Let's start a new feature wish list.

OK - I'll start:

I wish for...

1 - Effects! - Nothing too complex, just portamento, delay, verb, and maybe some minor dynamic effect. (OK, I'd settle for just the delay or verb)

2 - Note off delay. - It's simple, just an option to delay the action of raising your finger by a few milliseconds or so. It would make it easier to switch notes without that annoying blip of the in-between note. (This one is very important)

3 - Different sounds. - I know someone else mentioned it, but I want it too. May I suggest... PAN FLUTE! (what, too obvious?)

4 - Favorite user list. - Just a button in world view that saves that user, so you can hear em again sometime.

Well, those are what I got for right now. What else?

Can't really think of anything else. But a collection of more effects will be really nice..

I would love a way to switch the base/mode more quickly. Maybe a few presets up at the top? Like a C Ionian and A# Zeldarian? Those seem the most popular.

Let me preface this by saying I don't have the app, nor do I even have an iPhone yet, but seeing the vid of this in action may have pushed me over the edge. That said, I'm not really interested in the Ocarina app per se, but I sense a larger market, with what should be, programmatically, an easy extension: Make it a whistle. For those unfamiliar, the typical traditional tin whistle or pennywhistle has six holes along a tube, played with three fingers from each hand, with the left hand 'on top', but it could easily be represented on the iPhone with three holes on each side. I would be willing to bet that this type of app would see an even bigger following. I'm a flute/whistle/fife player, and have been fantasizing about a virtual instrument for practicing 'silently' for a very long time, not to mention the allure of being able to transpose on the spot (can you do that with the current app?), and maybe even change the actual sound being used. Since the Irish flute, pennywhistle and fife all use the same 6-finger simple-system, and, for the most part, the same fingerings, the same app could be used for any all all of these sounds!

Simply put, this is brilliant, and has huge implications. Please! I want a virtual fife/flute/whistle!

Thanks! :)

1. I second the note-off delay. Just long enough to avoid the blips. Though it might make trills difficult, which add a lot of character to ocarina playing.

2. Perhaps an option to use the tilt to bend notes rather than control vibrato.

3. Haptic feedback...someday... :-)

How about a 'play along' mode, where the user picks a song (from somewhere?), after play starts, the next set of notes/holes to be covered is highlighted (somehow the 'leave all 4 holes open' note would be indicated too). Maybe either adjustable tempo, or it just waits until a note is sounded, then shows the next note.

Couple of easy ones for the Score Generator!

1. Change the page title to the title of the score! It makes bookmarking and browser history easier.

2. Add a print stylesheet to hide the header/footer/border, so we can print them directly.

3. Make the top right bubble a little bigger or darker. It's harder to see on a crappy LCD screen when you're viewing it from a bit of an angle.

And congrats on an awesome app :) Really looking forward to seeing people post more scores over the next few days. :D :D :D

[quote author=DaBomb]I would love a way to switch the base/mode more quickly. Maybe a few presets up at the top? Like a C Ionian and A# Zeldarian? Those seem the most popular.\[\/quote\]

I would Love to have a preset would be soo much easier

[quote author=daniel]Couple of easy ones for the Score Generator!

1. Change the page title to the title of the score! It makes bookmarking and browser history easier.

2. Add a print stylesheet to hide the header/footer/border, so we can print them directly.

3. Make the top right bubble a little bigger or darker. It's harder to see on a crappy LCD screen when you're viewing it from a bit of an angle.

And congrats on an awesome app :) Really looking forward to seeing people post more scores over the next few days. :D :D :D \[\/quote\]

I Totally agree with #2 & #3

- perhaps using four circles within four square quadrants of the screen. Touching the circle will play the note while Sliding the circle within the quadrant will bend the note? Just a thought..

good idea..

[quote author=c10]How about a 'play along' mode, where the user picks a song (from somewhere?), after play starts, the next set of notes/holes to be covered is highlighted (somehow the 'leave all 4 holes open' note would be indicated too). Maybe either adjustable tempo, or it just waits until a note is sounded, then shows the next note.\[\/quote\]

I'd love to see a "curling" effect for notes when you move your finger outwards from the hole/circle. That would be awesome!

An interactive map.

