Updates All Around

Author: Christopher Souvey

30 Jul

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…

Filed under: Musical

8 Responses for "Updates All Around"

Joshua Munoz September 9th, 2009 at 8:05 pm 1
Hello,

I don’t want my e-mail to be caught as spam, so here I am. Two things:

1.) I was wondering if you could raise the max tempo? Up to 255, I was hoping.

2.) Could you add a tempo input like a number pad, where you can just punch in your selected tempo instead of using the slider?

Thanks!
Christopher Souvey September 9th, 2009 at 8:12 pm 2
1. Probably not, because Android struggles with the tempo as is. You can use eighth notes to effectively double it though
2. This option already exists in the menu
Joshua Munoz September 9th, 2009 at 8:15 pm 3
Cool. Guess all the bases are covered. Just waiting for the Hero to finally come out stateside, then.
Fabio October 29th, 2009 at 2:59 am 4
I bought the Pro version of musical yesterday and I’m happy with it. I would please ask for a feature that would make me save some time: the chance to save a default layout for the keyboard. Every time I want to use it I will need to customize the octave shift, tell that I want the low octave on top, and the instrument. Having a custom preset would let users save some time. (I use it for “assisted solfeggio).
Thanks.

PS: I love the metronome with the beat count.
Christopher Souvey October 29th, 2009 at 7:42 am 5
@Fabio: Would an acceptable solution be for it to just remember your last settings, or would you prefer an option under Preferences where you can “permanently” set the defaults?
Fabio October 29th, 2009 at 7:48 am 6
Hello and thank you very much for replying.

Actually just remembering the last settings would be more than OK, personally I don’t plan to use different set-ups other than that. I was actually surprised to find that it was re-set to the default layout .

Thank you very much.
Christopher Souvey October 29th, 2009 at 8:00 am 7
I’ve added that to my to-do list for the next release. Thanks for the feedback!
Fabio November 6th, 2009 at 3:45 pm 8
Thank you for fulfilling my request!