Well I'm glad you asked me that Marc, yes there are some very cool things you can still do with an old Palm device

So, Marc Weidenbaum from Disquiet (you might remember he wrote a very nice interview with me) emailed me a question about using some old Palm PDAs. In fact the three palm devices in question were,  a Palm IIIxe, the Clie SJ20, and the Tungsten T3. Marc suggested that I reply to him in the form of a post, so here we are with "there are some very cool things you can still do with an old Palm device".

Let's start off with the Palm IIIxe.

The IIIxe is actually a very interesting device. Even though it's old, it actually has a lot of potential, especially for anyone who wants to use it for MIDI. There are a few MIDI apps available for the older Palm OS. But before we go there, just a little history about the Palm OS and devices.

Palm devices like the IIIxe used Palm OS 3 or 4 and these devices used serial outputs which are generally speaking very good for old five pin MIDI. After Palm OS 4 came Palm OS 5 (not a big surprise there), and OS5 was more USB focused and not quite so good at MIDI either. However, it did have its other benefits and we'll see those in a while.

For now let's have a little look at the different possible MIDI apps you could find for a Palm IIIxe:

For starters there's MixPad:



MixPad is great if you want to play MIDI files and mix them. It came from miniMusic who were real pioneers in the mobile music world. MixPad works well, but doesn't allow you to change the MIDI file unfortunately. There were plans to do this, but sadly it didn't come about.

Next let's look at BeatPad. This is a Palm OS app that will be a bit more familiar. It has a drum part and a bass or mono part too. However, there's a lot you can do to control what BeatPad does.





BeatPad is pretty cool and lots of fun to and gives you some nice control if that's what's important to you, but we don't end there.

Another notable Palm OS app in the same series is NotePad, which is, as you might expect, a notation app. NotePad also has MIDI capabilities too so is worth a look.

The last of the miniMusic apps to look at is SpinPad which is a more interesting interface altogether.





SpinPad also has the added benefit of being free too. It was a miniMusic app that I'd always hoped that they'd do more with, but sadly that is now very unlikely.

So those are the miniMusic apps. But before we leave the IIIxe, and I hope that I've proved so far that there's life in the old dog, there's another group of apps that I need to mention. These are the Capers applets or demos. These are a group of apps that were meant to demonstrate some of the functionality for a replacement OS for the Palm OS which would have been a musical operating system. Sadly, it never saw the light of day,

But the Capers applets / demos are still available. One of my favourites amongst the applets is the Hedgehog. Here's what it looks like in action:







The last video here bridges the gap between Palm and iOS with the old IIIxe driving an iPad app, Magellan. That about does it for the IIIxe. If you do take a look at the applets from Capers you'll also find a PDF on how to use Hedgehog. Hopefully it'll be useful.

Next we move on to the Palm Tungsten T3, and now it gets really interesting ...

So, what  can you do with a Tungsten T3 these days. Well, it'll come as no surprise to many that I'm going to mention Bhajis Loops. Bhajis is still one of the most versatile and complete mobile music apps around, even though it has been out of development for years and years now.

I went looking for a few videos of Bhajis, but couldn't find too much actually. However, this video from artist Transient.



Bhajis was, and still is for that matter, a unique a brilliant app for the Palm OS. I'd probably go so far as saying that it's only relatively recently that apps on iOS have gone further, and there are still some things that Bhajis does way better than iOS. Add that Bhajis is now free, as is it's little brother Microbe (which is also worthy of a look) and you've got a simple and cheap way to get a mobile music machine going. So if you want a cheap mobile music device, get yourself a Pam Tungsten T3 from eBay or a Palm Tungsten TX for that matter, then grab Bhajis for free, and Microbe of course, then, when you need some instruments and sample libraries, head over here for an Aladdin's cave of Bhajis richness!

So Marc, does that give you enough to go on? I hope it does. In my view both your T3 and your IIIxe are very useful indeed. You may have noticed that I haven't mentioned the Clie SJ20. Well, of the three, in my opinion this is the least interesting. It was running Palm OS 4.1 which was ok, but not with serial so not much good for MIDI. It's an ok device overall but for musical applications, not so good.

So, to recap, both Bhajis Loops and Microbe are still completely excellent mobile music making apps for Palm OS, and as you've already got a Pam Tungsten T3 which was arguably the best Palm for running Bhajis then you're good to go!

I think that there are still some quite interesting things that can be done with Palm devices these days, and I hope that I've gone at least a little way to showing that.

The History of Sunvox in screen shots

I'm sure most of you will know SunVox and be aware of just how awesome it is and has become. But I expect that few people will be aware of how long it has been around and how it evolved. I actually remember using SunVox on an old Palm OS Treo 650. It was awesome even then. Just look at how far it has come since it started.

