AudioVeek Piano Roll MIDI sequencer AU

midiSequencer

@Mull said:

@lasselu said:
May I just say that seeing developers (potential competitors) helping each other warms my heart...

It is fascinating and it makes me think, when we all grab the pitchforks and yell ‘MOAR FEATURES!!’ I think we tend to forget just how much work goes into even the most mundane of things. I think it illustrates just how much work goes into this stuff. Maybe next time we all start getting impatient and demanding features get added to our favorite apps, we should pause and remember that in a lot of cases it’s just one person coding all this. We lucky to get what we get, there’s been some outstanding apps on iOS and we wouldn’t have shit without these guys.

P.s @brambos @j_liljedahl @midiSequencer @blueveek where would you guys recommend starting if anyone were interesting in learning to code midi/audio apps? Is prior coding experience essential or could you learn specifically to do just that specific aspect and learn along the way?

If I was starting from scratch I'd start with Audiokit playgrounds.
Gene's blog is good for getting an initial midi framework https://audiokitpro.com/auv3-midi-tutorial-part1/

As @SevenSystems said everything else you need to learn!

SevenSystems

@midiSequencer what I didn't tell @Mull is that I'm framework-allergic, so I tend to avoid them and do absolutely everything myself down to the last proverbial bit just imagine my horrible life!

midiSequencer

@SevenSystems said:
@midiSequencer what I didn't tell @Mull is that I'm framework-allergic, so I tend to avoid them and do absolutely everything myself down to the last proverbial bit just imagine my horrible life!

sometimes thats wise - My adaption of Audiokit UI controls is still causing me pain!!

blueveek

@SevenSystems said:
@midiSequencer what I didn't tell @Mull is that I'm framework-allergic, so I tend to avoid them and do absolutely everything myself down to the last proverbial bit just imagine my horrible life!

Yup, same here. Takes me longer to do things, but on the upside I have functional and creative control over everything.

SevenSystems

@blueveek said:

@SevenSystems said:
@midiSequencer what I didn't tell @Mull is that I'm framework-allergic, so I tend to avoid them and do absolutely everything myself down to the last proverbial bit just imagine my horrible life!

Yup, same here. Takes me longer to do things, but on the upside I have functional and creative control over everything.

Exactly. The worst part is if you happen to hit a "Roadblock" thing, i.e. a bug or missing feature in the library which you either can't fix because it's not open-source, or can't afford to first understand its huge codebase... then you can pretty much start over so... no frameworks for me!

jonmoore

@BiancaNeve said:
Am I the only one who finds the devs talking gibberish to each other strangely entertaining

In all seriousness, it's one of the things I like most about the iOS audio scene, developers that collaborate!

Plus for me, I work with developers all the time so it's interesting to hear the challenges even though I'm not a developer myself (fine with hacking away at scripts and a little C based VFX programming - VEX for Houdini - but certainly no chops in Swift or dread of dread, Objective-C).

CracklePot

@jonmoore said:

@BiancaNeve said:
Am I the only one who finds the devs talking gibberish to each other strangely entertaining

In all seriousness, it's one of the things I like most about the iOS audio scene, developers that collaborate!

Plus for me, I work with developers all the time so it's interesting to hear the challenges even though I'm not a developer myself (fine with hacking away at scripts and a little C based VFX programming - VEX for Houdini - but certainly no chops in Swift or dread of dread, Objective-C).

Houdini! That was like the SunVox of the 3D apps back at the turn of the Century.
Renderman was a very powerful pain in the.. too.

jonmoore

Funnily enough Houdini is going great guns and is far more accessible these days to those without a computer science background (although in truth, you need to be able to think programatically as well as creatively). It’s used for far more than Movie VFX these days - it has taken a lot of the motion graphics market from Cinema 4D. It’s bread and butter is still big budget movie VFX. There’s hardly a blockbuster released that hasn’t involved a good number of Houdini shots. And RenderMan has equally been tamed so that mere mortals can get great results. That used to require an army of technical directors to render an animation of a moving ball!

CracklePot

@jonmoore said:
Funnily enough Houdini is going great guns and is far more accessible these days to those without a computer science background (although in truth, you need to be able to think programatically as well as creatively). It’s used for far more than Movie VFX these days - it has taken a lot of the motion graphics market from Cinema 4D. It’s bread and butter is still big budget movie VFX. There’s hardly a blockbuster released that hasn’t involved a good number of Houdini shots. And RenderMan has equally been tamed so that mere mortals can get great results. That used to require an army of technical directors to render an animation of a moving ball!

