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iPhone / ITM midilab (and other products)
StoreTags: wireless, midi, iphone
Author: gorf on September 29 2008 Viewed 1185 times. 11 people liked this blog. You can rate it below if you haven't already.
People who enjoyed reading this: lematt, craque, p, filarion, Otterfan, Dizzygotheca, ercoa, minisystem, eyesnine, skab, kidko
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I got the chance over the weekend to play with ITM's free wireless midi / iphone utility entitled "midilab". This is the one free program that they offer, the rest are around the $5 mark I think.
All I have to say is wow. I know this is just the tip of the iceberg but man am I ever impressed. Midilab allows you to turn your iphone into a 4x4 or 8x8 trigger grid, a keyboard with octave selection and a pitch bend, or a XY controller. I believe the phone handles up to 5 point multitouch, so it's quite powerful. I know some people had compared them to cheap lemurs in the past, and that's a pretty accurate description!
Setting up midilab on an 8x8 grid pretty much makes my iPhone as useful of a tool as my mpd32. I'm amazed at what I can do with this thing. Not to mention how damn easy it is.
My first experiments worked something like this:
1. Set up each scene of a song in ableton along the top 16 or so triggers on the iPhone from left to right.
2. Randomly select single loops and assign them to triggers towards the bottom of the phone's screen.
3. Set up the middle 16 triggers to stop audio on the first 16 channels
4. Set ableton to 1/16 notes.
5. Go crazy while sitting on the toilet and triggering your laptop in the next room (not really, but I could have).
This opens up a huge range of possibilities for performance, or lack of. I think it would be super fun to play an entire set from within the crowd. Hahaha.
A friend dropped by yesterday after I had everything set up, he said that I had pretty much killed musical performance for him after showing him what it could do. Personally, I think it's a whole bunch of awesome!
This kind of stuff is only going to get better and better. I've yet to buy any software for my iPhone yet, but I will once I find my way around the lay of the land. So exciting!
link
/mike | |
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09/29/08
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lematt
i agree. tried it too. it's even like a cheap WIRELESS lemur ! 
09/29/08
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filarion
touchOSC is the REAL wireless Lemur!
09/29/08
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filarion
sorry, here's a link: link
09/29/08
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gorf
I had come across touchOSC before but haven't had the time to look to deep into it.
It seemed at first that it was much more complicated to set up, these videos don't really make it seem that way... Interesting...
09/29/08
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filarion
the thing you have to do is install "osculator", which handles the interfacing between the OSC and Midi signals. there's presets for it though, so you only have to make sure that the assigned ports are correct and then you can use the Osculator MIDI driver in any MIDI host.. pretty wicked, there's no latency to speak of for me. once they come out with their interface designer it'll be touch-heaven.
09/29/08
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p
OOOOHHH! touchosc is exactly what I've been looking for.
thanks filarion
09/29/08
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p
oh and thanks gorf. I'm checking midilab as well.
until touchosc does the customizable interfaces. I still may have to roll my own somehow. so all info is wicked.
09/29/08
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tmns
will this work on the ipod touch too?
09/29/08
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gorf
All of the itm stuff should, or so I've read... I dont know about osc.
09/30/08
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filarion
everything should work on the touch as well, except for apps that use the microphone or GPS..
09/30/08
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n9
they all work on the touch, confirmed by me. touchosc is the shit but it takes a long time to set up the OSCulator patches for a lot of the pages. Like hours, although once you've done it I guess you don't have to do that again.
It is pretty much exactly like a cheaper smaller lemur, especially considering that touchOSC will soon allow people to make custom layouts, but the screen is so damn small. too small to be a monome emu, I think, for example. I tried to use mine on a session over the weekend and I just fell back on my padkontrol and bcr. I have had thoughts about velcroing it to my guitar's pickguard so that I could use it while I play that way.
09/30/08
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opticecho
nice, I'm going to have to check it out. Thanks for the link!
09/30/08
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filarion
n9, have you tried out haplome? it actually is just that, a 40h via OSC. there's also a bunch of osculator presets for touchOSC (at least for the Simple and Mix layouts)
10/01/08
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kidko
holy crap this is cool. thanks for the tip. it took me 10 minutes from reading about it to hammering out a beat on the 8x8 pads
10/04/08
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gorf
itm just updated the midilab software. Luckily I read the changelog before installing as it turns it into much more of a trial software to test the different functions of their paid programs. The new version will randomly choose a control surface type and will randomly switch after 30 minutes.
You've been warned.
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