Stroke Machine Update Adds New Views, Longer Sequences, Audiobus 2 & More

Franke Music has updated Stroke Machine groove synthesizer for iPad to version Version 2.

Here’s what’s new:

Three new views have been added:

  • The Pad view offers big, velocity-sensitive pads for playing the twelve percussion sounds.
  • The Mix view shows the most important mix parameters for the 24 sounds like Mute, Solo, Volume, Pan, FX Bus and FX Send. All continuous parameters can be automated.
  • In the CC view, MIDI Control Change messages can be assigned to any sound, effect or mix parameter. Just tap a button of a parameter and move the desired control on your MIDI controller.

The resolution of the built-in sequencer has also been increased drastically. Up to now it sported a maximum of eight bars with four beats with four steps each. Now it offers up to 16 bars with 16 beats with 16 steps each. That means that a bar can have up to 256 64th notes resulting in up to 4096 64th notes for 16 bars. This also allows you to set unusual measures like 11/9 or 5/13.

A frequently requested feature was to be able to set the MIDI channels of the individual parts. Now, each of the twelve melody sounds and all drum sounds at once can be set to a certain MIDI channel, to all (omni) or no (Off) channel.

Stroke Machine 2 also supports AudioBus 2, including saving and loading of the current kit.

Here’s a detailed look at what’s new in Stroke Machine v2.0:

Stroke_Machine_Pad_View

  • Maximum settings of Bar, Beat and Step highly increased. Now a pattern can have up to 16 bars with 16 beats with 16 steps each. This amounts to up to 256 64th notes per bar and 4096 64th notes in total. Please don’t blame us if you mess up your patterns, but send us audio links to interesting tracks you’ve created with it.
  • AudioBus 2 support including saving and loading of the current Stroke Machine kit.
  • Added Mix view with important mix parameters for the percussion and melody sounds like Mute, Solo, Volume, Pan, FX Bus and FX Send. To automate them, activate the respective Modulation Sequence.
  • Added Pad view with big, velocity-sensitive pads for the 12 percussion sounds.
  • Added MIDI channel selection for each melody sound and all percussion sounds to 1 to 16, Omni (all channels) and Off (no channel).
  • Layer sounds by setting several parts to the same MIDI channel.
  • Added Route button. When activated, incoming MIDI notes are routed to the currently selected sound independent of the received MIDI channel. Other sounds on the same MIDI channel are layered. When deactivated, the MIDI channel of the incoming notes is evaluated and the respective sounds are played (previous versions of Stroke Machine decided automatically if incoming MIDI notes should be routed to the selected part or not depending on the MIDI input port).
  • Added Internal/External Sequencer button. When using Stroke Machine with Inter-App Audio or AudioBus, you can now select if you want to continue using the internal sequencer or the sequencer of the host app.
  • Added MIDI Learn. Tap the CC button to show the MIDI Learn view. Tap on any of the lime green edit buttons to arm MIDI Learn and move a dial or slider that emits MIDI Control Change messages on your hardware controller. The MIDI Control Change message is immediately assigned to this particular parameter. The MIDI channel is learned as well, so you can assign a MIDI Control Change message on MIDI channel 5 to a sound receiving notes on MIDI channel 4. Assigning a particular MIDI Control Change message to a different parameter removes the previous assignment. To remove an assignment manually, double-tap the respective MIDI Learn button. The learned MIDI Control Change messages are saved with the Kit. Please note that some MIDI Control Change messages are excluded, those are Bank Select MSB (#0), Modulation Wheel (#1), Channel Volume (#7), Pan (#10), Expression (#11), Bank Select LSB (#32), Sustain Pedal (#64) and the Mode Switches (#120 to #127). They are reserved for future use.
  • Added MIDI Program Change reception. Upon receiving a MIDI Program Change message, Stroke Machine loads the Quick Access Pattern with the respective number.
  • Changed Master Volume to only control the volume of Stroke Machine rather than the overall iPad volume. This way it doesn’t affect other IAA or AudioBus app.
  • Added Clear Pattern button in Kit view. Tapping it clears the pattern notes while keeping the sounds and other settings.
  • Added LFO phase beat sync. Activate Clock and Mono and set the Startphase to any value except random (leftmost slider position) to get an LFO cycling which is hard-synced to the beat rather than to the moment when a note is played. The former behaviour is still available when Mono is switched off.
  • Fixed crash when tapping Next or Previous Kit while in topmost library folder.
  • Fixed crash with Share Kit/Sound on iOS 6.
  • Fixed crash when editing notes while recording.
  • Fixed freeze when an interruption occured such as an incoming Skype call.
  • Fixed an issue with soloed parts when loading a kit.
  • Fixed possible double playback of notes on first step when syncing to MIDI Clock.

