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.
Convert keystrokes to midi?
Is there any app (or other clever workaround way) that can run in the background and do this, mapping different keystokes to midi messages so I could use an external keyboard as an additional controller?
Comments
Sidecar (iPad only)
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/sidecar-midi-controller/id1073305840
AND
....S_nV_x
Yeah actually I got Sidecar recently thinking it’d do the job but it doesn’t work in the background and takes up too much space on screen for what I was hoping to use it for (covers three of the twelve Loopy tracks...)
What is this... S_nV_x?
SunVox.
Is there a Mozaic script for that? I think there is but not sure...
Sidecar doesn’t work in the background because of ios security. hopefully this will change so a user can disable this by choice.
If a host like AUM would support this then maybe it can work, because you can play notes in Moog Model 15 for example.
Nope. That's not possible with Mozaic.
The typing keyboard can be used to play within Sunvox itself but that isn't applicable for other apps.
@wim you can actually use sunvox as the controller for other open apps with midi routing. Gotta find the thread...
Sidecar on another iOS device might work.
Does sidecar support slideover mode?
Yes. Not worth the trouble IMO, but ...
Thanks @wim
One solution might be to run a pure data patch in either PdParty or MobMuPlat
And route it’s translated QWERTY to midi to your instrument.
Pd patch
http://lwmmusic.com/software-pdp.html
Down the page in a zip file
My mistake. I could have sworn there was something like that but you would know better then me @wim Thanks for chiming in.
@audiblevideo That's a great idea, I didn't know that MobMuPlat can capture keyboard events in the background.
You can also do something completely different with your keyboard:
Use Accessibility Switch Control in iOS settings to store a different gesture for every key. You can tap on any screen control, swipe, zoom a certain area etc. just by hitting a key.
Details here:
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/31245/how-to-remotely-control-any-ios-app/p1
Weird, I also have "Sidecar Mini" on my iPhone but apparently they've pulled it out of the Appstore 😮
Or if you’re at home. Use a seperate bluetooth keyboard on Mac. Map all keys to midi for that specific keyboard using keyboard maestro, bome or a free keyboard to midi app. Route that as a network midi device to iOS. Not ideal but it does work.
No easy/sensible way of doing that on iOS sadly.
Hey some nice creative suggestions here!
This doesn’t quite accomplish what I was hoping for with controlling some parameters in background apps but I did not know about this feature and will definitely be using it for other stuff! Very cool, and thanks for the great tutorial on the thread you linked to. Excited to use this for speeding up workflow in various DAW’s...
I’d never heard of this either, and got PdParty and the zip file for the QWERTY to midi patch but can’t seem to get it to do anything when loaded...? I got it into the Documents section of PdParty but when I click on it I just get a blank screen... Watched part of that very exciting tutorial video
but didn’t find anything helpful in there. Any ideas?
I was searching for the same thing and I found Bome.
They have a demo version
https://www.bome.com/products/miditranslator#downloads
It doesn’t work in the background, but Drambo can do it. And now that it can host AUv3 you can use a qwerty keyboard to control those AUs from within Drambo.
One workaround is to route this way:
1.BT keystroke to an iPhone
2.iPhone app converts keystroke to MIDI message (Drambo or other)
3. iPhone should be able to send virtual MIDI as bluetooth or wifi to your iPad
If you have an old iPhone it shouldn’t be hard to set this up as a dedicated controller, but I haven’t tried it in a while, maybe not since iOS 10 or 11 so I’m not even sure it still works.
The benefit is that you can send MIDI independent of what app is in the foreground of your iPad.