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Live Guitar is on the Bus
Live Guitar 1.3 is out. Here's a quick demo video to see what it does.
The app is a guitar-style controller, with a half dozen internal guitar tones, and support for Virtual/CoreMIDI (most iOS apps work fine, including GarageBand, but we're having some grief with SampleTank right now).
You can import and export sets of chords using Twitter. Internally, the app uses ChordPro formatted files, which should be familiar to old-skool guitarists who remember usenet news. You can make your own sets of chords, and your own chord shapes if you like (I play a lot of unusual open-string chord voicings, and wanted something that would let me do pretty much anything).
The way that you select chords is a different from most apps -- hold the iPad or iPhone as you might grip a guitar (left hand palm behind, and fingers curving around to touch the on-screen fretboard), while you strum or pick strings with your right. For both the iPad and iPhone, the screen will face away from you. Rather than swiping from one spot to another, chords change by one press, two, three, and then a variety of combinations -- up to 16 chords are quickly available, and you can change this on a song-by-song basis (which is why we have Twitter sharing....).
Hope people dig it -- drop me a message if you've got questions!
Comments
Do you have a YouTube video tutorial on the virtual midi function? I can't get SampleTank to work., no connection. Can't get Sunrizer going either. BTW, I never get Garageband show up on the midi page, it only gets triggered when Live Guitar is switched on in the midi section.
Tap the gear icon to get to the internal sound selection screen -- there's a toggle to turn off the internal sounds.
On the main screen, tap the MIDI icon -- this will bring up a list of virtual MIDI apps that are available -- you can turn on/off as many as you like (and your device can support simultaneously). If you want to connect over WiFi, turn on the network session (frequently called Session 1). To connect to CoreMIDI apps like GarageBand, turn on the "Live Guitar" interface -- this is the output MIDI port for Live Guitar.
SampleTank is currently not working with Live Guitar -- there was one version that seemed ok, but an update seems to have broken things. We're trying to figure out what's going on with SampleTank, but it's being problematic right now.
Okay so far only Garageband works. No Sunrizer, Alchemy, Music Studio and as You mention SampleTank. Since I can get GarageBand working no problem I'm assuming I'm doing everything fine on my part. Also, all the above apps show that they see Live Guitar as a midi input and they are on the correct channel.
Any other tips or are all of the above apps not compatible at this time?
My test set of apps for MIDI is generally ThumbJam, Animoog, BS-16i, SoundPrism, and Magellan, and we've run a few others through as well. I'll check Alchemy to see if I can figure out if there's something weird going on.
Are you turning on the output interface within the Live Guitar MIDI menu, and setting the other apps to receive input (Live Guitar also has a MIDI input port that should be visible to other apps -- we'll add in support for playing the guitar samples from other apps in the next release).
I can confirm that Sunrizer works fine with Live Guitar. However... the most recent update to Sunrizer kind of broke it on first launch. At least for me, it wouldn't produce any sound at all after the update. I had to manually close and relaunch it before it would produce sounds.
Also, make sure you have background audio turned on in Sunrizer, it is off by default. It is the little BKG button up in the top left.
You don't have to enabled Background Audio in Sunrizer if you launch it from within the Audiobus app. Then Background Audio will be on, no matter if the button for it was tapped or not.
@AkaMarco -- Music Studio just updated, with both Audiobus, and a fix for their virtual MIDI. This works for me now -- let me know if you see something different!
I've also tested SunRizer -- no problems at all, as far as I can see; can you try restarting it ? This seemed to work for @discchord.
I'm not sure what's going on with Alchemy -- this used to be a reliable one for me, but I'm not able to get it to respond with Live Guitar, ThumbJam, or any of the other MIDI sending apps I've tried. I'll see if I can dig into this, and track down what's going on. My guess is that there's a toggle switch somewhere in Alchemy that I'm not toggling the right way.
SampleTank is still being problematic. When I've got Audiobus running, it distorts the sound pretty badly (iPad3 testing -- I'll give it a go on other devices). ThumbJam seems to be able to send it MIDI and have it respond, so it's possible -- I'll work on this as well, and try to get to the bottom of it. With an earlier version of SampleTank, things were working -- so some sort of change has happened in an update, throwing a crank into the works.
@SecretBaseDesign It's not working in Cubasis either.
@mgmg4871 Are you sending MIDI from Cubasis to Live Guitar, or MIDI from Live Guitar to Cubasis?
Midi from Live Guitar to Cubasis.
@mgmg4871 Ahhh you've found something here. I'm not sure why, but telling Cubasis to connect directly to Live Guitar doesn't seem to work.
It does work though if you tell it to connect to "Virtual MIDI" instead though!
