Speaking of music apps for tablets and smartphones is no longer a very innovative thing. The choice is very wide, we can in fact decide to play keyboards of pianos and synthesizers, to pluck the strings of guitars or to create percussive rhythms. It is certainly a rapidly growing world, with considerable potential, but already widely explored. A type of applications, certainly more intriguing, is represented by those that are not created with the aim of emulating instruments, but which instead allow to manage the sound modulation of real instruments.
What we talk about in these lines, is an app developed by Domestic Cat for iPad e iPhone. His name is MIDI Touch, and as you can easily guess from the name, it is an app that acts as a midi control surface that uses the touch display of Apple devices. Midi Touch is a totally customizable app, which allows you to create the touch screen control surface according to your needs / setup, and which certainly finds its most convenient use if installed on iPad (Fig.1).
Preset, editing and sharing
As soon as it is installed, the app offers some already created control surfaces that can be easily recalled from the Saved Controllers menu (Fig.2).
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Fig.2a - Drum Pads |
Fig.2b - Mixer |
Fig.2c - Pad XY Controllers |
Fig.2d - XY Control |
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These presets consist of a series of controls to be configured to transmit on the midi channels of the instrumentation we want to manage.
In fact, during editing it is possible to modify the presets both in the number and type of controls, and in the type and composition of the midi message to be sent.
In addition to modifying existing presets, it is possible to create new ones, recalling different types of controls (knobb, fader etc.) to be placed on a totally black surface. The editing tools allow us to position and resize the controls and assign them a color, a name, but above all the type of the midi message, the value (or a range of values) to be transmitted, and the midi channel. The positioning on the black background is facilitated by the presence of a support grid (visible only in the editing phase and of which it is possible to adjust the size of the mesh).
Midi Touch offers a series of utilities to facilitate editing:
• Cut, Copy, Paste (even between different presets);
• Duplicate;
• Multiple selections (to perform Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate on multiple controls);
• Uniform Size functions.
Once the editing phase is finished it is necessary to save the preset created before being able to see it at work.
The presets can be easily exported using the classic button to share applications for Apple devices which will allow them to be sent as an attachment in an email. To recall it, simply open the attachment from the email and select the Midi Touch app.
Controls and midi messages
The type of controls that Midi Touch makes available are listed below:
• Knobb;
• Vertical sliders;
• Horizontal sliders;
• Switchers;
• Pickers;
• XYZ Pad;
• Transpose controls;
• Preset calls;
• Labels;
• Tab (to group controls).
The type of midi messages that can be assigned to these controls is shown below (Fig.3):
• Control Changes;
• Program Changes;
• Notes;
• RPN & NRPN;
• Sysex.
Each message can have its own midi channel, a specific range, and the ability to invert its values.
It should be emphasized that more than a single midi message can be associated with each control (knobb, fader, etc.).
The latter aspect can open up really interesting scenarios!
Connectivity
To transmit the midi messages of the control surfaces created, it is possible to use a wireless communication with a PC / Mac to which the instrument (or instruments) is connected, or to connect the iPad directly to the instrument.
In the first hypothesis it is necessary to use software such as ableton, logic, cubase or any other system that allows you to carry out a midi routing towards the instruments connected to the PC / Mac. This type of configuration allows us to create a single control surface to manage different instruments.
In the second hypothesis it is necessary to use the iPad Usb Camera Connection Kit (Fig.4) to connect the instrument with a usb cable (if the instrument allows this type of midi transmission), or with a usb-midi cable (Fig.5) if the instrument is not equipped with a USB port.
Examples of use
Midi Touch seemed to me a very interesting application, and what, in my opinion, attracts the most is its versatility, represented by the possibility of completely customizing the control surfaces.
For what has been said so far, it is a total versatility, both from the point of view of the creation of the control surfaces, and from the point of view of the possible connections that can be made.
Personally, rather than using the presets already created by Domestic Cat, I find it more interesting to create control surfaces suited to your needs.
2 different types of configurations are illustrated below:
• Configuration 1: wifi connection, MacBook Pro, Albleton Live, MicroKorg, Little Phatty.
• Configuration 2: iPad USB Camera Conection Kit, Little Phatty.
