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Good MPE controller for iPad?
I was hoping to use AnimoogZ as an MPE controller for Plasmonics on my desktop, but it doesn't seem to send CC 74 when I specify the output channel as MPE.
Can you recommend a good keyboard controller app that does? I was looking at Geoshred and it seems like I would have to update to the Pro version to get this feature.
Are there other apps that can do this?
Thank you!
Greg
Comments
Woodtroller maybe?
https://apps.apple.com/nl/app/woodtroller/id6445840179
Thanks a lot! Hadn't thought of that one but it looks great.
You're welcome, Woodtroller is wonderful MPE controller.
If you have geoshred control (not GS play), I don't think you have to upgrade and it's free:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/geoshred-control/id1336247116
Wow, also great to know about! Thanks...
Velocity KB should work for that. It’s a little quicker than GS to set up, but is not as feature rich. I use it a lot.
You should probably buy GS though. It’s a great app.
Velocity keyboard is the best one I've ever used. I own them all except for woodtroller. I have a Linnstrument as my hardware controller, and VK checks all the boxes.
https://apps.apple.com/ca/app/velocity-keyboard/id1462605052
Not all the boxes. Scale selection in VK is very limited, no custom scales, no diatonic layouts. GS has all that plus microtonal control.
I didn’t see it mentioned here but Salome can also be used as a midi controller for other apps and works quite well.
And I agree about Velocity Keyboard, it’s great.
https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/kb-1-keyboard-suite/id1437919435 By Kai Aras?
I have both Geoshred Pro and Velocity Keyboard.
As a virtual midi controller Velocity Keyboard allows fretboard(guitar/bass/grid) players to play with their native musical knowledge and finger skill(velocity by touch instead of Y-asis).
Velocity Keyboard is the best and seems the only choice to play on a touch screen like you play on a real fretboard. This app only does one thing.
People have no intention to play on a virtual fretboard and/or to express velocity by touch as on acoustic instrument might find this app useless.
Beyond replacing a real instrument interface, Geoshred Pro offers more features, it makes and creates sounds, it even offers a mini looper and drone.
I actually use Velocity Keyboard to play Geoshred Pro to get the best out of both apps.
Gs as a controller is a bit lacking in my experience compared to vk. I can’t remember exactly as I tested them both a lot a while ago but doesn’t gs lack a properly functioning touch velocity ? This is the main point of a touchscreen MPE app imo. I think I asked them about it - yes I or gavinski did or were certainly discussing it with someone here, I don’t wanna put words in a devs mouth - and they said that it was too basic in terms of iPad hardware to work properly and was supposedly composed of very very few like 5 layers. This it transpired was completely untrue. And it works very well in vk
There is also music kraken, I think that does touch velocity,
Given its implementation in vk I find the lack of touch velocity similarly implemented in apps really ludicrous.
It’s the major difference that needs to be made up between iPad and hardware more control. The focus needs to be entirely on it. I don’t like there being a single competent fully fledged MPE controller given the whole point of MPE is this
Edit: I want to be a little bit more precise, and perhaps I’m doing music kraken a big disservice here as I didn’t have enough experience with it to include it. I really appreciate that developer.
The whole point of MPE is to further develop midi to provide a closer experience to actually playing instruments, to increase the fidelity of control. As a musician, it’s a huge thing. I don’t program sequences etc I want to play music. You miss a near infinite set of nuances in most midi based music and they ll matter, and they ll matter hugely and are the difference in leagues between quality of music, feeling etc
So to then hobble MPE (and the newer MPE 2 or whatever it is I forget) by having a muh much more rticulate set of values simulated in a ham fisted wy like touch mapped to an x or y axis or whatever is ridiculous and self defeating. The WHOLE point is tht when you play something with touch you are actually playing, you feel wht you are playing. With a vertical access you don’t and never will. You can get closer nd closer to simulating that but you will never be playing the instrument, or feeling what you play, just triggering a simulation of it for the listener. And that’s very very clear in recordings when a good musician is playing rather than someone just getting the right notes in the right beats.
I’m saying this as someone who loves the iPad as a touch instrument and its potential and the whole MPE thing and is passionate about it so any criticism is based on that. I’ve found it to be a strangely rare thing unless you seek out MPE or midi control forums with things like eigenharps etc
So for me it’s not so much gs vs vel kb or other apps… it’s that gs is a non starter and not really an instrument as it lacks an entire dimension. Imagine playing a piano tht was not touch sensitive. You had to play with your fingers at different positions on the key to simulate a different volume. It and all other controller are that useless as instruments.
In order to produce recordings, yes they can be used but the deficit is felt very acutely in terms of playing. It’s bizarre to me how acceptable it is.
‘ gs is a non starter and not really an instrument’…
Bugger I knew I was doing something wrong… that’s 400+ tracks down the pan 😊
It's an instrument with limitations--like all instruments. And synths are never going to be as physically rewarding to play as physical instruments with acoustic components. At some point one will have to accept the limitations and make some music with the thing.
One of my favorite instruments--the organ--has no velocity control at all. Only an expression pedal to control the volume, and stops or drawbars to shape the EQ and volume.
@wingwizard - just to clarify, the iPad screen isn't pressure sensitive. Velocity Keyboard is doing some kind of detection based on the flattening out of your fingers as you press harder. I'm almost curious enough to buy it now to measure how sensitive / accurate it is using a midi monitor.
Anyway, that's why other developers have chosen to do "pressure" in different ways that they've probably decided will be more accurate and expressive by using other gestures than pressure. Maybe the VK developer has done a better job than the rest think can be done, which is cool indeed.
