well, last night, I bought an application for £1.49 that I think is a bit of a game-changer; I really like micro-tonal synthesis anyway, and this is from the same developer who created “mugician” – which is a great app to emulate indian music on, and since I really liked “mugician” a lot – when I saw this brand new app, released to the store on may 26th, I did not hesitate – “cantor” was downloaded and installed.
“cantor” is to electric guitar what “mugician” was to mock sitar – so this is an ipad tool for guitarists – and having just had a brief try of it last night, I think it’s going to be fantastic for live performance, useful in the same way mugician is useful when you want to play something microtonal on your ipad, but now, purpose-built for guitarists.
at first look, it’s a fantastic app, you have control over everything: the tone of the instrument, reverb, distortion, etc. as well as being able to configure the playing area (the “strings” as it were) in a number of ways, it even has a looper which I found a bit tricky, but I did get it to work in the end – plus, audio copy and paste (which I couldn’t quite get to work, but never mind, the app is only four days old!).
but for sheer “fun factor” – it’s fabulous, and I think it will rapidly become one of my most loved and most used apps, because while it’s not exactly a guitar, it’s damnably close in terms of it’s sound, it’s playability – I found that you can even press down three or four notes at once and get a pretty convincing “power chord”…brilliant!
the developer has placed a link to a site where you can look at tutorials, and has provided his contact details (this always impresses me) and he seems devoted to making the product be all that it can be – and I really hope he keeps developing this one, and gives it more functionality, more features (MORE distortion please, different distortions – please!) – but, out of the box, I already love it, it’s truly fun to play and I think it could turn out to be an awesome musical tool for myself and many other musicians needing a guitar-like tool on the ipad.
I could dream this thing into something really amazing – now he’s already got the basic guitar functionality (and I could do trills, I could do “tapping”, it works really well!) going, I would really love to see some enhancements – such as, what if…I think it would be fantastic if you could run this thing in tandem with one of the better guitar effects apps, such as ampkit+ – so we would need a way to feed the audio output of cantor to the input of ampkit+.
or – conversely, build a “better ampkit” – guitar effects, and lots of them – and none of this “you have to buy this pedal, then this pedal, then this pedal” crap – that’s nonsense – charge more for the app, sure, but don’t rape the customer once he’s bought it) – just one massive playground of effects boxes. and later, a rack mount section too.
it’s strange, we’ve had a lot of effect-based apps, but not too much in the way of input devices except for plugging a real guitar into these effects. now that cantor gives us, effectively, “a virtual guitar”, I’d love to see it coupled with the effects apps somehow – either externally by being able to route the output of cantor to the input of ampkit+ – or by building an entire effects module right into it…one way or the other. after some initial discussions with the developer, I think this needs to be more about apps working together rather than building one giant guitar app that does it all – but either way – I can still dream, right??
once I’ve played with the app for a couple weeks I am sure I will have some SENSIBLE suggestions, but right now, I am more excited about this app than I’ve been excited about any app since fairlight pro.
I would say, even some simple effects, chorus, flanger, phaser, wah, would be a good place to start – they don’t have to be super fancy, but just so we can alter the tone quite a bit more – nothing like a bit of chorus on a clean sine wave guitar; or a bit of flanger on a very distorted rhythm guitar…
or you could just go insane and build in a complete guitar synthesizer, something like my roland gr-55 but for the ipad – call it my dream cantor-55. please do!!
OK, I have to go there: here is what I would absolutely dream it would do: full on guitar synth, with as many presets as possible (and configurable sounds), including all of the “classical” instruments; full on guitar modelling so your basic guitar can be a strat or a les paul or a 12-string (plus the ability to blend/combine/shut off synth/guitar models/amp models); full on amp modelling so you can have a fender twin or a marshall or a line 6 or whatever; and finally, a complete effects family, in two sections; one, a full on stomp box (similar to ampkit+) and two, a rack mount as well, with more complex effects devices, especially a big, beautiful reverb with some massive rooms in it – no one builds decent reverbs!
call it “allguitar” or something like that – everything you need, no actual guitar required (although it would be good if you COULD play your real guitar through the synth, guitar models, amp models, and stomp box/rack mounts too) – that would be way cool. you would never need another app – everything could be done with the one app. maybe “oneguitar” is better, I don’t know – don’t care about the name, just want the app that does it all….
so I see it sort of like this:
cantor (or, real guitar or synth, plugged in to input)> imaginary cantor added-in guitar synth > imaginary cantor guitar modelling > imaginary cantor amplifier modelling>
note – all are switch-able, so you can have:
guitar synth only
guitar modeller only
cantor unprocessed
any 2 of the above
all 3 of the above
then, from any of these stereo chains into…
two parallel effects chains
imaginary cantor stomp box wonderland, like ampkit+ but better and NO “in-app” purchases please! >
imaginary cantor rack mount wonderland, like guitar rig for ipad, but better and NO “in-app purchases please!>
note – these are switch-able, so you can have:
stomp box effects only
rack mount effects only
both
none
then, from any of these three stereo chains > summed back into one rich stereo output > noise gate + reverbs **
** all stomps and rack effects can be “pre”, “mid” or “post” – so:
immediately after cantor (or real guitar or synth input)
immediately after the guitar synth but before the guitar models
immediately after the guitar models but before the guitar synth
immediately after the guitar models but before the amp models
immediately after the guitar synth but before the amp models
immediately after the amp models
immediately after the final output of stomp box or rack mount or both
you know, I don’t have the time to ever do or learn something like developing apps, I also don’t have the patience or the temperament unfortunately, but sometimes, I wish I were a developer. I would love to design apps (but not have to build or maintain them!) – all the glory, none of the pain! of course, I realise that what I’ve just described would probably be far too large and clunky for one app, and it would probably be best to do this with two or more apps, but hey – I can dream (and I am dreaming, with THIS description….).
maybe it should be called “dreamguitar”…but whatever they call it, I want someone to build it, so that ***I*** can play it…sigh.
note to all developers: please ignore this, I realise that it’s absolute fantasy but who knows, maybe some day…
🙂
pureambient / dave stafford 