Blocs Wave // V6.0 Released and now with Sections

gonekrazy3000

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

Blocs retunes every clip to the global pitch. It's kind of the apps main feature. You drop in any clip it will always be in key.

parallaxobject

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

mschenkel.it

@parallaxobject said:

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

Or transpose the attributes of the clips

Audiojunkie

@parallaxobject said:

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

Cool! Thanks! Initial tests seem to show this as doing what I need!!! So, when set to "none", it plays the loop with no key changes... That's kind of counter-intuitive, since I thought that setting the key that I wanted it to be in and flattening would be how it is done, but that didn't seem to work.

Audiojunkie

@mschenkel.it said:

@parallaxobject said:

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

Or transpose the attributes of the clips

I would have thought that would have been the way to do it too, but I tried it, and it didn't work. I set everything up to the way I wanted it, including transposing the clip to the key I wanted it in, and then flattened it, and set it to the key I wanted it in. However, this just played in the original key. I sure wish there was a manual or something--some of this is counter-intuitive....

gonekrazy3000

@Audiojunkie said:

@mschenkel.it said:

@parallaxobject said:

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

Or transpose the attributes of the clips

I would have thought that would have been the way to do it too, but I tried it, and it didn't work. I set everything up to the way I wanted it, including transposing the clip to the key I wanted it in, and then flattened it, and set it to the key I wanted it in. However, this just played in the original key. I sure wish there was a manual or something--some of this is counter-intuitive....

You would have to change the pitch in an external app and then import it into blocs as none. Blocs doesn't actually transpose a Clip when you flatten.

parallaxobject

@Audiojunkie said:

@parallaxobject said:

@Audiojunkie said:
Maybe I'm not understanding things, but flatten just doesn't seem to work the way I would expect too. I'm wondering if it's a bug. Here is how I would expect it to work: first set the settings the way you want them, then flatten. This creates a copy of everything set the way you want it to be including tune pitch. Next use the same loop to do the same thing with another pitch. So in other words let's say I have a single loop that I have flattened three times which is saved to the user file with the only change being the tune to a G, a F, and a C. This way I can play one section with the loop tuned to G, another section with the loop tuned to F, and another section with the loop tuned to C. On play back, they all play back at the same tuning. In other words, even though the tune pitch of the loop in each is different, they play back as the same. This tells me that I either don't understand or possibly expect more from the flatten feature, or there is a bug. What is everyone else seeing?

In order to use the method you describe, you'll need to set a flattened loop's key to "none" so that it no longer responds to global tuning changes as @gonecrazy3000 mentioned.

Cool! Thanks! Initial tests seem to show this as doing what I need!!! So, when set to "none", it plays the loop with no key changes... That's kind of counter-intuitive, since I thought that setting the key that I wanted it to be in and flattening would be how it is done, but that didn't seem to work.

One way to think about it is that when you assign a key to a loop, you're establishing how much that loop needs to be transposed in order to get it to play in key with the global tuning/key...so a loop set to Cm will not be transposed at all if the global key is set to Cm. But if the global key is changed to Dm, then that loop will be transposed by +2 semitones (and timestretched so that it still fits the global BPM, assuming the correct BPM of the loop was set in the loop's settings).

Setting loops to "none" in the key setting is telling the app that you don't want that loop to be transposed, regardless of whatever key you put your project in. The main intended use of this was probably for drums and percussion loops. But with the introduction of sections, the process you described -- re-tuning and flattening to get transposed variations of loops to be loaded and played in different sections -- makes the "none" setting useful in more ways I think.

As you found, when you set the key of a loop and then you use the global tuning to transpose it, and then flatten, the resulting flattened loop is in that new key. If you then turn the key to "none," it will remain in that new key and won't respond to any new global tunings. I can see some particularly good uses for this with one-note or one-chord loops and shots, like quickly making F and G chord samples from a C chord in order to manually build chord changes across sections or whatever. If you have some silence baked into the sample before or after the chord, you can use the slicer to build a chord sequence with these different samples from within the same section.

gonekrazy3000

The sections update pretty much broke blocs wave on the iPad 3. It takes forever to load blocs and can't really run more than 5 at a time. Could you please give an ability to disable sections or whatever is causing it to not run on the ipad3 ? 5.2 was working pretty well on it.

