KVR Audio

bioroid · Post by **bioroid** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 6:38 am

Hey guys,

Thanks to a review in the US Keyboard magazine I found out about some great music software for the Palm.

Microbe is a portable Rebirth. Two 303-like synths and an 808 drum machine. You can even replace the drum samples with your own wav files.

Bhajis Loops is a full sample sequencer that you will have to see to believe. It has filters, envelopes, LFOs, etc. And both applications share the same suite of effect plugins!

The website is http://www.chocopoolp.com/

If you have a decent Palm OS definitely give the demos a trial run. The download page has compatability info.

bioroid

Yagushi · Post by **Yagushi** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:15 am

Back in July I was interested in doing some music with Microbe and Bhajis Loops... I went so far as to purchase a Zire 72 just for the sake of demoing the programs but I still have yet to fire up the PDA... After messing with Griff and a couple of other programs on the PocketPC platform, I came to the conclusion that composing music on a PDA is incredibly lame (at least on that platform with those specific programs... perhaps I should finally get around to trying out the Chocopoolp programs...)

John Vulich · Post by **John Vulich** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:38 am

Yeah, as if I don't already feel that all of the full blown Windows apps, that I own, are missing features that I desperately need.

FaX · Post by **FaX** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 7:44 am

John Vulich wrote:Yeah, as if I don't already feel that all of the full blown Windows apps, that I own, are missing features that I desperately need.

You always make me have a sly little chuckle to myself John

PS: that was actually a complement BTW

KLG · Post by **KLG** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 9:34 am

Bhajis Loops is indeed very powerful for a Palm application. I think it's almost as good as the early Fruity Loops, with some surprising features like microtuning and live mode.

bioroid · Post by **bioroid** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 4:07 pm

Well you can't expect to have a full blown application with the same feature set as whats available on the PC/Mac, but what you do get is pretty damn good. If you were ever in the early MOD scene and able to do music with only 4 samples playing at one time and no effects, then this should feel like having access to a full studio. Sometimes having limitations forces you to be more creative.

I read in the forums that the PocketPC music apps aren't the most stable. If I knew someone with a PocketPC I would like to test those apps out, but I am quite happy with the features of the Palm ones.

mikejade · Post by **mikejade** » Tue Dec 20, 2005 4:33 pm

I can only add my good experiences with Bhaji Loops. Very strong on features, can even render to wav or save to midi, then export to PC for further music making. Interface is very easy to understand and use, remarkable design for such a small screen (it works on 160x160).

Much more useable than those trackers on PocketPC platform.

RZ · Post by RZ » Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:55 am

Has anybody come across anything good on the j2Me platform?

John Vulich · Post by **John Vulich** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 1:18 am

FaX wrote:
John Vulich wrote:Yeah, as if I don't already feel that all of the full blown Windows apps, that I own, are missing features that I desperately need.
You always make me have a sly little chuckle to myself John

PS: that was actually a complement BTW

Yeah, and it was actually more of a self deprecating comment than anything else.

fitch · Post by **fitch** » Wed Dec 21, 2005 12:13 pm

i'm downloading this right now... should be a fun thing for christmas

thanks bioroid

braj · Post by **braj** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 9:36 pm

I just ordered a Palm TX partly to use Bhaji Loops. Told my wife that I needed it for corporate email and Excel. Hehe... I'll probably be buying Bhaji Loops after trying the demo. BTW, Here is a cool little video demo in French, though I doubt you need to know French to see that it is indeed a cool little app. I hope to make little clips to later use in Live.

braj · Post by **braj** » Fri Jan 13, 2006 11:47 pm

I'm actually surprised more people aren't excited about this. It seems like a natural for KVRers.

Yagushi · Post by **Yagushi** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 5:46 am

Hey braj, thanks for the link! Now I really need to get around to demoing the Chocopoolp apps. While the mp3 files on their site sounded good, I chalked the quality up to being rendered music instead of live performance. (The rendered mp3 files from Griff sound good but the reality is that that interface is very unintuitive and the live performance sucks) But that French walk-through of Bhajis Loops has restored my faith in PDA music production...

bioroid · Post by **bioroid** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 6:12 pm

I'm pretty sure that the rendered output from Bhajis Loops is exactly the same as the real time output. It may sound crappy thru the built in speaker of a Palm, but it sounds amazing through headphones. Even offline rendering (using the conduit plugin SynchroPoolp) should yield the exact same result.

As far as why more people aren't excited, maybe because it requires a hardware purchase? I was able to test drive the demo on my girlfriend's Palm E but otherwise I wouldn't have made the investment in getting my own Palm without being able to first try it. The video link that braj posted was really good and shows how easy it is to work with.

The author of Bhajis Loops even posted a little sinewave application with source code to help others get started with audio app programming on the Palm. I'm already working on porting my Turntablist Pro plugin to be a standalone app. Hope to have a demo released next month. And whenever he adds instrument plugin support to Bhajis, I will release a plugin version too.

bioroid

braj · Post by **braj** » Sat Jan 14, 2006 6:24 pm

Yeah, I understang the hardware purchase thing, but in a world where some plugins cost more than a Palm, I still thought there would be more buzz about it around here

Cool to hear more Palm music apps are coming!

PalmOS music production