Helium AUv3 MIDI Sequencer by 4Pockets - Released

Gavinski

Not sure I will have time to make a video on this unfortunately - maybe if Paul had added me to the beta. As it is, I am severely backlogged already

@instrument6 said:
Just sent this to 4pockets email and figured I would post it here to provide people the opportunity to troll , comment , or offer help or suggestions...

@4Pockets

Hi Paul ,

Thanks for your unceasing work and production of great ios music apps...

I am wondering which route to take though... I have strummer and digistix and also purchased midimixer last week . However , now comes helium and I am left confused about stuff . I understand the basic idea that midimixer is just an automation recording tool for the aum channels , and that helium allows for more compositional elements in a formal timeline , and now has an experimental song mode ... but what are the functional distinctions in a pragmatic song creation workflow to be considered here ? is there a great way to use these together ? and finally , how would your multitrack recorder plugin fit into all of this ?

I just don't really know how to use all of these together in the best way... I follow the audiob.us forum somewhat and cannot locate there , or on youtube , example videos of people using these plug-ins together in AUM or explaining a decent workflow or order of operations ?

Perhaps the lesser experienced members of the community could really benefit from some tutorial videos adressing workflow ideas , distinguishing features , that use these three tools (Multitrack Recorder , Midimixer , Helium) , and perhaps others of yours , in tandem ... without being presumptuous , maybe this would be something @gavinski would be interested in explicating upon in one of his great videos ?

I am sure you have a grand vision in mind here for how all of these apps used together might create a total song creation system inside of AUM , and I think some comments or videos addressing this might be really helpful , especially for those of us on the forums that are more amateur than others ...

Thanks so much for your time !

MisplacedDevelopment

@instrument6 said:
Just sent this to 4pockets email and figured I would post it here to provide people the opportunity to troll , comment , or offer help or suggestions...

@4Pockets

Hi Paul ,

Thanks for your unceasing work and production of great ios music apps...

I am wondering which route to take though... I have strummer and digistix and also purchased midimixer last week . However , now comes helium and I am left confused about stuff . I understand the basic idea that midimixer is just an automation recording tool for the aum channels , and that helium allows for more compositional elements in a formal timeline , and now has an experimental song mode ... but what are the functional distinctions in a pragmatic song creation workflow to be considered here ? is there a great way to use these together ? and finally , how would your multitrack recorder plugin fit into all of this ?

I just don't really know how to use all of these together in the best way... I follow the audiob.us forum somewhat and cannot locate there , or on youtube , example videos of people using these plug-ins together in AUM or explaining a decent workflow or order of operations ?

Perhaps the lesser experienced members of the community could really benefit from some tutorial videos adressing workflow ideas , distinguishing features , that use these three tools (Multitrack Recorder , Midimixer , Helium) , and perhaps others of yours , in tandem ... without being presumptuous , maybe this would be something @gavinski would be interested in explicating upon in one of his great videos ?

I am sure you have a grand vision in mind here for how all of these apps used together might create a total song creation system inside of AUM , and I think some comments or videos addressing this might be really helpful , especially for those of us on the forums that are more amateur than others ...

Thanks so much for your time !

With MTR and Helium you have a way of recreating a DAW-like environment from within AUM.

Helium handles the MIDI but also now lets you arrange clip triggering on a timeline. The idea with the new song mode is that you define your individual song parts (intro, verse, pre-chorus, chorus etc) and any variations as clips and then use the song mode to trigger these at the appropriate point in the timeline. Atom 2 already does this with pattern triggering.

MTR is your audio triggering environment, e.g. you have a guitar solo that you want to trigger at bar x of your song. You either arrange that part of your song from within MTR, using its timeline, or trigger the audio clip to play via a MIDI trigger. Triggering the clip would be my preferred option in AUM since you do not want to have to maintain too many timelines, especially when things start moving around. You could trigger MTR clips from any sequencer with a timeline.

I never bought MIDI Mixer but I think that is more to do with automating AUM controls, such as faders etc. I would tend not to do this sort of thing and instead control volumes using automation within the sequencer. Including it in your workflow at this stage may therefore complicate things unnecessarily. Again, this is the sort of thing a DAW would let you do with built in fader/control automation.

MisplacedDevelopment

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Quick test shows that Helium seems to suffer the same problem as some of the DAWs I have tested where you can’t use notes to change patterns. Velocity changes do however work. Velocity is a little fiddly to change but better than some of the DAWs I’ve tried.

