My favourite posts of 2015, some thoughts, and a Happy New Year too

I thought I'd end off 2015 with a round up of my favourite posts of the year. Now the easiest thing to do would have been to simply direct you at the featured tagged posts, but that seemed like a bit of cheap way of doing it, so instead here's a more considered list of my favs this year.

Let's start off with music as an app, that still is an interesting idea and one that people still struggle with and don't really get right. This was a great step towards getting it right in my view. Music tech funding is an odd area and one that is hard to understand, this post aimed to try to clear up a few things and ask some questions too. Speaking at Abbey Road Studios was probably one of the most amazing and also important things I did this year and this post is about just that.

But even though that was quite important it doesn't mean that everything has to be so serious does it? I posted this in an attempt to make the point that creating music doesn't have to be so serious and needs to be fun too.

Mobile music has become about apps in the main, so here, in this post I decided to point out a few of the things I thought were important in an app. Just 10 things to consider, but important things and all of it still stands in my view, but I would say that!  On a similar note, I had to ask if there were too many synth apps in the iOS world, and, if anything, that question is more salient now than then! If you're interested you can also read my top 24 apps for 2015, which probably isn't the list you expect.

Staying with the apps theme for the moment, I thought it was interesting that Korg's latest two apps were both iPhone versions of existing apps, one from their iPad collection, the iElectribe for iPhone, and of course the iDS-10 for iPhone. This is important. I love that more apps are coming to the iPhone now, it saying something about mobility and the iPad and where the iPad range is heading.

Also on apps, Modular has been big in 2015. First we had AnalogKit modular and then Audulus 3 of course. Modular is not going away and I think both of these apps, and of course zMors modular too are really important. I did ask the question here about whether modular was actually right for mobile. You make up your own minds. Either way I think we'll see more of this in 2016 especially considering what's happening in Pd at the moment.

In terms of mobile hardware 3D touch is, for me anyway, a really big thing for mobile music, although it doesn't seem to have been adopted nearly as much as I'd expected so far and its potential is, in my opinion, huge! Although one notable adoptee is Roli with their Noise 5D app, and I hope that there'll be lots more soon. I'm hoping that this will change in 2016. But what seems to have happily eclipsed 3D touch is Ableton's Link technology, which I expect will roll out to even more apps in 2016.

I also expect that we'll see more crowdfunded (Kickstarter or Indiegogo) products in 2016. Aside from the fact that I'm waiting for a bunch of them myself it seems to be becoming the defacto way to get a good idea going these days. One of the best examples for me in 2015 was the Arpeggio, and I think it'll do really well as it will connect to its own iOS app.

Finally, one of the most important things I did this year was to help to run the SoundLab Play Space. You can read all of the posts about the Play Space here, but it was amazing to be a part of such a brilliant event and work with such great companies.

So that's a whistle stop tour of 2015. I'd like to say a quick thank you for everyone who's read PalmSounds, commented, tweeted etc in 2015.  Here's to an even better and more mobile 2016!