NOIZ app: Anyone can make a dance track in 10 minutes

[Aleatoriac]

Developer here!

Aha! So it was YOU!

I think that mission statement got lost somewhere along the way!
A

But...but... when I try that people just blame me anyway! I mean it isn't your fault some people are too stupid to appreciate your app.

But there I was 30 years ago practicing all those scales and starving half-to-death just to afford a musical instrument, and you go and make all that IRRELEVANT with a SODDING SMART-PHONE APP!!??

Why can't you people who code things make something so I don't have to go to work at all?

[Cinebient]

So i have to create an account to use this app?
It's another cloud like thing?
Deleted...but i really wish the developer good luck.
Some people will like it for sure.
These apps and those fremium casual games are a big part of our future, if we want it or not.

[morelia]

To be frank, I don't see that as the manufacturers' fault.

Agreed, 100%.

As hard-to-believe as it might seem, there really are going to be kids who will never see the worth in anything that makes the process of being a musician any harder than apps like this.

That's what I'm seeing.

Most of our users have never made music before and I think giving them an opportunity to get started is really cool. Even for some producers it offers an interesting way to lay out a sketch for a song.

That's actually a pretty good point. I can see some people using an app like this but wanting more which could lead them to expanding the way they work. Although I don't get the idea of producers using it as a sketch pad. Unless I misunderstand you, wouldn't that be a bit like me wanting a guitar track so I place a generic acoustic loop in that spot? Which IMO wouldn't provide a sketch for anything other than a different song to the one you have in mind.

[thomekk]

Most of our users have never made music before and I think giving them an opertunity to get started is really cool. Even for some producers it offers an interesting way to lay out a sketch for a song.

A

Clever idea, indeed. Fits well into the trend to dump the idea of "music" down into some formulas per presets/algos/most common tweakable parameters - my opinion. But why to have more people on board without any musical ideas fits to the approach having more people who can do video/image-editing via smartphone - without the knowing of any complexity and the hustles behind and condensed/primitivated to a few knobs? Of course this can work - but hmm "schematic" is a good idiom? What is music?

[alexfoxy]

So i have to create an account to use this app?
It's another cloud like thing?

Correct - there's a social network within the app where people post their songs and get feedback so you do need an account. We're looking at how we might make this optional as we know some people find it annoying to have to login.

Unless I misunderstand you, wouldn't that be a bit like me wanting a guitar track so I place a generic acoustic loop in that spot? Which IMO wouldn't provide a sketch for anything other than a different song to the one you have in mind.

If you watch the video there is a piano roll and keyboard to record your loops in. It's not just preset loops. We give users a layout with loops already set up as a starting point. You can then go and change the sounds, melodies etc to make your own track.

Fits well into the trend to dump the idea of "music" down into some formulas per presets/algos/most common tweakable parameters - my opinion.

Well - you still need to understand something fairly complex to make anything "original" on the app and you're never going to be able to make something as complex or advanced as on Logic/Ableton.

[Wormhelmet]

This thread truly had some posts that made me laugh out loud.

Agree tying it to a login of some site is a bad idea. Turn off for me buying it.

As a guitar player for 34 years, occasional drummer, keyboard hack going on 23 years, I can see some points some guys are making about easy tunes made quickly, BUT, I am also an electronic musician/producer/arranger and saw some skill in composition in the video, ability to make your own loops, and all in all, it looks like a really fun app for the iPhone.

Glad I watched the video before commenting. Lose the login to a social site requirement and I would definitely purchase it. Have little I do on my iPhone but a lot on iPad and this would go on my phone.

Best of luck to the developer and glad I watched the video before commenting on "button pushers".

Highly doubt just anyone could make good sounding tracks on this, but don't doubt someone with a musical ear and modest skill could definitely churn out something worthy of listening to and have fun manipulating it realtime.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Developer here!

You're all entitled to your opinion of course, but why don't you listen to what people are making on the app before judging. It's not all just four on the flour house...

Here are some interesting tracks I picked off our Featured list:
https://noiz.ee/s/YqCu4CiAornoVt4v1InFjZk0
https://noiz.ee/s/nTBQoZov22E1Mr4rQRSyxF6v
https://noiz.ee/s/jZzaj2Q3dAIipJ92ZEpncZIw
https://noiz.ee/s/ULr0kvdQIQerXmbxRwae9aeI
https://noiz.ee/s/Xkb0qAHUINc11cYvcU4lms0d
https://noiz.ee/s/YZYOtah3s1LqexC0hTIIYc30

Sure you're not gonna be sending them to get mastered and released on a label but they're still music and people have put a lot of effort and thought into them.

