Handpicked Software » Music

TotalTunes Control – iTunes controller

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

TotalTunes Control gives you control of iTunes.

When you are listening to your music all day long, and when you want to change the current playlist.. what do you do ? You have to enlarge iTunes window, and then select your playlist and click on the play button.

Forget that…With TotalTunes Control, just hit a key, and the controller is here ! You can change the current playlist, the iTunes volume, and more.

Now, you can close the iTunes window, and get TotalTunes Control ready!

What’s New:
Version 1.1.4:

Added shortcuts for iTunes volume control.
Corrects a bug with iTunes – iTunes was automatically re-launched.
Cleaner Artwork.

Developer’s website: Macxeagle

Sounds4Fun – Assign any sound to any of up to 70 events

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Sounds4Fun allows you to assign any sound to any of up to 70 events. Hear a sound every time you hit CAPSLOCK or when power to your Macbook is interrupted. Be alerted by a sound when the Finder has finished that long copy. Amuse your friends by having the Mac yawn when it goes to sleep or wakes up. Have HAL ask you if you are sure you made the right decision when you shut your Mac down and many, many more!

Assign a sound to any number of short phrases of up to 3 words and hear it play when the phrase is typed – fun for pranks, but possibly useful to correct your bad typing habits?

Have Sounds4Fun read out the name of the currently playing song and artist when iTunes starts playing a track.

Developer’s website: Riccardo Ettore

MetroGnome – Music metronome

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

MetroGnome is a highly customizable freeware metronome for OS X (Cocoa), featuring many time signatures (2/4, 3/4, 4/4, 5/8, 6/8, 7/8, and 12/8), volume control, mutes, accents, customizable sounds, silence, and tap entry.

Developer’s website: Braxton Sherouse

iConcertCal – Generates calendar of upcoming concerts in your city

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

iConcertCal is a free iTunes plug-in that monitors your music library and generates a personalized calendar of upcoming concerts in your city.

What’s New:
Version 2.0:

A new calendar of upcoming album release dates for artists in your library
Provides links to pre-order upcoming albums
Lets you share your calendar with your friends
Lets you see your friends’ calendars
Lets you highlight shows you care about for easier reading (and to share selected shows only)

Developer’s website: Brandon Smith

Guitar Shed – Guitar tuner, chords and play-along

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Guitar Shed is a set of tools for guitarists, bassists, and other types of musicians. Includes a Chromatic tuner, an extensive tonal tuner with customizable alternative tunings, a metronome, a chord library, tablature organizer, jam machine, song jam – which lets you slow your songs down for practice (without changing the pitch), as well as loop sections continuously for simple learning.

What’s New:
Version 2.9.9.5:

Now a Universal Binary
Data is now stored in a much more efficient format. If you’re upgrading from a previous version, your data will be automatically updated to use the new features.
Lots of small interface fixes, performance improvements, and overall stability added.
“Get Tab For Selected iTunes Song” feature provides much more accurate results, which now utilize the song’s artist, song, and album info.
Tablature Search feature now uses WebKit for native rendering on Mac OS X.
Song Jam now plays unprotected AAC songs again. Also, the Treble/Bass equalizer sweep range is much greater allowing fine-tuning of your music and to help single out specific instruments.
Metronome is now multi-threaded to enhance time accuracy. Also, 7/8 and 12/8 time signatures are now correctly counted.
Gig Manager and Web Manager are fixed to allow editing again (This error previously occurred on some newer iMac and Mac Pro models).
Many other small fixes and optimizations for Intel-based Macs.
Chromatic Tuner: Note – if the tuner is not responding to your microphone/sound-input, click on the Help button now located on the Chromatic Tuner window for details. Most third-party audio devices should now work properly.
Update is free for all registered Guitar Shed 2 users.

Developer’s website: Astoundit Software, LLC

ChordBook – Chords for guitar, standard or alternate tunings

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

ChordBook provides chord lookup and diagraming for guitar in standard or alternate tuning. ChordBook’s purpose is simple… it provides a way for you to create your own, customized chord listings in the order and with the voicing YOU choose.

Chordbook is designed to work along side a graphical editor of your choosing. This enables you to not only create documents of chord diagrams but also to write in lesson notes, song lyrics, and combine them with other graphics!

