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Firo / Fiddlewax Pro is back (and free for now)!
Hello again!
Five years ago I built a chord/drum/keyboard/looper app called Fiddlewax Pro (later renamed Firo). Unfortunately as iOS significantly changed, many of those system updates broke the original app code.
At some point (around iOS 9, i think?) the app stopped working altogether... I was busy with other projects/work and the business side needed to evolve (making it even trickier to keep the app alive in the App Store), which led to lots of headaches and eventually pulling the plug on it.
But the interest in Firo has remained strong (with lots of emails and forum posts asking about it). After a significant rewrite and update of the core elements (Audiobus3, AudioKit, and a host of other updated APIs), I'm happy to share that the app is officially alive again!
Firo4 is similar to how you may remember it, only now it's even faster and more streamlined. The whole toolbox of features is up and running (including advanced looping, chord automation, visual pitch detection, soundfont importing, and more). And since phones have become a lot more capable in the last 5 years as well, I've made a tiny version that has all of Firo's functionality and works on iPhone, too (yes, it's a bit tedious. but hey, now you can have the whole instrument in your pocket!).
You can find Firo4 in the App Store and read/see more about it on the overview page:
https://makefastworkshop.com/firo4/
and here's a quick video of it in action just for kicks:
Oh, and since there's no simple way to give the new version of Firo to existing users (some of whom paid ~$20 for it), for now Firo4 free! So if you previously used Firo, please go download it ASAP. Of course, anyone can get it now for free as well, so if you're curious to give it a try, you may want to go for it before pricing models kick in. 
Cheers,
Adam
Comments
Welcome back! Very generous of you to come out with this as a freebie. Loved fiddlewax.
Thanks! It's great to be back around the Audiobus forum. So many people doing cool things.
Naturally, if you have thoughts or run into anything as you use Firo4, just let me know. It seemed to be very stable during testing, but with so much code retooling, there are bound to be edge cases on various devices that deserve more attention.
Hope you find it useful/enjoyable/inspiring for whatever music you make next!
Thanks a lot @adamkumpf
I bought and used fire years ago. I see this new version need iOS 13, please can you made it iOS12 compatible?
I can’t even “buy” it now taking the free offer.
Aaah
You r amazing
I had all the old versions, now I’m very happy with this..
Thank You
@Synthi I'll look into back-supporting iOS 12. I decided to set the bar at iOS 13 after seeing that the current adoption rate across all iOS devices is already around 92.5%. As Apple deprecates various methods (backend code) with each new version of iOS, supporting too far back is a recipe for things breaking when the next version comes out.
Aw, that’s great , thanks foe reviving this fabulous app... lookin forward to diving back in !
Welcome back Adam. Look forward to running Firo again. Hope the years have been kind to you,
Will definitely give it a try.
Thank you.
Definitely trying it out.
🤙🏻
+1 Thank YoumAdam!
That would be really great. A fair number of people here have their iDevices still sit at 12.x (including the wonderful iPhone 6 Plus which cannot go to 13) for a number of performance and compatibility reasons, including great older apps that stopped working in 13 so the adoption rate around here is certainly somewhat lower.
Thank you for considering. 🤗
Awesome. I still have a couple Firo apps on my iPhone 6s, glad this is evolving.
+1 for iOS 12 support. I plan on sticking with 12 for at least another few months
oh wow this is actually pretty amazing that you can just play and record midi loops so easily in the looper, i could see myself using this all the time it’s def something that is missing on ios and this shows me it is possible , do you think you’ll ever make it so each loop can send out to a its own channel in something like aum
@adamkumpf when switching between apps Firo4 keeps reverting to the splash screen and resets midi ports on latest iOS. Original version doesn’t exhibit this behaviour. Thanks for the update, great to see you again.
Great news. Welcome back!
Very kind of you Adam. Welcome back to the forum. 🤙🤟
Thanks dev. Firo is a very cool and useful app. I strongly encourage anyone to try it (now that it is free). What are your projects now ? Are you going to release a new app?
Welcome back
again...i freaking love this midi looper / recorder!!! really want to be able to record to each of the loops but send that data to different synths! please 😎😎😎
@knewspeak Having the app be a good citizen led to a decision to have Firo4 fully release all resources/exit if it's not connected to other apps and/or continuing to handle events/midi. The upside is that it won't bog your setup down at all when you move on to other apps unless you explicitly keep it alive.
Firo4 stays alive when interacting with other apps if any of the following is true:
1. Audiobus is connected,
2. MIDI Output is enabled and notes are playing (i.e. loops are running), or
3. IAA/MIDI Input is enabled (see the option in the Advanced Settings section of the info overlay, the (i) button in the upper right corner).
In your case, if you want to force Firo4 to keep running while you're moving between apps, just enable IAA/MIDI Input while you work.
With some major code rework, I could get it to stay alive in the background and automatically rebuild the audio pipeline as needed to both be a good citizen and still have everything function, but there are a lot of elements at play and I'm hesitant to tackle that at the moment in favor of keeping Firo4 solid.
does this record external audio
in as well?
@eross It records from the mic (so you can see along and capture an idea) and Firo4's output; nothing incoming from other apps.
When you record a session, it saves a MIDI file and an audio recording with either:
1. Firo4's output on left channel, and mic input on right channel (default),
2. Only Firo4's output (clean stereo L&R).
To select which way the session's audio is recorded, see the "Session recorder" option in the Advanced Settings section (in the info overlay).
@Synthi @rs2000 @Halftone Good news on the iOS 12 front -- It looks like Firo4 can support down to iOS 12.1 with just a few minor code changes. I need to test a bit more to make sure, but hopefully that will show up in the next release.
@adamkumpf could we please get Ableton link for this ? Also. Would It still work in iOS 12.1 ?
I'm still running iOS 11.0 and iOS 12.0... doh!
No chance you can get the min iOS version down even more is there? I used to enjoy messing with fiddlewax back in the day. Gotta hold my devices back for development purposes though (plus they're too old to upgrade to iOS 13 now!)
@JamMaestro I think Firo4 supporting down to iOS 12.0 should be doable. Testing that now...
The website says Delaware ohio at the bottom lol I'm right by there!
@adamkumpf welcome back and thanks! Hoping iOS 12 support works out so I can reacquaint myself with this .
@reasOne If I remember correctly each ‘looper unit’ can hold up to 16 midi channels and the way you could combine/merge loops allowed some pretty complex things to be realised.
(Didn’t really need separate outputs since the MIDI can be parsed by channel to different destinations)
Thanks @adamkumpf for looking into broader iOS version support 👍🏼