Recently, I posted a new Grain Science demo track to SoundCloud. It's just a series of experiments, but quite a few people found it interesting because it demonstrates a side to Grain Science that maybe not everyone is aware of: the ability to bring to life the awesome synth instruments that are lurking in the everyday sounds all around you:
All the sounds you hear in this demo are created from four short recordings: a glass being struck, a coin being spun and dropped, a short whistling sample, and a tiny bit of beatboxing.
Grain Science 1.3 is out, and it's big! Rather than lots of little changes (as in version 1.1 and version 1.2), there are four major upgrades. Let's dig in and see what's new:
Today, version 1.2 of Grain Science was released. It's another big update!
The things I personally like the most in v1.2 are the new Chorus unit, Pulse-Width Modulation and (just because it "feels" nice to use) swapping FX units by drag-and-drop.
Here's the complete list of changes:
Most of the posts here are aimed at the people who use the stuff we make. This one is aimed at fellow iOS developers, who might be searching for a solution to a particular problem.
That problem is that UISegmentedControl doesn't offer good VoiceOver accessibility. This is unusual for Apple as their accessibility stuff is normally extremely strong.
(If you're lost already, VoiceOver is the name of Apple's technology for making devices usable by people who can't see — amongst other things, by reading out the names of items as they pass under the touch of a user running their fingertip across the screen. UISegmentedControl is the technical name for those widgets that look like one long button, split up into pieces, where you can tap the pieces to select one of several options. If you open up the Maps app, it's the thing that says "Search | Directions". )
Grain Science has been out for a month, and our first update has just been released. Version 1.1 brings quite a lot of new stuff!
The most exciting is probably the virtual MIDI/background audio support. This allows you to launch another app while Grain Science continues to play music in the background, either to combine their output, or because you want to use the other app as a controller. It's pretty neat tapping, say, the controls in Polychord and hearing Grain Science's distinctive sounds in response.
You may have heard we have a new project under way! We'd like to tell you a bit about it, and answer a few questions you may have.
It's a new granular synthesiser for iPad, and it's codenamed Grain Science. We haven't decided if that will be the final name or not — we like it, but might be confusing for people expecting corn- or wheat-based foodstuffs :)
Hey folks! There's a whole bunch of news today!
First of all, our new game, Get The Flock Out is now available in the App Store! If you haven't been following along, it's a sheep-herding game with 36 levels of tightly-knit action, for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch.
With iOS 5 due out tomorrow, there are new versions of both Sylo Synthesiser and Hokusai available on the App Store today — these contain important compatibility updates.
Another new Hokusai update, v1.0.4, should have hit the App Store by the time you read this. It's quite an interesting one... so what have we added?
Well, the biggest "crowd-pleaser", if your emails and tweets are anything to go by, will be the per-track gain control dials. These allow you to set the volume level of each track, nondestructively. You can also double-tap them to mute a track.
A new Hokusai update, v1.0.3, is now rolling out across the App Store. We have a bunch of new stuff to tell you about!
One feature we've already mentioned is the new Time Bar. Only available to paying customers, it adds an overview of where you are in your project, using a scrollbar-style indicator and a gracefully-zooming ruler. You can enable it from the View panel (iPad) or Project Actions menu (iPhone). But you knew that was coming already, so what else have we added?
With Hokusai 1.0.2 out, what's next? Well, we have a number of features in development, but we'd like to show you one upcoming feature now, the Time Bar.
The Time Bar is like an extra toolbar (and optional — we like to keep Hokusai clutter-free where possible) that features:
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