{"id":12,"date":"2013-01-05T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2013-01-05T16:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/spblog\/2013\/01\/05\/mugician-ipad-as-musical-instrumen\/"},"modified":"2015-05-29T04:03:26","modified_gmt":"2015-05-29T04:03:26","slug":"mugician-ipad-as-musical-instrument","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/mugician-ipad-as-musical-instrument\/","title":{"rendered":"Mugician: iPad as musical instrument"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/vnIqXc2rxVA\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Last week, I discovered a cool music app for my iPad. It&#8217;s called Mugician by Rob Fielding. I found it by searching for \u201cmicrotonal\u201d in the app store. It&#8217;s essentially an 11-string guitar synth. You can turn frets on and off. When they&#8217;re off you can slide up and down a string for complete control of tuning, within the limitations of your fingertip. You can also turn frets partially on so that you start on a tempered-tuning pitch, but then you can freely bend and vibrate the note. <br \/> <a name=\"more\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Developer Rob Fielding\u2019s blog has the <a href=\"http:\/\/rrr00bb.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/mugician-heiroglyphics.html\" target=\"_blank\">instruction manual<\/a>. He explains the controls at the bottom of the screen. The lock at the lower right kept me from discovering what the controls do. Unlock it (swipe the mini-slider to the left) and you\u00a0 might not even need the instructions. The controls let you turn on and control reverb, several types of distortion, and echo.<\/p>\n<p>He doesn\u2019t aim to make the instrument easy to play by emulating existing instruments or by simplifying it with preselected scales or loops;\u00a0 he says\u00a0 his goal is to \u201ckeep things expressive by making sure that there are as many dimensions of expression as I can cram into the given space\u2026\u201d\u00a0 He means for you to practice and develop your musical ideas, just like a violin or French horn.<\/p>\n<p>Mugician isn\u2019t being developed any more &#8212; it&#8217;s very expressive as it is. After all, you don\u2019t want the instrument that you practice and become good at playing to change out from under you. I do hope they keep it working as the iOS changes though. (What a tedious responsibility for developers.) Rob\u00a0 has developed another iOS synth, Geo Synthesizer, with Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater. I\u2019ll have to check that one out soon.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve made a little demo of some of the playing techniques that intrigue me.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve discovered a cool music app for my iPad. It&#8217;s called Mugician by Rob Fielding. I found it by searching for \u201cmicrotonal\u201d in the app store. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[127,128],"tags":[26,27,28,29],"class_list":["post-12","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-improvising","category-software","tag-electronic-music","tag-ipad","tag-mugician","tag-rob-fielding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":225,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12\/revisions\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spindrift.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}