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Keyboard/synth app with good natural/organic sounds?
Hello peeps.
Firstly let me say I'm old and somewhat hard of thinking so please take it easy on me!
So the story is this. For most of my life I've played in bands of varying types from reggae to folk, I've also written all the material for said bands and recorded demos of the songs on various lumps of hardware. I'm a guitarist and a singer but have zero ability when it comes to playing keys. It's that issue which has seen me experiment with various ways of getting over said hurdle, from guitar synths to various keyboards with one finger chord systems all of which failed to work well enough to stick with for any length of time.
So it was on yet another Google marathon of trying to solve the quandary that I stumbled upon 'ChordPolyPad' and it was like a real 'eureka' moment for me, that little app can do practically everything I need in terms of programming chords and triggering them from the pads....only trouble is I don't have an iPad. So I've spent the past few days scouring eBay, and my nice 'second user' Air 2 should be arriving tomorrow. I'm 60 years old but I'm proper excited!
What I want to use the iPad for will probably make you weep but I've got to stick with what I know for the time being.
I've got a vast collection of WAV loops on my PC which I want to manipulate in Acid Pro (see, I told you I was old) my PC is midi synced to my old faithful KORG D1600 Mk2 HDD recorder on which I will record all the live stuff, guitars, vocals etc (I have a couple of really good mics and a great old Joe Meek VC1qs preamp which work really well on the KORG) and via the iPad I want to simply input all the keyboard/synth type sounds that I need via the audio out, triggered from the ChordPolyPad and recorded onto the KORG.
See, I said it would make you weep. I know the iPad is capable of doing so much more and I could well get into all that later on but for now all I need it for is to do away with all the largely useless (to me) keyboardish stuff I've got cluttering up the gaff!
So to my question and request for help.
ChordPolyPad need a keyboard/synth type app in order to make sounds (it does have a few internal presets I know but I want something that sounds great). I need an app that has convincing natural/organic type sounds, good organs, pianos, nice strings, lush pads, good stabby brass tones for my reggae stuff etc. There are thousands of synth apps out there but nearly all of them seem centred around sound manipulation, filters, effects etc, whilst that stuff all looks like fun and I'd be happy to experiment a bit, the songs I want to record need to sound as 'real' as possible plus I would be happier working with loads of presets instead of getting involved in knob twiddling, for me, as it always has been; the song itself is the most important thing.
So far the only app I've found which looks something like it might do the job is the KORG iM1, lots of nice presets on that one but again, there are pages and pages of twiddle functions which as a guitarist I simply don't have a clue about.
So, does anybody know of an app which might suit? I would be really grateful for your advice.
Huge apologies for the length of this post but I also thought I'd use it as a way of saying hello and telling you a bit about myself, it just seems rude joining a forum and jumping straight in with the questions, I'm old fashioned like that.
Peace, Charlie. 
Comments
what would you consider "real?" there's stuff like emulating the physical presence, which entails reverb and maybe using a field recording alongside your instrument, then there's also stuff like emulating the sound of a recording on older medium, so you have like tape saturation and shit. there's more but those are the 2 i encounter often.
oh there's also amp emulation to imitate the sound of a cabinet amp and such
A ) @Karma_Train welcome
B ) You can leave the 'help out a poor old man' thing at the door; we're mostly almost all dead here 
C ) iM1 as you note has a furious amount of presets, yep you can fiddle with them, but the real fiddlers here (and they are legion) would not consider it a true fiddler; the presets are fine as is if they'll meet your needs. AND it's super easy to use. D ) I have no doubt others will offer plenty of more intelligent thoughts etc.
-Sampletank
-Korg module
Both apps cover a wide variety of sounds with limited editing functionality (mainly mainly basic stuff like the attack, the release, the reverb, some basic effects and the equalizer).
Both apps have In-App-Purchases But the base apps have lots of sounds nonetheless. The recommendation would be to listen to the sounds demos for each app and decide from there.
Welcome @Karma_Train
I don't really have a suggestion, just wanted to say. I am a guitar player. Never owned a Synth or keyboard other than the cheap Casio or Yamaha Toys as a kid. Now...........Well I have over 100 synth apps, and only prob. 20 guitar apps. So, be careful or you'll end up like me. I mean, what does a guitar player need with so many synth apps? But, they sure are fun, and sound amazing! Good luck.....
