
Show HN: We're releasing SoundBrush, an app that lets you draw music - jayrhynas
http://getsoundbrush.com
======
rohall
I use a lot (actually way too many) music creation apps. This looks really
nice, but there are a few things that made me turn away after only a minute:

1) In order to use any instruments other than piano I need to like or share. I
haven't even had a chance to build a song. As a user, I'm not comfortable
enough to recommend your app to friends or endorse it.

2) There doesn't seem to be much available in terms of drums / bass. I might
be missing something.

3) This is more of a nice to have, but customizing sounds through effects or
parameters would be amazing and add to the diversity of sounds.

I really do love the interface. I think with a few changes you could be on to
something great!

~~~
WA
Do you have a recommendation for an app that I can use to make basic music for
a game (think Ludum Dare level)? I'm not a music creator, but I want be able
to create some sort of music without having to learn much about music
creation.

~~~
rohall
The easiest one I've used is Figure
([http://www.propellerheads.se/products/figure/](http://www.propellerheads.se/products/figure/)).
You'll probably want something on your desktop/laptop to pull everything
together. Feel free to reach out if you'd like help with workflow.

I made this using mostly Figure and Garageband (to give you an idea of what
can be done):
[http://rickohalloran.bandcamp.com/](http://rickohalloran.bandcamp.com/)

~~~
Tloewald
+1 for Figure.

Looptastic HD is quite nice for putting something together with almost no
effort.

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nsxwolf
I am not musical. This app has not changed this. Everything I draw sounds like
crap.

~~~
anigbrowl
That's because it's chromatic; the smart thing would have been to let you pick
a scale (a subset of the 12 notes that sound good together, and which are
standardized)and then constrain your note input to that, using the
inaccuracies in your drawing for expression.

Also, in-app purchases for individual sounds, no MIDI, and no audiobus? Sorry,
total fail. No musician is going to buy this and no non-musician is going to
be any better off with it.

Nsxwolf, I suggest a copy of Animoog (if you feel spendy) or Borderlands
Granular (if not), either of which will allow you to enjoy a rich musical
experience within certain limits by applying touch to other things besides
chromatic sample playback.

~~~
jayrhynas
We actually do have the ability to constrain notes to a scale (the default for
new songs is in fact C Major Pentatonic, not chromatic). We're also working on
MIDI and other import/export options for future releases.

------
scrumper
The 'music' category is one of the very few places left in the app store where
you can actually charge a reasonable price for your work and still get
traction. It's a shame to see something like this show up as a free app,
especially with such granular IAPs as separate 'synth pads' and 'synth leads'.
It smells a bit of the worst parts of free-to-play.

Also, you're risking a future rejection by requiring the camera when the app
doesn't use it. Apple has a long history of pulling apps which request
specific features that they don't use.

The interface is nice, an appealing take on the piano roll.

------
hawkharris
I like the interface, and the marketing website / video did a great job of
explaining the product.

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everyone
No offense. This looks nice for casual user and whatnot..

But I was expecting something actually _interesting_ like being able to draw
waveforms like oramics.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oramics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oramics)

~~~
casual_slacker
It would be neat to create a VST based on oramics, though I think OP's product
is more of a DAW than a specific instrument.

~~~
everyone
Yeah a vst would be great! There is a thing for ithings already actually I
have just discovered.

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davidjade
Nice app. I find the overall color of UI elements to be a little too dark.
Right now with a little room light reflections on my iPad I find it hard to
see some parts of the UI.

The biggest issue I have is, unless it supports CoreMIDI that leaves anything
I create trapped in the app and makes it much less interesting and useful to
me as a music creation tool. It also rules out using it in conjunction with
all the other music apps out there. I would really encourage looking into this
and it is something I would probably pay for to enable.

Also I don't (and won't) use Facebook so that rules out any sharing, etc...
for me. I'm not opposed to sharing features at all, I just won't use Facebook
to do so.

edit: a word

~~~
jayrhynas
We're definitely planning MIDI export and possible CoreMIDI support, stay
tuned! The new Inter-App Audio in iOS7 also looks interesting...

In terms of sharing, Facebook definitely isn't required - you can email the
song to your friends or you can upload it to our Discover service and share
the link.

~~~
davidjade
ok, I see that Facebook isn't required now but it wasn't completely obvious to
me. When I tapped "create", it still showed the login via Facebook button and
that confused me that it was asking to create a Facebook account. Maybe a
carefully placed "Or" would make it clearer.

Inter-App audio as well as Audiobus (since it has so much traction) support
would also be nice.

~~~
jayrhynas
thanks for the feedback, we'll take a look into making that clearer

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mikenon
Had fun playing with it. Trying to play
[http://i.imgur.com/ArXK5rW.png](http://i.imgur.com/ArXK5rW.png) didn't go so
well, it exited after one or two notes.

------
darkmighty
I haven't tried your app, but from the video it seems you have those discrete
notes. Have you though about having a sort of continuous time/frequency
domain? I guess you could do that with an Inverse Wavelet transform or Inverse
Short Time FT with logarithmic frequency scaling. I'm assuming your sounds are
synthesized, not recorded.

