Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Nanokey Studio worth it?
Ok so I'm thinking of buying the nanokey studio..
I already have the arturia Keystep and love it, but the tight integration with gadget and the fact I can use it without all those cables has me really tempted..
Do you own one and would you recommend it? Also how many batteries does it need ?
Comments
Yes. Its a great piece of gear, that intergrates with Gadget seamlessly. It uses 2 AA batteries.
They last several hours. I use rechargeables, three sets altogether. When one set dies it goes in the charger. That way there's always one fully charged set available. It can be powered via USB charger cable while still connected via Bluetooth too.
No wires is worth it. Gadget integration maybe not as much when you look at the trade offs (cost, not the most flexible controller, non traditional keys, have to use a PC or MAC to program it).
All in all I don't regret it, but in retrospect I probably would have gone with something else if I had a do-over.
Yeah the fact I could chill in bed and use it without wires is really tempting, I don't mind if it doesn't work well with other apps. Will be buying it for gadget only. Thanks guys
I agree with all the above, nice and portable. I love mine...
Makes gadget much more musical.
I have it, and use it consistently with Gadget. Admittedly I hardly did much automation with filters and such prior to buying the nanoKEY Studio. But having physical knobs has made it so much more intuitive for me.
Also, I never really bothered to learn scales, so utilizing the scale mode on the keys gets me writing some melodies very easily.
Definitely worth the money, if not for the inspiration alone.
Thats a good point, having knobs automapped is very useful feature
unfortunately none available until mid december where i live, so i guess this will be my xmas treat
Try Ebay. They usually have quite a few.
this thread brought the nanokey studio to my attention again and I noticed they got a nice price drop here in Germany. so I ordered one and it just arrived. the keys will really take some time to adjust to but otherwise it makes a very good impression.
I wonder though if I have malfunction with one of the keys.
so a question to those who have one of these, @wim @Seangarland , the scene button is not doing anything on my unit, I would have thought pressing scene button and a pad will change scenes in Gadget. it is not. the button is not even lighting up when I press it, as opposed to all the other keys, so I wonder if the key just doesn't work?
@nick: I don't have the Studio but I do own a few of the previous generation Nano controllers.
It's my understanding that 'scenes' are user presets configured via the Korg Kontrol software. The idea being that you can create different mappings for the software you use and be able to easily switch between them from the controller.
Hold down the Scene button and press one of the eight pads to select the corresponding scene.
Yes exactly. And does the scene button has an LED lighting up when you press it? Like the others have?
Anyone know if it automaps with module?
it doesn't
When the Scene button is pressed and held, the pad button corresponding to the active scene is solidly lit, while the other pads pulse on/off. When you press another pad to select that scene, that pad now stays bright. when you release the Scene button, all 8 pads go dark, at which point there is no way to tell what scene is active. Of course you can press the Scene button any time to see which one is currently active
OK, thanks for checking that. Did you have to set anything up to have it behave that way? because my scene button when I press it in Gadget, it stays black and lights nothing else and doesn't perform anything either. it is just dead.
No special setup on my end. I've had mine less than a week, and haven't tried integrating it with Gadget yet. Before that last post, I tested it "standalone", turned on to battery power, bluetooth not connected, and it exhibits the behavior I described above.
Ah OK, yes I just also tried the button without nanokey being connected to Gadget and it did light up just as you describe but in Gadget it is completely silent so it may be a set up thing. Or 'scene' is maybe intended to be something completely different, and has nothing to do with Gadget scenes. Just a coincidence of names perhaps.
My understanding is that while running Gadget, the scene button is disabled and does nothing. It has nothing to do with a Gadget scene. But when using other midi programs, the scene button loads a midi setup that you have previously set up.
This is correct. It has nothing to do with Gadget scenes. The scenes on the unit are just presets that you can configure with the PC or Mac editor. These can be useful outside of Gadget, but are disabled in Gadget, which takes over all the keyboard functions for it's own native integration.
If you want to you can disable the native mode in Gadget through the advanced settings, but then you have to set up your own presets or MIDI mappings. Even that way though, there is no way to switch between Gadget scenes from the keyboard.