AmpifyxNovation

@gonekrazy3000 said:
The sections update pretty much broke blocs wave on the iPad 3. It takes forever to load blocs and can't really run more than 5 at a time. Could you please give an ability to disable sections or whatever is causing it to not run on the ipad3 ? 5.2 was working pretty well on it.

We're sorry you're experiencing this @gonekrazy3000. We're looking into it.

[Deleted User]

@Nathan said:
Section working well on iPad Air 2. I just wish there was a way to change key in any given section without it affecting all the others.

+1 If we can't change the pitch and key for each instrument it just looks like a good audio player ...

gonekrazy3000

@Nathan said:
Section working well on iPad Air 2. I just wish there was a way to change key in any given section without it affecting all the others.

Oh it's definitely working perfectly on my Air2. But i use 2 iPads with my iconnectaudio4+ to jam. My air2 and the ipad3. And the update ruined the performance on the ipad3.

BiancaNeve

ipad3 was probably the worst iPad ever . Not even going to get ios10 either.

fjcblanco

I'll check it out performance on my iPad4 when back home.

gonekrazy3000

What sucked is I did a 3 hr set last night with both iPads. And then I updated them today

R.I.P dual ipad jamming with effects. and flowing across keys. ye shall be missed.
in its current state the ipad3 is pretty much useless i hope you guys someday
make it work again. its one of the reason i bought 12 of the IAP's from you guys.
was having so much fun just jamming for hours on end.

JohnnyGoodyear

@grego68 said:

@Nathan said:
Section working well on iPad Air 2. I just wish there was a way to change key in any given section without it affecting all the others.

+1 If we can't change the pitch and key for each instrument it just looks like a good audio player ...

Disagree.

fjcblanco

No problems runnin 6 sections x8 on my iPad4. 48 different sounds. I stopped there but probably I could playing some more.

db909

im thinking that eventually, this will need straight up sampler type thing to create playable instruments from the slices, preferably with a figure/kaossilator style note input. I see there is still space for 3 maybe 4 more tab buttons on the top header. 1 could be a playing surface.

gonekrazy3000

@fjcblanco said:
No problems runnin 6 sections x8 on my iPad4. 48 different sounds. I stopped there but probably I could playing some more.

keep in mind the ipad 3 is vastly inferior. my point was it used to work before with 8. now it cant run 4 without collosal slowdown. something done broke more powerful ipads might just be able to brute force past whatever is causing my 3 to spaz.

AndyPlankton

@gonekrazy3000 said:
What sucked is I did a 3 hr set last night with both iPads. And then I updated them today

R.I.P dual ipad jamming with effects. and flowing across keys. ye shall be missed.
in its current state the ipad3 is pretty much useless i hope you guys someday
make it work again. its one of the reason i bought 12 of the IAP's from you guys.
was having so much fun just jamming for hours on end.

As its free, why not try launchpad app and see if that works ok on you iPad 3, different opportunities available to you then

[Deleted User]

@JohnnyGoodyear said:

@grego68 said:

@Nathan said:
Section working well on iPad Air 2. I just wish there was a way to change key in any given section without it affecting all the others.

+1 If we can't change the pitch and key for each instrument it just looks like a good audio player ...

Disagree.

About What ? I didn't say it' s a bad app but Im not in the mixing, slicing ,djing, remixing.I prefer to create audio from A to Z or at less have a few control like the pitch ,the scale .Im sure Blocs wave is pretty capable app but it' s not my thing that' s all.One sure thing is that novation are the boss for free apps and customer supports with all their frequent updates.

[Deleted User]

Sorry bad manip i Wanted to edit and i have a second post ...dunno Why .

lovadamusic

@grego68 said:

@Nathan said:
Section working well on iPad Air 2. I just wish there was a way to change key in any given section without it affecting all the others.

