Musikmesse 2014: Focusrite iTrack Dock

I realised that I hadn't posted these photos from Musikmesse so as a part of tidying up I thought I'd put them up now.

You don't know who these guys are, but I can tell you that they're awesome

These are some of the team from Propellerheads in Sweden. I was lucky enough to have a few beers with them when I was in Frankfurt for Musikmesse. They're awesome!

Sonoma Wire Works Musikmesse Wrap Up

Some more great pictures from Sonoma Wire Works and a great write up of their time at Musikmesse this year.

Musikmesse 2014 - iRing - IK Multimedia

Having played with these a bit, in fact, these exact same ones on that exact same iPad, it isn't easy to control.

Musikmesse 2014: EUMLab promo materials

I picked up these at Musikmesse. Nice to see such high quality promo material from an app developer.

Musikmesse 2014: Tascam (3)

Now these were the best things I saw from Tascam. I've seen their previous versions, but when you're up close and can handle them these are just lovely. Beautifully made and a joy to hold, and so small too. I thought I'd include the headphones in the top photo just to give an idea of scale.

Musikmesse 2014: Saying hello to EUMLab

It was great to meet up with the guys from EUMLab at Musikmesse this year. Of the 2000 or so exhibitors at the show this year they were one of the few iOS app only booths. For me that made them stand out if there products didn't do so already, and they do.

If you don't know EUMLab they make a range of great apps for you iDevice:

Pro Metronome - Beat with Sound and Light
iUke - Ukulele Song Book
Guitar Toolkit - Tuner, Metronome, Scales, Chords and Progressions
Ukulele Toolkit - Tuner, Metronome and Chord Diagrams

Actually that isn't even a complete list, they make more apps than that, but I'm only going to focus on a couple for now, Pro Metronome and Ukulele Toolkit.

When I visited their stand Shawn from EUMLab took me through both of these apps. Now, generally speaking I wouldn't really go for these kinds of apps. You've probably noticed that as I generally don't mention metronomes and guitar tuner apps or similar. However, I've made an exception for both of these apps as I actually think they're pretty special and worth mentioning.

Shawn took me through their Pro Metronome app which has just loads of features in it, too many to mention here to be fair to the app and to EUMLab. In fact the same is true of Ukulele Toolkit which was of special interest to me as an occasional Ukulele player.

It was great to see an app only booth at the show and I wish EUMLab all the best with their apps. You'll be hearing more about them I'm sure, and not just from me.

Musikmesse 2014: Say hello to the Anode

The meeblip anode is a lovely little machine, and when I say little I mean small. It's tiny, but it doesn't sound tiny at all.

Musikmesse 2014: Numark Orbit

It's possibly a little unfair to give a view on this device, especially as I wasn't actually able to play with it at all, just handled it. All I can say is it felt very light in my hand.

Musikmesse 2014: Great to see Sonoma Wire Works at the show

Having known Sonoma Wire Works for some years now it was great to meet them all for the first time face to face at Musikmesse.

Sonoma have been doing really cool things with the iPhone and the iPad from the very earliest days of iOS (before it was called iOS of course) and are continuing to do so as well. They launched the very first 4 track recorder for iOS, called, FourTrack (app store link), and the first iPad 8 track too, called StudioTrack (app store link). If that wasn't enough, they launched a great range of drum apps called the InstantDrummer series, were one of the main forces behind the original AudioCopy initiative and brought us the original GuitarJack, am immensely high quality iPhone audio interface before these things had really entered anyone else's head.

So, in my view, they're a pretty impressive force, and they've contributed a great deal to the iOS music making world. So it was great to meet Sonoma Wire Works and chat about what's coming next. Of course, as you can imagine, I can't say much about their future plans, but I can say that there's some great things coming from this long time support of the mobile musician.

And it's great to see Sonoma's hardware on display at Musikmesse. From where they started with the original GuitarJack and the Tayor EQ and GuitarTone apps, things have come a long way indeed. They're on the third iteration of the GuitarJack, the new GuitarJack USB model and it's just as good if not better than the previous too. You'll be hearing more from me about it in good time. As you can see there are some new versions of their hardware, Guitar Jack Stage.

Here's Daniel talking about it:





Of course I can't mention Sonoma Wire Works without saying that they turned 11 years old this year! Congratulations, and here's to many more years of innovation in both software and hardware.

Musikmesse 2014: Close up of Korg's new Rimpitch tuner

Musikmesse 2014: Bastl Instruments promo information

This was the material that Bastl Instruments had at Musikmesse 2014. Nice stuff and with lots of information on each module.

