Comparing iPhone guitar apps

I've been posting comics more often in Inkygirl and just updated Will Write For Chocolate, if you want to check those out. Click the image below to see a bigger version.



But now I'd like to talk about my new iPhone.

I've been curious about all the music apps coming out for the iPhone. You can turn your iPhone into a piano keyboard, drum kit, xylophone, theremin, and other instruments.

I've been especially interested in the guitar apps. I used to do my songwriting with a guitar on my lap, but I've found that the prolonged strumming isn't good for my tendons. I compose with a keyboard now, but I prefer a guitar because it's easier (for me, anyway) to come up with chords and chord progressions for Allison to play.

With a keyboard, it's too easy for me to slip into chords and an accompaniment that would be very difficult to translate into something a 12-string guitar could easily play.

Which is why I've been delighted to find all kinds of cool guitar apps appearing in the Apple iTunes store. Here are mini reviews of some of the apps I've been trying out, but I welcome feedback from other iPhone users.

CHORD PLAY (v1.0)

Chord Play (v1.0) lets you pick up to 12 chord names to display on the main chord index. You just tap on any chord name then strum the strings displayed at the bottom of the screen. After just a few minutes' practice, I could tap chords with one hand and strum with the other -- I might try this out in an open filk sometime. :-)

String response is fast, and I like the fact that you can exchange the chords on the main page with any other chord. You can also make up new chords and save them.

Cost: $1.99

CHORD PRO (v1.3)

Chord Pro (v1.3) lets you pick chords with slider wheels instead of buttons. This means that you have immediate access to all the chords, but it also means that it takes more time to pick the chords -- using this for live accompaniment is probably out of the question.

As a chord dictionary, it would also be nice to see alternative chord variations. There's also a slight time lag when strumming chords, but at least this has improved since the first version.

Cost: $1.99

GUITAR TOOLKIT (v1.1.1)

GuitarToolKit (v1.1.1) is pricier than the previous two apps, but also includes an adjustable metronome, chromatic tuner and the ability to tune to any musical note or from 40+ standard tunings (standard, open G, drop D, etc.). You can opt for audible tones for tuning by ear if you don't want to use the chromatic tuner.

There's a library of over 260 chord maps and 1600 variations. My only beef is that you can't "strum" the strings to hear what the chord sounds like, but apparently the developers are working on this and a new version will be released in a few weeks.

Cost: $9.99

SUMMARY:

I'll likely stick with Chord Play for basic songwriting and campfire singalongs but will opt for Guitar Toolkit for everything else.

While our renovations are going on, we've got plastic sheeting hanging all over the place. I keep expecting to see people in protective environmental suits wandering around.



Renovations are going well, however! I'll post more pics soon.

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Möbius Street: Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff

Beckett and I have just launched our graphic novel blog! More about this in an upcoming Blathering, but feel free to check it out meanwhile.


Photo: Beckett Gladney

I was very excited to get my copy of Möbius Street recently: Jeff and Maya Bohnhoff's new CD release. Their Manhattan Sleeps albums is one of my favourites. Maya, by the way, is a published sf/fantasy author; you can find out more about her writing on the Mystic Fig website.

Anyway, I love Möbius Street. My favourites change each time I listen to the CD, and I'm always floored by the incredible instrumentals, exquisite arrangements, and polished vocals. As I mentioned in a post about Manhattan Sleeps, I could listen to Maya sing forever. Michelle ("Vixy") Dockrey's backing vocals added a wonderful depth to the song texture.

The guest musicians on the album include Mich Sampson (of Playing Rapunzel), Tony Levin (who has recorded with Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Pink Floyd, Dire Straits, among others) on bass, Jerry Marotta (Peter Gabriel) on drums, Victor Gonzales (Santana) on bass, and Scott Irwin (Avalon Rising) on drums.

You can buy a copy of the CD as well as listen to sample tracks from Möbius Street at CDBaby.

Jeff kindly agreed to answer a few questions for me to post on Blatherings:

How long were you working on Möbius Street?

We started working on it in 2003. My original thought was to do another album of original material after Manhattan Sleeps. I had a few sketches done, and a fairly complete version of the song Möbius Street back then. In July of that year we were asked to be Guests of Honor at Concertino in Worcester MA, and the organizers asked us to submit a song or two for a special CD to give to pre-registered members.