But this begs a few questions. Just how is it that such a complex piece of software has been made so widely cross-platform and grown so much with the vision of just one person. Ok, one really amazing person, but there is only one NightRadio,


Well here you can find all of the screen shots of SunVox, the complete history, and long may it continue to get better and better.

My 24 apps for Christmas: 24 - Bhajis Loops and Microbe

You may have been wondering what the final app was going to be, and then realised that it was almost certainly going to be Bhajis Loops after the post on miniMuisc. Well I could hardly leave these amazing and hugely influential apps out of any list of mine, could I?

I last mentioned both Bhajis Loops and Microbe on so many occasions, and I think as part of my 24 apps of 2012 as well, which is probably no surprise either. Of course both of these are still completely free to use should you have, or decide to acquire a Palm OS device running Palm OS 5, ideally an old Pam Tungsten T3 from eBay or a Palm Tungsten TX. You can't use either of these on iOS, although there is an emulator for jailbroken devices if you've gone down that route, but it isn't brilliant, and to be fair you need the native hardware to get a view on what Bhajis can do.

Of course I secretly (although not so secretly now as I'm about to tell you all) still hold out the tiniest of hopes that Bhajis will somehow come to iOS, or even Android! But of course this won't happen. The developer has made that very clear indeed, and I understand his reasons. However, I still think (and I'm not alone in this) that Bhajis Loops was one of the most complete and innovative mobile music apps ever.

Finally, if you're interested, I've put out a couple of unfinished collections of pieces which were both made using Bhajis which you can find on Bandcamp if you're interested.  Also you might want to check out this old post about constructing a £50 mobile music studio, it'll tell you a lot more about Bhajis and what it does.

So that's my list for this year.  It's been fun going through them. Some I thought I'd have on the list didn't make it, and a couple of very new apps did.

If you've missed any, or just want to go back over the series, you can find all the entries by clicking on the 'featured' tag.

Enjoy!

An Ultra rare Palm foleo is sitting on eBay and it ends today

Whilst this isn't really mobile music related, it is very much Palm related and probably a complete one off. In theory the Palm foleo never actually went into production so there can only be a real handful of units left in the world, and this is one! So it is exceptionally rare, but also probably not too useful.

Ultra rare Palm foleo on eBay

Handera 330 controlling a Yamaha MU15 (video)

Sunvox on a Palm TX, what a great thing to wake up to

Testing the new #SunVox on Palm Tungsten TX pic.twitter.com/WXFXGp1wMZ

— Nightradio (@Nightradio) September 24, 2014

The Palm Sounds videos: Pocket DJ

I thought I'd dig out some of the old Palm Sounds videos from the very early days to remember what mobile music making was like pre-iOS! Here's my very first video from 2007 of the Palm OS app "Pocket DJ", which actually wasn't even an app, it ran inside the flash player which only worked on some of the Sony PDAs from back then.

transient - sine out (made with a single sine wave)

I always have to post something made with Bhajis Loop.

PHEM is a new Palm OS emulator for Android

So if you didn't like StyleTap or thought it was too expensive you might want to take a look at PHEM. It's a lot cheaper and has some pretty amazing features too. Here's what you can expect ...

PHEM Features

• Supports black and white, grayscale, 8-bit, and 16-bit color. It even supports the Handera 330's "High Res" grayscale screen!
• Supports sound and (for versions of the Palm OS that support it) vibration.
• Supports multiple different "sessions" emulating different Palms - multiple models, multiple versions of a single model, or both.
• Allows you to use your device's storage as a virtual expansion card.
• Emulated Palms can communicate using your device's network connection (wifi or cellular).
• Supports cutting and pasting text between the emulated Palm and your device.
• Supports hardware keyboards if present on your device.
• Supports "skin" files that precisely mimic the appearance of particular Palm devices.
• Supports most Palm "Hacks".

PHEM Limitations

• Like MAME (which emulates arcade machines like Space Invaders or Defender) or NESoid (which emulates a NES game console), PHEM emulates Palm hardware only - a Palm OS ROM image is required to run.
• PHEM does not emulate Palm models with ARM CPUs (any Palm running OS 5.x). (If you require this, do check out the StyleTap emulator.)
• PHEM does not support IRDA or serial hardware.
• Some games and hacks that rely on undocumented hardware features may fail.
• Multi-touch is not supported on Android versions below Android 3.0 (Gingerbread).

You can find it on the play store, and you'll notice it's pretty cheap.

Experimenting with MIDI in using the SG20

Using my iPad to enter notes on the TRG Pro running miniMusic's NotePad app. The MIDI in works but doesn't play a note, just enters it in the score. Play back is fine though.

SG20 MIDI expansion module, MIDI out indicator

Just a brief look at the MIDI out expansion module for the SG20 sound module running on my TRG Pro handheld.

D-Pod 2: Test compile to make sure it still works

And it does! Ok, with a few little glitches, but it means that I can start making a few changes to my old Palm OS drum app.

