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What are your favourite, playable apps?
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I recently bought iFretless guitar and bass, and being a guitarist have spent some happy hours since jamming away - just enjoying the playability of the UI. It made me realise that despite having gigabytes of synths, instruments and sound manglers, very few have this 'playable' quality. In fact the only others I can think of are Thumbjam, Thor (the keyboard and layout just invite you in to noodle), and (a bit leftfield this one) iVCS3 - which just begs to be twiddled.
I tend to use the iPad as a recording device - hooking up apps through AB and recording the results into Garageband, but the iFretless apps have added another dimension - and made it feel like a proper instrument in it's own right.
What are your most playable apps? Not the clever manglers and feature bulked synths, but the ones you can sit down and have a good old jammy noodle with?
Just interested as I've been missing out on iFretless until now, so interested to see if there are any others out there that have that irresistible 'sit down and play with me' thing.
Comments
Animoog and Magellan have great playable surfaces. Soundprism, once you get the external synth volumes correct, is wonderfully playable. TC-11, when the mood hits me, is also very playable. Oh, and Bebot, natch.
TC-Data, Ondes, and Geo Synth come to mind that haven't been mentioned.
Alchemy
The Nave "Blades". Even when i get a refund because the app never worked for me more than a few minutes without a crash it was the best MIDI controller for me. I could add a ton of MIDI learn parameters to the polyphonic aftertouch etc. and at the same time it has some very nice chords and scales available. Especially controlling the AUFX apps plus some synth at the same time was great. Still miss it a lot for this.
Of course ThumbJam is king too. Never saw any software with such many scales and a clever way to integrate expression. Also Animoog is one of the most "expressive" instruments out there.
Still try to include this in my new workflow once i know how.
Magellan, Thumbjam, & Thor for me...
As someone who plays the keys about as well as a blindfolded raccoon, I find TF7's pad interface a godsend for noodling out keyboard melodies
Agree with all of the above mentioned. Once you've got the presets you want, Gestrument.
Some others: TweakyBeats, CoTracks, iJBass HD, Odd:Hang, iDensity, iElectribe
@Paulinko said:
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I'm always going through the synths just to remind me of my sound palette or get inspiration; I enjoy messing around with Figure; Novation Launchpad catches my attention now & then; Bebop (big high-five here for finding the right sound for a Tubes cover I'm working on); Gestrument, for obvious reasons; triqtraq is cool, but I'm still climbing Mt. Interface on that one!
Thanks, there are a few there I haven't got, or looked at: Ondes, Geo Synth, TF7 Synth
and SynthX...don't really know those. Midi controllers such as Soundprism are a bit tricky on my old iPad as they glitch a bit, maybe when I get a new one I'll be more Midified. Triqtraq's good. TC-11 leaves me cold unfortunately, after a couple of minutes of swirling I'm bored, plus it glitches like a funky chicken on my older pad. Think I'll just have to buy every iFretless app they make.
Scalegen into Gestrument into Thumbjam.
@monzo said:
Seems nice.
@Fitz said:
Mmm.. You should post something...
Orphion. I use the 99 cent editor, and I use it to play other apps. It can take me a while to get the notes I want into the positions I want, but when I do get it set up it turns into a customized playing surface that can do impressive things.
TC-Data isn't the easiest thing for me to edit. I've learned how to make a few simple changes that make a lot of the presets more useable for my purposes.
The overall point, at least for me, is that in addition to being fun to play, the iPad can have some serious value as sort of a glass instrument. Like other instruments it can be halfway learned fairly quickly, but It will probably take me a few more years to get really good at playing the surface.
Orphion is unique IMHO. Worth it to buy editor IAP. Velocity sensing isn't as precise as using the x axis in Thumbjam, but I like the expressiveness of setting pitchbend to a low setting and swirling the finger.
For me, Thumbjam is still the King of Playability.
@Brain said:
Tubes cover ++
Arpeggionome
chordion uber alles.