Gotta keep the idea of Gadget "Scenes" and NanoKEY Studio "Scenes" separate. They're different animals.
thanks a lot for clarifying!
No problem. It's still a nice little controller, just limited in some respects.
It's too bad Gadget is so closed about it's transport and scene/pattern triggering. So many times people want to be able to launch scenes and clips via midi, or even start and stop the damn thing. But they have that all locked up tighter than an gnat's ass.
I've had one for about a week. Initially, didn't like the build quality. Not bad, but not great either.
However, this thing is super fun to play with, and very convenient with no cables to connect.
The arpeggiator and easy scale are amazing.
One other quibble: you need to connect to a computer to change parameters. It kind of defeats the purpose of having an ultra portable Bluetooth controller. Korg needs to make an app that can change the midi cc's over just Bluetooth.
I look forward to the day when we have a 37 key version with playable keys!
I asked KORG on Twitter back in June about a mobile configuration app, and here was their reply: "I would like to develop iOS editor too, if we have some time to develop
hope it comes!"
I haven't had any luck getting the arpeggiator to sync with anything, using Link to MIDI, which limits its usefulness for me. Am I missing something? (It may sync with Gadget, but I'm using it outside of Gadget).
I also would like to be able to configure the chords to some degree. I'd rather not always have the 7th included.
These things aside, I'm enjoying my Nanokey Studio as well.
I'll have to do some digging, as I use link a lot. Maybe the midi clock needs to come from the nanokey?
I haven't tried that, but it would be ideal. You'd either have to tap in the tempo, which isn't very precise, or set it per scene via the editor app, which isn't ideal either.
Nothing has really caught my eye during the Black Friday sales so I'm thinking of picking one of these up.
Can anybody comment on the pads suitability for finger drumming?
I think so. I'm very bad at finger drumming, but the pads are pretty much the same as in the Taktile series, just a bit smaller. You can also use the "nanokeys". I'm liking them a lot, they do respond very well to velocity- in my case, even better after setting the velocity curve to "heavy" in the PC/Mac editor.
@Shaken&;Stirred
Unfortunately, there is no MIDI clock sync via Bluetooth, period (stated by Korg on the product support page). I've used the tap tempo for this with Gadget and worked pretty well for me.
About the scene-MIDI channel thing, Gadget and other apps integration:
Since there is no way of changing the global MIDI channel from the unit itself, i think the clever think to do is to set the 8 scenes to different MIDI channels via the PC/Mac editor. Still, is quite frustrating you cannot switch to any channel at any moment.
Things are much easier when the app has a MIDI Learn feature but unfortunately most of Korg apps do not -and there is no "native mode" for any of them besides Gadget. Even worse, once you have the bluetooth MIDI connection active, apps like iMS20 will connect automatically, and, as long as the MIDI channels match, there's no way of deactivate the connection (I was trying to control iMS20 trough Modstep but every note I played got duplicated...).
Korg really needs to work on an iOS editor and better integration with their other apps (but I'm afraid I don't have too much expectations on that second point). Things may be worse with the MicroKontrol series, which don't even have different scenes to choose from.
That said, I really like the unit, but you should be aware it works great with Gadget (you can even deactivate the native mode, and then use Gadget's MIDI Learn feature to set the knobs to any other parameter for more advanced control) and with any other app with "advanced" MIDI input and MIDI Learn features. Apps like iMS-20, with fixed input MIDI channels and CC's would need of a dedicated scene carefully programmed on the soft editor.
I also got the NanoKontrol Studio, and while I am very positively surprised with the Ableton integration (you can even select scenes and trigger them if you activate some obscure option on the global editor settings), I have had several problems using it with Gadtet, and even when working properly the mapping is pretty basic.
And for the ones who already have the Nanokey, here is a question: I've found this bug that even when setting the keyboard output to any other MIDI channel, once you activate the arpeggiator it will keep sending the notes to MIDI channel 1. I've seen there's a firmware update but I cannot update it yet because of my OS. Can anyone tell me if this issue is fixed with the update?...