It seems smartphones can do anything these days. In fact, one could argue that smartphones provide everything you need to the point where you’ll never need another device. One area where people have begun to create innovative uses for smartphones is music production. Turns out, your smartphone can be any number of musical devices, from musical instrument to turntable. Let’s look a bit more in-depth at the many musical possibilities with smartphones.
1. DJing
Smartphones provide amazing tools for DJing. You may not achieve the most professional DJ sound possible, but the songs certainly come out sounding great, and transitioning between them is a breeze.
Apps like Droid DJ act just like turntables, allowing you to scratch and reverse, and providing a fader to switch between cued tracks. Thanks to Bluetooth technology, you can still carry your phone around with you. Bluetooth compatibility makes for a nice solution when you’re holding a party and DJing it yourself, while you still need to attend to guests and manage the party in other ways.
2. Smartphone Orchestras
The Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics, or CCRMA (pronounced “karma”), at Stanford, has created a cell-phone orchestra using smartphones. The orchestra, called the Mobile Phone Orchestra, or MoPho, mostly play improvised drone songs. Participants hold a button on their phones to select a sound, then move, shake, or tilt the phone to create different timbres and pitches.
Ge Wang, the creator of MoPho, sees the world on the edge of “mobile renaissance, maybe a new mobile revolution.” He also suggests that mobile phones can use music to create an incredible sense of community, and has online videos where he demonstrates how you can share music you’ve made on the same music apps between people anywhere in the world. Business execs may want to adhere to this advice, as they could apply the concept to enterprise mobility management, using smartphones in this way to create a sense of unity between employees (regardless of which smartphone they use), and lightening the mood a bit.
3. Smartphone Bands
Rather than using your smartphone as an ominous tone maker or a turntable, you also have a variety of options for using the phone as a more realistic instrument, with keys like a keyboard, drum pads, or virtual strings to be “plucked”. Get together a few friends and assign a virtual instrument to each person, and you’re set. You’ve just quickly and inexpensively put together a band.
You can become a one-person band with all the instrument apps available for smartphones. For example, you could record a piano track on a piano app, lay down some drums on a drum machine app, and sing your melodious lyrics into a pitch correction app, and then mix all three tracks on a smartphone DAW (digital audio workstation). With that, you’ve created an entire musical recording using simply one human and a phone.
DIY music making continues to become more accessible to the public, and smartphones have made their way into the mix as a valuable tool. What other ways can you think of to make music with your smartphone?
Source: yourguide.vzw.com
Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra
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DJ with mobile smartphone
Source: farm9.staticflickr.com