I do remember Houdini revamping its UI and making a push toward being more accessible. If that continued into the present, then it must be worlds away from what I was trying to learn back then.

I have been out of VFX since 2010, so my experience ended with Maya, MentalRay and Nuke.

DCJ

@BiancaNeve said:
Am I the only one who finds the devs talking gibberish to each other strangely entertaining

Not gonna lie it’s turning me on a little.

blueveek

Weekend teaser.

Every instance gets its own colours accents and clip name (which ends up shown underneath AUM's track icon). So it's you don't just see "piano roll" a million times

blueveek

@j_liljedahl It'd be awesome if plugins could contribute their short name to the label that AUM auto-generates for its tracks. So the short name isn't just shown underneath the icon, but the track name and window title bars too.

Is this something you'd be open to?

RajahP

@blueveek said:

Weekend teaser.

Every instance gets its own colours accents and clip name (which ends up shown underneath AUM's track icon). So it's you don't just see "piano roll" a million times

Nice...

midiSequencer

@blueveek notice you have triplets, you might want to add dotted too?

You going to offer a fold option (like i have on Photon & Live has)? Im finding it hard to align the notes to the kbd.

blueveek

@midiSequencer said:
@blueveek notice you have triplets, you might want to add dotted too?

You going to offer a fold option (like i have on Photon & Live has)? Im finding it hard to align the notes to the kbd.

I don't think dotted is that important, and I think it can also be pretty confusing for grid lines (just like showing swing). However this opinion is weakly held, and if enough people request it I'll add it for v2.

Fold is in the prototype stage, there was someone else who requested it too. Trying to figure out if I can polish it enough for initial release, otherwise it'll come in an update. Prioritisation is hard, and I really want to release this app sooner rather than later, otherwise I'll keep adding features forever heh!

I'll tease a screenshot of how scale overlays and snap to scale work, which I expect would satisfy a majority (but not all) of the use-cases for folding.

gusgranite

Looking great @blueveek. Who knew you had all this up your sleeve!

Samu

This is looking awesome, what kind of quantize options do we get and what resolution is the sequencer running at? (Like options for note start & end quantize etc.).

Will the midi cc editor have line and curve tools for editing? (Ie. set start and end values on the time line and let the sequencer interpolate the values with optional ’quantize’ setting for the value steps (think of this as sample-rate reduction from the sequencers highest reolution down to a set value)).

From the looks of it this will for me easily replace the current crop of AUv3 ’plug-in sequencers’

blueveek

@Samu said:
This is looking awesome, what kind of quantize options do we get and what resolution is the sequencer running at? (Like options for note start & end quantize etc.).

Time resolution is 64bit (double floating point). When playing, it's rounded to the nearest sample (depending on sample rate of course), regardless of buffer size. Regular manual quantise is up to 1/256th of a note (actual value depends on tempo).

Will the midi cc editor have line and curve tools for editing? (Ie. set start and end values on the time line and let the sequencer interpolate the values with optional ’quantize’ setting for the value steps (think of this as sample-rate reduction from the sequencers highest reolution down to a set value)).

More info on the exact details coming very soon

lukesleepwalker

@blueveek By the looks of it, you have way more than enough to launch this app with a big, big bang. Users will likely have a different view of prioritization of features after using the app for a week or two. So launch with what you have and then come on back and run a poll if you'd like help with prioritization?

jonmoore

@blueveek said:

@midiSequencer said:
@blueveek notice you have triplets, you might want to add dotted too?

You going to offer a fold option (like i have on Photon & Live has)? Im finding it hard to align the notes to the kbd.

I don't think dotted is that important, and I think it can also be pretty confusing for grid lines (just like showing swing). However this opinion is weakly held, and if enough people request it I'll add it for v2.

I think a good compromise here is to offer to quantise to dotted note values but keep the grid to whole, half, quarter, eigth, sixteenth and thirty second note values as standard. As you say it’s difficult to display swing values on a grid, but it’s also important to note that dotted rhythms are the basis of people grok to be a ‘funky’ feel.

However it would extremely useful if you also allowed bar’s to be split into arbitrary division values in much the same way as Patterning (the rhythm sequencer). e.g. having one sequence set up with a grid of sixteenth note divisions per bar whilst another is set up with a grid of twelfth note divisions per bar is a classic way of achieving a dotted polyrhythmic feel.

ecamburn

You have my 2 bits if those loop markers allow variable loop length according to snap values.