@JohnnyGoodyear I genuinely LOLLED at that reply, and believe me I don't LOL very often. I have been looking at this for a while and as I said, the KORG iM1 does seem to be the closest thing to that which I'm after. I have looked at Sampletank and the Korg Module before but thought them to be way too 'synthy' and complicated for what I want to do, I shall definitely have another look at them though and thanks for the recommendations.
@blanksmaiden by real I simply mean as close to authentic sounding pianos, organs, strings, brass etc as poss, the electronic stuff is really not what I need, of course some lovely pads, some nice synth tones and a few explosions would be perfectly acceptable and even experimenting with an arp or two wouldn't go amiss but I'm much more of a Bob Marley and the Wailers type of person that a Kraftwerk kinda guy if you get my drift?
Let's put this another way, is there anything else out there similar to the Korg iM1 or is that really it for traditional sounding workstationy type apps? Thanks again.
@High5denied thank you most kindly for the welcome, I can't see me ending up with 100 synth apps to be fair but I only really just discovered how useful an iPad could be in a recording environment a couple of days ago (gawd knows where I've been all those years) so give it time! Having said that I stumbled upon the Mellotronics M3000 today, now that's another sound I've wanted to use on songs for years....mmm - mellotrony! Uh-oh!
Hi there @Karma_Train
As for the one-app solution iM1 is obvious, but there's also Roland Sound Canvas, which is multitimbral as opposed to iM1.
Sir Doug has made a couple of demos over at the Soundtestroom, check out:
http://thesoundtestroom.com/roland-sound-canvas-demo-ipad/
Synthmaster player springs to my mind, mostly for the requested pads, but also check out the world music iaps, also demoed by Doug:
http://thesoundtestroom.com/synthmaster-player-sounds-of-the-world-demo-for-ipad/
Check out Thumbjam. For sounds and as a controller.
My vote goes to thumbjam, it has great "acoustic" sounds and it's perfect if you don't know how to play the keyboard (scales...), but im1 is a great choice too, and you can sequence it in korg gadget to compose full tunes.
Definitely re-consider Sampletank, it has lots of brass sounds, organs strings etc... For piano Module or iGrand, iElectric and Neo Soul keys are also great for EP sounds. Thumbjam is a great all rounder.
Essentially you are not looking for a synth, but a sample player.
There's a rule here that no matter what the question, the word "Thumbjam" is almost always a good answer! Well worth getting if you don't have it, and download the many excellent extra free sounds too (including some mellotron ones). The app that came to mind from your description is Korg Module, a good source of quality pianos, organs, etc. Between Thumbjam, Module and iM1, you should have all the basics covered in an easy to use way.
And 60 is not that old...
Galileo has some very nice organ sounds that might fit pretty well in a reggae context
Regarding your actual question, I think that BS-16i, a very decent soundfont player should be considered too https://itunes.apple.com/app/bismark-bs-16i/id388149926?mt=8
In addition to your workflow, I think you'd probably like Chordbot too.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/chordbot/id394754767?mt=8
Thumbjam as mentioned. Really beautiful samples of real instruments. Again, the additional sound packs are free and have lots of percussion suited for your styles. Also another good midi controller in the vein of chordpolypad is Chordup. I like it for its streamlined, dirt simple interface.
People, people, I am simply overwhelmed by all your wonderful contributions, thank you so very much.
My iPad arrived this morning and I've been bashing my head against the wall trying to get to grips with that, the last 'i' device I had was an iPhone a number of years ago, I switched to a Windows phone after that experience so today thus far has been about trying to log back into my Apple account having forgotten all my information....fun times.
Anyhoo, I'm back in there now and in a position to try a few apps so I'll be going through all your recommendations thoroughly in a bit, at first glance though, 'ThumbJam' looks bloody brilliant I must say, got to give that one a try.
@richardyot I agree with you about the needing of a sample player. I have got millions of wav samples on my PC which would be great to use but the thing I don't get about Apple devices in general is the huge amount of faffing about one has to go through in order to get anything you haven't paid them for onto their machines. I don't know if I'm missing the point here (I do that quite a lot) but iTunes, Dropbox, iCloud etc, why in Hell's name can't you just connect your iPad and do a straight copy and paste?....I'd love to find the easiest way of getting my own samples into the iPad and then using them with a simple sample player but that seems a bridge too far unless, as I say; I'm missing something blatantly obvious, it has been known.