Instead of randomly flipping through the globe, I would much rather select who I want to listen to and from where.

I second the request for a tinwhistle app, but I wonder if the mic is up to the challenge. Can the mic differentiate between soft blowing for 1st octave, and harder blowing for 2nd & 3rd octaves?

The biggest request I have for Ocarina, however, is a way to record my playing. I've tried outputting the headphone jack into the line-in on my Mac, but Ocarina is programmed to listen for mic input if anything is plugged into the headphone jack.

This leads me to my second request I'd like to be able to play the Ocarina with headphones on but blowing into the iPhone mic instead of the headphone mic. The headphone mic flobbles around and is difficult to blow into when trying to play. I'd rather have the option to choose which input mic the app listens for. This would solve the above problem as well.

Darkstream

The main ones for me:

Recording - I'd like to be able to record and then overdub so that I can create my own multipart melodies.

Presets - A way you can select the different keys / modes you need for a song in advance so that you don't have the limitation on how many notes you can play - your Ocarina will have a much wider range of notes that you can change back and forth between during a performance.

More instruments - A few more sounds would be a welcome addition too

Auto-blow.

Yeah, it sounds funny, but it would be nice if you could set the Ocarina to make sound without having to blow into it. Perhaps it would do this on key presses and then stop if there were no presses for 2 seconds (this would allow the "all open" note to play). But maybe there is a better solution.

The reason I would like this is so that I could inconspicuously practice while wearing headphones, without looking like a total dork (or more of one.)

Really, jmonty, part of the charm of the ocarina is looking like a total weirdo in public. ;)

Mmm... What about 'live concerts'? It will be great if we could listen a 'ocarina master' or even better a concert with various ocarina players around the world.

Just dreaming

Allow non alphanumerics in the name, so we can put our email addresses. It seems to run out of room doing the "at" and "dot" substitutions.

Mine:

1. Put the root and mode on the play screen, at least, it would be better to be able to change from there.

2. I concur the play-along mini-game suggestion.

3. Record your play, or better, make it a ringtone.

4. I also concur the ability to pick the region of where you would listen to.

Thanks for reading.

[quote author=NoCaution]OK - I'll start:

I wish for...

2 - Note off delay. - It's simple, just an option to delay the action of raising your finger by a few milliseconds or so. It would make it easier to switch notes without that annoying blip of the in-between note. (This one is very important)

3 - Different sounds. - I know someone else mentioned it, but I want it too. May I suggest... PAN FLUTE! (what, too obvious?)

\[\/quote\]

The delay suggestion is superb!

And for different sounds, bagpipe is a must.

I wouldnt mind the ability to play the notes on computer in the score generator rather than having to go to and fro with my iphone as I am wearing the batteries out at a good rate of knots. Even if it was just clicking on each note to get the sound. If its possible to do????

I would really like a save settings option so that you could configure several 'Roots' and 'Modes' without having to remember what is required for each tune. For example you could save F Lydian under Silent Night, or C Lonian under Default etc for quick access.

I'd like to be able to turn the tilt vibrato feature on and off. Sometimes I'm looking down at music on the table and don't want the vibrato.

I would like to see the training mode where the holes are highlighted for selected pieces...

Also, to help learn scales etc... how about floating out the note you're playing...

Making the map interactive would be cool too, and saving is a must!

Interactive/sharing feature requests:

1. When it says "Your top tune loved n times" (in the info page), it would be great if there were a way to find out what tune that is.

2. More generally, I'd love a way to manage my recorded/broadcast tunes. Listen to the tunes of mine that are on the server, delete any that I don't like, etc.

3. I'd love to be able to label and/or title tunes played by anyone. For example, roughly a fifth of the tunes I hear are "Amazing Grace"; I'd like to be able to label those as "Amazing Grace" (see item 4, below). Might also be nice to able to label one's own items as (say) "noodling" so that other people would know that I didn't intend this to be a recognizable tune. (But if I could delete items as noted above, this would be less of an issue.) I know this is subject to potential abuse, with people entering obscene labels and so on, but I think it would be workable. Maybe labels could be "signed" as having been posted by particular users, to make people accountable. Or maybe you can only label your own pieces, though that wouldn't be as useful 'cause most people presumably wouldn't do this.