What’s New:
Version 3.6.1 fixes a drawing (refresh) problem in the Chord Library window and fixes the background color when diagrams are dragged.

Developer’s website: DRS Digital Image & Sound, Inc.

HiRate – Access hidden rating scale in iTunes

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Hidden functionality is built into iTunes that allows songs to be rated on a scale of 0 to 100 instead of just 0 to 5. In fact, a * rating is really 20, a ** rating is really 40, a *** rating is really 60, a **** rating is really 80, and a ***** rating is really 100.

With HiRate, you can take advantage of this functionality to improve your iTunes ratings. Perhaps you have a song that you rated four-star, but like a bit better than your other four-star songs. Using HiRate, you can raise the rating to 81. It will still show up in iTunes as a four-star song, but you’ll see it at the top of your four-star songs when sorting by rating.

What’s New:
Version 1.0:

Most unimportant UI elements are smaller
The Quick Rating text has been removed
The heading for numeric equivalents is gone now
Added an “Album” field.
Changed the documentation to reflect changes and clarify a few issues.
All references to 1.0b1 or 1.0b2 (?!) should now be changed to 1.0.
Added an Easter Egg. :-)
Title, Artist, and Album fields are now selectable, so you can copy the text.
HiRate is 1.0 now, so nobody needs to worry about downloading a beta.
Fixed a silly bug that wouldn’t let you close the about box with Command-W

Developer’s website: Michaelnet Software

CoverBuddy – Add album art to iTunes

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

CoverBuddy is the premier visual music browser for your iTunes music collection. As a standalone application CoverBuddy indexes your music data, groups tracks by album, and displays your collection as “real” albums complete with cover art. Browse, select and play your music directly from CoverBuddy. Because CoverBuddy uses iTunes to play your music, it works with all your MP3 files as well as with songs purchased from the iTunes Music Store.

What’s New:
Version 1.3.1: Web Interface Server that lets you browse your music collection and control playback with every web browser. The music collection is shown as covers just as in popular CoverBuddy itself. Playstation Portable owners listen up � there is a special version of the CoverBuddy Web Interface optimized solely for PSPs!

Developer’s website: three-2-one

Feel Good Inc. Screensaver – The Gorillaz music video screensaver

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

This Music Video screensaver uses the music video from the song “Feel Good Inc.” by The Gorillaz. Simple install and completely free.

Developer’s website:

Songsheet Generator – Prints songsheets and songbooks

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Songsheet Generator is an application which prints songsheets and songbooks for home, small group, or large group overhead use. The program runs on any platform that supports Java 1.4 (.jar file). Song files must be provided in the ChordPro format, a common text format found on the internet (ChordPro files are easy to make yourself, if you can’t find the song you’re looking for). Also Songsheet Generator will import some basic tab (CRD) files, so you can print a songsheet or songbook from any songs you might already have in that format.

This program is distributed under the GNU General Public License.

What’s New:
Version 1.3.4:

Fixed automatic song numbering.
Songsheet Generator will prompt to save an unsaved songbook before exiting.
Note: the prompt will only be shown if the songbook has already been saved to a file.
Revised the songbook format to be compatible with SG for Windows 2.6.

Developer’s website: Ten by Ten

DesktopLyrics – Displays current iTunes song lyrics on desktop

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

DesktopLyrics is an application that displays the lyrics of the song currently playing in “iTunes” right on your desktop. The lyrics for the song have to be set in iTunes, DesktopLyrics does nothing to fetch them if they aren’t available in iTunes. If you don’t want to set all your lyrics manually you can use an application like “Harmonic” .

What’s New:
Version 1.0.1:

Updated all hyperlinks in the application and the documentation because of the move to a new hosting for website & e-mail
Added German translation (Thanks to Thomas Meyer)
Added a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions – with answers ;-), separated the History into a file and expanded the ReadMe
Fixed icon which was wrong at small sizes
Fixed file permissions which could cause DesktopLyrics to fail/crash for unprivileged users
Fixed hyperlink to “Harmonic” in the ReadMe
Refined defaults for better first-use experience

Developer’s website: corecode

Lyrics – Shows you the current iTunes lyrics

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Lyrics is a very simple piece of software that just shows the lyrics that iTunes is playing in a window. It never bothers you with needless functions.

The package includes a source code so that you can modify it yourself.

