At Superbooth 16, iPad music software was well-represented, in large part because of the presence of members of members of Musik App Manufaktur – a collective of developers of iOS apps.
They were presenting their applications, zMors Modular, Modstep. Triqtraq and Elastic Drums and also showing how they could be used in combination, using the recently introduced Ableton Link. We talked with each of them individually, and also filmed a multi-app jam session.
In the first video, above, Sven Braun gives a short introduction to his app, zMors Modular, and demonstrates how he uses it in combination with a Eurorack modular synthesizer.
In the next video, Benjamin Weiss introduces his iPad sequencing app, Modstep, and explains how the app can be used to sequence its internal instruments, iPad software and external hardware and software:
We also talked with Sebastian Schatz, below, about his iPad jam sequencer, TriqTraq.
TriqTraq is design for 4-channel beat making, but also supports Ableton Link so it can be used easily with other apps.
Developer Oliver Greschke, below, demonstrates his modular drum synthesizer Elastic Drums.
Elastic Drums is a 6-channels drum synth, that offers 12 different percussion synth engines (kick, snare, hihat, clap, tom, wobble, fm, fm4, square, grain, synth, drone).
All of the Musik App Manufaktur apps had recently implemented the Ableton Link standard.
Here’s a short jam session, below, featuring each of the four apps, synchronized using Ableton Link:
Cool stuff!
Amazing that this stuff was impossible just a few months ago, too.
It’s impressive to notice how much ModStep “opened up” some of my hardware, the Nord Drum 2 for example feels now much more alive…
Automaggedon, can you talk more about this? I haven’t grabbed modstep yet but am always looking for good midi sequencing apps to use in conjunction with my modular and other hardware.
A small example: I have setup the Nord Drum to receive midi on 6 different channels, this way I can:
– Setup Modstep so that drum pads send a fixed midi note to different channels, this way each pad triggers a different pad, but also I can map individual CC (on different channels) to the ModStep X/Y pad, or automate them in the stepsequencer;
– Setup Modstep to 6 melodic sequencers so that I can play tuned sounds on the Nord Drum 2 on each channel, plus the above CC flexibility
At the moment I’m trying to write a song on the Nord Drum 2 only, so I use a mix of the above methods, I have 4 drum channels controlled by one Drum channel on ModStep, while lead and bass are controlled by two melody channels on the ModStep, where I’m automating filter cutoff (timbre in Nord Drum 2 lingo) and amp decay.
It seems complicated, but once you wrap your head around it gets really simple, plus you can save your pad/cc templates.
Then I sample it all as loops in my Octatrack and have even more fun.
Thanks for doing these interviews Synthhead. Those four apps alone represent an awful lot of musical and sonic power. One thing that’s wonderful about all three of the time based ones is that they all allow different lengths per track in a pattern. It’s crazy easy to get poly rhythms going on in any of them. And with Link… Good times!
Wish TriqTraq and ModStep would support AudioBus state saving. Would make recalling sessions using them all as a single big bad groove box a whole lot easier.
Love me some Elastic Drums. Really powerful app.