Configuration 1:
In this configuration, a control surface has been created in wifi connection with a MacBook Pro running an Ableton Live session. This type of configuration allows you to use a single control surface (Fig.6) to manage some parameters of a MicroKorg and a Little Phatty connected to the MacBook Pro via a Motu Express midi 128 midi interface.
As you can see, the surface consists of two main tabs, of different colors, one green and one red, containing respectively the controls for the MicroKorg and for the Little Phatty.
The first tab (green color) sends MicroKorg midi messages (ch.4) to check:
• Cutoffs;
• Resonance;
• Delay depth;
• Octave range for the arpeggiator.
The second tab (red) sends the Little Phatty midi messages (ch.1) to check:
• Cutoffs;
• Resonance;
• Overloading.
Two other tabs allow you to manage the volume and filter envelopes respectively. Both offer the possibility to manage both the MikcroKorg and the Little Phatty through two special "sub-sections".
It is important to underline that by setting mutual routing of the midi tracks (in this case carried out via Ableton Live), the exchange of messages becomes bidirectional allowing both the control of the instrument through the app and feedback in the opposite direction (app controls that change value by moving the controls on the instrument).
Configuration 2:
In this configuration a control surface has been created in direct connection with the Little Phatty through the iPad Usb Camera Connection Kit.
The control surface created reproduces the same configuration as the front panel of the Little Phatty (Fig.7).
On the surface there are therefore the following sections (all controls transmit on midi ch.1):
• Pitch Wheels;
• Modulation Wheel;
• Modulation;
• Oscillators;
• Filters;
• Env Gen;
• Volume.
The direct configuration allows to have a bidirectional midi exchange between the control surface and the instrument without having to use any additional software and hardware.
The most interesting aspect of this second configuration is that it offers the possibility of simultaneously managing parameters that would have been managed individually on the original instrument. As an example, the Env Gen section on the front panel of the Little Phatty allows you to intervene on the volume and filter envelopes by modifying only one parameter at a time by having four keys to alternately select Attack, Decay, Sustain and Release and a single knob to change its value (Fig.8).
On the control surface, the same section has been created with four knobbs that can be controlled simultaneously, sending midi messages to modify the respective parameters on the instrument simultaneously.
This concept could be extended to all those parameters of the Little Phatty which, for logistical reasons, have been realized in such a way that they cannot be governed simultaneously.
In the oscillator section, for example, there is only one knob with which to alternately modify the values of wave, level, and frequency of the two oscillators (Fig.9).
The possibility of creating with Midi Touch a control surface with two distinct knobbs for each of the parameters of the two oscillators, and therefore of being able to modify them simultaneously, opens sound modulation scenarios that would not be allowed by the original instrument.
Final houghts
In the wide panorama of musical APPs, Midi Touch is not among those ready for immediate use, much less among the cheapest ones having a cost of € 17,99 for iPad and € 8,99 for iPhone. For the configuration of the control surfaces it is necessary to have the midi mapping of the parameters of the instrumentation to be governed in order to correctly assign the midi messages that the controls created must send.
Patience can be rewarded and the results can be remarkable both from the point of view of the management of a sound modulation of a setup consisting of different instruments, and from the point of view of the richness of the sound modulation in the case of instruments that have to deal with a limited availability of controls linked to its size.
A further strong point of this app is the possibility of associating several midi messages to a single control. In this way it is possible to control, for example, two oscillators with a single knob (assigning a different range of values) further enriching the panorama of the sound modulation compared to that foreseen by the instrument itself.
Pro
• Extreme configurability;
• Assisted editing of control surfaces;
• Possibility of sharing control surfaces.
Cons
• Made only for Apple devices;
• Rather high price range (€ 17,99 for iPad, € 8,99 for iPhone);
• Instability of the app on devices with IOS 6 during backups (while waiting for an app update, a continuous backup is recommended so as not to lose the work done).
USEFUL INFORMATION:
Producer: Domestic Cat
Website: http://iosmidi.com
Cost: € 17,99 for iPad, 8,99 for iPhone;
Connection compatibility:
• DSMidiWifi for Mac & PC (http://dsmidiwifi.tobw.net/);
• MIDI Network Sessions native OS
• iPad Usb Camera Connection Kit.