That aside, I think for my first foray into app world I will install the ChordPolyPad, the KORG iM1 and ThumbJam....that seems like a good enough place to start, I will definitely look at the other recommendations as well, SampleTank in particular, I think I must've missed something with that one, I watched a YouTube video tutorial by some American dude on the app and all it succeeded in doing was giving me a migraine, didn't feel inspired at all, I'll have another look at it for sure.
Thank again for all your help and friendliness, what a lovely place this is.
You might want to check out iFunbox, it's a free Windows/Mac application that allows you to drag and drop content from your computer and into your iPad apps' iTunes file-sharing folders.
Unfortunately the best sample-player app that lets you import your own sample libraries is the Lyra instrument inside Auria Pro, it supports SFZ, EXS and SF2 files. Sadly most of the stand alone apps on iOS only support SF2 at this time (Soundfont Pro, BS16i). Hopefully a stand-alone player that supports more modern formats will come along.
That would indeed be something to look forward to.
I'm more into 'single-cycle' waveforms (http://www.adventurekid.se/akrt/waveforms/) and even for those there are not too many options available on iOS.
iFunbox is being heavily outdone by the free copytrans imo. I believe I was one of the first users of iFunbox now switched to copytrans.
Don't pay just use the free apps.
korg gadget and korg module have some quite nice piano / keyboard samples that are worth checking out
Since you already got iM1, just live with that for a while (or until you can no longer stand the urge to buy more apps). iM1's piano is a classic sound for dance music and some folks actually like it for plain old piano. Same with the M1 organ. If you don't like either one, there are other options - but think about that later, after you've lived with iM1 for a while.
BTW, most of the Modules in Korg Module are pianos. There's really only one "synthy" Module - the Triton one - and it's optional. You won't get if if you buy Korg Module, unless you pay extra - so don't worry about it.
You could try the Module LE Edition for free and see if you like anything in there.
There is also an Organ Module but a lot of people seem to prefer Galileo to that module for organ sounds.
Its funny, it's the first time I have seen someone refer to sampletank and Korg module as "synthy" as both apps are basically sample players with extremely limited editing functionality and synth sounds are a small part of both as most sounds are based on acoustic/ traditional instruments in fact I would say iM1 it's much more complex and allows for more sound manipulation/ editing (after all it is a true synth unlike sampletank or module)
Lyra in Auria Pro has some nice sounds, but yes, it's not the cheapest app around.
I just wanted to drop by and thank you all for your valuable input, much appreciated.
It's been a week now of getting to grips with this whole new world and I'm absolutely loving it.
My iPad Air now has a lovely new case and a tempered glass screen protector fitted ( after destroying two of the damn things due to failed air bubble removal....sigh!). I'm currently working with a handful of apps thanks to the sage advice given above, the Mellotronics M3000, the Korg iM1, the ChordPolyPad and the wonderful ThumbJam, all of the apps work really well together and the possibilities are expanding daily.
Unfortunately however I went and made a tragic mistake....I installed GarageBand
I bought the iPad initially to simply act as an input device for my existing recording setup but the addition of GarageBand and discovering how much fun it is has made me want to record into that app as well. This in turn has given me days of exasperation researching audio interfaces which actually work with GB.
Most annoyingly, my existing Echo Gina 3G interface has no USB connection so that rules it out for iPad integration, I can obtain extra audio outs from the Gina but then there's no way of getting said audio into the iPad without buying a further flippin' interface which seems like total overkill. From reading hundreds of reviews it seems like the stupidly expensive camera connection kit fails to work properly almost as often as it succeeds so using a USB interface feels a bit hit and miss to say the least, the only units I've found which look like they might stand a chance of working with an iPad Air 2 and its lightning connector are the Focusrite iTrack Solo and Duo and the Presonus iOne and iTwo. Why oh why isn't there a straight forward 'audio in' to lightning adaptor? They make adaptors for cameras, card readers and HDMI leads but bugger all as practical and desirable as 'audio in'....frustrated much.
Ah well, I guess I should just get back to using the iPad as a sound generating device, something it absolutely excels at and forget about GarageBand and recording on it.....after all, the songs are always the main thing aren't they? And I have a perfectly good setup sat there waiting for the next horrible noise I want to make!
As I said, I just really wanted to say thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and ideas, addictive stuff this iPad malarkey ain't it? I really must try and get some proper sleep.
@Karma_Train
There will be no more sleep. You are one of us now Barbara.