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Hello, I am really interested in the new Nokia N900 and I might even buy it, if there would be an application that you can make music with.

I have seen some apps, but they were more like toys. I use FL Studio on my PC, It's my favourite audio workstation, and I would like something very similar, but mobile version. I'm talking about an application that you control with the stylus, not your fingers.

If you look at fl studio at the first time, you will see a spaceship control panel-like interface. It would be really hard to navigate through all those functions, so I gathered all those I would need.

1. Pan/Volume knob
2. The volume properties of the instrument.(Delay, attack, release etc)
3. ModX = cutoff frequency

This is the most important part, the piano roll, this is where the melody is composed, and this is why this application will be hard to use with fingers. There won't be any sliders on the screen. Scrolling will be done with the physical keys. I wouldnt want to see any other on screen, just the piano and the space for the notes. Selecting tool and playing the notes would be done by pressing key combinations like P for playing pattern. CTRL + touch for selecting notes. SHIFT+ touch for resizing them. Touch to move them.
Now onto the drums,

Those little boxes are the notes, they dont have controllable pitch. This is an easy way to create a drumloop. That little graph button activates the volume switch for the channel you selected then you can modify the volume for each note.
The app should have some basic samples to work with and should be able to use the sound files on the phone or memory card.

Do you think this is possible with the new phone? Any suggestions?
This would be a SUPER application and it would make great advantage against other phones like the iphone
Garfield2142

Glad to see another fellow audio creator on the scene. I'm a hardware guy myself, but I cut my sample manipulation chops on early Fruity Loops versions. However, I think building a new app would be better than porting FL Studio. I'd look at an interface more similar to MachFive instead, given the smaller screen. I expect someone will give us musicians and beatmakers an option. Maybe create a brainstorm or something...

FL Studio in a linux world = LMMS ( http://lmms.sourceforge.net )

Now running lmms on an N900 is another story

I agree. The environment doesn't lend to all of the buttons, which is why I suggested a MachFive-like app with a more compact UI. Maybe the LMMS devs can be compelled with enough users expressing desire for it.

There are some audio development apps available in the repositories. They even exist on iPhone OS. But I don't take any of them serious.

You won't have VST available either since most of these are written for Windows/x86-32 hence won't work on Linux/ARM.

Although, judging on your screenshots, you're not going to use synthesizers, require MIDI; you have your samples already.

What you then need is a sequencer or tracker.

A program to resample your samples. Preferably in the sequencer or tracker.

Your last screenshot is just the same as the piano roll; just a difference interface, and allowing some resampling options not available in 'piano roll'.

You're also going to need the stylus. Or some kind of zoom option. And the knobs which you turn around are not nice combined with a touchscreen.

Hate to be a negative *** but you're just better off with a netbook running Windows XP and Fruity Loops provided the sound quality it delivers is good enough (read reviews for that).

This is an area where the accelerometer can SHINE.

In this case, the user interface is far to large to confortably fit on a tiny screen. Imagine, tilting the device to scroll around interface quickly and naturally, as you fiddle with all of those knobs/sliders. Thus the N900 screen only sees a portion of the full interface, and you slide around it to gain access to the whole thing.

Before you write off the idea as lunacy, consider that Quake3 on the N900 has tilt-to-slide-about controls, and they're useful enough to play! I bet with a little practice this interaction method will become very natural!

}:^)~

allnameswereout, FL IS a VST instrument as well as a tracker and sample player. Its pretty feature packed. It has its own synths as well as hosts others in VST, DirectX and other plugin formats.

Read above. He wants an all in one solution, which apps like FL, Reason, and MachFive provide.

The Linux alternative mentioned earlier would be perfect with an optimized UI, but good luck waiting on that. Too many hills to climb, as was pointed out about the ARM vs. x86 issue. Steinberg owns VST, so they'd have to support the VST port to ARM first.

I think you're being realistic, and I agree. I wouldn't even go netbook because I've tried it. Not enough processing power for real pro work in most cases, and that was just tracking audio in Nuendo.

Accelerometer would shine how? How would it know how much tilt the user gives means how much interface should be changed?

The power of N900 lies in touch screen with keyboard IMO. That Apple monster has only 3 hardware buttons (power, volume_up, volume_down) and there is not much to control via that.

I know what Fruity Loops is, but TS made screenshots of the features he needed. I don't see any screenshots of software synths. A sample player it is, and it can resample, but I'm not aware it has (software) instruments you can record, although it does have MIDI support.

This would be biggg, I make and sell hip hop instrumentals that I produce with FL Studio 9. Something like this would be BOOM. If we have some developers available, I offer to design the whole thing.

@christexaport, I'm glad your "chapelle/kanye" "soulsearching" is over dude, glad to see you back, did you hear the official portrait announcement? Looks like your lobbying paid off.

I can see the confusion. It's a bit tricky to explain. I'll try again!

The tilt/reveal model:

The idea:
The N900 screen would show a portion of the app interface, and by tilting the device, it would pan the display over the interface in the direction of the tilt.

The explination:
Think of the app interface as a large window. Now think of a box over some portion of it. That box is the N900 screen which displays only the portion of the window that's inside the box. Now imagine that as you tilt the window, the box slides in the direction of tilt. The more you tilt, the faster it slides. Thus, as you tilt to the left, you pan to the left of the window, revealing a portion that you couldn't see before.

The Benefit:
This system is a novel way to view a large window on a small screen without having to use finger gestures to navigate. Simply use fingers to interact with the onscreen controls, and tilt the device to scroll vertically and horizontally!

Moreover, this tilt/reveal model can be used for MANY linux ports that simply couldn't fit onto the N900 screen without having to modify them AT ALL. With the correct wrapper, it could provide a quick-port solution for window'd apps that are not yet maemoinized. Similarily, this would work well for VNC's, maps, and any app that has a displayable area that's larger than the physical screen.

Combined with the zoom buttons, a user could quickly navigate a very large interface plane naturally, freeing the touch-screen for pure app interaction.

}:^)~