Another idea - how about making a part of the app sort of "real time" (or
short delay), like an instrument? Seems it would take the intuitiveness and
freshness of gesturing to a whole new level.

~~~
jayrhynas
Those are some great ideas. We actually do have a realtime component - the
note labels on the left side can be played like a piano without messing up
your drawing.

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incision
Reminds me of SoundBow [0].

0:
[http://www.binaura.net/stc/wrx/soundbow/](http://www.binaura.net/stc/wrx/soundbow/)

~~~
Avshalom
Hyperscore was my first thought

[https://hyperscore.wordpress.com/](https://hyperscore.wordpress.com/)

Though in the intervening years (6 shit!) it appears to have gone from a cute
mit tech demo to a commercial application.

------
nairteashop
Just downloaded it - beautiful app! I also love the intro video - slick and
professional, but gets straight to the point and gives an excellent overview
of how the app works.

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adaml_623
Looks quite good.

Can you tell us how long it took to develop and challenges or technologies
used.

(I know this sounds like a job interview question but I'm actually quite
curious :-)

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Torrents
It looks awesome, however I'm very hesitant to download free apps at this
point. I would rather buy something for $5 or $10, because then I have more
confidence I'm not going to have popups or have to endorse or recommend it for
rewards or something.

I still don't mind in-app-purchases. Free always sets off warning bells
though.

------
arc_of_descent
I've recently started to compose music, and nothing beats the simple notation
software like TuxGuitar. I don't even attempt to use any other complicated
software. Note I'm only talking about composing, not effects and mixing.

But a very impressive looking software and very cool introduction video. And a
good composition too!

------
undoware
Looks really cool. Too bad SoundBrush is already the name of Roland's app for
their 'GS' MIDI extension.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_GS](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roland_GS)

(Not that most people would notice.)

------
Tloewald
This looks promising. It would be nice if you could constrain single strokes
to only play single notes simultaneously — as it is you often get very
discordant hits when a line gets steep.

I also wish you could draw strokes when zoomed out.

My daughter loves playing with the app.

------
rwhitman
Ok so its a piano roll sequencer with nice chrome and a locked set of mildly
acceptable instruments. Sorry but this just isn't overly exciting to me in its
current state.

Unlock all the instruments, add MIDI and charge for it. Then we're talking

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codereflection
Lovely execution. This is the type of app that I feel Bret Victor is talking
about, allowing you to explorer and create in new ways with immediate
feedback.

The disappointing part is seeing that this is an iPad only app.

~~~
baldajan
I'm sorry that we're iPad only, but you won't believe how large SoundBrush is,
and how small our dev team is (just the two founders). We're right now
strained for resources, but hopefully that won't be so later on.

~~~
codereflection
I completely understand, best of luck to you guys!

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no_gravity
Impressive interface!

What I would love: When tapping a note for the second time would make it
disappear. Currently, when Im trying stuff, I constantly switch between the
piano set and the eraser. Thats pretty tiresome.

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DonnyV
Unfortunately you need a fairly new Android phone to be able to pull something
like this off. I wish Android didn't take so long to fix the audio latency
issue.

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oracardo
Slick UI and cool concept. One comment on the website: the "share & discover"
section is jumbled on Chrome

~~~
baldajan
hmm... that's interesting, we use chrome for our web dev, so I'll take a look
at that. Thanks for the heads up. But can you tell us what system you're on?

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abecedarius
It's a shame it won't install on my iPad 1 -- the required camera seems like
more of a frill.

~~~
jayrhynas
Well, it's less of the camera and more of the iPad 1's processing power and
memory. We do have an iPad 1 in the dev office - but no matter what we tried,
we couldn't get it to run properly on it. Sorry, but this is something we
probably won't be able to support in the future.

~~~
abecedarius
Fair enough! Good luck with it, it looks neat.

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gdonelli
The video is awesome! Looks like the app is free? What's the $$$ plan?

~~~
jayrhynas
The app is free to download and includes all functionality and 1 free
instrument. You can get additional instruments by liking us on Facebook and
tweeting, or through in-app purchases

~~~
anigbrowl
I would like to recommend it to my fellow electronic musicians, but with such
restrictions it is literally not worth the time. Make a lite version that
presents the interface and 2 or 3 instruments simultaneously, and a premium
one that just unlocks everything. There's a huge variety of electronic music
software on the iPad, and musicians don't have the patience to be nickel-and-
dimed.

~~~
nutmeg
In my experience with iOS music apps, most of them use IAP. YMMV.

~~~
anigbrowl
I guess I'm biased towards the more pro end, though some pro SW like Animoog
does that too.

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d0m
Probably one of the best video introduction I've seen in a while!

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timthimmaiah
Been playing with this for 10 mins now...awesome concept. Instant fan!

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smaili
Very cool, love the fusion of music creation and touch gestures!

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daniel_levine
Would love to see Dropbox integration for backup and sharing :)

~~~
baldajan
So would we! No promises on feature release date, but we would love to get it
into our user's hands ASAP!

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lfuller
Really cool app. Are you planning to add an iPhone version?

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tagabek
This is a really neat idea. Great app, and great execution!

~~~
TylerE
Great execution, old idea. It's the basic piano roll most midi editors had in
the early 90s, or even before.

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fuddle
Its amazing what a good video can do to sell an app.

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woah
HHmm reminds me of fruity loops

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mixwhit
very nice. now if it could only export notated music...

