From The Floor - Mad about Music? Go Mad with MadPlayer!

by , 9:00 AM EST, January 10th, 2003

Of course the Mac is a great platform for audio and music work, but there may be those who would like to create music, but don't know a sharp from a flat. Sure, you could take some music courses, but there's a much quicker way to create music on-the-fly. We had a chance to sit down with Viot Damevski, President and CEO of MadWaves, who demonstrated their MadPlayer device. This is the first US Macworld where this device has been demonstrated.

In a nutshell, you tell the MadPlayer device which style of music you'd like to create, and it will start playing a tune using that style. The styles you can choose from include Hip Hop, Rap, RnB, Downbeat, Ragga, Manga, Drums&Bass, Jungle, House, Garage, Techno, Trance, Ambient, New Age, Ballad and Bossa. Unfortunately, when your author was queried about his favorite style of music, we started feeling our age since Classic Rock wasn't (yet) included.

Once you select a style, you can then navigate along a "highway" which has bass, drum, lead, riff, sample and microphone "lanes." Once you select a lane, you can then "dive" into it and change that particular portion of the music until it is to your liking. The bass, drum, lead and riff lanes are fairly obvious. The sample lane lets you incorporate your own audio samples into the music, and the microphone lane lets you include audio from a microphone in real time. Although you can use the device on its own, there is also MadWare software, which lets you save your creations to your computer.

The MadPlayer package normally retails for $249, but until January 31, 2003, it can be purchased from MacWarehouse for the special price of $199.

The Mac Observer Spin:

Based on the amount of traffic at the MadWaves booth, we think this product will be a winner. Our writeup only touched upon some of the features of this product. Be sure to visit the MadWaves web site to get a rundown on the full feature set of this innovative product.

MadWaves