Making music with an iPhone

Gary Go writes his music using an iPhone app.

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Is there nothing an iPhone cannot be harnessed to do?

Today we are attending a session with British pop singer and songwriter Gary Go, whose single, Wonderful, topped the US iTunes store last month.

Of the song, a pleasant enough ballad, I have no opinion but Go's use of the iPhone and a number of musical apps pounding sound through his electronic music system is impressive.

He says that with ever more musical apps being built for it, the iPhone is becoming "the Swiss Army knife of musical composition. You can even use it as a microphone on a sound system at a rock concert." He should know; he has performed before a crowd of 70,000 at Wembley Stadium.

The only caution he advises is turning off the phone (putting it into airplane mode) when performing. "I don't want my mum breaking into the stadium audio at a high emotional point in the song telling me: 'Your dinner's ready dear,' " he says.

Go uses a bundle of really cool iPhone applications not only when he composes songs but also in concerts, backing his electronic keyboards and, of course, his voice.

Begin by pointing your browser to tinyurl.com/qmhume, where you will find Keyboard Magazine's website and Go explaining his use of the iPhone and Twitter in his songwriting.

Twitter provides a human component in an electronic exercise. The inspiration for Heart Balloon, the second song he performs for Keyboard Magazine's lunchtime concert, was the sight of a heart-shaped balloon caught in a tree outside his window. He took pictures of it with his iPhone, posted them on Twitter and invited people to tweet to him their ideas for lyrics for a song he would write.

See Go at tinyurl.com/qzn46g singing the song, backed by his iPhone running an app called Euphonics from developer Frozen Ape.

The Ape says: "Euphonics is best understood as a cross between generative music and keyboard apps. It is designed to put you in control of the music while making it easy to create beautiful layered tunes in the palm of your hand."

It is a chord generator with a mini keyboard for single notes. A pretty demonstration is at tinyurl.com/pdyfll.

The second of Go's musical tools is Chordica.

It's fairly probable I could make pleasant musical sounds with this - a bit like playing with Magic GarageBand.

Chordica's developer, Scoreless Music, claims it is "set to change the way the world plays accompaniment music" and suggests you can easily learn to play music "even without prior musical knowledge".

The resultant sounds may not have anything to do with either Mozart or Elton John but why not give it a go?

Chordica comes in two versions: Chordica Lite (free) and the full monty at A$3.99. See a demonstration on YouTube at tinyurl.com/c2mdol.

Third in the Go musical arsenal is Ellatron, essentially a Mellotron synthesiser for the iPhone. It has seven voices and 16 banks of programmable chord buttons. The lite version costs A$1.19 and the full thing A$3.99.

Keyboard player Jordan Rudess demonstrates it at tinyurl.com/ccbh8j.

Finally, Go, a very relaxed pop performer who wears a suit and tie, admits that being a musician on the road can be a lonely life, so he has an iPhone friend, called BeBot.

Go says BeBot is "very shy", which I can understand, given he sounds like a mixture of electronic farts and burps.

In fact, the BeBot app (A$2.49) is a polyphonic musical synthesiser with four modes and sounds controlled by swiping and tapping on the iPhone screen.

"A fun app with a cool graphic," Go says.

You can see Go produce a bit of cacophony with it at tinyurl.com/qzn46g.

It is fun but your listeners might need a sense of humour and perhaps also tolerance of small boys with noisy toys.