Patch 017 - Noisy Arp / TB MIDI Stuff

The 1st Gen iPad's launch in 2010 re-defined the way musicians create "content" (it used to be called music in my day!), from sequencers to effects, from audio editing to fantastically complex synthesisers - you could quite literally have a whole studio in the palm of your hand.

I didn't jump on the iOS bandwagon until Autumn 2015 by which time there were hundreds of virtual synths available and I hate to think of the amount of cash I have spent in the last 4 years or so on various apps but I never found myself particularly attached to any of them. The reasons for this are two-fold - (1) the dreaded GAS always took hold (there is always another synth round the corner which offers something the others do not) and (2) you can't beat having the tactile, zero latency experience that a hardware synthesiser provides.

So here I am! My iPad is relegated to streaming YouTube videos, surfing the net, recording any YouTube "content" (aka videos) I produce and very occasionally performing other audio production tasks such as sample editing, some more out there granular sound design and multi-tracking. And finally, getting to the point of this blog post - creating MIDI controllers for my hardware synths!

Although you can't beat a physical knob or slider, the touch screen of the iPad does afford some advantages especially over synths with a limited physical GUI as the microKORG. These include the ability to graphically see all the settings of the synth on a single screen and being able to edit more than one parameter at a time (which you can typically only do on the microKORG if they are on the same row of the editing matrix such as cutoff and resonance, decay and release, and so on).

So when I got my microKORG again last week I thought about creating an interface for my synth on something like MIDI Designer or Lemur but then I remembered that TB MIDI Stuff, which I had last used a couple of years ago, already has an editor for the microKORG included in the example editors that come with it - happy days!

Almost all the editable parameters are included with a couple of exceptions (e.g. I can't find a way to edit the tempo or the type of mod FX) but otherwise it is very thorough and easy to work with. There is also a page for the vocoder which I must admit I haven't tried yet. The only thing you will have to do is prepare a preset in the app (a "canvas snapshot") with the same settings as the microKORG init patch so that the on-screen parameter values matches those on the synth.

So for this week's patch you can watch me have a play about with the editor starting with an initialised patch!

Below are settings for the noisy arp! I particularly loved the effect when closing the filter and toggling the distortion on and off! (starting from init, shift+3):

Voice: SYT, SGL, PLY, ---, --- (unchanged)
Pitch: 0, 0, 0, 2, 5 (unchanged)
Osc 1: SAW, 34, 31, ---, ---
Osc 2: SQU, OFF, -12, 3, ---
Mixer: 127, 108, 42, ---, ---
Filter: 12L, 12, 39, 0, 0
Filter EG: 16, 22, 0, 0, ON
Amp: 127, CNT, OFF, 0, --- (unchanged)
Amp EG: 0, 64, 127, 51, ON
LFO 1: TRI, OFF, OFF, 70, ---
LFO 2: SIN, OFF, OFF, 7, ---

Patch 1: LF1, PTC, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 2: LF2, PTC, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Patch 3: LF1, CUT, 13, ---, ---
Patch 4: LF2, NOS, 4, ---, ---
Mod FX: FLG, 20, 0, ---, --- (unchanged)
Delay: STR, OFF, 91, 83, ---
EQ: 320, 0, 6.0, 0, --- (unchanged)
Arpeg. A: 120, 1.16, 62, UP, 1
Arpeg. B: ON, 0, ON, 8, --- (unchanged)

Does anyone else rock TB MIDI Stuff? Let me know in the comments below. :)