Readers have complained that we’re doing so much mobile music coverage that it’s hard to wade through it, specifically in regards to the iPhone. I’ll be consolidating that news into a more manageable weekly post. The goal is to make this information more manageable both to those who love mobile music making, and those who don’t. Unfortunately, in my haste to do so, I got something wrong, and I think it deserves a separate correction.
Update: The iDrum mobile app available today will indeed allow you to use your own samples and exchange files with your desktop computer. The original story has been updated:
iPhone News: iDrum, BtBx In; Mixtikl Out Citing Apple Rules
That’s important, because the fundamental issue that determines whether a handheld music app is a toy or something that matters to your music is workflow. If you can complete something musically meaningful on a handheld device, or you can work on something related to what you’re doing on your desktop/laptop computer, then obviously, it’s useful, and that’s what we care about on CDM.
Developer Art Gillespie explains:
With iDrum for iPhone, you can do full round-trip editing of beats–including sending samples back and forth–with iDrum (desktop) for Windows/Mac.
As for audio export, it’s pretty easy to grab the ringtone bounce and use that. (If you don’t already have iDrum)
If you’re currently using the app, the build of iDrum.app with this feature isn’t out just yet; we’ll have an update when it becomes available. It’s not documented, either, but we have confirmed this functionality.
This also explains something that confused a reader, which is why the iPod Touch version of iDrum still has a ringtone bounce, even though you can’t load ringtones on the iPod.
Of course, part of why we don’t simply copy and paste press releases on CDM is that I like to understand the real message of new tools , even if that means first getting it wrong. (The round-trip workflow didn’t seem to be fully documented when the story first ran.)
So, apologies to Art, and now back to your regularly-scheduled programming. We’ll have another iPhone update at the beginning of next week.