We still have a long way to go until Android has a significant number of music creation apps for creative types to choose from. It’s only a matter of time, sure…but things right now are a bit scant, so when a new music app comes along, I don’t hesitate to pick it up and give it a run through.

SequencePad (Skyarts), a 4-track general MIDI sequencer is available for ¥250 in the Android Market right now. If you work with MIDI, it makes a decent song sketchpad and supposedly exports sequences as .mid files which, as you know, can be edited in any number of desktop music suite, I personally use Logic Studio and FruityLoops.

However, I cannot guarantee that this app actually does export .mid files, because the simple fact is:

IT’S THE CRASHIEST APP I’VE EVER USED, and I never got far enough to find out if I could save as .mid.

Now I don’t think I’m unjustified in calling this app “crashy as fuck”, but SequencePad doesn’t just force close a lot (I can understand it to a point, it happens…that is something I’m used to), but this app would just turn my screen black and go completely unresponsive for 3-5 minutes. I had to fully reboot my phone three times in the course of reviewing it, and the worst part about it is that this fatal crash occurs when you want to exit the app. You’re not provided with a quit or close button, so you can either try to hit “back” or “home” and the result is the same: total unresponsiveness.

That’s not to say the app isn’t worth picking up, though. I mean, you really don’t have much of a choice if you’re an Android-using musician. You get every app at this point, support the developers, submit useful bug reports, and hope for updates.

On to what SequencePad can actually do.

The main sequence screen

There are a couple of very dumb things about the sequencing screen.  Each vertical line is a note in the scale and each horizontal line is one beat.  The red dots are notes that I’ve placed.   Down the right hand side, you see the numbers 1-4, and in the lower right hand corner, an arrow pointing down?  That’s SequencePad’s way of fitting in 8 beats.  On the first screen, you’ve got your first half, and then you click the down arrow to switch to the second half of the phrase on the second screen.

That’s not the dumb part.

The dumb part is that you can’t put a note on the ONE beat at the very top!!!  you have to start either on the upbeat or on the TWO.  See how the screen actually has space for five beats?  yeah…it doesn’t make any fucking sense.  You actually have to start playing the track to figure out where the downbeat is.  And there’s no metronome function to simply and clearly show you where to start.

If you like general MIDI and its familiar palette of 128 sounds and sixteen assignable drumkit slots, you’re fully covered.

Ah, Bird Tweet. The most useless MIDI sound ever.

There are four tracks of general MIDI instruments which can be either “tones” or “rhythm.”  The red number one in the picture above means i’m on track 1, and the purple button with the tools to the right of it lets me switch between sounds.  To switch tracks, you just push the number button in the middle and choose your track.

The compositional aspect of this app is intuitive and should feel familiar to experienced musicians. You can listen to a track individually, or with the rest of them at the same time, and you can alter the tempo with the metronome button.  The only thing I haven’t figured out (besides how to export .mid files) is how to sustain a note.  As far as I can tell, this app only allows one note at a time per four tracks.  That is, you can’t plonk down four tracks worth of sustained piano notes complete with overlaps.  If you can, I still haven’t figured out how.

This might be because the instructions are in pure Zero Wing Engrish.

“Edit Phrase Screen:  When it touches the measure eye part, the demiquaver can be added.  When it touches an existing note, it is possible to erase it.  However, harmony cannot be used.”

Okay, I sort of get what it’s saying, and let me respond by posing this question:

How perpetual notes? User cannot creation tone which have timbre and echoing over formerly stricken sound, and resulting phrase have redolence of Sierra On-Line vintage King’s Quest MIDI beeps.  Please to instruct.

Because I spent many years as a poor musician, my area of gear expertise isn’t with high quality instruments, it’s with bargain equipment (think Zoom, M-Audio, Casio, et al.), pawn shop finds, and things best classified as “musical toys.”

I keep up with the latest toy musical instruments, and delight in their exploitation. Circuit bending brightens my day, and I’m always looking out for the next Stylophone. I got the Korg DS-10 on the day it came out, I have two copies of Traxxpad for PSP, and I consider the iPhone/iPod Touch to be a full-fledged music platform.

I guess i’m a pretty discerning customer in the “Don’t Expect Much” category.

Electrum was made by Niko Twenty and is available for $3.99 in the Android Market. What you get is a 16-step sequencer somewhat like the ol’ TR-808 in design, and each sequence is built with six samples. You can put together up to 32 different sequences and create full songs. The cool part is that you can export your creations as single sequence loops or as a full song. The dumps are 16 bit wav files (mono).

A blurry, late night shot of Electrum's interface

I had originally intended to put in a couple of quick sequences that I whipped up on the “rock kit,” but I’m having some trouble doing that, so I’ll just say that there’s also 808, 909, Orchestral, Hip Hop, and Human Beatbox kits and 6 free downloadable packs. While it’s pretty light on features, the only thing it’s really lacking is the ability to import your own sample set. (See Comments)  I always find myself wishing for a sound recording sampler app so I can make my own Richard James kit of nutty noise captured on the phone’s mic. But I guess I have to wait.

If you’ve ever used BeatMaker on iPhone, don’t expect that level of quality. However, BeatMaker costs 20 fricking dollars and Electrum costs only 4. At one fifth the price of BeatMaker, you get much more than one fifth of the functionality with Electrum. Complaints are few. It does get crashy at times, it has dumped some broken .wavs for some reason, and the UI in Sequence mode looks like it’s unfinished. But it’s a work in progress and junk musicians should applaud Niko Twenty.

This is definitely one of the best music apps we have on the Android Platform, and I’m currently working on a little jam built with beats from BeatMaker, a guitar track from Ubisoft’s Jam Sessions for Nintendo DS, and some Theremin wangling from Bebot on iPhone.

It took me a while to get into podcasts…like very long…like I had an iPod for 3 years before I even considered checking any out.  And this is coming from a guy who runs errands on Saturday mornings just so he can listen to Car Talk, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, and This American Life in close succession.  This is coming from a guy who would subject his bandmates to old tapes of Johnny Dollar and Nero Wolfe when on tour.

So, long story short, it took me a while, but I eventually learned that I love podcasts.  However, using mp3 players without their own wireless connection kind of makes the acquisition of podcasts a little bit tiresome…especially if you don’t use iTunes. So being able to get them wirelessly as soon as they come out is probably one of my top five favorite media conveniences.  It’s definitely up there with Kindle whispernet shopping and Netflix Instant streaming.  (I’ll think of a couple more later.)

I used DoggCatcher for a while when the app was still pretty new, but it really sucked the battery,  sucked up resources, the interface was crap, and there was no easy method of content discovery.   On top of all that, they started charging for the full version.   It was at that point that I uninstalled it.  I haven’t had a podcatcher on my phone since then.

check that out!

You can also discover new content by browsing through recent and most popular searches, or by entering topical search terms. For example, if you don’t know exactly which show you want to listen to, but you want it to be about some current event, just type in the event or the date. It’s a good use of search. I suppose it may actually be more a search tool than a podcatcher, but I haven’t decided yet. I have only been using it for one day.

Like the title of this post says, if it’s made by Google, even as a Lab, you can expect a certain degree of awesomeness.

Scan this to download Google Listen!

Humorously, In the Listen FAQ, it asks: “Will Listen work on my iPhone, Palm Pre, or Newton?”

Jokes.