Palm OS App of the Day: ranDRUM

Ok, this one is one of mine. One of the few Palm OS apps I wrote. One day I might even update it so it could do a bit more.

StyleTap update

If you're interested in running Palm OS apps on your Android then you might like to know that StyleTap have added bluetooth support in the latest version of the Palm OS emulation platform.

More details here.

Palm OS ... in fact, 22,000 words about Palm OS

A massive piece on Palm OS if you're interested in that sort of thing, but not free! No, at 22,000 words it's being sold for $4.99 a time, and I for one think that's very reasonable too.

I'm off to buy it then. You can find it here.

Magellan Discovers the Hedgehog! (old meets new)

Sorry, I've got very excited about this. It's a sort of old meets new thing really. You can expect some more like this too.

Punchdrunk, part 1. Some new (old) music from me.

These tracks were made with Bhajis Loops and Microbe over a number of years and through a number of versions of Bhajis too. For the most part it was made on an old Pam Tungsten T3 although I did use a a few other older machines in the process too.

Anyway, I hope you like it / enjoy it etc.

More Hedgehog and Shruthi

Working out the controller assignments in Hedghog and getting it working with the Shruthi-1

No chance of StyleTap enabling MIDI from the emulator

I asked StyleTap if this would be possible, to allow a Palm OS app in their iOS jailbroken emulator to send MIDI out of the dock connector into an adapter. I knew it would be a long shot, but I thought that I'd ask.

The answer? No, they've no plans to support it. It was always going to be a real long shot wasn't it. Still, never mind.

Here's what the Baby Hedgehog does

I've become slightly obsesessed with this little Palm OS Sequencer from the distant past. So I thought I'd share a bit about what it can do:

Hedgehog is a pattern sequencer for MIDI-enabled hardware and software that runs on your Palm Pilot. To use Hedgehog, you need some sort of MIDI interface attached to the serial port (the thing the Hotsync cradle or cable plugs into.) Hedgehog sequences 16 1/8th notes ('ticks') per pattern and can chain up to 12 patterns in a larger loop.

Each pattern can support 2 discrete channels of MIDI information, and each tick can also send out up to 16 controller messages, to sequence effects or synth parameters with your note information. This is
where Hedgehog is great fun. Hopefully, your gear already supports MIDI controller automation.

The note information is entered on the screen, and can be changed while the sequence is playing.
The 'X' on the left represents the state the system is in, you can be in "add note on", "add note off",
"add single hit", and "delete note" mode. The last row of the control bar determines which channel
the data is being changed for. In this manner, you can control perhaps a drum machine and a
synthesizer separately but on the same page, so you can see how the pattern will sound before you
hear it.

Notes that are for channel one appear towards the left of each grid space, and notes for the second channel appear towards the right. As well, a special area to the left of the note editing grid is set aside for octave shifting. If you tap towards the right of the note grid, you can get either an up or down arrow which shifts that note (for just that pattern) up or down an octave. This is great for making dual bassline and melody information, or even just for marking "valid" notes.

The controller information is entered by dragging your pen across a controller bar below the note entry grid, or just tapping each tick's individual section. There are 16 controller states the sequencer sends out at each tick. Using this system, you can do crazy things like sequence panning information or volume, or your effect's reverb level per note, or filter level for your samplers... the possibilities are endless. Each square in the grid represents a different controller type, and controllers can also be browsed and changed while the sequence is playing.

Even more fun is the Tweak Bar at the top of the screen. As the sequence is playing (or even when it's not), you can twiddle the pen over the Tweak Bar to dynamically send controller messages of the type currently selected onscreen. So in addition to the sequenced controller changes, you can "jam" along on another controller. Sequences are made up of groups of patterns. Each pattern can be viewed by tapping on its box at the bottom of the screen. Of course, you can view and edit other patterns that are not playing at the time. A small dot indicates which pattern is being played at the time, however. You can define the start and end position of the sequence loop by using the start/loop/start bar to the right of the sequence bar. Sequences can be from 1 to 12 bars long and can start and end anywhere among the pattern list.

To start, stop, or rewind the sequence, use the transport bar at the left of the screen. This works just like everywhere else you've seen it. It also sends out the proper MIDI Realtime messages upon restarting the sequence (hitting rewind while playing) or continuing (hitting stop, then start again) it. As well, you can change the BPM of the sequence here as the sequence plays and view it onscreen.
Lastly, Hedgehog also does some things that no other pattern sequencer does. The Math Bar to
the right of the pattern list can alter your sequence in varying ways. It can randomize the sequence completely from a new seed (either the controller set or the note set, you choose by marking the rightmost box) or vary it only slightly using a Markov chain model. This of course can happen during sequence play.

So, as you can see, even for a very simple little Palm OS App it can do a lot. I plan to do a bit more with this soon and have a few more videos of it controlling stuff, so expect to see it in action again soon.