I'm a big fan of the iphone/ipod touch, I see them as little modular sound stations that never leave the pocket of their owner, and yet are as multicapable as a laptop, just not as multitaskable... I contend that that's a benefit, as it keeps one focused on a single task at a time, without getting distracted my new chats, emails, and status updates!
Since the app store opened last year, I've obtained a microphone that dangles off the ipod like a little friend, and with it, I'm able to make a recording of anything that passes by my field of hearing within seconds of first noticing it! For this reason alone, the ipod touch would be an invaluable tool, as most field recordists don't actively carry around their equipment on their day-to-day, but if your recording equipment is also your music player, email device, calendar, and more, you tend to have it with you!
The sound capabilities of the little touch don't stop at field recording though, there's a multitude of synths, samplers, live processing effects, virtual instruments, and generative composition programs!
By using a special mic I have that allows one to plug a line input into any of these programs, I can use a couple or, by borrowing my girlfriends, a few all linked together like a traditional effects chain where each can be a whole multitude of different effects, without having to rewire anything, but simply by changing the program!
One program I find to be particularly cool is called "RJDJ" and it's essentially a host program for PD patches made by users all around the world... usually, these subprograms take a live input from the microphone (or line in) anf effect it in some predetermined way, there's glitchy choppers, delay + feedbackers, granular delays, pitch shifters, quantizing rhythmic loopers, and a bunch of other stuff, sometimes having it's own music that responds to noise input to control the compositional structure of the playback... these aren't my favorites, I prefer ones that only use one's input sounds with no additional sounds of their own... but I'm in it to create, rather than for entertainment. Below is a link to my RJDJ profile, and I suggest playing a couple or a few tracks at a time, as each was made as minimally as the software would allow, in order to facilitate mixing later, only after uploading these to their site did I realize that one may mix them on the site itself!
RJDJmore to come...
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