Archive for the ‘Curtis’ Category

Curtis Control

Tuesday, January 4th, 2011

New in 2011, Curtis 2.1 adds a keyboard along with XY pads for even better touch control! Turn any recorded sound into a synthesizer!

The keyboard controls the grain cycle length to match standard twelve-tone tuning. However, the content of the source sound file at the current time point along with other parameters will determine the pitchiness of the sound heard. When the time point is static, Curtis behaves like a wavetable synth. When you pinch to create a grain range or apply the time LFO, things get.. stranger.

Two new XY pads control pitch and time LFO’s for still more wonk. The horizontal axis controls LFO frequency, while the vertical controls its depth. One wiggles the source point in the audio file, the other wiggles grain size, which in many cases corresponds to pitch.

We also gave the interface a twice-over, greatly improving multi-touch performance. Now you can apply all kinds of fingers and toes to the sound mangling craft.

We hope you’ll enjoy these new additions!

  • • keyboard control for chromatic mode
  • • pitch and position LFO modulation
  • • much multi-touchier
  • • improved pitch slew behavior



Curtis turns 2.0

Monday, November 8th, 2010

We’re eminently pleased to announce the 2.0 release of Curtis today, with some great new features:

  • • All new user interface
  • • Amplitude envelope
  • • Scratch mode
  • • Chromatic pitch quantize



We think this edition is a great improvement over the last. It’s far more musical, with chromatic quantize snapping the grain pitch to actual notes. A fantastic idea from Sleazy! The new amplitude envelope greatly extends usability and expressivity, so Curtis doesn’t perpetually sound, but can now be played like a more traditional instrument. Controls have all been surfaced, so there is no longer a need to flip down a hidden panel. The scratch mode we were playing around with some months ago has been incorporated as well. A big thanks to the users who wrote with suggestions, ideas, and demands!

Curtis updates big and small

Friday, October 22nd, 2010

A couple Curtis updates just appeared on the App Store. On the iPhone, Curtis Heavy now uses file sharing through iTunes, ditching the peculiar browser upload. It still uses the first four seconds of your WAV file. Curtis on the iPad has had some major memory fixes, so it handles large files far better than before. Great news, finally enabling crash-free access to the awesome included library by Richard Devine. Sorry it took so long! Enjoy the grains.

Curtis gets Devine

Monday, August 30th, 2010

The latest installment of Curtis, version 1.1, is up on the iTunes Store. We’re extra excited about this one, as Richard Devine has been kind enough to create an incredible sound scape for the app. We could hardly think of a better way to glitch bliss on Curtis!


New in this release:

  • exclusive Richard Devine sound set
  • pitch control
  • echo effect
  • volume control
  • mp3 import

Curtis 1.2, so much louder!

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

We tweaked the Curtis audio routings to pump sound out of the main speaker rather than the earpiece. So.. happy.. now..

Pending potential bug fixes (never say never), that wraps up Curtis Lite. Rather than spring a whole new beast on our users, we’d like to roll out the Heavy features as we build them. At the same time, we would like to keep a Lite (or even Free) version around. So, in order to reward our early adopters, Curtis Lite will morph into Curtis Heavy at the next update. At this point, the Heavy price will go up and a Lite or Free version may come out.

Mouthful? The short version: if you own Curtis Lite, you get Heavy for free. The sooner you buy in, the cheaper the price.

Create Digital Music

Thursday, June 18th, 2009

Curtis made an appearance on our favorite music blog yesterday!

A recurring feature request seems to be adding the ability to load audio into Curtis. Any suggestions regarding how this should work? Apple keeps us locked out of your music library, so the most obvious (and fun?) option is out. Creating a desktop synchronization client is out of the question for such a cheap app. We’re eager to hear your thoughts on this as well as any other feature requests!