What’s New:
Version 1.2 adds a good looking icon.

Developer’s website: sekn

GimmeSomeTune – iTunes current song info in a floating window

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

GimmeSomeTune is an application that extends iTunes’ functionality.

With GimmeSomeTune, you can download lyrics and album covers without the user having to do anything – so that he can do things the computer can’t do for him.
Furthermore, it shows you iTunes’ currently playing song in a beautiful floating window, which you can hide with the push of a button, and it can as easily be brought back to the foreground.

GimmeSomeTune offers the user a lyrics-window, which shows you the lyrics of the currently playing song. In this window, you can also edit the lyrics on the fly, and, if GimmeSomeTune can’t find any lyrics, look for them on Google.
Of course, GimmeSomeTune features a vast number of hotkeys to control iTunes (and parts of GimmeSomeTune itself) out of any application. Alternatively, or as a complement, there is a mini-controller that lets you control iTunes with the mouse.

To please every individual user, GimmeSomeTune has functionality to change it’s appearance. The user can, amongst other things, modify the infowindow and the status menu. Even the information GimmeSomeTune shows you is changeable.
Other features of GimmeSomeTune are support for iChat, a “Recently Played” menu and a daemon, which starts and quits GimmeSomeTune whenever iTunes starts or quits.

Version 3.6 for Mac OS X 10.3.9 can be downloaded here.

What’s New:
Version 3.7.5:

Fixed a bug with hotkeys
Fixed a bug causing crashes
Improved daemon
Improved uninstaller

Developer’s website: Eternal Storms Software

MakingMusic – Online musical instrument encyclopedia

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

MakingMusic is an online Musical Instrument Encyclopedia, providing a description, an image, and a sound clip per instrument.

This is an ongoing Freeware project, with new instruments being added to the database as the research progresses. Each time you launch the application you may find you have access to different amounts of information. The aim of the project is to form a comprehensive database of musical instruments, the criteria being anything from any culture or any age that is used to make music. This may take some time! If you would like to submit an instrument to the database please email the details by using the link in the application ‘Help’ menu.

What’s New:
Version 2.7:

provides a necessary update to the database server (the database now resides on my idisk)
MakingMusic now contains 328 musical instruments & climbing.

Developer’s website: David Ahmed

X-Tunes – Unique utility to control iTunes

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

X-Tunes is a free utility to to control iTunes without bringing iTunes to the foreground, or having the iTunes window on screen. The installer places a prefpane in your Library.

Contrary to iTunes or other controllers, X-Tunes does not display a window permanently on screen, but only when you press a given key combination (Apple+Space by default). This window appears in front of all applications so you can click on its buttons while remaining in the current application. As soon as you release the key combination, the window disappears smoothly.

Developer’s website: Pol-Online.net

QMidi – MIDI and Karaoke player for the Mac

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

QMidi is the ultimate MIDI/Karaoke player for the Macintosh. It can play all kinds of MIDI files, no matter where they came from, in any order, using either the QuickTime musical instruments, Opcode OMS, MOTU FreeMIDI system, or serial port interface. QMidi also incorporates a MIDI mixer + GS effects.

What’s New:
Version 1.8:

Universal Binary support for Mac OS X which provides native support for Macintosh with Intel Core processors. QMidi supports the enhancements to performance introduced by the new MacIntel chipsets.
Classic version is no more supported.

Developer’s website: MIXAGE

iJames Lullaby – Automate your computer system volume

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

iJames Lullaby allows you to automate your computer’s system volume. What does this mean? It means that you can tell your computer to silence itself when iTunes is done playing OR have the volume slowly fade away over time. For me, it is the perfect solution with which I can to fall asleep to music and not worry about being bothered by the system sounds that follow a new email or a 4AM video chat request.

Developer’s website: James L. McMahan Jr.

IntervalPhobia – Learn to recognize music intervals by ear

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

IntervalPhobia helps you learn to recognize intervals by ear.

In IntervalPhobia, you will see/hear most of the intervals from pefect unison to perfect fifteenth.

