Hi all,
first of all, please forgive me if my question is noobish, but I got my ipad only yesterday and have no clue abour the potential and limitation of music making in iOS.
As the first thing after unpacking the ipad, I bought the animoog synth because it's on sale now and received so much praise.
I'm not a good live player and this recording/overdubbing thing within animoog is not my cup of tea.
So I wonder how I can sequence with another app the most out of animoog. What are good sequencers where I can enter midi notes and maybe even automation data, which is then sent to animoog? Is it possible to record the audio produced by animoog in the external sequencer?
Or is my traditional concept of Cubase + vstis completely incompatible with the ios way of making music?
Thanks
FT
Is there anything similar to the vst host/vsti concept on ipad?
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- KVRist
- 143 posts since 28 Oct, 2002
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- KVRist
- 37 posts since 14 Oct, 2011
A number of apps offer MIDI OUT, but the trick is for the sequencer and/or the target to support background operation (ie work whilst minimised). the other main consideration is that both should ideally support virtual MIDI. Core MIDI is the ability to use hardware to drive an app and most support that. An increasing number of apps now support virtual MIDI, allowing you to plug apps directly into each other. If not, an in between app like MidiBridge can connect them together, pretending the signal is coming in as CoreMIDI. Hope that makes sense, it does in my head.
Good apps to invest in would be Gene Midi Sequencer which is a dumb sequencer and supports automation, or Phaendra which is similar but only a step sequencer. Good targets are Sunrizer and Addictive (and a million others).
Capturing the audio back is more problematic. Some apps will record and let you copy or export this as a wave. If not, you can record line or mic out to a digital recorder. By design, app audio is sandboxed, so one cannot record another (unless Jailbroken).
However you can't import waves back into these sequencers but will need another multitrack (Multritrack DAW and especially Meteor are good).
Another approach are the all in one DAW apps like Beatmaler 2, Tabletop and very especially NanoStudio (the king!). Can be limited but more fulfilling in getting a reasonable finished product quickly.
Hope this all makes sense. It's a steep learning curve if coming from desktop DAWs.
Good luck!
Good apps to invest in would be Gene Midi Sequencer which is a dumb sequencer and supports automation, or Phaendra which is similar but only a step sequencer. Good targets are Sunrizer and Addictive (and a million others).
Capturing the audio back is more problematic. Some apps will record and let you copy or export this as a wave. If not, you can record line or mic out to a digital recorder. By design, app audio is sandboxed, so one cannot record another (unless Jailbroken).
However you can't import waves back into these sequencers but will need another multitrack (Multritrack DAW and especially Meteor are good).
Another approach are the all in one DAW apps like Beatmaler 2, Tabletop and very especially NanoStudio (the king!). Can be limited but more fulfilling in getting a reasonable finished product quickly.
Hope this all makes sense. It's a steep learning curve if coming from desktop DAWs.
Good luck!
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- KVRAF
- 1895 posts since 13 Oct, 2002
As jkhanhl pretty much summed it up: the will is there and and at this point it's a bit of a mess. Fortunately there are some devs working together towards some kind of standard, but it's not spearheaded by Apple. This group is quite active on the subject: OMAC.
The problem is that the kind of data and file exchange we're used to in our conventional computing experience goes against the grain of what Apple is trying to do with iOS. In iOS, Apple compartmentalizes and isolate apps from one another (no shared data space). They opened a crack with Core Midi and some devs are playing around with the idea of transferring Audio via MIDI packets because that's the only crack in the "armor" (MIDI has no speed limitation when virtual, so it can be done). Whether Apple will approve this or not is up in the air.
But it's definitely something many people want and it'll become even more relevant as future iterations of the iPad become more powerful and capable of running several taxing concurrent apps.
The problem is that the kind of data and file exchange we're used to in our conventional computing experience goes against the grain of what Apple is trying to do with iOS. In iOS, Apple compartmentalizes and isolate apps from one another (no shared data space). They opened a crack with Core Midi and some devs are playing around with the idea of transferring Audio via MIDI packets because that's the only crack in the "armor" (MIDI has no speed limitation when virtual, so it can be done). Whether Apple will approve this or not is up in the air.
But it's definitely something many people want and it'll become even more relevant as future iterations of the iPad become more powerful and capable of running several taxing concurrent apps.
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- KVRian
- 1185 posts since 2 Jan, 2004 from England
the biggest downer with the iOS right now is the whole disparity to it all. We have great synths, drum machines, generative sequencers and FX processors, but multitracking them into one big cohesive project is a royal pain in the ass.
