Free classical music

Sundays are all about lounging around, so to make yourself seem a little more urbane and intelligent whilst you read Reddit or eat breakfast, why not enjoy some excellent classical music for free? 

Starts off with a great rendition of Beethoven's Fifth and continues in great fashion, with performances of popular classical music that you should know by now. Did I mention that it was free?

Fire up your Google Play account and point it to:

https://play.google.com/store/music/album/Various_Artists_The_Great_Classical_Works?id=Bjpaub4gem5372t2j4uy2oqdike&hl=en_GB

4 new Android music apps

It's been a while since I last took a look at some of the apps available for music making on the Android platform, so I thought it would be a good idea to take a look at what's new on the play store. One thing that has struck me was that a lot of the older apps have been updated and benefited from user feedback and there is a great deal more on offer. MIDI over USB has also started to creep in and I am sure that this will help legitimise the platform for music making. As before, i have only limited myself to free titles with URLs in an effort to see what's available.

Android Synthesisers

A few months ago I took a look at mobile music apps on iOS and Android and lamented that high latency on Android’s operating system (at least at the time of writing) was to blame for the lack of decent music apps on the app store. However, the Heat Synthesiser did pave the way forward in this regard and highlighted that with a bit of programming know-how, it is possible to play a decent Android software synthesizer.

It’s now Summer 2013 and the Google Play store has been steadily building up a number of music apps for download, both free and paid-for. In this post, I’m going to cover a few of the free options that are available and will highlight some of the best (and worst) the platform currently has to offer.

Android and music: we have the technology

The only thing that Android seems to lack in terms of applications at the moment is proper support for music making. Not to sound like a complete anti-Apple person (they just priced me well out of the market, is all!), but Apple's low-latency audio drivers and substantial market share for the iPad have allowed companies like Arturia, Korg, Moog and Propellerhead (to name but a few) to develop touch-enabled software synthesisers, as a way of bridging the gap between virtual synths on desktops controlled through a DAW and a fully blown standalone hardware synthesiser. There are even iOS versions of full DAWs including FL Studio and Garageband, bringing full mobile music to anyone who has these devices.