Most of our users have never made music before and I think giving them an opertunity to get started is really cool. Even for some producers it offers an interesting way to lay out a sketch for a song.

Sure it's not gonna fit into everyone's work flow but don't hate on it just because it's trying to do something different. Our goal isn't to dumb music making down, it's to take a fresh approach and to try and make it exciting again. I think that mission statement got lost somewhere along the way!

A

I don't have an issue with fresh approaches, per se, as I enjoy some of the inspiration that can come from approaching music from a completely different perspective.

However, your marketing copy seems to be at odds with your mission statement.

You say that this can be used as a sketchpad. Of course, that is true. But you are pitching this more as an end-game, rather than a means to an end. You are selling people on the idea that they can make "Epic!", and "Amazing!" music, and then they can just upload their masterpieces to the world...Done!
This just plays further into the reality that so much music today is disposable. Why wouldn't it be? This is not an issue that you have created, but you do contribute when you sell people on on the idea of making a banging dance tune in under 10 minutes

Why should I care? As I said, it's not about snobbery, but about giving people the opportunity to discover something that can add immense value to their lives. Of course, I am not saying your app couldn't light that flame, but I am not so sure. To me, it doesn't seem scaleable. Until I hear some of this epic, amazing music you're talking about, I'll remain unconvinced.

Again, this is not about raising the bar to entry. I just feel there are many other apps that allow people to start as absolute beginners, but will allow them to grow within the same app, should they so desire. Two perfect examples are Garageband, and Gadget. Both will allow you to start small (Garageband even offering a loop-based paradigm), but then they both give you room to grow. And with both of these apps I actually have been amazed by the results people get.

I also don't understand how this app makes anything "exciting again" Did it ever stop being exciting?

Y'know, I wonder how this might have been received if you hadn't succumbed to marketing it in the way you have. I did want to try it to find out myself, but I'm not signing up to anything just to test an app. I also won't get any use out of it if it won't work in landscape mode. For now, I've deleted it. maybe if you change the social network aspect to work on the back-end i.e only when you want to share, then I'd try it again. I haven't given up on the idea of being able to make something good from it

[alexfoxy]

This thread truly had some posts that made me laugh out loud.

Agree tying it to a login of some site is a bad idea. Turn off for me buying it.

As a guitar player for 34 years, occasional drummer, keyboard hack going on 23 years, I can see some points some guys are making about easy tunes made quickly, BUT, I am also an electronic musician/producer/arranger and saw some skill in composition in the video, ability to make your own loops, and all in all, it looks like a really fun app for the iPhone.

Glad I watched the video before commenting. Lose the login to a social site requirement and I would definitely purchase it. Have little I do on my iPhone but a lot on iPad and this would go on my phone.

Best of luck to the developer and glad I watched the video before commenting on "button pushers".

Highly doubt just anyone could make good sounding tracks on this, but don't doubt someone with a musical ear and modest skill could definitely churn out something worthy of listening to and have fun manipulating it realtime.

Thanks! We're currently working on the "pro" version of this app called KRFT where you build your own interfaces for electronic music composition/jamming/live performance. You can see one of our beta testers having a jam on it here:

There's no social stuff on this one, just a tool!

[alexfoxy]

I don't have an issue with fresh approaches, per se, as I enjoy some of the inspiration that can come from approaching music from a completely different perspective.

However, your marketing copy seems to be at odds with your mission statement.

You say that this can be used as a sketchpad. Of course, that is true. But you are pitching this more as an end-game, rather than a means to an end. You are selling people on the idea that they can make "Epic!", and "Amazing!" music, and then they can just upload their masterpieces to the world...Done!
This just plays further into the reality that so much music today is disposable. Why wouldn't it be? This is not an issue that you have created, but you do contribute when you sell people on on the idea of making a banging dance tune in under 10 minutes

Why should I care? As I said, it's not about snobbery, but about giving people the opportunity to discover something that can add immense value to their lives. Of course, I am not saying your app couldn't light that flame, but I am not so sure. To me, it doesn't seem scaleable. Until I hear some of this epic, amazing music you're talking about, I'll remain unconvinced.

Again, this is not about raising the bar to entry. I just feel there are many other apps that allow people to start as absolute beginners, but will allow them to grow within the same app, should they so desire. Two perfect examples are Garageband, and Gadget. Both will allow you to start small (Garageband even offering a loop-based paradigm), but then they both give you room to grow. And with both of these apps I actually have been amazed by the results people get.

I also don't understand how this app makes anything "exciting again" Did it ever stop being exciting?

