App Music: IPhone plays the band

The graduate opera singers and the Smartphone: A lecturer at the Berlin University of the Arts has established the DigiEnsemble. Eight musicians play live on iPhone and iPad. The first lesson: solos easier on real instruments – but the academic audience likes the music app.

Matthias Krebs sits with his eight-member DigiEnsemble in the rehearsal room and taps on the screen of his iPhone around, it tilts to the right and left and runs his fingers over it. Every touch and movement produces a sound that it produces a gentle string melody. The seven other musicians in the orchestra’s fumble just as concentrated around on their devices. It sounds the “Ostinato for eight iPods,” an original composition in the classical style, which approximates the sound of real instruments amazing.
If we go by outside in the hallway, you think of Stradivari and not to Apple. Matthias Krebs is a graduate opera singer and music professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin. His seminars have titles like “Learning in the digital music climate change.” He also called social media evangelist.

“We are ostracized”

In the conservative world of classical music, he and his penchant for all things digital an outsider. With his band smartphone he must rehearse in normal classrooms, not every professor at the traditional university is thrilled. “We are ostracized,” he says as he pushes a few tables aside to make room in the rehearsal room. It is the dress rehearsal, the performance of the ensemble at the summer festival at the University imminent. How will colleagues react, the audience will understand at all what is happening on stage? Cancer is a pioneer of the fledgling genre, the “mobile music“. This is music that is played solely with apps for iPhone, iPad and other mobile devices.

400 instruments in one hand

The 32-year-old has about 400 music apps in his repertoire. Today he plays ThumbJam, a program that can simulate 40 instruments. Cancer selects the cello. He tilts his iPhone from horizontal to vertical – the sound of the cello becomes louder. He shakes it – the sound vibrates. “This has been very instrumental in character, since it is controlled gestures,” says Krebs. That’s the promise of music apps: Through an intuitive to use even a unmusical users in a short time to play as if he had tormented by hundreds of hours of practice. “When the trumpet in three days I’ve learned, what else would I have taken three years,” says Timon Kossack. He actually studied piano at Potsdam for the DigiEnsemble but he takes over again with new instruments.

Limits of the iPhone music

But the musicians still come across the borders App music. “Most of the solos were on real instruments easier to play,” says Krebs. The tip-speed can not increase just endless, the position of the smartphones on the palm is sometimes impractical. To show how out of touch at any one tone, transmits his cancer touch screen with a beamer on a screen. He plays a few bars of “Starlight” by the British band Muse. The chords he has put on buttons, which he then successively selects. The touch of the strings on the display is easy to see exactly on the canvas.

“There are always people who think that we would only run on our equipment stored music. Thus it is obvious what is going on. One of the art of the musician is even closer than a normal concert.” In spite of everything remains digital instruments by hand. Each note corresponds to a finger on the touch screen. Compared to a conventional orchestral rehearsal time and costs are low. Besides the iPhone, and iPod, iPad DigiEnsemble needed to make music just a line mixer, with the eight devices are wired. This levels out the volume ratio of the eight sources and directs the mixed sound to the room loudspeakers.

Appearance in front of music professionals

And of course the musicians need a lot of apps. The hot GarageBand, or Accordio Shiny Drum. There are now hundreds of them in Apple‘s App Store. Most do not cost much more than a few. At the summer festival at the University of the Arts, the DigiEnsemble plays directly in front of the prestigious university big band, the patio is full. Matthias cancer is on the stage and explains how you can follow his app on the monitor. Some onlookers smile at the first glance at the strange ensemble, which occurs because without instruments. The “Ostinato for eight iPods” is recorded behavior. The worn classic piece does not fit into the party atmosphere of summer evenings. That’s when the pop song “I Need a Dollar” differently: Soul singer Mark Godau brings in the Digi-appearance, he yells, screams and jumps up and down on stage. He also sends his voice through an app of course: “Irig Vocalive”.

The audience is enthusiastic and filmed, photographed and waves back with its smartphones. “I need a new phone, I want to do music,” says one student. After the final applause, Matthias cancer seen at the relief. The mobile music also depends on a classical concert stage, consists in the strict gaze of music professionals. Or as a singing teacher in the university jargon: “It’s just an abstraction of that which ought to hear what you – but it works.”

This entry was posted on Monday, July 18th, 2011 at 10:07 am and is filed under Technology. Tags: apple, Apps, Music, Smartphone You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.