Anyway, with the new Song mode you can now trigger Atom 2 patterns using predefined clips of MIDI on a timeline. Here is an example two pattern Atom clip:

This is triggered by the following Helium setup:

First I configured the C0 notes with different velocities to trigger the two different patterns in Atom.

Then I created a snapshot of these notes so that they would be available in Helium song mode.

I then opened up the controller mode and long pressed on “Velocity Selected Controller” and chose song mode.

I could then select the loop that I just defined and paint it onto the timeline.

Note that by default the clip loops forever and you probably do not want this so change the loop type to “Play” on the left hand menu.

I don’t know if it is supposed to (or indeed is technically able to), but changing the playhead in song mode does not update the AUM timeline. That means if you click to some point earlier in the timeline on the song mode area then AUM ignores this and carries on from where it was when you paused. You can however scrub/drag over the AUM timeline which will move the song mode playhead accordingly:

Samu

Does anyone dare to do a 'midi timing comparison' between Helium and Atom 2?

I'm truly impressed by Atom 2's super tight midi timing and LaunchPad integration.

Triggering 1/64th notes at very high BPMs' (up to 999BPM) without hick-ups or note drop-outs is impressive.
Sure it sounds more like 'granular synthesis' than 'music' but it's a good way to test the timing accuracy

Perfect 5th - Rhythm Becomes Pitch

MisplacedDevelopment

@samu that’s very impressive, would be interesting to see how Helium compares. What did you use for the visualisation?

MisplacedDevelopment

Have not got my head around the song sode yet. It seems that there is a single song mode timeline per Helium instance rather than one per track. I was expecting the song mode to be per track or the ability to add multiple lanes to the song mode controller, otherwise you will need one instance of Helium per track which surely can’t be right. I’ll check out the new song mode video in case it goes into this.

Samu

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
@samu that’s very impressive, would be interesting to see how Helium compares. What did you use for the visualisation?

It's not my video but I've done similar experiments on my own

This one can get pretty close though.
https://apps.apple.com/app/id1525484137
Oscilloscope & Spectrogram from Blue Mangoo...

MisplacedDevelopment

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Have not got my head around the song sode yet. It seems that there is a single song mode timeline per Helium instance rather than one per track. I was expecting the song mode to be per track or the ability to add multiple lanes to the song mode controller, otherwise you will need one instance of Helium per track which surely can’t be right. I’ll check out the new song mode video in case it goes into this.

The clip that you define is a slice right through every track rather than just the one currently displayed so if you clip between bar 2 and 3 then everything on every track between bar 2 and 3 will be triggered when you play the clip. The properties menu that you get when you long press on a clip in song mode lets you mute some of these slices, e.g. mute the notes playing on tracks 4 and 5. This makes more sense now.

Edit: bug found I think - if you stop the timeline after muting slices then restarting it does not unset the mutes.

White

instrument6

@gavinski thanks for the quick response...

instrument6

@MisplacedDevelopment

hey thanks a lot for your comments... helpful stuff !

MisplacedDevelopment

I have reported some bugs with the new song mode which will almost certainly catch you out once you start trying to use it:

1. If you delete a clip and undo then the clip will not play the next time through - workaround is to simply add something to the timeline or deselect/select the clip you just restored before restarting the AUM transport.
2. Whenever you change the mute settings for a clip, deselect and then select the clip otherwise the settings will not apply correctly. This is the case whether you have added or removed mutes. The little graphic updates to suggest that the setting is active but it may not be.
3. Mute settings are not being reset when you restart AUM. A tip here is to open the mixer window if things are not sounding right. You will probably see that the song has started with some of your tracks in the wrong mute state. This happens if you have set a mute on a clip and then end the song before a STOP clip. To work around the problem, either never manually end your song and make sure it ends with a STOP, or make sure that if you do manually stop the song then you unmute any tracks that are still muted. Note that the unmute property of a clip will not unmute an already muted track if the song was started with that track muted (if that makes sense!), i.e. if your track starts accidentally muted then a clip with that track unmuted will not flip its state to unmuted.

RajahP

@White said:

Nice

MisplacedDevelopment

I may be missing something but the current song mode implementation gives you 12 clips to loop on but what each track is doing cannot be shared across clips without copying/pasting. Say, for instance, you have a drum sequence A on track 1 and bass sequence A on track 2 in clip S01. You will need to copy/paste notes to repeat the drum sequence A if you also want it to appear in clip S02 with bass sequence B.