Maya and I decided that since we were mainly known for parodies in the Filk community, we should submit a new parody, so we recorded Come to Mordor for it. Doing that was so much fun, it deflected me toward doing another parody CD, so we ended up doing Aliens Ate My Homework first.

I had also committed to producing Stardust County for Nancy Freeman around that time, and I was transferred from Nevada City to Cupertino. It took forever for us to sell our house, so I ended up commuting, spending part of each week in Cupertino, and part in Nevada City. That made getting started on Nan's album problematic, so I sort of puttered on our album when I could. After we finished Stardust County last year, Maya and I started working seriously on Möbius Street.

Did your guest musicians record their parts in your studio?

Some came to the studio, some recorded elsewhere. It's really pretty easy now to collaborate over distance. With Tony Levin, I bounced down stem tracks of the songs as WAV files. Stems are basically sub-mixes of categories of tracks (vocals, guitars, drums, etc.).

Tony put the stems into Logic and then recorded his bass or stick parts. He sent me back just his parts, and I laid them into my project file. For Jerry Marotta's drums, I sent a USB thumb drive with the stems. He sent the drive back to me with about 20 tracks of drums, which I again simply laid into my project.



For Mich Sampson's piano, I sent Martin Gordon-Kerr (her recording engineer) stems, and again he sent back just the piano track. For Scott Irwin's drums, I went to Flowinglass Studio with my stems, and Kristoph Klover engineered the drum sessions.

Stoph and Scott play together in Avalon Rising, so he knows how to record Scott's drums really well. Stoph uses Pro Tools instead of Logic like I do, but that really doesn't matter, the audio files are compatible. Everyone else came here to record.



Photo: Beckett Gladney

I love the gorgeous harmonies in "Remover Of Difficulties." What language is this? What is the song about?

That one is a Bahá'í prayer, sung in Arabic. The melody is very close to a traditional chant for that prayer. I've been working with the music for years, but had never come up with a lyric for it. We realized that the chanted melody worked well against the chord changes with just a few slight changes.

Could you describe the collaboration process between you and Maya when arranging and recording a song that you wrote?

It's not always quite the same, but typically I'll play the guitar and sing what I have in mind for the melody to Maya. Depending on how attached I am to my melodic idea, she'll either recreate it pretty much intact, or in some cases, embellish it a bit. For my songs, I usually handle the arrangements. For Maya's songs, I'll arrange them, but Maya often has ideas that shape what I do.

"High Desert" is one of my favourites on this album. Could you tell me what inspired this song?

Well, the "surface" inspiration was a trip we took. In the summer of 2004 we drove from Nevada City to a family reunion near Las Vegas. The route from Reno down to Las Vegas had some spectacular desert scenery. I took some of those images and used them metaphorically for the song. I find landscapes like that exhilarating, but lonely, and I was trying to capture that duality. Like most of my songs, it's really about finding connection :-).

What conventions will you and Maya be attending in the coming months?

We're planning to attend OVFF in October. We'll be at Consonance in March 09. Beyond that, I'm not sure.

Have you started your next recording project(s) yet? If so, what are they?

I'm producing Seanan McGuire's Red Roses and Dead Things right now. Maya and I are trying to decide what to do next ourselves. One idea would be to do another parody album. We're also thinking about doing an album with purely acoustic versions of our original songs. If we do that one, I think we'll call it String Theory. Another idea would be to do an entire album of Bahá'í prayers (mostly English translations) set to music. The audience for that would be different, but it's something we've been asked to do over the years. I doubt we'll decide until Seanan's album is done.




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Balticon (part 7): final wrap-up

Photo by Korak

My Balticon report posts so far:

Balticon 42 - Part 1
Balticon 42 - Part 2
Balticon 42 - Part 3
Balticon 42 - Part 4
Balticon 42 - Part 5
Balticon 42 - Part 6

Allison's Balticon reports: Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3 - Part 4 - Part 5

I need to wrap up my Balticon report, though I could go on (and on) about all the cool people I met and wonderful things I saw. Clearly, I need to go back someday. Many thanks to the Balticon concom for inviting Urban Tapestry as Music Guests Of Honor. We had a fantastic time!

And here are just a few more personal highlights from the convention....



Photo by Korak


-- Dave Clement's concert. I always love hearing Dave sing any time, any place. His guitar broke a string partway through, but Tom replaced the string as well as lending Dave his own guitar until Dave's was ready. Yay, Tom!

