Awesome DS indie project spotlight: SoundCells

Well, after about 2 weeks of inactiveness, here’s an article for you. School hasn’t finished yet and this wednesday I’ll be on finals, but this was just too awesome to pass up.

Indie project maker Pakl, has developed a very cool sound/tune creator for the double-screened handheld. It’s actually pretty simple and looks like a lot of fun to try out; the thing’s got a lot of potential as you can see on the videos.

Plus, after begging him for 3 hours (not really) Pakl agreed to answer a few questions to explain us about this great DS application, so click on if you wish to know more about SoundCell.

Video 1
Video 2

EP: So what is the concept behind the project?
Pakl: Picking up where Electroplankton left off, using the DS touch screen as an innovative instrument interface.

EP: That sure sounds like a challenge. Could you explain what’s behind the name?
Pakl: Well, I’m impatient for the tenori-on to come out… one of the basic concepts of the tenori-on is that a cell in a grid can trigger a note… so I was playing with this concept on the DS touch screen, and decided that 16 cells should be easy to access when playing the DS like a guitar. the Tenori-On is an instrument being developed by Iwai (the maker of electroplankton)… I have been thinking for a while to make a Tenori-On emulator on the DS to satisfy my appetite until the Tenori-On comes out (But I think the DS screen is too small to really have a satisfactory Tenori-On interface… so SoundCells is the next best thing.)

EP: What exactly do we see in the videos?
Pakl: In the videos, you see me demoing SoundCells — an interface to a virtual PianItarMonica — playing two tunes. I chose the tunes because they’re popular and they demonstrate several features of SoundCells. One of the features of SoundCells is that you can record several tracks so that it will play along with you on command. To record a track, you simultaneously hold the Y-button (“record”) with either A, B, or X. The A,B or X buttons tell SoundCells where to store the recording. Like a guitar, the notes are laid out horizontally and vertically; like a piano, the natural notes are the main keys accessible, but like a harmonica, you use an accessory button for the sharps. Pianitarmonica =)

EP: That sounds really fun and simple! Have you made any other application for the DS or is this your first?
Pakl: My first foray into DS programming was “Ukulele DS”where you strum a virtual 4-string ukulele. It’s had almost 1300 downloads from www.ndshb.com (http://www.ndshb.com/cgi-bin/cfiles/cfiles.cgi?0,0,0,0,3,76)

EP: So is this the final version? Will it be available to everyone interested in it?
Pakl: It’s nearly final, it will definitely be available to everyone and will be open source too

EP: Is there anything else you’d like to add? When do you expect the final version to be made available to the public?
Pakl: Mostly that I hope to see cool compositions and performances with this thing! About the release date, I expect to release it within a week, so of course, we should double that. 2 weeks at most. =P The folks at ndshb gave me place to host stuff at http://patryk.ndshb.com/ so that where it will be posted.
Another thing to add — there may be future releases of SoundCells, like adding another row of notes or allowing users to slide the rows independently so that the difference from one to the next is not always an octave. (That is, you could make it more like a guitar by sliding a row so the difference from one row to the next is 4 or 5 half-notes.)

EP: Well it does seem to have a lot of potential! Thanks a lot for your time!

And that’s it for Expansion Port’s first interview. I expect to see this really succeed, as it does show a lot of potential as we can see in the videos. Thanks again to Pakl for giving us this exclusive interview and keep checking the site for more news on this and other indie projects!