Interval Roots: C, C#/Db, D, D#/Eb, E, F, F#/Gb, G, G#/Ab, A, A#/Bb, and B
Intervals: PU, m2, M2, m3, M3, P4, TT, P5, m6, M6, m7, M7, P8, m9, M9, m10, M10, P11, CTT, P12, m13, M13, m14, M14, and P15.
Play Modes: Interval Dictionary, Training, and Lesson.
Note Orders: Chord (simultaneous), Ascending, and Descending.
Interval Display: e.g. 1-3, PU-M3, C-E
Piano Keyboard View
Grand Staff View

What’s New:
Version 1.5:

Added “Beat” (1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64) setting for faster ascending/descending playback.

Developer’s website: majorthird.com

iPodDisk – Copy music off your iPod

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

iPodDisk is designed to make it easy and intuitive to copy music off iPod; it enables you to do so within the Finder, or whatever application that can read files.

What’s New:
Version 2.0b1:

ported to MacFUSE.
a new logo.
built as universal binary at last.
added support for multiple iPods.
optimized memory usage.
compilations are now grouped under iPodDisk/Compilations folder.
fixed some bugs where iPodDisk.app would not start when placed under certain folders.

Important Notes:

MacFUSE 0.2.4 is required.
due to a limit in MacFUSE, 10.3 is no longer supported, sorry.
this is still a beta release, please report any issues found.

Developer’s website: Isaac Huang

SonicMood – Plays smooth melodies while you work

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

SonicMood bathes you in gentle tones played by selected instruments to calm and relax you while you work. It’s like ‘Mood Chimes’, notes which sound as if produced by chimes blown by the wind. The patterns never repeat and are gentle, harmonious, and soothing.

There are 26 different sets of ‘chimes’ using different instruments, including bells, crystals, kalimbas, glockenspiels, violins, and many others. Audio files of nature sounds can be added to each mood. You can create your own moods or edit the 26 existing moods. You won’t find anything like this on a CD…

What’s New:
Version 4.7.6:

Fixed a bug that caused a crash if the user tried to use “Create a Mood.” SonicMood would crash when the “Create” button was pressed.
Made a minor cosmetic change to the MIDI window by combining the “elapsed time” settings and the countdown timer within one area of the window.
Fixed a bug that caused the default value for Mood timer to be 1 second for the Mood created by “Create a Mood”.
Made the “Create” button the default in the “Create a Mood” window.
Made sure that Moods can only be added or “Created” if the “all Moods” Theme is selected and a Mood is highlighted.
Fixed a small bug that allowed the user to delete ALL the Moods by doing a “select all” and deleting… Now at least one Mood must stay.
Fixed a small issue where the highlighted Instrument row wasn’t centered in the Instruments list in the “Mood Info/Edit” window.
Fixed a bug that kept the Tab key from working properly after the Mood name edit field was selected in the “Mood Info/Edit” window. Also fixed a bug that kept the spacebar from pausing the sound, and the arrow keys from working properly right after the Mood name was edited if the edit was ended by pressing the “enter” or “return” keys.
Changed the labels on the play/pause time sliders (SoundFile page of the “Mood Info/Edit” window) from min/max to minimum/maximum.
Increased the range of possible colors in the “Mood Colors” window.
Increased the range of the “Sound Motion” time sliders on the “Sound Motion” page of the “Mood Info/Edit” window from 20 seconds to 30 seconds.
Fixed a bug that sometimes left a white “ghost” around cleared “Color bars” in the “Colors” window. Occurred especially when changing the musical scale.
Fixed (or worked around) a problem caused when an 8 bit per sample soundfile is played and we’re running on Intel with OS X 10.4.9 (don’t know about later versions of OS X yet…). The sound becomes “statically” or “noisy” and all the other soundfiles are affected and sound the same. The fix is to limit the soundfiles in the list to only those that are at least 16 bits per sample, if we’re running on Intel. All the soundfiles supplied with SonicMood are 16 bits so this is actually a very minor problem.
Fixed a bug that kept proper slider settings from being set on entry to the Soundfiles page of the “Mood Info/Edit” if no soundfiles were checked.

Developer’s website: John Hall

JewelCase – iTunes visual jukebox

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

JewelCase is a plug-in that turns iTunes into a visual jukebox, displaying each song in a virtual
CD jewel case, complete with album cover art, lyrics, artist and album information… It’s just like viewing real CDs in your collection.

JewelCase is the tangible connection to your digital music collection.

What’s New:
Version 2.1: Intel support, song lyrics, random layouts and fonts.