Looks like a winner.

jonmoore

@ecamburn said:
You have my 2 bits if those loop markers allow variable loop length according to snap values.

Looks like a winner.

The important bit from a UX perspective is that the grid divisions are separate from note values. Much like with Patterning 2, you need to be able to create e.g. 12 divisions per bar but enter notes of e.g. 16th or 32nd value. I can see this piano-roll as being most useful as a step sequencing tool, so having to edit 12th notes down to 16th or 32nd's will become tiring fairly quickly. I'm not suggesting that it's not going to be used for live input, but step sequencing will be significant use-case.

ecamburn

@jonmoore said:

@ecamburn said:
You have my 2 bits if those loop markers allow variable loop length according to snap values.

Looks like a winner.

The important bit from a UX perspective is that the grid divisions are separate from note values.

In your use case...

Seriously, for my use case, I don't really care whether it's grid divisions or note values, I just need something where pattern length is not limited to a multiple of a bar.

CracklePot

This looks amazing.
Congrats @blueveek .
You are a Rockstar Dev, for sure.

TheMetaphysicalCrook

@blueveek

I would add my vote to those who have already, in some form or another, suggested:

• dotted notes - essential for percussions / drum tracks IMHO.
• loopmarkers allowing variable loop lengths and/or ability to setup sequences with arbitrary lengths/beat divisions - any and all means allowing production of polyrhythmic melodies / beats and fugues really..

Thank you for taking the time. Great app. Looking forward for release.
Btw, I have a 2018 iPad Pro (12.9) w 3G & 500GB storage. Would love to help beta test. Should I bother you with a request or do you have enough of those covered already?

wim

I don’t really get the need for dotted notes. If the grid has small enough snap then the distance between notes is just three cells rather than 2 or 4, etc. Triplets I can see the need for though.

soundshaper

@TheMetaphysicalCrook said:
@blueveek

I would add my vote to those who have already, in some form or another, suggested:

• dotted notes - essential for percussions / drum tracks IMHO.
• loopmarkers allowing variable loop lengths and/or ability to setup sequences with arbitrary lengths/beat divisions - any and all means allowing production of polyrhythmic melodies / beats and fugues really..

Thank you for taking the time. Great app. Looking forward for release.
Btw, I have a 2018 iPad Pro (12.9) w 3G & 500GB storage. Would love to help beta test. Should I bother you with a request or do you have enough of those covered already?

@blueveek actually this is very interesting. If possible (maybe not in the initial release), but like Ableton Live, it would be great to be able to assign a clip start point AND a loop start point. Basically this allows you to trigger your MIDI clip with an intro that plays, but when it loops back it now starts from a later point. Extremely useful.

RajahP

Any idea when is this going to be released?

Edit.. and can you import midi?

j_liljedahl

@blueveek said:
@j_liljedahl It'd be awesome if plugins could contribute their short name to the label that AUM auto-generates for its tracks. So the short name isn't just shown underneath the icon, but the track name and window title bars too.

Is this something you'd be open to?

Good idea, perhaps appending "(theShortName)", or even using only the shortname if set.

blueveek

@jonmoore said:

@blueveek said:

@midiSequencer said:
@blueveek notice you have triplets, you might want to add dotted too?

You going to offer a fold option (like i have on Photon & Live has)? Im finding it hard to align the notes to the kbd.

I don't think dotted is that important, and I think it can also be pretty confusing for grid lines (just like showing swing). However this opinion is weakly held, and if enough people request it I'll add it for v2.

I think a good compromise here is to offer to quantise to dotted note values but keep the grid to whole, half, quarter, eigth, sixteenth and thirty second note values as standard. As you say it’s difficult to display swing values on a grid, but it’s also important to note that dotted rhythms are the basis of people grok to be a ‘funky’ feel.

Note lengths or timings aren't limited to anything, obviously. Grid divisions are standard like in the screenshot, can pick between 1/256 notes and 1 bar.

However it would extremely useful if you also allowed bar’s to be split into arbitrary division values in much the same way as Patterning (the rhythm sequencer). e.g. having one sequence set up with a grid of sixteenth note divisions per bar whilst another is set up with a grid of twelfth note divisions per bar is a classic way of achieving a dotted polyrhythmic feel.

Clip durations can be arbitrary as well, not limited to multiples of bars. So if you want your loop to be 2 bars, 3 beats and 4 sixty-fourth notes long, sure!