Jasuto Sounds
A combination of being on vacation, and having the graphics card in my 15.4″ MacBook PRO Laptop Computer fail shortly after I returned, provided an unintentional opportunity to get to know my iPod Touch a little better.
Jasuto gave me plenty to keep me busy while my computer was at the shop. I really enjoy having so much modular synth power on a handheld device, and I found it’s usage to be fairly intuitive.
Have a look at some more detailed tutorials and descriptions of Jasuto’s features at the app’s webpage.
Here are a few exmaples of what I could do with Jasuto after a few days of experimentation.
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In addition to giving me hours of DSP–related fun away from my computer, I have started to think of Jasuto as a good place to hash out new ideas for bigger projects before rolling them over into Ableton or Max/Msp.
Toy or Tool?
Unfortunately, there are a few things keeping Jasuto in the audio “toy” realm, and prevent it from becoming a real audio tool. In the examples above you can probably hear that I am having a hard time keeping the sequencers and audio samples in sync with each other.
It’s great that you can load your own audio samples in addition to using the ones that come installed with the app, but that’s still not enough if things can’t sync properly.
I would also like the ability to create longer sequences, as well as trigger different sequences at different times.
Jasuto’s modular GUI works extremely for my purposes, but there is one situation I wish I could find a way around.
Maybe I am just weird and unique (entirely possible), but often I’d like to use the release/mod information coming off of the left outlet from the Sequencer module and have it control the attack of an Envelope module.
Doing this is not very convenient since the attack input is on the left side of the Envelope module. Jasuto’s website tells me that I can use the Link module do accomplish this, but I always end up having some information delay.
VST
Honestly, I haven’t played with the VST version too much yet, but I should mention that having the possibility to route all kinds of audio through Jasuto seems very powerful. What I find discouraging is that the app and the VST seem to be completely separate at the moment.
I was a little angry earlier when I was planning this blog entry and I realized there was no way to load scenes I had created on my iPod into the VST.
To me this is a real drag. If I feel creative on the train, I’d like to pull out Jasuto and let the ideas flow, but then again, why get involved if there is no way to transfer my work into more appropriate mixing/recording mediums.
Calling for Help
In lieu of it’s faults, Jasuto’s forum page seems to be very active and peoples questions’ get answered or addressed often.
The idea and layout of this app is definitely new and unexplored territory for many, and I am no synth-genius myself, so there may be ways around all of these issues that I haven’t discovered yet, but even if there isn’t, I love having Jasuto on my iPod to experiment and generate new ideas with.
That being said I do still have high hopes for some big updates in the future.
Gregory Despain said on January 11th, 2010
Great Article! Thanks!