Only a few controls are supplied, and these program the behaviour of the mesh of springs and determine how the system reacts to fingers, gravity, inertia and the position of the iPad. Fortunately, you don't have to grasp any maths or physics to have fun poking at it and shaking it around! Instead, it's an elegant, interactive noise source that generates its complex tones by scanning a model of a physical vibrating system. I should say at the outset that this is not a regular musical instrument, at least at the moment. Its one-page interface opens onto a circular network of modelled springs ready to be plucked, stretched, wobbled and generally interfered with. It's increasingly rare to discover musical apps that look or sound unique, but Rootnot's The Wablet easily ticks both those boxes. The Wablet's spring mesh comes alive, generating a scintillating, shimmering drone whose harmonic content shifts as the iPad is moved Two Wablet spring structures in action. It has become an integral part of my setup, for mixing and sound design as well as for composition. But that's not to say you need to be a programming geek to get a lot out of it. Ultimately, MIDI Designer Pro will only be as rewarding as your creative application of it and the degree of effort you're willing to put in.
While software instruments and effects offer flexible MIDI control, hardware devices are a little more challenging, and you'll often need to consult the documentation to see exactly what is controllable. MIDI Designer Pro takes working with these software instruments to an entirely new dimension, and makes them much easier to interact with.Īs powerful as MIDI Designer Pro is, its success is dependent on the degree of MIDI control offered by the target device. I find that sample libraries that rely on keyswitches to change settings (such as articulations) are much easier to work with now that I can lay them out visually and name them appropriately, rather than having to remember which note and octave of the keyboard each is mapped to. I have been using the control surface I designed daily in my mixing work, and it has brought a degree of spontaneity to sound-design work that previously required a lot more effort.Īs a further test, I created a control surface for a Scarbee Rickenbacker Bass instrument, adding buttons to assign notes to particular strings, a slider to choose between neck and bridge pickups, and, finally, volume, tone and amplifier controls. It takes very little time to set up these relationships. All that's then needed is to move the slider or button so the destination device can see which CC number to respond to. In Kontakt, right-clicking on most controls prompts a 'Learn CC Automation' message. In MIDI Designer Pro, a button or slider is assigned to a MIDI CC number, along with a default value setting and the ability to define another control (typically a button) to be used to reset the control to its default position. I set up each of these to be controlled by MIDI Designer Pro, creating buttons and sliders to control tuning, distortion, volume, high- and low-pass filters, reverb and delay (with delay time and feedback controls). I do a lot of sound design in my post-production mixing, and use a Kontakt template with various whoosh, hits, foley, cymbal and percussion patches. The option to save and share your creations rounds out the offering. Designing your controller takes place within the app itself, and, as the web site proudly boasts, there's 'no scripting, ever', and overlay display makes it easy to see exactly what's happening. Buttons can be set to a momentary state or to toggle on and off. Each can be resized, copied, dragged to any position on the screen, or can overlap another control.
These controls can be added singly, or in groups of four and eight, and multiple banks and pages are available. The app uses buttons, knobs, sliders, crossfaders, X-Y pads and accelerometer controls to send those messages. These include Control Change (CC), Note On/Off, Pitch-bend, Aftertouch and SysEx. MIDI Designer Pro can send a variety of MIDI messages with minimal latency.
MIDI Designer Pro configured for Kontakt effects control. It can connect via Wi-Fi, CoreMIDI-compliant hardware such as the MIDI Mobilizer II and Alesis iO Dock, or via Virtual MIDI to supported apps on your iOS device. Unlike dedicated programs that cater to specific applications, MIDI Designer Pro can be used to control almost anything you can think of that will react to a MIDI message of one kind or another.
MIDI Designer Pro is a unique app that allows its users to create custom MIDI control surfaces to interface with hardware and software synths and effects, as well as some DAW controls.