Probably some confusion on which ports to connect to, and whatnot (and the way MIDI has evolved on iOS has not made life easy). I don't have Cubasis, so I'm sort of flying blind with that, but I'm getting some info from the folks who do beta testing.
With CoreMIDI, an app creates an output port (associated with the app itself), and then other apps need to connect to it to RECEIVE notes. So....
Live Guitar can send notes, and has a CoreMIDI output port. Cubasis would need to connect to it, to catch notes. This is the way GarageBand works -- it connects to any CoreMIDI port that it sees. For this to work, turn on the "Live Guitar" port within Live Guitar (we'll be renaming this to "CoreMIDI Output" in the next release, to reduce confusion). Notes are not sent to the CoreMIDI output port unless you toggle it on (and the same is true for the network session, which you'd need to connect to external MIDI adapters, or for WiFi).
Apps can also create Virtual MIDI ports, which are way more useful, but not uniformly supported. From @dischord's comment, it sounds like Cubasis has virtual MIDI ports as well. Turn on input for those (from within Cubasis), and also set Live Guitar to send to the Cubasis virtual MIDI port, and you should be in business.
With CoreMIDI, the receiver has to connect to the sender. With virtual MIDI, the sender has to connect to the receiver. Yes, it could probably be more confusing, but not by much. Both ends have to be configured right for things to work, and the right configuration is not always obvious.
Live Guitar also has a Virtual MIDI input port -- right now, it doesn't do anything, but the next release will let you play the LG samples from other apps by sending MIDI notes. Note on/off are working now in the development version, and we'll be adding in pitch bend and a few other things.
Got Music Studio to work but still no Sunrizer. I even deleted Sunrizer and reinstalled.
@SecretBaseDesign So, Core MIDI is like a global broadcast, where anyone can pick it up, but you have to tune in on the receiver, whereas Virtual MIDI is more like a phone call and only goes to the chosen destination. Good to know.
So which of these shows up as Network1?
@AkaMarko -- do you have the pro upgrade for Alchemy? It looks like they've disabled MIDI input in the free version. I'm sure that MIDI was working with earlier versions of Alchemy, so this is something they've changed in one of their updates.
For Sunrizer -- are you able to send MIDI to it with other apps (ThumbJam, Genome, ???). I'm seeing zero problems, and none of the people in my test group have had trouble either. I'd like to get this working for you, but right now, I'm stumped as to what could be going on.
@PaulB -- yes, that's a pretty good analogy. Core MIDI is sort of broadcast mode. The app sending MIDI has to send stuff out, and the receiver has to tune in. There can sometimes be trouble with a sender needing to be active before the receiver starts listening (some receivers only check to see what's out there during an initial start -- and so they don't hear a sender that comes alive later). I recall the launch order being critical to get GarageBand working at one point, but it seems to be fixed now.
Virtual MIDI is more of a phone call -- with the sender calling the receiver (and the receiver needing to be configured to answer the call).
Network sessions go off of the iDevice to the outside world. The name of the session is governed by whatever you call your session on a Mac, or with RTPMidi. There could be multiple network sessions, hooking to different machines over WiFi.
And then there's DSMI, which I've had pretty good luck with when connecting to PCs, but the Mac server seems a little flaky (frequently doubling notes -- but this might be a Mac MIDI routing problem, or something weird with Logic).
Lots of standards to choose from, all slightly different, all mixed together and working at the same time. What could go wrong? ;-)
@SecretBaseDesign I'm sure midi was not included in the free version of Alchemy. Midi was a part of the pro upgrade.
I remember Camel Audio made Alchemy's Pro features available to free users for a limited period until it got it's next update. Could have been about 7/8 months ago?
I can get Alchemy to respond with Live Guitar but with distortion. I have the pro version of Alchemy.
@SpookyZoo -- ahh, right, I remember that -- they accidentaly put out a version with pro features enabled, and that was probably when I was doing experiments with it. If I didn't already have a stupid number of great synth apps, I'd grab the upgrade for this.
@mgmg4871 -- the distortion sounds like a CPU limit issue. Maybe try knocking Audiobus to the 512-sample setting? The internal synth for Live Guitar should be pretty light on CPU demand (especially when turned off), and I recall Alchemy being fairly efficient too. Hmmmm.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback, by the way -- I really do appreciate the info, and it helps me figure out where to improve things, and what I need to make more clear.
@secretbasedesign Oh, that was an accident?...I thought they had released it as an incentive/tester!
@SecretBaseDesign I'm not connecting LiveGuitar with Alchemy through AB because Alchemy is not yet AB compatible. I use Alchemy with other apps without distortion, and I agree that LiveGuitar is not CPU heavy.