4. Labels and titles would be particularly useful if there were also filters. For example, ideally, I'd like to be able to tell Ocarina to skip any tunes that are labeled "Amazing Grace", 'cause much as I like the tune, I don't really need to hear a fiftieth Ocarina rendition of it. (After enough tunes were labeled with a given title, the server could even compare the notes and see if they're the same, or very similar, and then start auto-labeling other tunes that match that note pattern! But this auto-labeling thing is a pie-in-the-sky super-advanced low-priority feature.)

5. On the flip side, if I really want to hear how a particular tune goes, it would be cool if I could search for tunes labeled with a given title.

6. I'd like to be able to mark a *person* as a favorite, to increase the chances that I'll hear more by them.

I realize that all the things I'm suggesting might complicate and clutter what's really a clean and elegant interface. But I think all this could be done in a way that (a) would be invisible to anyone who didn't want to use these features, and (b) would fit nicely with the rest of the GUI for people who do want to use them.

GUI feature request:

I find the interface for choosing a mode a little clunky. (Which stands out mainly because the interface for the rest of the app is so good.)

Others have suggested a variety of cool ideas for improving mode selection, including the ability to store presets. I agree with all that.

But at a more basic level, I want a "Confirm" or "OK" button for the mode chooser. Having to tap somewhere in blank space to confirm a selection is nonstandard, to the point that I found it very frustrating the first several times I tried to change modes.

Look at the way the iPhone's Calendar app does its time-picker: Tap the + button to go to the Add Event screen, then tap the time box, and you go to a separate screen to pick times. When you're done picking times, you tap Save to go back to the main Add Event screen. Now imagine instead that on the Add Event screen, when you tap the time box, a time picker appears, and to get out of it you have to tap somewhere in blank space -- that would be awkward, and hard to use.

Score generator feature requests:

1. On some online forum for physical ocarinas, I saw a score/tablature display system that shows the fingering for each note (like yours does), but next to each fingering icon there was also a standard sheet-music note on a treble-clef staff. Example (but of course you should use your four-dot fingering icons for the fingering part). So a score display would alternate: fingering chart for a note, sheet-music notation for that note, fingering for next note, etc. I'm still having a hard time mapping Ocarina fingering to sheet-music notation in my head, and I think this would help tremendously. The resulting display is a little bit busy to look at, but I think it's really useful.

Of course, with the Ocarina app, the note played by a given fingering (and thus the sheet-music notation) varies depending on the mode and base note. That's fine -- the score-display system could easily map from mode/base/fingering to real note, and could pick the corresponding sheet-music notation note to display.

I wouldn't worry about note duration; just make them all quarter-notes.

...This should be optional, of course; people who just want to see fingering should be able to view fingering without other notation getting in the way.

2. I wanted to second someone else's request that the filled-in-hole color be made darker. I find the filled-in smallest hole to be hard to see on a monitor, and almost impossible to see (as a light gray) when printed out. This is probably partly because I (like about 7% of American males--not sure about numbers in the rest of the world) am partly color-blind, which in this context means that I need relatively high contrast between foreground and background colors. The light blue, while pretty, is too light for me to distinguish it from white when it's in a small area (like that smallest hole) surrounded by a light-colored border, at screen-viewing distance.

You could even go so far as to provide a real color-blind display mode in which you put an X over filled-in holes or something, rather than just coloring them, but I don't know if that's really necessary; I think most people can see the difference between a dark blue and a white, if the blue is dark enough.

Another world-map feature request:

The world looks more sparsely populated with Ocarinists than I think it really is.

I suspect that the bright white dots are several, maybe dozens, maybe even hundreds of Ocarina players in a small area. But my gut reaction to seeing such a dot is that it looks like a single player, 'cause it's just one dot.

So I'd like to see something that makes clearer that the bright dots are multiple people. Maybe just make them bigger? Maybe change color as well as brightness? (But that might mean the dimmer ones would blend in with the background colors even more than they already do, so maybe that's not a good idea.)

Anyway, I don't know what the best solution would be, but I think it would be neat to be able to get more of a sense, from the map, of where there are a lot of players.

