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Modern alternatives to Touchscaper
Are there any up to date touch controllers in that kind of radial pattern as TouchScaper? Particularly with the ability to freeze notes and have them orbit? I’ve been having some issues with TouchScaper and it definitely isn’t as flashy as some other touch instrument controllers.
Comments
Touchscaper was (is?) a great app. It was more or less the first music app I ever bought and actually produced some vaguely decent music with.
The problem is that @Rob_Jackson_Music just sits on his a@se… I mean, it’s not as though he is churning out apps faster than we can buy them and actually use them.
If he got his finger out and did some work for a change he could rattle off TouchScaper 2 in a couple of weeks…
All of the above to be read with a tongue firmly placed in cheek in the absence of a suitable humour font 😊
@FizzyLizzy27 I don't know if TouchOSC can be set up to do something like that - maybe someone who's an expert on that app could chime-in? It certainly looks very powerful.
If the issues you're having with touchscaper look like bugs or (more likely...) due to something getting borked by an iOS update, I can look into it.
While I'm here for @GeoTony...
And anyone else that might be wondering...
There are a couple of reasons why touchscaper is now in maintenance mode. One is technical, and I go into that a fair bit on my app support page. The other is really about potential demand, and the ROI on the development effort required, which I know you know would be more than 2 weeks
@Rob_Jackson_Music I’ll see if I can pinpoint an issue I was having where it stopped working in AUM loaded as IAA after playing for a few minutes. It was iOS 26 on an M2 iPad Pro driving VAPoly16 as an AUv3 plugin. The “change chord with bass note” and “different colors on press” toggles don’t seem to be working either.
How does open source code work on iOS? If there’s an app like this where it’s strictly maintenance could the code be open source? Not saying that’s a route you’d want to go, but something I’ve wondered about.
TC-Data, TC-11, and TC-Performer look cool. I’ve messed with Performer a bit since it’s free but that was about 5 minutes of fooling around. I’m more quite sure how the apps relate to each other - is one a controller only? Is there different synth types? Not really sure but looks promising. Great visuals and it covers a lot of what I like about touchscaper, even if it is missing the ribbons, radial grid, orbit mode, etc.
I’m realizing how cool TouchScaper is as I’m typing what I want other apps to have lol.
@FizzyLizzy27
Just wanted to add, you’re not alone. I also yearn for these niche iPad music experiences like touchscaper. I got in late and missed a lot of the early ones that got removed, noticing the stagnation of new ones being made. But I also understand robs perspective and often forget to put my feet in a pair of developer shoes. (I think another factor is that most of these apps are IAA, and peoples aversion to the non auv3 compatibility is another aspect devs consider). All said, hopefully we see more in the future 🤞
(It’s no touchscaper, but poly 2 is pretty rad)
Was auv3 the beginning of the end for these touch apps?
Thanks. I know it's kinda boring, but it saves a lot of back-and-forth messages, but for any issue, I just need steps to reproduce. In other words, tap, this, tap, that, etc. Like I say, very boring, it's ultimately the info I need. Then... basically, what you'd expect to happen (if it's not obvious), and then what happens instead
Well, I guess I could, but to what end? So someone else could fix it / make an AUv3 version? I suspect that they'd come to the same conclusion as me: that for various reasons, very little of the existing code code be re-used, so you're pretty much looking at a total re-write. That's months of work and the potentially open sourced code would be pretty much useless anyway.
Plus, if you were wanting to do an AUv3 spin on a touchscaper 2 app (and you'd be crazy if you didn't support AUv3...) I think you might end up designing a totally different app anyway, the only similarity maybe would be the main touch view. Maybe...
Just to be clear, maintenance mode for me, means fix any major bugs.
And, I would tend to say yes, one of the downsides of the AUv3 movement on iOS is that basically everything had to be a plugin with a buttons and switches UI in a little window in AUM or whatever - like you'd see on desktop DAWs. And you don't have multi-touch on desktop, generally speaking. Plus, now and again, Apple hijack multi-touch events for core features in new versions of iOS. That's annoying for games developers too. I know you can switch some of them off, but still... Why give developers a multi-touch API, then randomly cripple it?
Anyhoo, rant over and sorry about touchscaper.
Gestrument is pretty powerful, and probably the closest comp to TS. But Touchscaper is unique in how it handles harmony compared to other touchscreen apps.
But you can patch almost anything in Mirack.
Or, Rozeta XY into Midi Tape Recorder.
TC-Data is nice, but not exactly "up to date".
TC11 has a synth built in. TC Data is only the controller part, meant to send midi to other synth apps. I've never tried Performer.
Seems to have been yes. Once AUv3 came in, devs started thinking more in terms of desktop plugin design, they had to think about an app's ability to resize etc. Huge and interesting topic but I think those are two of the main things.
