[Msrwbdas]

</p> Readers have complained that we’re doing too much mobile music coverage, specifically in regards to the iPhone. I’ll be consolidating that news into a more manageable weekly post. Unfortunately, in my haste to do so, I got something very, very wrong, and I think it deserves a separate correction.

Retraction: The iDrum mobile app available today will indeed allow you to use your own samples and exchange files with your desktop computer.

That’s important, because the fundamental issue that determines whether a handheld music app is a toy or something that matters to your music is workflow. If you can complete something musically meaningful on a handheld device, or you can work on something related to what you’re doing on your desktop/laptop computer, then obviously, it’s useful, and that’s what we care about on CDM.

Developer Art Gillespie explains:

With iDrum for iPhone, you can do full round-trip editing of beats–including sending samples back and forth–with iDrum (desktop) for Windows/Mac.

As for audio export, it’s pretty easy to grab the ringtone bounce and use that. (If you don’t already have iDrum)
This also explains something that confused a reader, which is why the iPod Touch version of iDrum still has a ringtone bounce, even though you can’t load ringtones on the iPod.

Of course, part of why we don’t simply copy and paste press releases on CDM is that I like to understand the real message of new tools , even if that means first getting it wrong. (The round-trip workflow didn’t seem to be fully documented when the story first ran.)

So, apologies to Art, and now back to your regularly-scheduled programming. We’ll have another iPhone update at the beginning of next week.

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