Minimum requirement: iOS 6.0

Stroke Machine 2 is available in the Apple App Store now. From August 22 to August 31, 2014, Stroke Machine is available for a 50% reduced price of 8.99 € / US $9.99, afterwards the price goes back to 17.99 € / US $19.99.

If you’ve used Stroke Machine, let us know what you think of it!

9 thoughts on “Stroke Machine Update Adds New Views, Longer Sequences, Audiobus 2 & More

  1. Bought this last December, runs terrible on an iPad 2. Never used it as I can’t utilize more then 2 sounds at the same time before glitches starting to happen. Always felt a bit ripped of as there was no warning for this on the site.

  2. Try the updated version and see if you get better results. There are lots of bug fixes in there. I’m running it on a 4th gen iPad. I haven’t put it through its paces yet, but so far it runs well.

    I’ve only had it a couple days and haven’t really dug in, yet. But so far, I really like this app. It really is a massively fun box. And it is THE MOST VERSATILE music making app in terms of sounds and ability to produce interesting content.

    It is a very capable and fascinating synthesizer with a few very cool twists. Parameters are easily modified internally and externally. The fx are kind of limited, but there are four separate FX buses, each with 3 blocks. The first block is compression/distortion, the 2nd is some kind of mod (like chorus or filter), and the 3rd is delay/reverb.

    The sequencer has two modes: PERC(ussion) and MEL((ody), each has 12 tracks/sounds. The synth engine is the same for perc & mel. The rhythmic organization is excellent. EXCELLENT! Each pattern can have its own setting of some number of bars (1-16), each bar can be 1-16 beats long, and each beat can be divided int 1-16 steps. This is really fantastic. With this you can create a huge variety of rhythms. Though all tracks have the same subdivisions, with 16 steps per beat you can create plenty of great polyrhythms & tuplets.

    The way a “song mode” is approximated, you assign patterns to banks of buttons and you can tap order of patterns in. It will play each pattern to completion before cueing the next. It seems that the ability to string patterns together would be a simple matter. Perhaps it will appear in a subsequent update.

    Stroke Machine has such incredible potential. I really would love to see it continue to improve and evolve.

    I’ll report back when I’ve had more time to tinker & test.

  3. I found the app to be a bit glitchy on my iPad 4. Also never got into it, so I deleted it. However, I reinstalled the app after like a year and it was like wow, I forgot I had this awesome app. Then I deleted it again. If/ when I get tired of gadget, I’ll reinstall Stroke again, looks like I may be in for a surprise.

  4. amazing app, but I run out of voices? – sounds cut off if a few things are running especially with modulation -on ipad3. Still works fine as an add on to other gear, has midi sync.

  5. I have IPad 4 and when ST Machine is running can not open pther app (like TC-11 i.e.) without have a momentary (long) interrupt & bruits. Also into Audiobus setup.
    For the rest i am VERY HAPPY. And more with this new version. Only please A VIDEO explico-demostrative. For not English readers is like ride a new horse each new update of each music app.

  6. I just picked up the app for $10 U.S., and like @Beargrip above, I have an iPad2. I read enough to know that there may be some issues on an older device, but I felt it was worth the risk on the sale (and because I may get a faster iPad some day).

    I’m VERY impressed with the interface and depth of the app. Even the presets demonstrate how the sounds can go from full-on synth/electro to almost acoustic/percussive. If I knew more about sound design, I feel like I could make the app do quite a bit.

    With just a few voices playing (and the app running by itself), performance seems pretty good. I could imagine running it through AudioBus and recording would cause some issues. The way I would probably do that would be to use AB on 512 or 1024 frames and record into AudioShare to make a loop. That would allow you to snap-adjust timing, so the latency shouldn’t be an issue.

    But yes, I do hear some of the voices cutting out once you get a bunch of things happening at once. It’s an imperfect but still pretty cool app.

  7. I got it yesterday on an ipad 2 , yes the amount of sounds is limited , but when sound stealing occurs it’s not glitchy it actually adds some usable variation to the pattern . Only problem I’m having is I can’t assign patterns to the quick access buttons for some reason

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