m i f k i

Information on the future of SoundGrid and SoundGrid Live!

In this post I want to address two questions users often ask now after release of SoundGrid Live!.

First, I want to clarify that SoundGrid Live! is not a ‘next version’ of SoundGrid in regard to future development. This means that original SoundGrid will not be abandoned and both applications will be developed and supported further. Moreover, many new features of SoundGrid Live! will be added to SoundGrid in next updates as well.

SoundGrid will be focused on programming melodies using eight patterns playing one after another (or in any order manually) - that’s so-called ‘song mode’ which most of the users enjoy. While SoundGrid Live! is meant for live performances, it doesn’t have way to automatically play one block after another to create pre-programmed song but has more blocks, more layers and more performance modes.

Second question is why SoundGrid Live! had to be separate application and not a free update to SoundGrid. The main reason for this is that some of new performance modes in SoundGrid Live! are incompatible with ‘song mode’ of SoundGrid (and therefore with grid sharing too). So basically SoundGrid and SoundGrid Live! being separate applications allows me to add features specific to each application without any limitations and keeping them simple and easy to use.

As always, I’m open to any suggestions about features of both applications.

SoundGrid updated to version 3.40

What’s new:

• Bug fixes and major optimizations. 
• Better support for musical scales. Edit Scales.txt file via iTunes file sharing to define your own scales. 

Deleting saved and shared grids in SoundGrid

From recent user review in AppStore I see that some users don’t know how to delete saved and shared grids and think that it’s impossible.

Of course this is possible - you can use standard ‘swipe to delete’ gesture in Load Grid menu to delete unneeded grids, and also in Shared Grids it’s possible to delete your grids the same way (you have to do this on the same device from which the grid was published).

SoundGrid 3.30 & new instrument: Steinway Piano

SoundGrid 3.30 is out. This is minor update with some UI fixes and one improvement related to musical scales.

Now list of possible scales to show in instrument selector is automatically determined from set of samples included in instrument packager. Scales definition file is updated every time user opens ‘Get More Instruments’ menu.

Also new instrument is available - Steinway Piano. It contains 85 stereo piano samples from http://theremin.music.uiowa.edu/MIS.piano.html

SoundGrid 3.2

SoundGrid 3.2 released. Not so many changes in this new version:

* Layers scrolling in different device orientations fixed

* Notes now played on touch even if the song itself is stopped

* Support for copying recorded audio tracks to clipboard to use in other apps

SoundGrid in the AppStore

Browse and listen to Shared Grids in web browser

Great news! Now everybody can browse SoundGrid shared Grids and listen to them right in web browser! No iDevice required.

Just navigate to http://www.mifki.com/soundgrid/index.html#sg. Sortable by date or user rating. Only Grids created in Song Mode are available.

Note: encoding process is taking place now, not all grids are available on the site yet, be patient. 

Duplicate shared Grids in SoundGrid

While SoundGrid users are free to download shared Grids, modify them to create their own Grids and share back, sometimes users publish Grids that exactly duplicate Grids shared by other users, either by mistake or intentionally. Sometimes even duplicate Grid gets better rating that the original one. This is obviously unacceptable. 

From now on there are two rules when sharing Grids:

1. When publishing Grid that duplicate another Grid published before by another user, the new Grid won’t be published.
2. When publishing Grid that duplicate another Grid published before by the same user but with different name, the old grid will be renamed without publishing the new Grid.

All already shared duplicate grids will be removed leaving only originals.

What’s new in SoundGrid 3 - part 1

While SoundGrid 3 is being reviewed by Apple it’s time to tell you what’s new in this version.

Read More

Web Console in SoundGrid 3

…allows to quickly add your own samples to the app (and download recorded tracks too).