this year, so I've
been surfing the App Store for music applications.  One that may be of
interest to some of you is called TouchOSC.
 
    http://hexler.net/touchosc 
 
It is basically a small graphical control surface, sort of like a
miniature JazzMutant Lemur.
 
On it's own it isn't very interesting, it just sends OSC commands into
the air.  But when you combine it with the Mac application OSCulator:
 
    http://www.osculator.net/wiki 
 
you can transform OSC messages into MIDI that can be received by any
application that can use virtual MIDI devices.  It's really quite easy
to set up, here's a tutorial for Ableton Live.
 
    
http://www.osculator.net/wiki/Main/IPhoneOSCulatorAndAbletonLiveTutorial 
 
And of course a patch will be available to let you use it with Mobius.
 
You can use it with hardware devices by routing the virtual MIDI
device to a physical MIDI output device.
 
The size is both a plus and a minus.  Some control pages like the step
sequencer are hard to use accurately because the "buttons" are so
small.  Then again this could be easily attached to the body of a
guitar (no wires!).
 
The main limitation is that it is not velocity sensitive.  It is also
not at the moment possible to define your own UI layouts.  They have a
collection of useful layouts, drum pads, sliders, knobs, step
sequencer, X-Y grid, etc. but you can't create new ones from scratch.
They are supposedly working on a new version that lets you create
new layouts.
 
It works with either the iPhone or iTouch.  I've read that you can use
this with Windows but the setup is much more hacky.  OSCulator doesn't
run on Windows, the recommended approach is to use a pd (the freeware
Max/MSP) patch to do the OSC/MIDI conversion.
 
The cheapest option would be the 8GB iTouch for $230, OSCulator for $40
and TouchOSC for $5 for a total of $275.  Still a bit pricey but compared
to a $3000 Lemur it's at least accessible.
 
Another product in this vein is iTM MidiLab.  I haven't had a chance
to check this out yet but here's a shot of their DAW'ish control
surface.  It seems less flexible in that you have to switch between
apps to get different UI layouts.
 
    http://www.itouchmidi.com/?q=node/32  
 
Then there's mrmr:
 
    http://poly.share.dj/projects/#mrmr 
 
This is a little less visually stimulating than TouchOSC but
it does let you define your own control layouts.  I'll be
looking at this next.
 
Happy New Year!
Jeff