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Why no pitch bend and mod wheel?
I don't get it. Having a pitch bend and mod wheel is such a basic and essential thing. Most synth apps have them in their built-in apps. Yet, otherwise full featured Midi capable hosts, such as AUM and ModStep, just have the keys. They're such essential parts of expressive playing, yet we're supposed to just bang out a melody and then go around again and lay in some cc automation?? Or do they assume we always have a nice midi keyboard hooked up at all times?
Now, with AU's not displaying their keyboards, even playing within the the app and recording out is a chore at best, and impossible if the AU doesn't have midi out.
Am I missing something here? This just seems like something so basic, I really am baffled.
Comments
modstep can assign pitchbend and modwheel to the X-Y pads for live play. so its definitely there.
just load the correct template or make one and use the X-Y pads.
You can't have the keyboard and x y pads showing at the same time.
Ah. didn't realize that. use an external keyboard myself. a Keith Mcmillan K-board that doesn't have good pitchbend or modwheel so i use the X-Y pads. Didn't realize it was either X-Y or onscreen KB.
If enough people request the pitch & mod-wheel I'm sure it will it pop-up in both AUM and ModStep. X&Y pads are nice but a compact performance layout with customisable controllers (pads, keys, switches etc.) would be even more awesome!
I'm using Cubasis most of the time for AU and some IAA such as iM1 and iOS Soundcanvas and it has one of the better onscreen keyboards available.
I seldom drag along an external keyboard with my iPad when inspiration strikes...
Allowing slides - left and right for pitch bends, up and down for mod - is a good alternative.
This is a very good alternative for solo-sounds but less than optimal for chords
Yes, I agree, I'd like pitchbend and mod wheels for Modstep and AUM. The XY pad in ModStep is not ideal for pitchbend since it doesn't snap back to middle.
I saw M-Audio 49 key MIDI controller with pitch/mod wheel in great shape for $20 at Thrift Store yesterday.
For a small amount of money, probably buying a MIDI hardware controller would me most advisable and easiest.
For me the main 'thing' about having onscreen pitch-bend and mod-wheel etc. is to avoid having to use external controllers...
I think most of us have a midi controller with pitch/mod wheel but there's many times when the inspiration strikes and your're just sitting somewhere comfy and want to add some pitch bend action but the controller is too far and would make the whole setup less comfy. Many apps have midi in and a way to do the pitch/mod wheeling with the touchscreen and that's a beautiful thing.
I'd like to see those features in Music Studio, one of my go-to's that I always keep around. ThumbJam (another go-to) can cover some of that but it does take more practice to pull off a usable recording take. I can't think of any others right off the bat but I'm sure there are a couple, at least.
And I don't see myself having much if anything to do with hardware peripherals, and not to mention that pitch bend and modulation are ancient standards.
I don't know,
Virtual modwheel I find ok,
But virtual pitchwheel feels strange, and never behaves right.
Don't want that.
Prefer some kind of ribbon or xy field.
Virtual pitch wheel is such an absurd thing to do, I think. Not a good method to control pitch on a touch surface - virtual pitchwheel with virtual springs, bah.
Humm. Think about that for a second. Functionally it's really exactly the same as a small vertical ribbon controller. Replace the graphics and don't change anything else and it will behave exactly the same way. I don't care what it looks like if the functionality is there. Return to center (what you call a virtual spring) is essential for pitch bend.
I'm not into horizontal ribbon controls. I feel like my hands get crossed up and in the way. Ancient technology or not, those two types of controls are the most intuitive and accessible way of adding expression during live playing or recording. Rockin the keys with the right hand while giving it some life with the left just feels right.
I actually broke my pitch wheel on purpose so it doesn't do that.
The timing of the SnapBack never fits my mood and can't be adjusted per piece ...
It's just not great, a pitchwheel. It's like playing legato notes without control about the glide time, if you let it go always the same thing happens, no matter if you did bend 2,3,4,5 or 12 half tones, that's not very flexible or expressive is it? ...
Sure, if you think failing to re-center it and playing everything off pitch is expressive...
Who says you have to let it go anyway?
But hey, it's software. Someone like @j_liljedahl could surely make both auto center and return time configurable. (Hint, hint)
Then things get really crazy if your midi controller shows different things than you hear ...
That's worse, I think, lol
Pitch and modwheel are wysiwyg ...
Who said anything about external controllers? The topic is host app keyboards. I get your point about your pitch wheel preferences. It's irrelevant since the point of the thread is there not being any in the first place.
Sheesh.
It would have to work with both virtual & real keyboard,
that gets confusing - uh, I didn't expect that to happen - pretty quick
@Sabu: how do you avoid using midi controllers when you want to input different velocity values i.e. drum machine? Beathawk lets you do it but it's a work around.
Korg MiKrokey AIR. Problem pitchbend and mod problem solved
by some people's logic all app and host keyboards are useless. So I guess nobody should even include one, and everyone should always use an external keyboard? I don't think anyone would say that. So, all I'm saying is a mod and pitch wheel would be nice in host apps. Some people would use it.
Wow. I'm now officially bored to death with my own thread. I'm out.
Animoogs/moog 15 touch strip keyboard is pretty nice
And doesn't use or need pitch or modwheel
And if you really care about being expressive you use an external midi keyboard,
That gives you velocity and dials ...
Or are you having fun trying to play chords on a virtual keyboard?
I use the onscreen stuff to play 2 finger melodies, lol, so that isn't exactly expressive playing because I simply can't reach the keys I like to press because I can play with 10 fingers on a real keyboard ...
Easy, make the 'Pads' react to velocity depending on where you press/hit them, edge for soft hit and center for max volume and interpolation in between, just like piano keys where top and bottom deliver different velocity. For me this works very well on a touch-screen.
I'm really waiting for 3D Touch on iPads so I get aftertouch
That would be something real and not a virtual workaround for a ##itty onscreen-keyboard
Maybe won't happen
For modulation purposes I like to use the gyroscope ( playing back the notes from seq)
It's a little slow and not very exact but workable and real and works without me watching the screen ...
Just use a midi controller app like Lemur or MidiDesigner Pro
Did this ever happen 😁
I use the onscreen keyboards and to be honest most hosts and DAWs are pretty poor in these areas. I’m hoping that AU midi keyboards, pads and other midi input devices expand and replace most of these awful beasts.
And DAWs using MPE protocol, Animoog amongst others long time ago gave us a cool way of playing synths via the iPad when can we record that data directly into a DAW.