Musikmesse 2014: Tascam (2)

All of Tascam's nice little iOS add-ons were hidden away behind a protective screen so you couldn't play with them at all, which was a bit of a shame really.

Musikmesse 2014: Line6's AMPLIFi FX100

I got a demo of this unit at Musikmesse and was actually very surprised by how well thought out it was. That probably sounds wrong. It is as I'd expect from Line6 (who made the very first MIDI mobilizer for iOS of course).

The hardware is well made, the build quality is high, but I was especially interested in the integration between the device, the app, and the cloud service that holds everything together. It's a great idea and a good use of the individual pieces of technology. I can see it being really useful for guitarists.

What really interests me though is how we'll see all these things hanging together in the future, or to be precise, the not very distant future. The use of cloud based services to hold and share presets is a great one, but so far everything I've seen sits in isolation. Line6's cloud won't talk to Positive Grid's ToneCloud and vice-versa.

What we need, and what I expect will happen eventually is that we'll see an Audiobus for tone sharing, and possibly for more, like synth patch sharing across apps. Why not? If you can share a preset in Audiobus 2 then why not more?

Anyway, that's off the subject for now, I was impressed by Line6's latest offering and I'll be interested to see how it develops over time and what users make of it too.

Musikmesse 2014: Tascam (1)

For some reason I have a real thing for these little portable recorders. I know I would probably not use one very much if I did get one, but that doesn't stop me from wanting to get one.

Musikmesse 2014: Teenage Engineering there, but not

I was glad to see that at least there was a little 'booth' if you could call it that for TE at the show, but sadly I didn't get to catch up with the guys and talk about the OP-1 and the new OS version that I'm hoping will be out very soon indeed.

Musikmesse 2014: Bastl Instruments

Each module is connected using a small 4 pin connector and nice triangular velcro patches on the sides of each box.

If you're looking for pure tones and big string sounds or anything then these are probably not the modules you're thinking of. However, if you like nice raw glitchy lo-fi synth sounds then you're going to love these things.

I had a brief play with the  Bastl Instruments modules and they're pretty good. I didn't have time to really get acquainted with the interfaces at all.

But I did play with their stick keyboard. Now that was fun! I still don't know quite why they have a keyboard made with sticks, but it certainly got a lot of attention at Musikmesse.

One of the things I wanted to establish by taking a look at Bastl Instruments offering was, would I buy them? The answer, yes, sadly I'm afraid that these lovely little modules are just the kind of thing I would love to play with and integrate into the stuff I make.

Bastl Instruments stuff ticked the following boxes for me ...

• Build quality: Very high, nicely made and solid feel.
• MIDI: The little MIDI module gives you control over all the modules that you connect together
• Sound quality: Whilst I only heard these at the show, and it was noisy to say the least, I could certainly get a feel for the kinds of sounds you can reproduce, and I really like them
• Modularity: Well these modules certainly fit together easily enough, and you seem to be able to connect them in any sort of configuration you want.

If I have on reservation it is how stable the connection is going to be. The four pin connector isn't particularly hardy and the devices are held together by velcro. I know that I'm not likely to be using these in a very mobile environment or expect them to handle a great deal of movement, but it still a small area of concern. However, I don't think it would stop me from starting my own collection of Bastl Instruments modules.

So, overall I think that these modules are pretty cool. They certainly get the thumbs up from me. Of course it just adds to the temptation and constant drain on my wallet!

All the same, I wish Bastl Instruments every success with their modules and hope that the show was really good for them. I think we'll be hearing a lot more about them over the next few months.

Musikmesse 2014: Keith McMillen Instruments

 I'd never tried the QuNeo controller before so I was keen to give it a try at the show. I was really glad that I did. It is an amazing controller. So responsive and completely usable.

I was really impressed by the QuNeo, and really tempted to get one, I can see it being a very useful piece of kit with just about anything.

Whilst I didn't try the QuNexus, but if it's anything as good as the QuNeo then I'm sure it'll be amazing. I think I need to think a bit more about whether these become part of my mobile studio.

Musikmesse 2014: Messing about with the Launchkey Mini

I've known about these since they came out but never tried one until Musikmesse. I actually thought it was a really nice keyboard with a good action to it. The key size is just right for me too.

I was using the keyboard with Music Studio, which was fine but I'd have liked a wider range of apps to use it with.

If anything I've just become more tempted to try get one now, but I'll hold off until I see how my C.24 pans out. When I've got it of course.

Musikmesse 2014: Z3TA+ from Cakewalk

Nice to see Cakewalk showing off their new iOS synth, especially using one of IK's iRig Pro keyboards.

I noticed that it actually drew in a lot of people to play with it, but not all got the interface.