Beat Scholar by Modalics (iOS / Desktop) | Giveaway & Detailed Walkthrough (See PInned Comment)

Gavinski

Beat Scholar by Modalics (iOS / Desktop) | Giveaway & Detailed Walkthrough (See PInned Comment)

5 Copies of Beat Scholar for iOS to Give Away! All details, links etc are in the pinned YT comment as usual. Enjoy and good luck!

This is a very detailed walkthrough, demo and review of this innovative rhythm sequencer / sampler that:

• Covers all the main aspects of the UI and gives ideas for how to get started making your own beats / rhythmic sequences

• Shows things like how to set up multi-out in AUM

• Gives ideas for how to effectively use this to sequence melodic instruments

• Demos some of the factory presets

• Mentions some areas where there is room for improvement

Remember to like and sub if you find this useful, cheers!

colorsinspace

Can you get those wonky LA, Flying Lotus style beats with this.

Gavinski

@colorsinspace said:
Can you get those wonky LA, Flying Lotus style beats with this.

I would say you could probably, yes - though it only does polyrhythm, not polymeter, which I think is a real missed opportunity. The swing options are great though, it can swing VERY hard, on 1/8 1/4 or 1/2 notes, and yeah, you can clip your sounds’ decay really short, which seems to be something flying lotus does a lot. But I would imagine he is probably going in and doing a lot of manual offsetting of his beats, so this might jut get you in the rough ballpark.

Just don’t understand why each lane doesn’t have its own length / meter / tempo. Really would make the app massively more versatile. Still, it is a cool app and a nice fresh take on drum sequencing, and the devs are super responsive and overall extremely friendly and helpful, so who knows, maybe these things could be added.

hes

@Gavinski said:

@colorsinspace said:
Can you get those wonky LA, Flying Lotus style beats with this.

I would say you could probably, yes - though it only does polyrhythm, not polymeter, which I think is a real missed opportunity. The swing options are great though, it can swing VERY hard, on 1/8 1/4 or 1/2 notes, and yeah, you can clip your sounds’ decay really short, which seems to be something flying lotus does a lot. But I would imagine he is probably going in and doing a lot of manual offsetting of his beats, so this might jut get you in the rough ballpark.

Just don’t understand why each lane doesn’t have its own length / meter / tempo. Really would make the app massively more versatile. Still, it is a cool app and a nice fresh take on drum sequencing, and the devs are super responsive and overall extremely friendly and helpful, so who knows, maybe these things could be added.

You can get polymeter by opening up a second instance of Beat Scholar. Pretty usable, though not what it could be if it were integrated in same instance. I would guess they have good reasons for not including it. Not sure what those would be, since I'm still wrapping my mind around things. But one reason would be that as they've set it up they've taken great care to have the play point in each lane at the same spot, which is part of the whole visual aid thing that the pizzas provide. The pizzas that are playing in each lane will always align vertically with those in other lanes, and each pizza will play through itself at same rate as pizzas above or below. Having polymeter destroys this visual synchronicity, which is a key feature of the app (though like I said you can still get polymeter by using a second instance of Beat Scholar).

I think a similar point may hold regarding fact that the time signature denominator is limited to 2,4,8,16. This simply means that each beat is notated by a half note, quarter note, eighth note, or sixteenth note. I'm not sure this is limiting at all; if it is limiting it's limiting things to anything that can be expressed using standard musical notation (i.e, no such thing as a "seventh note" or a "fourteenth note"). It's the time signature numerator that's more important for polyrhythms, and for that Beat Scholar lets you choose anything from 1 to 32.

Gavinski

@hes said:

@Gavinski said:

@colorsinspace said:
Can you get those wonky LA, Flying Lotus style beats with this.

I would say you could probably, yes - though it only does polyrhythm, not polymeter, which I think is a real missed opportunity. The swing options are great though, it can swing VERY hard, on 1/8 1/4 or 1/2 notes, and yeah, you can clip your sounds’ decay really short, which seems to be something flying lotus does a lot. But I would imagine he is probably going in and doing a lot of manual offsetting of his beats, so this might jut get you in the rough ballpark.

Just don’t understand why each lane doesn’t have its own length / meter / tempo. Really would make the app massively more versatile. Still, it is a cool app and a nice fresh take on drum sequencing, and the devs are super responsive and overall extremely friendly and helpful, so who knows, maybe these things could be added.

You can get polymeter by opening up a second instance of Beat Scholar. Pretty usable, though not what it could be if it were integrated in same instance. I would guess they have good reasons for not including it. Not sure what those would be, since I'm still wrapping my mind around things. But one reason would be that as they've set it up they've taken great care to have the play point in each lane at the same spot, which is part of the whole visual aid thing that the pizzas provide. The pizzas that are playing in each lane will always align vertically with those in other lanes, and each pizza will play through itself at same rate as pizzas above or below. Having polymeter destroys this visual synchronicity, which is a key feature of the app (though like I said you can still get polymeter by using a second instance of Beat Scholar).

I think a similar point may hold regarding fact that the time signature denominator is limited to 2,4,8,16. This simply means that each beat is notated by a half note, quarter note, eighth note, or sixteenth note. I'm not sure this is limiting at all; if it is limiting it's limiting things to anything that can be expressed using standard musical notation (i.e, no such thing as a "seventh note" or a "fourteenth note"). It's the time signature numerator that's more important for polyrhythms, and for that Beat Scholar lets you choose anything from 1 to 32.

Good points, I guess, yes.

hes

@Gavinski

I thought this youtube video by Mike Malyan, whose relevant presets are included in Beat Scholar, was kind of illuminating/mind-bending:

geremy

@hes said:
@Gavinski

I thought this youtube video by Mike Malyan, whose relevant presets are included in Beat Scholar, was kind of illuminating/mind-bending:

OMFG

Gavinski

@hes said:
@Gavinski

I thought this youtube video by Mike Malyan, whose relevant presets are included in Beat Scholar, was kind of illuminating/mind-bending:

Looks interesting but I only have time for a quick skim now. Definitely though I'm going to be trying out the idea of using several instances of BS (unfortunate acronym haha) to do polymeter. And probably most interested in using that for minimalist melodic patterns than for drums, in my own case.

[Deleted User]

This is an incredible drum machine auv3
It can do everything so easily, What a incredible idea

(Any way to drag and drop kits? Into the window?)

Gavinski

I think, from memory, that you can only drag and drop individual samples onto individual pads, but that doesn't take long

[Deleted User]

@Gavinski said:
I think, from memory, that you can only drag and drop individual samples onto individual pads, but that doesn't take long

True

It was* crashing when I changed the volume of my iPad
, it looks like it may have been the other app needs to be closed

Gavinski

@fearandloathing said:

@Gavinski said:
I think, from memory, that you can only drag and drop individual samples onto individual pads, but that doesn't take long

True

What is a bummer is it crashes whenever I change the volume of my iPad

Hmm weird. Email the devs?

[Deleted User]

Ok I will ask them what might be going on. (It looks like it was fighting with another drummer, I think)