I have just released the Pro version into the Android Market for $1.99

At the moment, the only major difference is that the Pro version includes a simple tuner.  The tuner includes frequencies built in for common string instruments (guitar, violin, mandolin, bass, ukulele).  Unlike the “pitch pipe” feature, however, it allows you to enter custom arbitrary frequencies.  It still operates pitch-pipe style though (tuning by ear), but as soon as Android allows it (Cupcake, whenever that happens), I will try to make it work with the microphone.  There are also some minor interface tweaks to make room for all the new features I plan to add.

Most (if not all) future feature updates (not bug fixes) will now only be added to the Pro version rather than the Lite version (and all will obviously be free upgrades to purchases of the Pro version).  Here is a sneak peek of the some features on my ToDo list that I would like to add to Musical Pro (disclaimer: this is my personal wishlist, not guarantees, but I will try to complete as many of them as I can):

• Real Tuner (depends on when Cupcake comes out)
• Games (rhythm-based, music theory practice, etc)
• More Instruments (drums? violin? xylophone? others?)
• Circle of Fiths
• Intervals (and interval recognition practice)
• Scales
• Additional Languages (as the Android Market adds paid apps to other countries, and as I find people who will translate for me )
• Melody/Notation Editor (with MIDI export)
• Recording Virtual Instruments (if possible, with MIDI export)

If you want to try out the new Tuner, Android Market lets you download a paid app and get your money back if you return it within 24 hours.  I believe though if you do this now, you won’t be able to use this trial at a late date when I release more features, so be aware of that if you do.

Another thing to note: the price is starting at $1.99, but if I get a bunch of these new features in, I may raise the price as I see fit.  If you buy it now though at the introductory price, all upgrades are free.

Thanks for all the support, and enjoy Musical Pro!

I’m trying to prioritize features for the next release of Musical.  If you use the application and have a minute, I would really appreciate it if you filled out a little survey (its reasonably short and all the questions are optional).  Click here if you’d like to fill it out. Thanks in advance for your help in making Musical better!

I finally got sick of waiting for RC33. I looked up online how to download and install it manually. I downloaded the file off Google’s servers, renamed it, and plugged in my phone. Before I could copy the file to my phone, T-Mobile pushed the update to me . Amazing coincidental timing? Or perhaps Google tracking my search for RC33, testing my internet speed, predicting when I would finish downloading it, and having T-Mobile’s servers push the update to my phone (that would be really cool ).

There have already been a ton of reviews published online, so I’m not going to go into a ton of detail. Latitude is cool, but not useful yet since none of my friends use it. Voice Search is cool and works well, but I don’t know if I’ll ever actually use it. Nearly every app I had installed had updates available in the Market (since the Market now informs you), so I spent 15 minutes or so updating them all (I wish it had autoupdate).

However, there was one thing that wasn’t in any of the change logs and that I haven’t seen in any of the major reviews: the camera. The camera application seems to have improved tremendously. In the past, for me (perhaps this was an isolated issue, since I’ve never met anyone else with a G1), the camera had an absolutely awful refresh rate and updated very slowly (lagged, blurred, etc). Now, it looks beautifully smooth. It also seems to take less blurry and better pictures, but that could be a placebo after noticing the other change. Perhaps this is as a result of some changes being made to allow for Cupcake’s video recording (which I had wondered about due the remarkably bad frame-rate of previous versions).

The update process was easy and painless. The only hiccup I experienced was that the update froze on the Android boot screen (with the small logo and text) for about 5 minutes. I’m not sure if this was a glitch or part of the update procedure, but it seems to be running great now!

I seem to get the same questions and complains over and over again, so I’ve decided to write a up a post to clear them up (apologies in advance if this seems bitter–its not intended to be… I just want to stop the spread of misinformation).

Why doesn’t Musical have multitouch?  I’ve seen videos! The G1 does support multitouch!

I’ve been getting a lot of comments recently about multitouch for Musical. Musical will never have multitouch on the G1.  There.  I said it. I am aware that the G1’s screen supports primitive multitouch and that those with root access (and JF1.4) can take advantage of it. However, this multitouch will NEVER (I repeat… never) be sufficient for playing a multitouch piano. This is not a software limitation–it is a hardware limitation with the G1’s physical screen. Multitouch on the G1 will never be useful for much more than gestures (pinching, scrolling, etc).  According to the blog of the developer of JF1.4, which allows multitouch on the G1 (Luke Hutchison):

• Only supports 2 fingers (so still no chords, and not really that much better)
• Fails completely when fingers are close together (and on a piano, they will be as close as they could be)
• When the 1st finger is lifted but the second is not, the second finger turns into the first finger (so it doesn’t tell you when you release them and the keys would get mixed up)
• “The G1’s screen is a much better device for multi-touch scaling than it is for multi-touch rotation or more general multi-touch input, because the distance between the two touch-points in multi-touch can be measured a lot more reliably than the actual position of the points.”

Why isn’t there a tuner? The G1 has a mic, and Shazam is able to figure out the whole song!  Why can’t figure out even one note???

As I have said many times, the G1 does not support live audio input.  There is no way to analyze the sound coming into the microphone (except for getting very low resolution and basic volume/amplitude information).  Shazam does not perform live audio analysis.  It records 10 seconds or so of audio, uploads it to Shazam’s server, then downloads the name of the song which their server calculated from the uploaded recording.  The only current way to get pitch information from audio is to record a sample, and then analyze it after the fact.  It is impossible to analyze audio as it is being played (although according to the internet, the mythical cupcake revisions will remedy this).

Why is there no grand piano? 3 octaves isn’t enough!

Android currently provides no way to directly play midi notes (javax.sound.midi is not available on Android).  The only way to play midi sounds on command (at a reasonable speed) is by preloading midi files into memory and then playing those.  Unfortunantly, the only API that will work for this is not yet complete, undocumented, and unstable.  Based on my testings, loading more then 3 octaves of sounds into memory at once makes the application extremely unstable and prone to crashes.  When I initially released the application, I provided a full grand piano.  My rating immediately began to plummet as my inbox filled with complaints about the keyboard being slow and crashing frequently.  So I quickly chopped out all the octaves but the middle 3 and reuploaded the new version.  The market rating began to rise again.  Unfortunately, the emails about crashes were quickly replaced with emails that 3 octaves wasn’t enough.  For now (hopefully an update in the near future will remedy this), its either flexibility or stability.  I (and the extremely negative reviews I recieved) decided that a keyboard that could always play 3 octaves was better than a keyboard that could sometimes (due to crashing) play all of them.