Warner Crocker points to a music program that uses a digitizing Tablet as its input. He tries the program out on a Tablet PC with some success.
The last week I’ve been playing around with different ways to use my new Samsung Q1 to make music.
I don’t have any programs to share at this time, however, there are a couple apps online that you can try for yourself that might give you some ideas of what is feasible.
One good starting point is a Flash drum app, which you can get to by clicking here. Just tap on the drums and symbols with your fingers. The drumb emulation isn’t that great, but if you’re like me, it’ll probably give you lots of ideas on how to really do this for an UMPC.
Another music making app that you might want to try is this virtual keyboard from CodeProject.com. The keyboard is a little small for the UMPC, so for those developers out there, you can take the app’s source code and “rescale” the keyboard to full screen width or divide the keyboard up into two rows that span the full width of the display. The code’s all there, so let your imagination go wild.
What about a virtual stringed instrument? Or a virtual turntable? Or a photo of people’s heads turned into a bobble-head instrument?
Hey, maybe at Mobility Connections we need a UMPC Jam session? LOL.
The Q1 has a sensitive (80g) touch digitizer so these music programs work fairly well. I haven’t tried any of them on the TabletKiosk eo which has a 120g digitizer (which I actually prefer in general). Anyone want to give the link a go?
You will also notice that you’ll have to program “around” what happens when more than one finger touches the display at once. Actually, this can be pretty interesting. Take the keyboard app, for instance. Place one finger on the left side of the keyboard and another finger on the right. Now vary the pressure slightly between pressing harder with the left finger than the right and vice versa. You’ll be playing notes that slide up and down the keyboard. I bet you didn’t know you could play the piano that fast. 
(By the way, for all you game developers this may give you some ideas about unique control devices for UMPCs too. Again, I haven’t tried this on a 120g digitizer, so I’m not sure how generic this feature would be, but it’s worth a few experiments I think.)
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