+1 If we can't change the pitch and key for each instrument it just looks like a good audio player ...

What's just an "audio player?" I suppose because a good drum kit can't sing Over the Rainbow, it's just something to bang on.

[Deleted User]

First Im not english so perhaps i can't explain good What i think with my native langage : for me Blocs wave is a Remix and mix app but i prefer to play instruments in a sequencer .And as i said i havent seen a function to change the pitch of those individual sections so for me it seems limited.I havent play long with this apps so perhaps it' s hidden somewhere and deeper than i master it or this function Will come in the next update ..Waldorf attack and Ids 10 can sing Over the Rainbow

Will

@kobamoto said:
no need for (instead) you can have panning in the app and individual outs too, that way people who don't use Aum, or want to use blocs with Aum can also pan their tracks... Unless they are paying royalties to kymatica then each and ever single developer should get off of their hindbees and not lean on audiobus or Aum. Here's a thought, Make your app complete by itself, and allow it to work with others.

Respect your perspective, and very much want panning in Blocs, but disagree with this in general. Adding a feature is always an 'instead' sort of thing with only so many hours in a day. If there are other apps that do things real well, I'd generally rather devs utilize those features and spend time on whatever it is that makes their particular app special. Along with panning.

kobamoto

right back at'cha , but isn't that like putting the whole of iOS development in the box of those types of devs that make an app for one specific purpose, like the compressor apps, or a delay app etc... rather than viewing an app through the perspective of it's purpose.... I wouldn't expect a delay app dev to make a self contained beat machine but I would certainly expect a beat machine dev to make his or her app complete without the need of other devs unless the other devs are partnering with the app.
take Jonatan Liljedahl for example, how miserable would iOS be without kymatica apps right, but that doesn't change the fact that kymatica apps like audioshare and aum are problem solving apps, apps like audioshare and audiobus are iOS bacon saving apps that wouldn't exist if iOS wasn't lacking in the first place imho.... the audiobus team and kymatica have been solving our problems, if other devs would carry their weight we wouldn't need the audiobus team and kymatica to be the sun and moon in our iOS sky so to say....
can't tell you how many times someone tells me to just use AUM for panning.... for a bass app like ifretless good idea but for a beat machine or any music app that has tracks I shouldn't have to open up another app for something like that imo.

lets take blocs for example, they've got great things on the way so this is not a digg at them... but this is a sampling, slicing, slice sequencing app... right now you can't do much with the slices they are global (it's not going to stay this way) this is just an example, if the slices were to stay global then it wouldn't even make sense to have them as the point of slicing is to have individual control over slices. so if they gave us individual outs before individual slice control so that we had to open up an entirely different app, send each slice out to aum, and do pitch and timing changes via aum that would not be cool in my opinion. now if we could do those things on top of proper in app slicing then that would be super cool in my opinion. you know I'm just rambling at this point but my point is that in my opinion the development of an app should adhere to the concept of what kind of app it is in theory..... I know devs are artist and they can and should make whatever kind of app they want, but paying for apps is an art form too and if they are selling their artwork it might be good for development in this context to hopefully also serve the intended uses of the user. It might surprise people reading this post that in all of the request I've ever made on this forum, none of them have been innovative... sample import/export...midi in/out, proper mixing in apps that have mixers, proper editing in samplers but in some of our debates you'd think I requested something special.

lukesleepwalker

Hate to say it, but panning would be innovative at this point.

kobamoto

it's on it's way!!

lovadamusic

@grego68 said:
First Im not english so perhaps i can't explain good What i think with my native langage : for me Blocs wave is a Remix and mix app but i prefer to play instruments in a sequencer .And as i said i havent seen a function to change the pitch of those individual sections so for me it seems limited.I havent play long with this apps so perhaps it' s hidden somewhere and deeper than i master it or this function Will come in the next update ..Waldorf attack and Ids 10 can sing Over the Rainbow

No problem. I know what you mean about the pitch. I suggested it myself, I think in this thread. Maybe it's the language, but I don't see the app as just an audio player. From the beginning, the loops it plays can be in any key and tempo. There is manipulation of the samples to produce countless variations. Technically, if you make a function to change pitch of individual sections, it's still an "audio player."

