Wednesday, December 30, 2009

uloops.net: Making sweet, sweet music on the G1

Ever since I got my G1, I've been on the lookout for Android apps that could allow me to create music. Having no musical skills (well, maybe some skills), I thought the G1 would be a perfect way to experiment on the go with music composition. Most of what I found though, were cheesy apps that would allow me to play a few canned wav files. This is fun for the kiddies, but gets old fast.

I do believe, though, I've found a solution: uloops.net. Uloops is described as:

Uloops Music Composer it's a complete composition environment for the android platform. Make hi-quality tracks using three concepts: Song, Loop and Devices (including Synthesizers, Drum Machines and Modulators). Publish your songs in our community and adapt the work from others to your compositions.

And the thing works remarkably well. Here are few points I like about it:

  • You can publish your completed music. That's huge, the thought of creating something and having it stuck on my G1 seems really depressing.
  • The musical capabilities are really impressive. Knowing very little about how to actually use the app, that's probably not much of a claim. But seriously, the whole ability to compose music in small chunks really works on the tiny Android footprint.
  • The ability to slurp in work created by others is a great. This means you don't have to start creating music from scratch and can build on what others have done.

Here's a screenshot:

While the app is remarkable (especially considering it's free), I do have a couple of enhancements I'd love to see. First, a few tutorials would be awesome. The trial-and-error approach to composing music isn't as much fun as you'd expect it to be. Secondly, the ability to publish my work outside of uloops.net would be really powerful. If I could save the clip as an .mp3 or .midi file, even better.

But all in all, it's a solid app.

So, I've got to ask -- any ulooper's out there have any suggestions for getting started?

Download uloops.net from the Market app, or point your Bar Code reading software here:

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