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Considering other DAW options
Have some questions:
does MultiTrack Studio allow you to restrict its piano roll (and keyboard) just to a specific scale?
what's FL studio like these days? And does it restrict to a scale?
do both allow decent midi to IAA instruments?
do both allow IAA effects and can you tweak those effects in real time yourself and have the automation recorded to the resulting audio?
Any help on any of the above very much appreciated. Thinking of alternatives (to Cubasis I guess) for a full IAA set up now I have an Air2.
(And I can't just wait for Auria Pro 
)
Comments
Just wait for auria pro. Trust me. Can't say why but you should trust me on that one.
Any clue on how long the wait is yet? Spring is a distant memory now......
Ha ha. Ok. I'll struggle on
Not convinced that Matt's points will necessarily be addressed. Auria Pro would need to have user selectable scales and the ability to record live tweaking of IAA effects.
I really hope that Auria Pro is going to be awesome, but at the same time with the long wait etc it's also bound to disappoint some simply because of the weight of expectations.
Inevitably so.
The wait of expectations...
I don't do much midi myself, but I'm pretty sure the audio side of things is not going to disappoint. I'm betting that the midi will work well though.
I am trying not to set a ton of expectations for Auria Pro beyond just getting stability improvements as I loved what Auria had in terms of navigation and audio editing alone. Whatever I can figure to do with midi, audio warping / quantizing, pitchshifting, audio to midi conversion..and... Uh.... Err, actualy my expectations are pretty damned high! It's going to be so frickin AWESOME!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!
"With great power comes great responsibility".......... I'm sure Auria Pro will raise the stakes in the IOS music community. Then we will see Cubasis, and the big boys try to catch up. I'll wait, then enjoy, like us all.
The direct answer is no. But there's an interface to record midi chords to the piano roll in a certain key. Press a chord button while recording, etc. You can also expand a single note in the piano roll to a whole chord.
Yes in MTS. Some apps don't play well with IAA though (not the fault of MTS) and I've had to use AB instead with those apps.
Yes generally in MTS. On some occasions I've had buffer underrun errors when doing this. Is depends on how resource dependent the apps are that you're using.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 have you considered using Firo as a MIDI controller, that will allow you to use a user specified scale and record into any MIDI DAW.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000
In terms of restricting you to notes of a given scale, MTS has a score editor, allowing you to sequence midi track using musc notation, bass and treble clef, sharps and flats etc. In this editor you can chose any key signature, and the editor restricts you to entering notes only on your chosen scale.
If you are playing the inapp keys, or using the midi piano roll you aren't restricted. If you switch back to score you will see where notes have fallen out-of-scale...
I'll dig around and see how live IAA fx tweaks wold work. Off the top of my head I would say AB recording, with IAA FX assigned to the AB audio tracks would be the way.
Thanks everyone!
Richard - yes, I've tried Firo and yes, it would be good as a scale restricted keyboard for playing in. As is thumbjam etc.
But ideally the piano roll would be able to be restricted, like Gadget or Genome. It just means one less thing to think about. But then again maybe it's time I leant my scales / strayed outside a given scale.
The fact MTS has some smart chord stuff and will show up notes being outside the scale if you flick to the notation view might be useful. I'm quite tempted to get it actually. I like the idea of putting some staple soundfonts into it too - like a piano one - for some internal sounds on tracks.
But it's a bit of money and I should probably wait to see what Auria Pro brings I guess. Maybe....
I would add, restrict to scale is such a useful feature for idiots like me.
I'm surprised more apps don't have it. Especially the ones with piano rolls.
Yes, I find it really useful - although in my case I can live without it on the piano roll, but it's really useful on the actual keyboard. I only ever do minor edits in the piano roll, all the original notes are played on the keyboard anyway, the piano roll for me is just a way to fix minor timing issues.
Yes, you said it yourself. Learning some scales is probably the next step.
I have leaned on programs that restrict your notes to a certain scale but it really limits some of the opportunities for adding other flavours to your music. Many pieces of music will add a note or two from outside the scale to emphasise some kind variation in parts of the music.
I'm just picking this stuff up myself so I'm sure there are many more knowledgeable people on the forum who could give us a few pointers here..?
Well there's plenty of apps that will map out scales on to piano keys for you.
SecretBaseDesign just released an interesting scales practice app for a buck, it's basic, but so am I!
Here's Tim Webbs write up on discchord: http://discchord.com/blog/2015/10/16/practice-practice-practice.html
I am an amateur note hacker myself and went for many years without giving a crap about scales and it was only really on ios apps that i started to play with it as it was there. I found it did give that nice 'this sounds more right' quality but at the same time a certain magic was missing. Going off the grid so to speak scale wise does seem important to me but also having it present to play off of is great to. These days i will typicaly use groove box or fuge machine type apps that give a real structure within a scale. then i really enjoy just doing freeform overdubs playing off and on the scale. It has a more organic and expressive human feel for me that way.
I love Animoog for being able to choose each key for its keyboard.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000
One huge plus in MTS favor is the way it sips CPU, far less than any other daw, and allows me to do the multi app setups that freak out all the others. That and the best in class midi and audio editors, and, and, and...
feature by feature I hope Auria Pro is looking long and hard at what MTS can do.
Thank you @Littlewoodg - you're making it tempting for me.
My alternatives if I save my money for AP are:
genome > synth apps > Auria or MTD
re download Cubasis and have another go with it
stick mostly to Gadget then into Auria
I'm just getting itchy feet to use some of my apps other than Gadget (eg Patterning, iElectribe, Thor, Elastic Drums, Animoog, Sunrizer etc... Plus some IAA FX too).
I'd love for piano rolls to have some sort of "show only existing note lanes" that would get rid of everything except the note rows with events on them. Would help with zooming. Could also drag your finger along a scale keyboard and end up with a scale based piano roll.
I feel like I used to use a (desktop?) sequencer that had this feature but I can't remember which.
Matt, I'm also in a MTS/AP holding pattern.
Yes please.
@syrupcore - ableton live does this (folding). I suspect other daws as well. gadget has folding.
I just had another go with Cubasis last night. I remember why I didn't like the piano roll:
not even any note names apart from C on the piano roll - so it quite brain taxing for me to figure out what note I'm inputting.
no really a touch interface in the piano roll. You can't just touch to add notes. You have to select the 'draw' button every time, or erase or move etc etc.
On the plus side I did get Animoog running through Crystaline and then Effectrix and Effectrix seemed to automatic take Cubasis's clock - so that's good. I'm also assuming that when I boot up again today, Effectrix and Crystaline will boot with the same settings (as long as I don't use them for anything else).
You could also pass midi through thumbjam on its way to a DAW. "input scale lock" in the midi settings can transpose 'midi in' data to the scale it's set for. Sweet feature.q
Don't know if anyone has used the forgotten Daws. Like Meteor, or N Track Studio Pro. The days before Cubasis(I think?)
I'm sure custom scales for the piano roll is on Mr Bremmers request list, if not someone should mention it to him...
Hmmm....in MTS You can design your own scale in the drum editor by adding any midi note in your scale, then point it at a synth and then sequence notes...so not what your after but a sort of workaround is possible, when you jump back to the piano roll you can then adjust the lengths of notes etc and see all the notes outside your scale...but then I'd probably just use a midi controller app like scalegen or navichord.
I have both Auria and MTS and they both go well together. MTS is my favourite tool to record jams with, midi and audio at the same time via Audiobus. A small footprint, very easy to set up and for me all my midi sync issues disappeared after using MTS as my main recording DAW.