This is probably reeeally cheeky, but I've recently started transcribing my own scores and I've started to notice just how limited it is... If you added an extra 2 holes, you'd bump the note capacity up to 36 which would give us 3 whole octaves! This would make fingering a lot more difficult... But people like a challenge ;) besides, some people have already gotten far too good. *coughmodalmixturecough*.

Half-covering.

Split the right hand holes in two. When you press the other half, it will act like full-covering, and when you press the other one it acts like half-covering. This would be great as it would allow playing those couple sharps/flats and it would be that much more closer to the real thing. This feature could have an option to turn it on/off.

Don't know if someone already posted this, but a fifth hole that changes octaves would be nice and gives you more notes to play with.

Ipod touch support :D

I definitely would like to see:

1) A play-along mode, suggesting which notes to play next.

2) A "favorites" list, allowing me to save (and even input) people's names so that I can listen to them regularly. I know this requires unique names (and perhaps a messy registration) but I find that 90% of the stuff out there is pretty bad, as new people figure the Ocarina out. Also, if this feature crept in, it would be nice to be able to "poll" our favorite users so that we hear them when they start playing. Or perhaps...

3) A way to toggle a threshold for who to listen to, for example, I'd be really delighted if I could only listen to people who had gotten at least one, or five, or ten "loves". Then I'd probably only hear people who had figured out the basics.

4) A geographic "overlay" for the glove views in all apps that would show the continent/country the user is in. I really love when I see people from far off places, but sometimes I don't recognize where they are. A (toggle-able) overlay on the globe or a (toggle-able) pop-up text line next to their location would make the globe view much cooler, and even educational! =)

5) A higher contrast button color, like White! I tend to use the Ocarina for long stretches, and my battery gets drained because I have the brightness way up so I can see my finger contact the buttons (a must because the more I play, the closer my fingers drift towards each other, canceling out one of the button "holes").

I'd be interested in a way to jump to a different mode quickly so that more songs could be possible without octave jumping.

Also, a way to listen to certain users on the world view would be nice.

[quote author=jc21echo]I'd be interested in a way to jump to a different mode quickly so that more songs could be possible without octave jumping.\[\/quote\]

I second that. How about this:

1. An ability to pick "alternative mode and root" in the settings screen

2. A little toggle in the corner (while playing) that would allow you to switch between the main and alternative tunings.

Here's my wish list:

1. Octave shift. How about a mode where instead of controlling vibrato, tilting up and down controls octave. You could get three octaves that way.

2. A way to clear my tunes. I played my own tunes and was dismayed that they were mostly scales and stuff from when I was dinking around.

3. Record and multi-track. I would like a way to record an accompaniment and then play along with that accompaniment, like a 2-track ocarina mixer. that'd be awesome.

4. pitch control. Sometimes you need a sharp or flat. How about twist to the left or right for half-step up and down. Just an idea.

5. Blip control. As others have mentioned, I get a lot of blips between notes.

6. Collaboration. It would be cool if I could play in a group with others over the interwebs.

Hey, I have an idea, check it out here:

viewtopic.php?f=8&t=973&p=2608&hilit=iPod+Touch#p2608

Comment if you like/dislike it or if you think it could/couldn't work!

A way to view your uploaded tunes. Also, more information on players such as clickable profiles with list of top tunes.

Something of the sort.

I think changing to a 5 or 6 hole fingering would make it too difficult to hold. However the current set up only allows an octave and a 4th, which is very restrictive. So what about adding an extra set of holes on the inside that can can be used to play in a different octave? This would increase the range to over two octaves, greater than that of a recorder or simple 6 hole flute. And I would like to second the other posters request of half-holing to give us a complete chromatic range.

tilting left/right alters the pitch?

Standard colors for different modes (or less elegant - just some way to see that your are still in Zelgaliuaerobama mode and not in Ionian like you thought... quick change mode ... first new screen after the playing screen is mode change... and the mode change is in a grid - the wheel is very cute but a grid of pitches and modes - rapid touch and go back to the playing screen...

so much fun --- none the less...

have fun,

TerryPun

I'd love to be able to record within the application itself.

Save the recording and mix it with another one.

One other thing I might suggest is, try to make it use less battery in the future. It eats the battery life.