-- Thanks to the generous France, who kindly offered to do a mini grocery run for us and bought fruit, cheese, crackers and other snacks. This ended up saving our bacon several times when got hungry, especially later at night when restaurants were closed.




-- 'Twas great to see so many people in the open filk each night; apparently this was fairly unusual for Balticon. From the Balticon Livejournal: "Sunday evening at 10 PM we had four (4) major activities that were all very well attended: the Sunday Night Film Festival, a book launch party with a concert by a local band with music written for / inspired by the book, George Hrab in concert in the hotel lounge / lobby, and an open filk circle with close to 50 people. On a Sunday night we had four events that had significant attendance."

Sadly, we ended up missing a few songs from a rock opera version of Dune in open filk; I hope we run into them again some other convention.



-- Balticon's con suite (above) was AMAZING. Holy cow....it was certainly the largest con suite I've ever seen.

-- Hearing Danny Birt (below) perform Tom Lehrer's Masochism Tango in open filk.



Photo by Korak

-- Seeing Debbie M. again; Debbie gave me a hand-designed card thanking me for supporting her in her walk for cancer in Relay For Life. One of these days Debbie and I have to sit down and have an actual conversation. We Debbies have to stick together, after all. :-)

-- Finally meeting Kathryn Cramer in person (we had crossed paths several times in Facebook).




-- Attending the Balticon Masquerade. As guests, we got prime seats in the front row, woohoo!



-- Loved the variety and creativity of all the costumes.



-- My favourite entry was the fairy tale theme Sleeping Beauty entry (above), not just because of the costumes but also the well-written and entertaining presentation. It ended up winning top prize in the Masquerade.

I especially got a kick out of the kids' masquerade entries. Some, like Erin (below), were a little shy. :-) Erin ended up being led across the stage by her parents, and she beamed at the audience the whole time as if she was thinking "hey, they're all looking at ME - how COOL!". Cuuuuuute. :-D



-- I was especially impressed by how much Masquerade event time was devoted to the Jack L. Chalker Young Writers' Contest, which is sponsored each year by the Baltimore Science Fiction Society. Marty Gear was an excellent Master of Ceremonies throughout:



-- I enjoyed Kallisti Tribal, both the music and the mesmerizing performance. What I loved the most: the joy in these women's faces, and their confidence in their bodies.



Photo by Allison

-- Another open filk highlight: hearing Gary sing a song he had written for Sheryl. It was great to be able to spend time with Sheryl and Gary at the beginning of the convention. Thanks also to Gary for taking us to The Walters Art Museum, where we saw a special map exhibit that included maps by Leonardo da Vinci, J. R. R. Tolkien's map of Minas Tirith, and Thomas Jefferson's map of the proposed contours of the states of the Union.



-- Gary was a WONDERFUL guest liaison, by the way. Thank you, Gary! Below: during the Filk 101 panel on Friday night.



Photo by Korak

-- Thanks also to Crystal (below), for helping us get us and our luggage to the airport on the way home. I've also been very much appreciating Crystal's sewing tips recently, and I asked her for more in the car when we were on the road.



- Another open filk highlight: hearing Maugorn perform his Cthulu reggae song.



But I have to stop now, else this Blathering (and this con report) will end up way too long. Ok, maybe it's already way too long. :-) I blame Balticon. Let me just say that Allison, Jodi and I enjoyed ourselves tremendously at Balticon as Music Guests Of Honor.



Anyway, I strongly encourage you all to check out Balticon when you have a chance. There's something there for everyone; browse through this year's pocket program (still online when I last checked) if you don't believe me. I hope to go back someday as a regular attendee. :-)

And once again....THANK YOU to the Balticon concom and volunteers for making Urban Tapestry feel so welcome!



Jodi, Allison and me, holding roses from Tom & Sue.



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Balticon (part 6), Evil Squirrels and Sewing Disasters

Above: One of my highlights from Balticon was hearing Rin Barton perform in open filk during the weekend. As I mentioned earlier, this talented young woman also won Best-in-Class Journeyman in the Masquerade for her Princess Koneko costume:



Rin says it was her first time performing in an open filk. Wow, what a voice...and such beautiful original songs! Rin also had her own webcomic for a while. Wish we had more time to talk.

