MooCowMusic Band 1.0 Released!

Posted by Eric March on May 8, 2008 at 10:38 pm

Been looking forward to Moo’s Band app? Drooling in anticipation, perhaps? Well, you can chuck the bib, because Band has officially been released. For that one or two of you who have been

vacationing in a singularity for the past few weeks, Band is an all-in-one music application that combines an assortment of instruments and effects into one package that allows you to compose music using multiple layered instruments.

There are a total of 8 instrument, effects and tools to choose from:

Audience: Crowd noise, for those that want to add a touch of that live sound to their works.
Bassist: A bass guitar with the usual scrollable fret board.
Bar Blues: Essentially a sampler geared towards blues riffs, but includes individual blues guitar notes as well as riffs and loops.
Drum Machine: A drum machine, not unlike MooCowMusic Drummer.
Funky Drummer: A sampler designed for drum loops.
Grand Piano: A two-tiered piano that offers two octaves on one screen — very handy for smooth chords.
Scratch: Not quite what I was expecting; you don’t actually spin the wax here; instead, it’s a sampler designed for scratch samples.
Metronome: For those who need a little help keeping time, there is an audible metronome you can set at a specific volume and tempo. It even supports different time signatures, so that 6/4 song you have in mind will be no problem.

Band allows you to record each instrument on its own, and then add to the whole piece instrument by instrument. There are options to erase the last note, or last 10 notes, the entire instrument, or just nuke the whole song, if things go horribly awry. There is also a mixer that allows you to pan and set the volume for each instrument individually, allowing you to master the mix, position the instruments and get it sounding just the way you want.

It isn’t perfect — there are a few things I’d love to see, such as a basic note editor/piano roll for each instrument, a quantizer, and the ability to add shuffle/swing to a single instrument or the whole song — but perhaps I’m getting ahead of Moo here. Either way, those would be tops on my wish list for Band.

The download comes in two pieces: The main Band application, and Instrument Pack 1, which are the actual instruments. Undoubtedly new instrument packs will be released at some point in the future — that’s the great thing about Band: It’s modular, so packs can be released for individual instruments, or entire themed packs can be released for the whole bundle. Did I mention that each instrument is skinnable? Because it is. You can even define where the buttons are on a given skin and what they trigger, so you aren’t required to stick to the basic layout of each instrument, giving you the freedom to create entirely new instruments. The possibilities really are limitless.

Band and its first instrument pack are available on the ModMyiFone repo (http://modmyifone.com/installer.xml), and you can check out a ream of screenshots below.

[Show as slideshow]

(Source: iPod Touch Fans)

2 Responses to “MooCowMusic Band 1.0 Released!”

James said:

May 9th, 2008 at 5:12 pm

I must say, as great as Moo’s instruments are, considering that they’re on an iPhone/iPod Touch, the things I like about this package the most are the Bar Blues sequencer and the Metronome, as they are brilliant portable tools for musicians such as myself (although a real piano and a good-old fashioned metronome would always be preferable). Downloading as I speak; can’t wait to try it out!
Eric March said:

May 9th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

True — but when you’re nowhere near any real instruments and you want to jot down a song idea, or just noodle around looking for inspiration, an entire band’s worth of instruments in your pocket can’t be beat.