I was hoping that this repetition of music would be avoided but forcing you to work this way does mean that you can build up whole sections of music in one go and then you are then just moving around the finished chunk rather than the arrangement timeline being where you position each instrument.

lukesleepwalker

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
I may be missing something but the current song mode implementation gives you 12 clips to loop on but what each track is doing cannot be shared across clips without copying/pasting. Say, for instance, you have a drum sequence A on track 1 and bass sequence A on track 2 in clip S01. You will need to copy/paste notes to repeat the drum sequence A if you also want it to appear in clip S02 with bass sequence B.

I was hoping that this repetition of music would be avoided but forcing you to work this way does mean that you can build up whole sections of music in one go and then you are then just moving around the finished chunk rather than the arrangement timeline being where you position each instrument.

This is the one downside to setting up the snapshots as 4Pockets has done in Helium. I think it's pretty darn easy if you have everything lined up perfectly across tracks but it gets dicier when it's not lined up. It would be a REAL efficiency gain to be able to define different spots in each track associated with a snapshot.

MisplacedDevelopment

@lukesleepwalker said:

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
I may be missing something but the current song mode implementation gives you 12 clips to loop on but what each track is doing cannot be shared across clips without copying/pasting. Say, for instance, you have a drum sequence A on track 1 and bass sequence A on track 2 in clip S01. You will need to copy/paste notes to repeat the drum sequence A if you also want it to appear in clip S02 with bass sequence B.

I was hoping that this repetition of music would be avoided but forcing you to work this way does mean that you can build up whole sections of music in one go and then you are then just moving around the finished chunk rather than the arrangement timeline being where you position each instrument.

This is the one downside to setting up the snapshots as 4Pockets has done in Helium. I think it's pretty darn easy if you have everything lined up perfectly across tracks but it gets dicier when it's not lined up. It would be a REAL efficiency gain to be able to define different spots in each track associated with a snapshot.

Yeah, I was hoping that we would see one local clip pool per track (in addition to the current global one) and either one song mode per track or a single song mode with multiple lanes like in MTR.

MisplacedDevelopment

Playing with hosting this in Audio Evolution Mobile. There was a problem apparently with Cubasis incorrectly advertising the sample rate and it looks like the same thing is true in AEM. I needed to manually change the sample rate in Helium to 48k, then save and reload the Helium session in order for the song timeline to run at the correct speed without overshooting the end of every clip.

Trying one Helium per AEM track. This way you can keep all clips for each instrument in one session. In theory you then have 12*16 clips per track, per instrument by using clip mutes. Best to see if you use up all 12 scene clips in each track before messing with track mutes to extend the number of clips for that instrument. Using gated clips means you can just make all clips something like 12 bars and just drag the clip in song mode to match the amount you used for that section.

Using AEM timeline looping you can loop over your song mode timeline and use that to build up the other tracks, which you can’t do in AUM.

Tip for this is when you start a new track, have the transport running and looping over the area you want to play over. First thing to do on the new track (after resetting the sample rate - got caught by this again!) is create an empty clip. Opening song mode you will see the transport looping and this will guide you to draw in the new clip. Once the clip is drawn then you can edit the notes on the main piano roll, guided by the looping piano roll transport.

soundtemple

@MisplacedDevelopment @lukesleepwalker Pro's and cons as I see it. RE the copy/paste issue, you can use the media bay to export anything by selecting a region and hitting Export midi clip, then you can drag that to any snapshot you might want to use it in. Pretty easy. The folder organisation with naming makes it neat and tidy.

I quite like Paul's implementation of building up sections for your song on the timeline. It's (a unique and original) combination between traditional DAW flow and session view Ableton style clip launching. The mute functions give you a lot of flexibility. Instead of having clips/patterns from everywhere you work on a section of your song which can then be placed anywhere in the timeline. I like it.

lukesleepwalker

@soundtemple said:
@MisplacedDevelopment @lukesleepwalker Pro's and cons as I see it. RE the copy/paste issue, you can use the media bay to export anything by selecting a region and hitting Export midi clip, then you can drag that to any snapshot you might want to use it in. Pretty easy. The folder organisation with naming makes it neat and tidy.