Developer’s website: Optical Alchemy

VSamp – Quality MIDI audio sample playback module

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

VSamp is a software sample player for the Macintosh. It comprises: a program for creating and playing virtual instruments; a VST plugin for playing VSamp instruments from within a VST sequencer; and an AudioUnits plugin for playing VSamp instruments from within an AudioUnits sequencer.

Features:

Up to 64 stereo sample playback = 128 voice
polyphony.
32-bit output (VSamp application under Mac OS 7, 8 or
9 limited to 16-bit).
Up to 192 kHz output (VSamp application under Mac OS
7, 8 or 9 limited to 48 kHz).
Load samples into RAM for higher performance or
stream from disk for lower RAM usage.
128 resonant lowpass filters with realtime MIDI
control and modulation.
LFO to modulate pitch and filters
5-stage AHDSR envelope configurable for each sample.
Compatible with sequencers running MacOS X MIDI
services, OMS and FreeMIDI.
Compatibility with major soundfile formats including
AIFF, WAVE and SDII.
Import SoundFont2 and SampleCell 2.x samples and
instrument keymaps.

More information available here.

What’s New:
Version 3.7.1:

Quieter note stealing
Fixed Intel problem accessing some sample files whose Finder information does not include the file type
Fixed Intel problem using Sound Resources

Developer’s website: Malcolm Haylock

Noodle Heaven – Write and play interactive music

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

Noodle Heaven is a revolutionary platform for writing and playing with interactive music. The Noodle Player is a new way to play with music, it’s a system that allows artists to create new types of music and games – interactive, free flowing and endless. It works like this : After installing the Noodle Player on your machine and signing up for a Noodle account you’ll be able to download and play interactive Noodle Tracks. We currently have tracks by Peter Gabriel and Afrocelts, and we’re working on adding more all the time. Tracks are a combination of music and video game play – the current “Sound Field” tracks let you play with your favourite tunes like musical Lego bricks, new tracks coming soon will challenge your speed, skill and imagination to open up their secrets and multiplayer tracks will allow you to play with or compete against others on the net.

Please note that you will need to sign up for a (free, no hassle) account before you can play tracks.You can sign up from our website here.

Developer’s website: Noodle Heaven

MacLoggerDX – Auto DX radio tuner

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

MacLoggerDX logs into your favourite telnet or TNC DXCluster and as DX Spots are received, tunes your radio to the spot, looks up the call and displays the DX station on the Greyline Map.

What’s New:
Version 4.3.2b12:

Ten-Tec Omni VII S-Meter adjustment
TS-480 S-Meter adjustment
K2+XV50 Driver 50 MHz.
HamCall fix for Hughes ISP
New Free Internet lookup format fix

Developer’s website: Dog Park Software, Ltd.

EchoMac – Communicate with other amateur (ham) radio users

Sun, 14 Oct 2007 12:03:23 +0000

EchoMac is designed as a single user, single connect application. It is meant as a means to allow you to connect to any other station or conference server on the Echolink system. It can only connect to one station at a time, but if you connect to a conference server you can talk to as many stations as that conference server supports – just make sure every connects to that same conference server and you can have a group chat.

The first time you use the Echolink network, you need to be verified. This is accomplished by simply putting in your information (call, name, location, password) in the program preferences and connecting to the network. This will queue you up for approval, and then you just wait. Sometimes it takes fifteen minutes, sometimes it may take up to a day or longer, but that’s unusual. However, eventually you should be able to log in successfully. When you run it the first time and put in your information, you can either leave the software running while awaiting validation and eventually you will see the list of active stations appear, or you can quit and come back later to check if you are validated.

I have been requested by Johnathan Taylor, K1RFD, the author of Echolink, to have you visit his web site:

http://www.echolink.org/el/register_data.asp

Please register your call and e-mail address with him, even though you are not downloading the software from there.

What’s New:
Version 1.16:

NEW: Build as Universal Binary (N9YTY)
CHANGE: Use search field (with menu of recent searches) to replace old filter text field (7J1AJH)
BUG FIX: Dividing by 0 is 0 on PPC, but a crash on intel. Protect portaudio’s mac_core from dividing by 0 (N9YTY)
ISSUE: Change how status field updates from a secondary thread are done to avoid case where initial station list display is blank (7J1AJH)

Developer’s website: Dog Park Software, Ltd.