Instrumental is now Live on the App Store!
To celebrate, we’re offering 50% off the regular price until June 21; get in quick!
Space Age
Instrumental’s Generic surfaces provide a great deal of flexibility, allowing you to configure control panels suitable for all sorts of virtual devices. The modular panel system allows you to quickly reconfigure an entire surface, and the labelled control system frees you from worrying about MIDI messages.
The modular panels used by the Generic surfaces are the same ones used by the other, more musical surfaces, except there are more of them.
Controls can be labelled in three ways:
- Control labels and display ranges can be customised per preset
- A MIDI Control Map that specifies the MIDI parameters for every available control. You can create a MIDI Control Map that defines the messages supported by each device you own, and label them there.
- MIDI SYSEX Message. Plugins for DAW packages can send the labels and text readouts for all controls via MIDI SYSEX messages. This allows the controls to be accurately labelled even when controls are being dynamically remapped. (Currently this is only available for Propellerhead’s Reason & Record)
Generic-S controlling Scream-4
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Wicki-Hayden, Instrumental Style
Instrumental's Wicki-Hayden surface in the default minor-thirds colour scheme
Instrumental’s Wicki-Hayden surface provides a large hex keyboard at three different sizes, along with a variety of colour schemes (piano, minor thirds, minor fourths, etc), and a configurable control panel that can house a variety of faders, rotaries, buttons, switches and XYG Pads.
The Wicki-Hayden layout makes much more sense than the traditional Piano keyboard. The Piano layout gives C-Major on the White keys, and that’s about all there is to it. This simple design is the bane of keyboard players everywhere — change key and the “shape” of everything changes, to accommodate the irregular spaces of the black keys. While this makes it very easy to play C Major, for me it really obfuscates the actual structure of music, and means that transposing is considerably harder than it should be.
The Wicki-Hayden layout is regular; the same relative movement will always result in the same change in semitones, regardless of where you are — the shape of the Major scale on the hex keyboard is the same, regardless of which key it is being played in — as is the sound itself.
Instrumental's Scale Modes can visually show a variety of different scales and chords. This is C-Minor; D minor has the same shape but is shifted one to the right.
To help you with Wicki-Hayden, Instrumental supports a simple yet flexible “scale mode” system that can colour the surface according to a particular scale, or can even autocorrect notes to the closest note in the configured key.
If you record scale mode changes into your sequencer track and play them back while composing, Instrumental can display the correct chord as you move through your piece!
For more information about the wonderful Wicki-Hayden layout, I highly recommend the Wikipedia article on Wicki-Hayden.
Posted in Instrumental, iOS, Music
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Nightmare Eleven
The long haul had taken its toll on RM-118, but his journey was almost complete.
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Reducing Wi-Fi Latency
When using Instrumental to play music, having a low latency Wi-Fi connection is essential. The network protocols Instrumental uses are designed to provide reliable low-latency communications, but it all comes down to the performance of the Wi-Fi.
If your setup is properly configured and your Wi-Fi connection doesn’t have to contend with too much interference, you should have no perceptible delay between pressing a note on Instrumental and hearing the sound from the DAW software running on your computer.
If you are experiencing delays, first make sure that the latency is not being introduced on the output side (play some notes directly on the computer, for example). Sound-card drivers with high latency are very common on Windows machines. There is a low-latency sound-driver for Windows called ASIO4All that has worked well for me.
If you are experiencing excessive Wi-Fi latency, here are some things you can try:
- Use the QB Conductor Protocol instead of Apple’s Network MIDI. Conductor’s protocol gives the Wi-Fi connection the best opportunity for low-latency performance in a noisy environment.
- Use a dedicated Wireless Router. Having other people watch streaming video using the same radio channel can only make things worse.
- Use a wired network connection for your computer. If both your computer and your iPad are using Wi-Fi to connect to a Wi-Fi router, then your input must travel over Wi-Fi twice – once from the iPad to the router, and then again from the router to the computer. This will double your latency — the time taken to send a message over the wired connection is miniscule compared to what it takes to send it over radio.
- Try an “ad-hoc” wi-fi network that doesn’t use a wi-fi router at all. In this mode your iPad is transmitting directly to the wi-fi card in your computer. Personally I find these “ad-hoc” connections a little too fiddly — wiring your computer to the wi-fi router should be virtually as fast, despite involving more equipment.
- Upgrade to a 802.11N Wireless Router. 802.11N provides a lot more bandwidth than the earlier wireless standards, and as a side effect delivers much lower latency. It also operates at higher frequency ranges, which may have less interference at your location.
- Disable 80211.b/g compatibility mode in the router. 802.11N routers often support the older 802.11 standards (a, b, g); supporting the old standards prevents the 802.11N from running as fast as it should, as the router has to periodically switch modes to check for older devices.
- Disable “Automatic Channel Mode”. Some Routers have a mode that automatically looks for channels with less interference and will automatically change. While this sounds like a good idea, you will get a spike in latency when it does change its mind about which channel it wants to use. Experiment with different channels
- Eliminate sources of interference. Malfunctioning equipment can generate a lot of RF noise. I recently had an LCD Monitor that was causing digital-TV interference, but only figured this out when the monitor finally died, as that was when the annoying interference was gone.
- Try moving the Router to different places; closer to where the iPad is is better, a clear line of sight will help; going through walls and appliances can only make things harder for the radio link
Posted in Instrumental, iOS
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It’s Instrumental!
The program previously known as MidiPad shall henceforth be known as Instrumental.
I feel this name better reflects what the program does, and is also a pun 
.
I had been planning to release on the App Store by now, but the private beta showed that some flexibility that I had left out really needed to be included. The bad news is this will delay the release by at least another month. The good news is the final product is going to be heaps awesomer
Integration with Reason & Record works an absolute treat. It’s so nice to use a surface where all the controls are properly labelled and have text readouts like “3.4 dB” — even when you remap them on the fly.
Standard (non-labelled) functionality works out of the box with any MIDI capable software, but to get the full Instrumental experience you need a driver/codec/plugin for your midi software so it knows how to send the extended feedback that Instrumental needs, such as the labels of the currently mapped controls.
I’d like to get support for as many packages as I can before launch — Ableton, FLstudio, Logic, Reaper, etc. If you are familiar with making a MIDI control surface driver/codec/plugin for your favourite DAW package — please drop me a line — you don’t need an iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch, but it would help.
I’m also looking for a few more people to take part in the next beta. If you’re interested and own an iPad/iPhone/iPodTouch, drop me a line! Please include information about your setup — hardware and software.
Instrumental is coming…
Instrumental is a wifi midi control surface for iPad and iPhone.
It includes four different surfaces:
- a 4×4 drum pad, with plenty of rotaries and switches
- an 8 or 16 channel mixer, with almost 100 separate controls
- a Wicki-Hayden hexagonal keyboard, with plenty of rotaries and switches
- a standard piano keyboard, also with plenty of rotaries and switches
Instrumental does not make any sound on its own. It is designed to work as a control surface for a DAW package running on your computer.
While Instrumental will work with any program that accepts MIDI input, it works best with Propellerhead Reason and Propellerhead Record. Instrumental makes extensive use of Propellerhead’s powerful Remote system to provide automatically labelled controls, with all the realtime feedback you’d expect from high-end surfaces with motorised controls and countless LED displays.
Coming Soon to the App Store!