Users probably deserve some of the blame, they may also often have been used to plugins or hardware and expected or wanted their apps to look and work that way. What should have happened is that we got the best of both worlds - plugin functionality combined with design focused on the strengths of the touch screen. That mostly didn't happen. So yes, it's probably a failure of imagination on both sides, mixed with the restraints imposed by AUv3s ideally needing to resize OK in various hosts. And the economic incentive of making an AUv3 that also works on Macs, potentially leading to more sales. Oh, and, perhaps, the low return on music app dev incentivizing devs to regularly put out plugins which have cookie cutter UIs rather than making labor-of-love one-off masterpiece UIs.
It's a tough niche to make a living in, I can't blame devs for doing things like that. But for the platform as a whole, it's not good I think, and everyone suffers from that, including devs. I think of the niche as having groups of stakeholders - app buyers, devs, YouTubers, other music websites etc, and active, helpful, knowledgeable members in forums like this. Just like any ecosystem, the health of any one depends on the health of the others. Should probably add Apple itself to that group of stakeholders actually haha. Certainly things they do also have a direct impact. Cough cough... Headphone jack...
And it seems there is much less interest now in the iPad as a device for making music than there was 10 years ago, in the time before plugins came along, if evidence on the internet is anything to go by (articles in Sound on Sound, views on old YouTube vids etc).
Don't want to drag this discussion too off topic, but as it's my app that was mentioned, maybe I have a little bit of airtime left...
I was thinking about this last night quite a bit and started looking at it from a different perspective. Maybe it's the plugin host that should be doing new and exciting cool things with a multi-touch interface, and not the plugins themselves.
Before the AUv3 revolution, the app was boss - running fullscreen. Now the host is the boss.
One of my favourite things about AUM when it was released is that I'd never seen anything like it - it really was a game changer. Perhaps something as equally revolutionary is waiting to happen that taps into (no pun intended...) a multi-touch UI. Something that people would see being used and say Wow! That looks cool - I want some of that.
Like when Loopy HD was on the Jimmy Fallon show
Then the next thing you know, everyone wants to make music on an iPad and we're all winners, right?
PS. Perhaps ironically, touchscaper (under the hood) is an AU host for several sample-based instruments, effects and a mixer plus its own multi-track sequencer. Not saying I was ahead of my time or anything...
That's what's needed indeed!
@Rob_Jackson_Music I’d say we’re still well on topic. I like how you point out the lack of new plugin hosts doing much in the way of trying new things. TouchScaper being a host under the hood is a good example of a feature set that could be expanded on by someone else if open source. I like to dabble in programming apps, so peeking under the hood of a favorite app at the least could help me better understand the inner workings.
I’m about to do some quick bug testing - which I find quite fun, not boring lol.
I think this is a brilliant observation. I still use a lot of IAA apps including touchscaper because I love the creative interfaces.
@Rob_Jackson_Music I’d like to thank you for touchscaper. My father has Parkinson’s and his hands are barely functional at this point. He used to love noodling around on a keyboard but that became impractical long ago. He got a Linnstrument which was better but ultimately frustrating. He tried a few other things as well but basically gave up on making music. I showed him touchscaper just recently and he was truly delighted with it and said it was the best music interface he’s ever used. Thank you so much for bringing some joy and creativity back to him.
Wow that was special
My devices are old and can’t run this new iOS 26 so this could definitely be incorrect, but I feel like I’ve heard about a new “floating window” feature. In theory wouldnt this aid IAA apps to function like auv3s (windows over windows instead of having to switch app screens)? Perhaps this is a step in the right direction of making apps like touchscaper appealing to consumers again functionality wise
@oddSTAR - thanks so much for sharing that, and please pass on my warmest regards when you get a chance.
@FizzyLizzy27 - honestly, I really don't think there's any potential in the open source route. I built touchscaper on an Apple framework called AVFoundation which seems to have been abandoned a long time ago. Plus, it's all Swift-based, which is not suitable for hardcore DSP. Even the UI code uses older APIs that have since been superseded with shiny new ways of doing things.
@Squishy - trouble is, IAA has been deprecated by Apple for... what is it now, almost TEN years?
At some point they'll break it and from what I've seen, it seems to get more and more flakey with every iOS update. I'd hate to suggest that's deliberate... 
Very true. The previous IAA apps and the framework is on the way out for sure, but maybe this new structure of window on window will provide an opportunity for devs to make things like touchscaper in the future with the new system/framework. (I’m sure you can tell I’m no dev/programmer, so apologies if any of this is off base/nonsense)
@Squishy - totally, I think the floating windows thing is going to change the way developers design their UI - hopefully in a good way!
Not everyone will remember when (2010) you could only run one app at a time on an iPad!
Who remembers Mac OS System 6
Still the coolest vers. name, or maybe it’s nostalgia…
I miss when they named the operating systems after big cats. Snow Leopard is a pretty badass name for an os.
This app reminded me how much i used to use Touchscaper, just had a lovely session playing it into my Mood mk2 pedal…they were made for each other. Looking forward to using Touchscaper more often again, what a wonderful app