Meanwhile, I've already raved about another new talent who emerged at Balticon this past weekend: our friend Connie; Jodi and I met Connie through Allison. Connie had never sung in open filk before. Here, Jodi and Allison rehearse one of Connie's songs:



Connie's Tolkien songs are gorgeous, as is her voice. I hope we'll see her in more open filks from now on! Maybe (rumour has it) even FilKONtario someday...



I'll be writing more about Balticon, but right now I'm interrupting my con report because I feel compelled to share more evidence that THE SQUIRRELS ARE TAKING OVER!



Yesterday morning, I was working in my basement office when the power suddenly shut off. In fact, it turned out our whole neighbourhood lost electricity, and the culprit was...you guessed it...a SQUIRREL. In yet another attempt to cut off communications and take over the world, the local squirrels managed to blow the local transformer.

We've lost our phone communication before because of squirrels when they chewed on the telephone lines. When that strategy failed, the furry little demons must have decided to try another plan.

The hydro guys told me they hate squirrels, and that squirrels are responsible for a lot of power outages. Ontario Hydro has started putting up "squirrel guards" around all the transformers; these give the squirrels a mild shock when they brush by the wires, hopefully resulting in them steering clear of the area.

Anyway, I was surprised to find out from the hydro guys that the squirrels sometimes ATTACK them when they're up in the trees doing repairs.



In fact, I watched as two squirrels ganged up on the hydro guy repairing our transformer and snapped the photo above. He had to use his repair pole to shoo them away.

My friend John (Happy Birthday, John, by the way!) writes: "Evil Squirrel Overlords send out their more aggressive young foot-soldiers on suicide missions like this to distract you from their ongoing plan to destabilize the global economy. When paper money won't buy you food, those who have been carefully hoarding food (like our squirrels, who keep their bagels in our mailbox) and have the teeth and claws (or thuggish raccoon henchmen) to defend it will rule supreme."

Spent time songwriting and sewing this past weekend, as well as (finally) finishing unpacking from Balticon. I had several sewing disasters. One resulted in my turning a dress into a skirt (I totally screwed up alterations to this dress so decided to salvage what I could). In another, I discovered that the very cheap fabric I had picked up on Queen St. was cheap in more than just price -- it MELTED when I tried ironing it! Eek.

And finally I gave up on this top; I've vowed to NOT buy any more of this slippery ultra-stretchy fabric until I have more experience. It's impossible to pick stitches out, which makes any mistake deadly. Ugh. I've been experimenting with extra fabric to see what I can do to transform the top into something I could actually wear.



Anyway, I comforted myself by cutting out a bunch of tank top shapes (I modified a store-bought pattern to fit my own body shape) and painting on them. I used acrylics mixed with Liquitex Fabric Medium. Fabric soaks up a lot more paint than canvas but it worked out pretty well.



After I finished each painting and let it dry, I turned it over and ironed it on Cotton setting to set the paint. Then I sewed the top; I serged a rolled hem around all the edges and seams instead of the usual folding, pressing and sewing. This saved a ton of time so I could spend more time on the painting part.

Susan suggested in Flickr that I add beads to the butterfly painting; I think I'll try that!



I was pretty happy with the result, and I plan to do more fabric painting. Tank tops are the easiest for now, but I also plan to paint some bags and purses, dresses, vests, and other pieces of clothing. Once I'm more confident, I'll probably try other sizes as well, and put some up for sale in my Etsy store.

I think it would be fun to create pieces of art that people could wear using paint, collage, beading, and quilting techniques. Meanwhile, though, I'm also continuing to learn more about sewing basics. My first Beyond Beginners sewing class is later this week!



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Balticon report (part 5): New friends

Above: Rob Balder performing with Geordie Keitt. I enjoyed hearing Rob perform at Balticon last weekend. Rob is the creator of the comic strip PartiallyClips and is also author of the webcomic Erfworld; the latter was listed in Time Magazine's 2007 Top Ten list of graphic novels (!).

Anyway, Rob talked a great deal about filk and the filk community in his performance with Sudden Death, and did a fantastic cover of Andy Eigel's Uplift as well as encouraging those who considered themselves filkers to vote for the song in the Pegasus Awards. Andy's song, by the way, has been nominated FIVE times before but hasn't yet won.

Below: Rob in the open filk circle with Abi, Roberta Rogow and Dave Clement.



Continuing with my other personal highlights from Balticon...