With one project you can create a piece of a composition. It has export features that allow you to assemble pieces in another program. It's a very functional tool for making music if you don't expect it to do everything, but maybe it's not for you at this time.

If they give it even more functionality, and for free at that, I'll be thankful. If not, I'm going to continue to use it.

lovadamusic

@kobamoto said:
right back at'cha , but isn't that like putting the whole of iOS development in the box of those types of devs that make an app for one specific purpose, like the compressor apps, or a delay app etc... rather than viewing an app through the perspective of it's purpose.... I wouldn't expect a delay app dev to make a self contained beat machine but I would certainly expect a beat machine dev to make his or her app complete without the need of other devs unless the other devs are partnering with the app.
take Jonatan Liljedahl for example, how miserable would iOS be without kymatica apps right, but that doesn't change the fact that kymatica apps like audioshare and aum are problem solving apps, apps like audioshare and audiobus are iOS bacon saving apps that wouldn't exist if iOS wasn't lacking in the first place imho.... the audiobus team and kymatica have been solving our problems, if other devs would carry their weight we wouldn't need the audiobus team and kymatica to be the sun and moon in our iOS sky so to say....
can't tell you how many times someone tells me to just use AUM for panning.... for a bass app like ifretless good idea but for a beat machine or any music app that has tracks I shouldn't have to open up another app for something like that imo.

lets take blocs for example, they've got great things on the way so this is not a digg at them... but this is a sampling, slicing, slice sequencing app... right now you can't do much with the slices they are global (it's not going to stay this way) this is just an example, if the slices were to stay global then it wouldn't even make sense to have them as the point of slicing is to have individual control over slices. so if they gave us individual outs before individual slice control so that we had to open up an entirely different app, send each slice out to aum, and do pitch and timing changes via aum that would not be cool in my opinion. now if we could do those things on top of proper in app slicing then that would be super cool in my opinion. you know I'm just rambling at this point but my point is that in my opinion the development of an app should adhere to the concept of what kind of app it is in theory..... I know devs are artist and they can and should make whatever kind of app they want, but paying for apps is an art form too and if they are selling their artwork it might be good for development in this context to hopefully also serve the intended uses of the user. It might surprise people reading this post that in all of the request I've ever made on this forum, none of them have been innovative... sample import/export...midi in/out, proper mixing in apps that have mixers, proper editing in samplers but in some of our debates you'd think I requested something special.

Give me the source code, and way more time and ability to program, and I could make Blocs Wave into an app that does everything I need as a sequencer of samples. Song mode and a mixer would take care of a lot of it. Even more time, and I could get to other people's wishes. The question, though, if I'm not coding it for myself, is how far am I going to take it for free after the initial sale. I don't know where Novation is on the issue, but frankly, I think the economics of iOS is such that we do need to rely on combining the functionality that multiple devs are giving us. We do have to work a little harder, if you can call app switching, exporting/importing, and planning ahead "working."

parallaxobject

There are some workarounds for dealing with sections and the global key tuning.

First thing to note is that the eight samples can be completely different in each section.

It's not too hard to make your samples individually tuned however you like, by manipulating the key setting on loops (for every semitone up you label your loop from its original key, it will be transposed a semitone down vs. the global tuning, and vice versa).

The flatten function can quickly make duplicates of samples, even in new transposed keys (so you can load variously transposed versions of samples in different sections, and continue to manipulate those key settings on further duplicates).

BTW, if you've sliced up and sequenced or moved the markers on a loop, it's probably easiest to flatten it twice if you want to re-tune a copy of it in another section -- once to truncate and render the sequence for that slot, and again to create a duplicate to manipulate in another section.