Exporting audio this-a-way and that-a-way, running apps in the background so we can listen and play... convoluted MIDI solutions. The best option at the moment is to use a MIDI interface of some sort and pipe the resulting audio into a classic DAW. It can, and has, been done all on the iPad, but at the moment it seems like taking three steps to accomplish one.
There's a real lack of a standard solution at the moment, and it all resembles the pre-MIDI era again.
Exporting audio this-a-way and that-a-way, running apps in the background so we can listen and play... convoluted MIDI solutions. The best option at the moment is to use a MIDI interface of some sort and pipe the resulting audio into a classic DAW. It can, and has, been done all on the iPad, but at the moment it seems like taking three steps to accomplish one.
There's a real lack of a standard solution at the moment, and it all resembles the pre-MIDI era again.
11, 418th in line to the KVR throne
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- KVRist
- Topic Starter
- 143 posts since 28 Oct, 2002
Thank you guys for your excellent explanations of the current state-of-the-art in music making on the ipad.
It's been really quite a disappointment for me to learn that the iOS music world is so cluttered. Maybe I'm too pessimistic but the built-in limitation that one app cannot grab the audio produced by another seems to preclude any modular, but seamless sequencer/plugin solution
Fette Töle
It's been really quite a disappointment for me to learn that the iOS music world is so cluttered. Maybe I'm too pessimistic but the built-in limitation that one app cannot grab the audio produced by another seems to preclude any modular, but seamless sequencer/plugin solution
Fette Töle
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- KVRAF
- 4420 posts since 7 Nov, 2005 from Florida
Meteor has virtual instruments you can buy and use. Not sure how good they are.
Mike
Mike
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- KVRAF
- 13444 posts since 14 Nov, 2000 from Hannover / Germany
If you are into MIDI stuff, you should in any case get NanoStudio. Unfortunately, it doesn't support audio tracks, but otherwise I think it's the best iOS sequencer so far.
Music Studio is a little similar, supports audio but I find the handling to be a bit fiddly, plus, the internal sounds aren't really up to what one might be familiar with.
Anyway, as far as the status quo goes, I think you should rather get one sequencer doing the things you want instead of bothering with background audio/MIDI. It's just too much hassle to really feel comfortable.
FWIW, there's a free Win/OSX version of NanoStudio which is exactly like the iOS version, so you can try it out in every detail (an excellent business model, btw).
- Sascha
Music Studio is a little similar, supports audio but I find the handling to be a bit fiddly, plus, the internal sounds aren't really up to what one might be familiar with.
Anyway, as far as the status quo goes, I think you should rather get one sequencer doing the things you want instead of bothering with background audio/MIDI. It's just too much hassle to really feel comfortable.
FWIW, there's a free Win/OSX version of NanoStudio which is exactly like the iOS version, so you can try it out in every detail (an excellent business model, btw).
- Sascha
There are 3 kinds of people:
Those who can do maths and those who can't.
Those who can do maths and those who can't.
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- KVRist
- 58 posts since 14 Dec, 2011
yeah meteor is fantastic sends midi start to devices and records at same time so you dont have to spend time chopping the sample its a bit power hungry so best not to run other apps as well but this is by far the best midi / audio solution recently been syncing mpc with meteor and it works perfectly.
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- Banned
- 1583 posts since 19 Aug, 2011
BeatMaker 2 runs in the background and records midi from AniMoog, and others like Sunrizer, ThumbJam, etc..
Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function | http://soundcloud.com/bmoorebeats
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- KVRist
- 91 posts since 13 Dec, 2011
I tried to record midi from Animoog with Beatmaker 2 running in the background, and couldn't get it to work.
The first problem I had was that, even after a restart, Animoog would be glitchy when running BM2 at the same time. I tried to record midi notes using a few different setting, and ended up with nothing.
Am I missing something obvious? Can you describe how you get Animoog and BM2 to play nice together and also record midi?
The first problem I had was that, even after a restart, Animoog would be glitchy when running BM2 at the same time. I tried to record midi notes using a few different setting, and ended up with nothing.
Am I missing something obvious? Can you describe how you get Animoog and BM2 to play nice together and also record midi?
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- KVRer
- 3 posts since 11 Jul, 2009 from Brooklyn, NY, USA
YES. No MIDI out from Animoog yet, only MIDI in on channel 1.sonicflux wrote:I tried to record midi from Animoog with Beatmaker 2 running in the background, and couldn't get it to work.
The first problem I had was that, even after a restart, Animoog would be glitchy when running BM2 at the same time. I tried to record midi notes using a few different setting, and ended up with nothing.
Am I missing something obvious? Can you describe how you get Animoog and BM2 to play nice together and also record midi?