As I've mentioned before, I found everyone at Balticon to be super-friendly and welcoming, and very much enjoyed meeting new people like Linda Taggart:



Photo by Allison


Linda was Naomi Novik's guest liaison. Linda and I kept running into each other at the convention and we start greeting each other with hugs and "It's been so LONG!" Definitely a kindred spirit. :-D You can read her Balticon report here.

Linda decided to check out the open filk that night and I love her description of her first-time experience:

"I headed back to the room, but something really neat happened to sidetrack me. I heard singing and was reminded of the Open Filk and that Urban Tapestry would be there. I'd missed their concert, so I'd hoped to hear them sing. Little did I know that I wasn't walking into a simple meeting room in a hotel. I was walking into The Court of Miracles.

There was a quiet but sizeable group of people there. Their ages varied from young teenagers to people many years my senior. They held harps and guitars and mandolins. They took turns at sharing songs funny, sad, beautiful and joyful. It was magical. Someone would start a song and others would join in, playing or singing along after having heard only a few bars of the music, creating lovely harmonies.

I felt like I'd walked into something secret and magic and beautiful. These musicians (some of whom I've known for years like gorgeousgary, starmalachite and the_sheryl) blew me away with their talent and their sense of community.

I headed to bed after a while there, feeling like I'd stepped out of a fairy circle."

How cool is that?



Above, Urban Tapestry with John Jude Palencar. Even if you're not familiar with his name, you've undoubtedly seen his artwork (a few samples below). I found John very friendly and approachable, with a wry sense of humour. I met him at one of the Meet and Greets as well as on Monday, when we discovered that our Kaffeeklatsch was scheduled at the same time and in the same room as his. You can see more samples of John's artwork at Johnjudepalencar.com.






We let John use the Kaffeeklatsch room; no one had signed up for ours anyway, but we decided to hang out in the hallway for about ten minutes just in case anyone showed up. Glad we did, too, because we ran into author Jean Marie Ward, who said she hadn't realized she was supposed to sign up.

Photo by Allison

We headed down to the lobby area, where we ran into more people who wanted to attend our Kaffeeklatsch. Some had gone to our workshop room; our workshop had been rescheduled because of a conflict, but the sign hadn't been changed and the old time was still listed in the main program book. The others hadn't realized they were supposed to sign up.

To make a long story short, we ended up with far more people (and had far more fun) in our Kaffeeklatsch than we expected. I talked with hotel staff and they kindly let us use part of the bar/restaurant area that was supposed to be closed off. We found the hotel staff at the Marriott to be incredibly helpful and friendly, by the way. Including this fellow, who said he was going to try to drop by the open filk:


Photo by Allison.

Jean Marie, Debra Baker, Sue and others have convinced me to try looking up the TV series Highlander.

Also very much meeting Miranda Mason, who was Connie Willis's guest liaison. Sadly, I didn't get a photo of her. :-( While chatting with her at one of the con-arranged meals (the con organizers took the guests out for dinner -- didn't I say they treated us well? :-), I discovered that we have a surprising amount in common. I hope our paths cross again soon.

Dan Guy Fowlkes, Balticon 42 Coordinator, was someone else I enjoyed meeting:



Wish we had had more time to chat. Funny, smart, interesting guy -- super organized and very hard-working; it always seemed like he was everywhere at once, making sure things were running smoothly. He's also Neil Gaiman's Webmaster.

Dan gave us each a package of Berger Chocolate Cremes. Yummmm....



Allison, Jodi and I had fun doing a podcast with Paul Fischer:



Photo by Martha Holloway

Paul was a great podcast host. We were a bit nervous (or maybe I should be specific -- *I* was terrified! I'm terrible at public speaking!) but his humour and mellow demeanor helped calm us down. We did lots of talking and also sang "The Friendship Song" in the studio after a quick run-through.

The podcast will be posted on The Balticon Podcast site at some point, I think.


Above: with Naomi Novik.

I also enjoyed meeting Badger and lordlnyc, who won the item we donated to the Reading Is Fundamental auction. One of the items was the Companion Cube we used in our concert; thanks to my husband Jeff for helping me put that prop together!



Other items in the bag (which I sewed!) included various types of yummy Canadian chocolate, a Canadian pen, one of my mini-paintings ("Alien Dude"), and a set of my Letterpress and writing-related cards. We weren't able to attend the auction but I've been told that several people were bidding on our item, yay!

More about Balticon soon....


Photo by Allison

Above: gorgeous roses, presented to us by our friends Tom and Sue after or concert last weekend.



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