Other than that, i love this application

You could download music scores and the Ocarina could play it and show you the hole changes, etc?

yes

Now that we can record our own music and archive it, it would be cool to have the ability to title your track when you select to archive it, and then when you go into the world map, be able to look it up under your name and pull it up for quick playback. The ability to greater manage your own uploaded music would be amazing. When you are recording your songs you are doing it so that others can hear it or so that you can pull it up and let others hear what you play.

Why don't we all step back a moment and completely think out of the box.

Why not use the universal ability to hum or whistle a tune and use that for the input rather than the need to learn a whole new language based on finger motion.

There are existing wave-to-midi translator programs that could enable pitch recognition of a hummed or whistled note and subsequently stream the midi data to any voice file. Thus if I whistle a c note recognized in the wave form of the wave file this will become a midi c note in the midi stream and can then be routed to any voice. Thus if I whistle a c note into the mic, out comes, say a trumpet, playing a c note.

This represents a quantum advance in accessibility in creating music.

This universal instrument could be called "Hummy" as that is kind of catchy and cuddly. A good alternative would be "Digivoice".

I can further flesh out this idea for a universal instrument.

1. The recognized pitch, if slightly off scale, can be automatically corrected. Kind of like snap to grid in graphics. The scale it is to snap to can be preset and the sensitivity can be adjusted.

2. There would be a mode which simultaneously output the actual pitch recognized and the corrected pitch. This would be a learning mode to correct the persons accuracy in mouthing the correct pitch.

3. 2 selection wheels would determine input and output. On input you could select between multiple customizable keyboards, whistle pitch recongnition, hum pitch recognition, or external line-in. On output would be a list of voice files to call the sound from according to the corrected or uncorrected pitch.

4. Programming could also enable "tounging" as attack wave forms to modify the character of the voice output.

5. Use the iPhone headset mic so it can be held in the mouth to provide isolation from ambient sound events. At the same time use the headphones to feed an adjustable metronome sound over the hummed input in one ear and the selected instrument voice output in the other ear.

We're really talking about a whole API with the sole purpose of sophisticated translation of human voice input to almost any imaginable sound voice output. A drag and drop environment which allows routes to be set up from multiple inputs designed as plug-ins to effects as plug-ins to voices as plug-ins designed like a calligrapher designs a font. This becomes a whole infrastructure accommodating community extension of this central idea.

This may be too much to ask of the iPhone, but if so this idea forms the basis for a complete redesign of Garageband so that these ideas can make use of multiple CPUs and GPUs and will benefit from Snowleopard.

I want to be able to bend notes, that's pretty much it.

I wouldn't mind being able to compile a 'song book' of favourites on the website.

A section on the website showing the fingering above the notes on a stave.

Being able to hear the tune from the actual score.

Can anyone write any scores for duets, trios or quartets? (will require new modes for notes in the base range).

Then you could jam with someone elsewhere on the globe (you'd see their music rising and merging as they enter space).

yeh i really think the few millisecond delay would be good, but make sure thers an option to turn it off as when your playin a song and wish to play it fast it could get in the way

I'd like a grip, specifically designed to make it easier to hold the iphone while playing the ocarina. The iphone is small and slender, and I have big hands, so a grip might be nice.

Good job

How about adding a blues scale and note bending by tilting up or down.

I'm not sure if some one mentioned this if so, sry.

i wish for...

1. more than 1 octave, and i suggest using the accelerometer. Vibrato make things sounds good but if it cam be a side to side so that way player can also bend notes up and down by moving it sideways. And when you tilt the phone up you jump the octave. it'd be like the bridge for the clarinet....

2. since we can hear other players, maybe there is a way we can play along with them, duets!!! or Trio!!!! anyways it wold be awesome to be able to jump in and play the harmony to a melody! ;)

1. Higher and lower octaves (maybe with more holes)

2. Semitones (sharps and flats)

3. Wide range of music instrument sounds other than the existing one

i wish that you could arrange the modes by how much u use them like zeldarain mode near ionian mode then u dont need 2 scrool from top 2 bottem all the time

Tilt for octave shifts
also finger position to centre could vibrato or bend

Ocarine is amazing, but having more social interaction (like in trombone) would be even better. I would pay again for an improved version.