Fugue Machine Update Promises Faster, Tighter MIDI & More

fugue-machine-ipad-sequencer

Alexandernaut has released an update to Fugue Machine for iOS that promises to deliver faster, tighter MIDI and more.

Here’s what’s new in Fugue Machine 1.2.0:

  • Per-Playhead MIDI Routing – You can now independently route each playhead to any MIDI Channel, allowing the playheads to control separate apps or MIDI devices. Go to Settings > Midi Output Settings > Output Channels for more info.
  • Faster, tighter MIDI – Thanks to a complete rewrite of the sequencer code, Fugue Machine is now about 4 times faster and MIDI timing is now as tight as computationally possible.
  • You can now (optionally) send MIDI Program Changes to the MIDI Destination when you change patterns. When enabled, there will be a “PC” button next to each pattern in the PATTERNS Menu. When you press this button, the pattern will change and a Program Change Message will be sent to the MIDI Destination. Go to Settings > MIDI Output Settings > Send Program Changes.
  • Ableton Link Offset Setting – When Ableton Link is enabled, you now have millisecond control over phase offset — allowing you to compensate for potential audio and midi latency introduced by your setup. Go to Settings > Ableton Link Settings > Offset for more info.

Bug Fixes:

  • If you loaded a pattern while editing a note on the piano roll (yes, a corner case’s corner case), you’d find yourself controlling the loaded patterns selected notes. This was weird, and doesn’t happen anymore.
  • Fugue Machine would hang when being launched from an Inter-App Audio host, requiring you to open it before adding it to your IAA session. Fixed now :]

Here’s the official preview for Fugue Machine 1.2.0:

Fugue Machine is available for US $9.99 in the App Store.

 

8 thoughts on “Fugue Machine Update Promises Faster, Tighter MIDI & More

  1. The ability to route each play head to a different MIDI device/channel is a welcome feature- so you can distinguish the voices and choose your favorite tones.

    Would like to see custom scales, but at least with this routing option, that could be handled externally (I think).

  2. would still love to see a per channel “note hold” feature, it is nice to have short staccato phrases for higher “melody” parts, but would be good to not have the bass notes drop out in the gaps in the piece.

    1. That’s a good idea. Note hold or a similar duration scaling setting per play head. At least with this multi-output assignment feature, one could set longer releases on some parts.

  3. The only chords I could hear were just the result of everything running together. Is that what you are wondering about? I didn’t hear something generating chords distinct from the playheads.

    There was a sound that had kind of a bounced attack (a la tremolo picking). Wonder what that was.

    1. Hey hey, developer of the app here. @stub is right. No chords, but perhaps a bit unclear is that the red and orange playheads are playing at the same speed and direction — so as a result, one is always hidden. You can see at about 0:15, I tap the orange playhead’s settings button, which then puts it on top of the red playhead.

      And all the sounds here are presets from Ableton Live synths. The red and orange playheads are being sent to an instance of Sampler (String Ensemble patch), and the blue and green playheads are sent to an instance of Collision (Dulcimer patch). The bounced attack you’re referring to is from Collision — and why I love physical modeling synthesis :]

  4. I’m a bit of a novice at the Midi in/out thing. I understand the channel per play head settings but the only two ‘in-house’ iPad apps that I got to work seamlessly with it are Sound Prism Pro and Thumb Jam (I’m talking about apps that give up their preset patches to be used within Fugue Machine itself rather than just being controlled by Fugue Machine). I couldn’t get synth apps like Mersenne, Squaresynth and even the unexpanded Animoog to work with it. There are obviously loads of others that I don’t have installed on my iPad and it would be nice to have a beginner’s list of apps that work the same way Sound Prism and Thumb Jam do. I’m not sure why some apps work and others don’t.

    1. Animoog and mersenne work fine with fugue machine on my iPad. You could go into the settings menu to check that the different play heads are outputting to different midi channels and that the apps are set to receive the appropriate midi channel as input.

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