Figure, iKaosilator.
Steppolyarp is great to set its internal keyboard to a scale and then play with different arp rhythms.
Phase rings, Aeolian Harp and Orphion for some great weird sounds.
Alchemy (nice scale keyboard, good accessible XY pad and crucially, a built in 4 track looper).
midi keyboard into thumbjam (with scale applied) then midi thru into any synth.
Gadget's keyboard (I know it's small but it's very customisable) plus my Nanopad xy pad assigned to some parameters.
Egoist and Samplr - both excellent at what they do. (Also Effectrix actually)
out of left field for me, I'm actually really liking iMachine on the iPhone now you can AB / SoundCloud out of it. It's got great sounds and FX and it's very playable for a one handed Noodle on the bus (fnar, fnar).
Edit: I forgot to add the great FiddleWax Pro, Auxy, Fingertip Midi and Guitarism. All designed very much around easy playability. For that matter I guess the Garageband smart instruments should get a mention (although I don't use them since it's such a closed environment).
Oh and FM4 and SpaceVibe are pretty playable / sound designable.
Guitarism,--Thumbjam,--SoundPrism .---Janie's perspective re.the Surface on the pad are so correct
Because of Janie's post I'm going to try Orphion as a midi controller.
I have the add on but I seem to remember finding it hard to easily create a minor scale 'Keyboard' but I'll try again.
It all started with GarageBand years ago and I still like some of the instruments in GB as well as the enhanced version of these now found in the Logic Pro X Remote app on the iPad. Things like ThumbJam, iFretless apps, Capo, etc. are all classics, but the App that I've really started to use the most is ChordPolyPad, usually to drive other apps via MIDI. I have programmed in a bunch of Guitar voiced chords so I can better hear how things will sound when I've back home while I waiting in parking lots, doctors offices, and such.
I've played single melodies on it as well, you can do some things with pads you just can't with keyboards or strings, or you can just be lazy at times.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 said:
Nice one. Really really great fun and very playable.
Playable on-screen: has to be ThumbJam, the most intuitive and not needing to constantly look at UI; the iFretless series.
Brilliant contributions here. A real primer. Has sent me back to the 'glass' a number of times already...
SoundPrism Electro is pretty playable with chords/bass and melody all at once in a way that SoundPrism couldn't do. Nobody has mentioned MorphWiz yet so I'll throw it a bone.
...blindfolded Raccoon...
I'm more tradition-minded - give me a keyboard with pitch and especially mod wheels, and scales, and I'm done. I hope Thumbjam will one day be able to send Mod CCs.
Apart from what has been already mentioned, love jamming with drumjam, get a nice percussive section going and play with the pads and bedlam, fecking love bedlam, also like the fx section in drumjam, makes me want a bigger ipad and have the fx on the same page. Also love polychord, even with the built in sound, had problems with notes sticking a lot on older versions.
Liked using synthmate for a while, could get some nice sub sine bass out of it, hope it gets updated, filtertron is great for noodling around with, but I'd get frustrated with it at times as it has such great potential, be nice if they did a series of filtertron/moogerfooger apps. Also was very inspired by konkreet performer, especially linked to reaktor, felt like I was playing with an instrument/fx panel from the future.
Although I played instruments at school, I'm not very confident using a keyboard, can do basic melodic stuff, but I've found using an ipad far more intuitive, all the chord based apps, instrument apps like yumi:synth and things like samplr which puts me in the zone. My focus has been shifted from mainly concentrating on production and experimenting with fx and synths to jamming a bit more.
Impaktor, chordion, thumbjam
TC-11, SynthX, Ondes, Aeolian Harp, PhaseRings, iGuzheng, Tachyon, PixelWave, Samplr, Cantor, BeBot, Musyc Pro. And ScratchVox
@JohnnyGoodyear said:
Yes, and I have been surprised over the years how many people are unfamiliar with this particular tune...