This weekend, in anticipation of the Verizon Droid’s arrival this week, I released an update to Musical Lite and Musical Pro that should provide support for Android 2.0 and the new larger and smaller screen sizes that are heading to the next generation of Android phones.  Once the Droid comes out, I’ll hopefully be able to experiment with the multi-touch and implement it in Musical (as Android 2.0 on new phones finally supports multi-touch).  Sorry for the lack of exciting new features in this release–I had to spend my time making the existing features work with new phones.  Good things are coming… stay tuned!

I released an update to Musical Pro a few days ago (on the 24th) and am finally writing up a post about it. This update brought two major updates and a few minor changes.

First and foremost, the drums have been completely revamped. All the drum sounds have been replaced with professionally recording samples courtesy of JohnnyBluePrint (Thanks!) and 4 new ones have been added. The default kit now includes the following: crash, 3 toms, ride, hi-hat, snare, and kick. There are now two modes–single-touch mode (which has 8 pads) and multi-touch mode (which can only have 4 due to hardware limitations with multi-touch).

Secondly, the metronome can now run in the background. If you start the metronome and then exit Musical Pro or change to another instrument, the metronome will continue running. What this means is that you can now use the metronome along with the piano or the drums. While the metronome is running, an icon will be added to the notification bar to provide access to the metronome from anywhere in Android. A word of caution: don’t expect to be able to heavily multitask while the metronome is running–anything CPU intensive (gaming, load screens, etc) can cause the metronome to skip a beat.

Finally, there are a few minor changes that you probably won’t notice. One that is worth mentioning, however, is the ability on the keyboard to swap the Y and Z keys on the keyboard. What this means is that the hardware keyboard mapping (currently useful on the G1) now supports QWERTZ “kezboards” (used in German speaking countries). You can find this setting under the preferences dialog for the Keyboard instrument.

More updates are hopefully on their way–including the much requested ability to record…

Two things to announce today regarding Musical for Android:

1. I’m currently on vacation (and have been all week) in Hawaii, which is why there haven’t been any updates or new features. Development will resume as soon as I return mid next week. I have internet though (obviously) and am still responding to support emails, so as always, feel free to contact me–although I’ll be a bit slower to respond than usual (within 24 hours, rather than a couple hours).
2. I’ve had an official site up for Musical for 2 weeks or so now, but haven’t officially annonced it yet, so here goes… Visit androidmusical.com for a list of features, descriptions, and screenshots of Musical. If you already have Musical, this won’t be of much use to you, but if you are still on the fence about purchasing it, give the site a skim and see what you are missing.

I just released a new version of Musical Pro with a rewritten MIDI over WIFI system.  If you already are using the Desktop Client, you must download the latest version here: http://www.souvey.com/musical. Conversely, the new Desktop Client will not work unless you have the latest version of Musical.  Apologies for the inconvenience, but I had to make some back-end changes to allow for some exciting new features that are on their way.

I’ve just released an update allowing you add your own songs to the practice piano.  The format is documented here: http://www.souvey.com/musical/

Because this is only an experiment, the format may (and quite possibly will) change in the future, but if it does, I will release a simple program to convert to the new format, so rest assured you will not have to rewrite anything you create for this version.

If you come up with any interesting creations, email them to me, and I’ll add a directory on the format page of songs other people have created (although anything I provide on my site has to be legal and can’t be copyrighted).