@mgmg4871 If you start up an Audiobus session with 512 samples, that will set the sample size for ALL apps, whether they're on the bus or not. The first app to request an audio session determines what everyone after that gets (this is part of the reason they ask you to start Audiobus first).
On my iPad3, if I start Audiobus, then Alchemy, I get distortion when I'm playing the Alchemy keyboard -- this is with no other apps running. It seems like Alchemy can't handle the 256-sized-buffer, even with nothing else running. If I kill all of the apps, start Audiobus, put it into 512-sample mode, I can then run Alchemy without getting distortion.
Live Guitar defaults to 256 sample buffers -- so if you start that first, that may be the cause of the distortion from Alchemy. Can you try starting Alchemy first (or Audiobus first, but set to 512), and then Live Guitar?
(Hmmm. I'm doing a heck of a lot of troubleshooting for non-Audiobus apps on the Audiobus forum!)
@SecretBaseDesign Thank you. That worked. I really appreciate that tip. I guess the non-AB troubleshooting is ok if the Dev has committed to implementing AB. At least that's the story we can stick too. Also AB was used in the troubleshooting.
From here it looked like you were troubleshooting a potential issue with Live Guitar...
@SecretBaseDesign Just been playing with the chord creation utility. The libraries are great, but I do tend to use some strange chords that mix open strings with stuff up at the 8th fret and above. Frankly, I'd be surprised if many of them were in any of the libraries, and if they are, there's a lot of other chords to sift through to find them. Does the full version of the app allow the user to build up their own library of favourite chords to overcome this?
Oh, and when naming these strange chords, this site is useful.
http://jguitar.com/chordname
I like the flexibility of the chord creator/arranger, but I do have a couple of suggestions... It would be nice to be able to hear a new chord before committing it to the chord set, just in case I got the numbers wrong. Also, since we can select/highlight a chord in both chord set and library lists, it would be great if the last selected chord played just once, so we can audition selections before committing to them or leaving the chord arrangement page.
@PaulB -- you can enter your own chords by typing in the fingering in the little box that says "New fingering," and you can name it anything you like with the chord name. I do tons of open-string drones and weird chord shapes all over the fretboard.
If everything is 9th fret and below, you just type 799899, or something like that. If you need to go above the 10th fret, just put a space between each number, like 8 10 10 9 8 8.
I spotted a bug in Tweeting sets of chords that go above the 10th fret, and with chord names that are weird, so I've got something that I need to fix. So far, though, not many people are using the feature (it's so freakin' cool, what's wrong with you people ? :-).
If you tap the "note" symbol in one of the chord lists, it'll play the chord. If you grab the wrong chord, or need to rearrange them, tap the "edit" button, followed by "chord arrangement," and that will switch the chord list into a mode where you can rearrange and delete stuff easily.
The UI in this section is pretty clunky; it was put together back before I had any idea what I was doing, so a redesign in planned. Probably not in the next release, but some time before the start of summer, it should happen.
I've seen the chord naming site -- I might add that functionality in (although the correct naming for most of the chords I use is WTF!).
Heh, I understood the funny custom chord creation just fine. (Pat on the back for me). Where I was being spectacularly dumb was in not spotting the note symbols. What a moron. Lol.
I would still like to audition my new chord BEFORE I add it to the set, and I would also like to build my own library if possible. Pretty please? I think I'm sold on the product though, so I'll be getting the full version.
If you want to build your own library, tap "new," and go for it. Add the chords you use. Then, when you want to create a song that uses these chords, you tap "load library" -- any set of chords you want can be loaded in, and then you can copy them over to the song you're building. You can also load in a song to the "library" spot, and grab chords that way.
And if you happen to have old ChordPro files lying around, you can drag them in using iTunes file sharing (and the built in web-browser will recognize them too). These are plain text files that look sort of like this:
{title: Harry Nilsson} {subtitle: Lime and Coconut} {url: } {define: Mute base-fret 0 frets -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1} {define: A7 base-fret 0 frets -1, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0} {define: D7 base-fret 0 frets -1, -1, 0, 2, 1, 2}A lot of tab web sites use ChordPro under the hood. Earlier versions of Live Guitar had some code in that would extract this from the web pages, but then all the sites started mangling things so that it wouldn't work. The tabs came off of newsgroups like rec.musicmakers.guitar, but those newsgroups are gone, and the tab web sites are now hoarding things. My hope is to be able to move the chord sharing over to Twitter, so that the chords and progressions people come up with can't be locked up again.
I'll add preview of a new chord when we rework the UI in this part of the app.
So chord sets and libraries are interchangeable? And I can add more than 16 chords to a chord set when creating my library? That's very useful to know, thanks.
Also, thanks for listening re new chord preview.