Y'know, I wonder how this might have been received if you hadn't succumbed to marketing it in the way you have. I did want to try it to find out myself, but I'm not signing up to anything just to test an app. I also won't get any use out of it if it won't work in landscape mode. For now, I've deleted it. maybe if you change the social network aspect to work on the back-end i.e only when you want to share, then I'd try it again. I haven't given up on the idea of being able to make something good from it

Sure, our marketing copy is a bit hyperbolic. We're just a two man team, both musicians and developers and I'd be the first to admit our marketing skills aren't our biggest strength!

[Wormhelmet]

Nice. Look forward to that one. Thanks for sharing the preview.

Suggestion -

If it does landscape mode, it will please a lot more on iPad.

[alexfoxy]

Nice. Look forward to that one. Thanks for sharing the preview.

Suggestion -

If it does landscape mode, it will please a lot more on iPad.

Yes I've seen people saying that sort of thing! I think we will do just iPhone first and then an iPad version that takes advantage of the screen space. Thanks for the tip though!

[Daimonicon]

What the heck, I've never been crucified here so I'll have a go at it. I hate this app and every one of it's kind. It's taken my whole life to develop some pretty average mixing, arranging and guitar playing skills. So when I see someone press a button and think they are doing something more than press a button it annoys the hell out of me. On the other hand, if you are so desperate to feel good about yourself that you'll believe you are doing something truly creative then good luck to you. The whole music industry if full of generic garbage anyway so what difference does it really make. There, it's done, now nail me up and wait till I die.

I have to agree. We live in a world where so many are not willing to sacrifice time and effort to become good at something. They don't have the patience. They want it right now, otherwise they will be bored and jump on something new. When I started playing guitar all I had was a cheap tape recorder, a crap guitar and a Roland 505 drum machine. Nowadays youngsters even complain about free stuff. Stuff back at the time when I started only could dream of. What a sad world.

[el-bo (formerly ebow)]

Nowadays youngsters even complain about free stuff

Are you calling me a youngster?

[Jace-BeOS]

Anyone here been in the 3D modeling/rendering community? Apps like this remind me of Bryce 3D. It was technically capable of letting you create some incredible CGI landscapes, but it was REALLY easy to create formulaic infinite landscapes with geometric primitives all over the place. People would use it and feel super proud of their "art", when it was really more like a generative product; a sort of collage of functions/elements that produced very similar results across so many "artists". There would be a few artists making incredible stuff with it, diving deep into its technical capabilities, but that was overshadowed by the bulk of people making samey crap with it, because samey crap was really super easy to make.

Then there was Poser. Same problem: the tool could help artists create incredible things, especially when used with other tools.. But most people seemed to just use it to create cliched T&A fantasy scenes from pre-made content (there's an entire cottage industry for models and textures to serve this kind of "content creator").

I think 3D software in general is the most unfriendly, buggy, and unnatural type of art tools ever. I'm all for these tools being made accessible (and stable!!!). The consequences, however, are in making it easy for inexperienced users to flood the world with less-than-amateur-artist content. When people see the content without knowing how it was made, there's a lot of assumption about the artist's creative process that isn't necessarily correct (i.e.: "that must have taken a lot of effort and skill", when, no, it didn't). It's not about elitism. It's about defining art, or the artist's methodology, in a way that excludes automated formula. If we don't make such distinctions, how do we tell the difference between an artist and a person making a collage of other people's materials?

Then again: Is there a difference? This comes up a lot. And here it is in music.

These accessible music apps do the same thing. It's good and bad.

It's good in that it lets inexperienced would-be-creators get started and it maybe inspires them to pursue more complex efforts.

It's bad in how it homogenizes the output of the medium.

I'm generally not interested in these kinds of apps. Especially when they're focused on playback of pre-made content. I deleted Roli Noise for the second time because I find it to be the antithesis of what I want to do with music (and really counter-intuitive, if it's more than what I understand it to be, plus, lots of storage space is eaten by loops I don't want to use anyway).

Then again, I had previously deleted Propellerhead Figure for the same reason. After seeing people continue to be complimentary about it, I installed it again and gave it another shot. The second time, the tutorial (which wasn't there before) guided me into what it does and I thought "this is actually kinda cool and fun". So I'm capable of seeing both sides of this issue. (More about Figure: I tried to see how a non-music-making friend would feel about it, but the damn demo mode cannot be turned back on after you end it) Consequentially, it's still on three of my devices and I might play with the notion of using its output as components of my music making. But I'm not a realtime performer/improv type of person, and it really seems to be aimed at that kind of usage. So who knows what I might do with it. I promise I won't be producing dance music, though.