Personally, I'm not trying to equate playing the iPad surface to playing any real instrument, so I don't care that much about pressure sensitivity. Playing a screen is an abstraction no matter what. Alternate ways of expressing "pressure" are just one more abstraction. Just as all instruments are different from one another, and we learn to play them as they are, so is the glass screen to me.
But! I'm super happy that velocity keyboard works out so well for you. 😎
I mainly stopped by to clarify that iPad screens aren't pressure sensitive, so simulating it isn't something trivial that other developers have chosen to ignore. There's more to it than that.
Hi. There’s a bit of confusion here in tht velocity and pressure are two different things and I was talking about velocity in my post
Yeah ofc re the iPad screen, that was the main point of my post, that it’s crazy for me more apps and developers aren’t doing more to get velocity sensitivity.
Velocity is done by accelerometer I think and is very good relative to other apps at least. Other apps aren’t comparable. Tht what I was referring to and their attempt using axes to simulate it are very inaccurate (actually i can’t really speak about accuracy or inaccuracy as velocity isn’t being played at all) as you aren’t playing it. They’re just guesswork. The brain doesn’t work like tht, it’s asking your mind to equate visual stimulus with physical impact despite a lifetime of tht being a haptic thing.
I don’t use the touch radius. That’s the pressure sensitivity you were referring to and I don’t think it works in anything particularly well and the devs I’ve spoken to have ll said the hardware isn’t there really for that screen reaction I’m not sure.
The best thing for pressure sensitivity i have found, as someone very focused on playability, is to use the y axis. You can then ply at a slight angle and pushing your fingers harder or releasing is making light x axis changes. Or use a finger roll. It’s really pretty close to the really thing.
There’s a trade off with physical controllers between velocity and pressure. L’instrument vs roli for example. The material used or design means that the more sensitive the velocity sensing the less articulate or playable the pressure dimension. And vice versa.
I can’t agree that a screen is an abstraction in the context of wht we’re talking bout (obviously it’s not the instruments it’s representing but It’s a physical object). If you tap or rub it it you expect it to produce responses instinctively. There’s resistance. There’s a world of difference between implementations of that. If I tap the screen and it’s responsive or if it does nothing except note on off for example. Of course every electronic instrument is an extra layer of semantics but then that’s a philosophical wormhole when you get to thinking about what the senses and our understanding of and relationship to physical reality and ourselves really are
Sorry for typos fucking typing on an iPad kb with calluses from guitar and apples idea of auto correction is a whole different kettle of suicide lol
Ahh. The accelerometer. I forgot about that being the way they do it. Good info. @wingwizard.
While I don't share your opinion about the scale of importance of the velocity implementation and don't understand why you don't see the idea of tapping on glass as an abstraction vs. a real instrument, VK's method it is a cool concept and I'm glad that it's effective for you.
Has Blue Mangoo ever explained how it works, or are we all guessing? (I thought he was measuring finger displacement on the screen.)
The last paragraph of this post seems to confirm the accelerometer use for velocity sensing. https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/736434/#Comment_736434
There's also a post further on in the thread where someone suggests using the microphone in addition to the accelerometer, and he doesn't contradict the assumption that the accelerometer is being used.
From a few another posts, it seems that finger displacement is possibly used for pressure sensing (or not):
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/640277/#Comment_640277
Wow, that is such a cool and creative use. Many thanks.
When the app first came out, the developer said that the finger radius is not very sensitive. If I called correctly, iPads and iPhones can only sense 3 or 4 levels of “pressure” from finger radius.
Re abstraction, because I think it’s only an abstraction in a technical way rather than a practical one when it’s possible to make that abstraction almost exactly resemble what it’s symbolising, or a very responsive and expressive electronic instrument interface. And because midi, MPE etc are the real abstractions of the playing of acoustic instruments and I suppose I’ve been quite involved in simulating acoustic instruments playing and seeking that out for a long time playing and listening to eugenharps, linnstruments, continua, roli devices, that little board thing I can’t remember the name, k boards.
It’s like saying a digital piano is an abstraction. Well, it is but it’s one tht almost exactly resembles a piano to most people, despite there being no hammers interacting with strings.
I really wish I got more into tc- whatever it’s called as I’ve seen some great things done with that and being able to play with the effect the speed of movements have nd the relationship between pressed areas is so so cool. I can’t remember if that’s auv3 now.
Just my point of view, and how I weigh up the various aspects.
I just see it now like, we are making an instrument and it uses glass as its physical interface.
It has adjustable sensitivities for all its inputs and one of them, most often used for pressure, is touch radius,
But yeah it’s a bit rubbish lol I never use it
I think it’s 5.
You can see it quite clearly in Gestrument.
Full of pronouns... It's not about you or me or any individual subjective feeling.
It's the fact that Velocity Keyboard react to "different touch velocity" on the whole playable touch area, corners to corners. Players can develop chops based on the consistent interaction purely with their fingers.
If a smooth surface cause any problem, I would say the piano keys are super smooth like glass too and has much less traction than say, guitar strings. It's just different interfaces and all serve well as instruments because they all react to players DIRECTLY.
edit: typo
Radius is aftertouch and has nothing to do with attack velocity. You can have very soft attack followed by a deep aftertouch radius.
Velocity Keyboard has a bundle app called Velocity Filter, you can see how many layers of velocity you can get. There are many layers you can get it just need some practice.
I miss Force Touch from the iPhones of a few years ago. I was always hoping that would come to iPad but it never did.
I never got to try that but he the same hopes. I’m not sure how well it worked. I read that the technology wouldn’t really be compatible with a larger screen but I wouldn’t know
I remember wondering if you could create some kind of touch sensitive thing with a clear silicon layer sending signals to add touch sensitivity
May I interject my opinion that Thumbjam remains the best app ever - and among its other astonishing tricks is MPE of course. My midi control daily driver!