I quite like Paul's implementation of building up sections for your song on the timeline. It's (a unique and original) combination between traditional DAW flow and session view Ableton style clip launching. The mute functions give you a lot of flexibility. Instead of having clips/patterns from everywhere you work on a section of your song which can then be placed anywhere in the timeline. I like it.

Ah, had not thought of that technique; thanks for the tip! I do agree that Paul’s take on looping within a traditional timeline is unique and compelling for some workflows.

MisplacedDevelopment

@soundtemple said:
@MisplacedDevelopment @lukesleepwalker Pro's and cons as I see it. RE the copy/paste issue, you can use the media bay to export anything by selecting a region and hitting Export midi clip, then you can drag that to any snapshot you might want to use it in. Pretty easy. The folder organisation with naming makes it neat and tidy.

I quite like Paul's implementation of building up sections for your song on the timeline. It's (a unique and original) combination between traditional DAW flow and session view Ableton style clip launching. The mute functions give you a lot of flexibility. Instead of having clips/patterns from everywhere you work on a section of your song which can then be placed anywhere in the timeline. I like it.

Good tip there to quickly reuse clips, also the folders will surely be a help here too. My problem (and I'm not sure it really is much of a problem!) comes when I want to change the contents of that clip across all of the places I have used it. One missing piece of the puzzle would be the ability to optionally link your CLIP01:TRACK01 data to the contents of the clip file rather than be a point in time copy of it. That way you could update the clip file and everywhere which references it would also be updated.

I agree that despite its limitations, this way of working does encourage you to quickly get stuff down and as everything is on one screen then that makes it easier to keep everything in your head. It focusses on creating larger chunks of song which would suit some more than trying to create a song from smaller building blocks.

soundtemple

@MisplacedDevelopment I hear ya. I think we (and the devs) are all working hard to crack this song sequencing / post DAW / AUM style workflow. It seems there's a lot happening with LK, Helium and Atom2, so I think we'll get there soon with many and varied options. So, I'm all for hearing about ideas when people have them!

I've been contemplating a setup whereby for some tracks instead of sequencing notes in Helium, I use Helium to trigger patterns in an ATOM instance that is dedicated to a particular instrument. The ATOM instance can house all the patterns I might need and Helium can trigger them with a note (which can be part of a Helium snapshot and song structure). The advantage of this solution is that if I change the ATOM pattern it is updated in all places.

Maybe I am over complicating things (wouldnt be the first time)

MisplacedDevelopment

@MisplacedDevelopment said:
Quick test shows that Helium seems to suffer the same problem as some of the DAWs I have tested where you can’t use notes to change patterns. Velocity changes do however work. Velocity is a little fiddly to change but better than some of the DAWs I’ve tried.

Anyway, with the new Song mode you can now trigger Atom 2 patterns using predefined clips of MIDI on a timeline. Here is an example two pattern Atom clip:

This is triggered by the following Helium setup:

First I configured the C0 notes with different velocities to trigger the two different patterns in Atom.

Then I created a snapshot of these notes so that they would be available in Helium song mode.

I then opened up the controller mode and long pressed on “Velocity Selected Controller” and chose song mode.

I could then select the loop that I just defined and paint it onto the timeline.

Note that by default the clip loops forever and you probably do not want this so change the loop type to “Play” on the left hand menu.

@soundtemple Great minds I stopped going down this path when I realised I would still end up wanting to reuse my trigger patterns across Helium clips. Using one Helium per track does open up the options but then you have multiple timelines to keep on top of and you lose a lot of the advantage of having everything on one screen, though it did work surprisingly well in my earlier AEM DAW experiment.

[Deleted User]

Can someone tell me if I have to preset a length before recording into Helium? I'd like to just hit record and play for as long as I feel like.... possible?

soundtemple

@MisplacedDevelopment ah must have missed that. Interesting. I need some more time to play around with some ideas. Be sure to let us know if you come up with something that works.

I’m just looking to keep it super simple and maximize every possible option - there must be a way!! lol

eross

i haven’t been following this thread for a bit. has the developer mentioned anything about this coming to iphone ?

gdog

@eross said:
i haven’t been following this thread for a bit. has the developer mentioned anything about this coming to iphone ?

I asked him in the comments section on his YouTube video, and he said he’d look into trying to make it in a future update, but I don’t think it’s guaranteed to happen..

RajahP

Updated..

soundtemple

@RajahP said:
Updated..

... again!!

RajahP

@soundtemple said:

@RajahP said:
Updated..

... again!!

seems so... Yes...

[Deleted User]

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