iMIDIPatchbay – a new iPad app that’s designed to let you organize your whole MIDI setup from one central point – is now available.
Features:
- Create split and layer configurations very easily
- Send volume and other control changes (reverb, chorus, pan) to your sound devices
- Send program changes to your sound devices
- Transpose sounds in octave steps
- Filter controller data (sustain, pitch-bend, modulation, expression, aftertouch)
- Store configurations as programs for later recall
- Switch programs of iMIDIPatchbay from another app or MIDI device via program changes
- Switch programs while holding down keys or holding e.g. the sustain pedal without getting stuck notes
- UI which is optimized for live usage
The developer notes:
“iMIDIPatchbay aims to be used on stage. As I’m a live keyboardist myself and make frequent usage of the app, a great user experience and ease of use is taken care of. While some other apps also offer routing for MIDI data on iOS, none of them addresses the needs of live musicians. For example, iMIDIPatchbay allows to switch programs while still holding down keys without interrupting the sound. Furthermore, the user interface’s artwork fits nicely to real hardware devices.”
Here are some scenarios for how you can use iMIDIPatchbay.
As a keyboard player, you most probably know about splitting and layering sounds. While this can be done relatively easy on professional keyboards, it becomes more complex if your gear consists of multiple keyboards and sound expanders. iMIDIPatchbay makes building such configurations a lot easier than it has ever been before.
After connecting your keyboard and other MIDI devices to the iPad, you can easily create split zones and assign sounds of your MIDI devices to them. It’s also possible to route the MIDI data to other apps if they have a virtual MIDI port. Furthermore, you can filter out controllers which is great if you want e.g. pitch bend or sustain to affect only a subset of the active sounds.
Requirements:
You need a CoreMIDI interface to connect your keyboards and sound expanders to the iPad.
iMIDIPatchbay is available in a free and paid version. The paid version is $54.99 in the App Store. The free version is limited to two programs to store to, and they are cleared if the app is terminated. In addition, when running in the background, the lite version terminates after 30 minutes.
Great App, and works good!! With all due respect to the author, it it would be more competitive if you priced it lower.
Sometimes I think ipad users have been spoiled by all those insanely low priced apps.
the two most remarkable features are that it produces no audio glitch while changing banks an that the developer thinks that it looks cool.
49€ i mean sorry for a midi patchbay?
for sure iam used to low priced ipad apps because that are the apps i buy. also korg synth apps go for 20€ why on earth should i buy a midi patchbay for double the money of an ms20 or polysix. all of the virtual of course
You don’t have to buy it….. go on buying bad 3D shooters for 1,99 $ ….
No virtual midi?
Um, the “free version” seems to be a version of the same program in roughly the same sense as Calculator is a free version of Excel…
This app is perfectly suited to my needs and seems to be very well thought out and has a nice clean UI…then the price convinces me that I don’t need it ‘that’ much. Oh well.
For the iPad platform….it’s $$!! Not spoiled as I do run a lot of NI Apps….also use Ableton…..so I do spend $$…..
Nice to see that someone else is working in this direction, but I have much, much more in my mind only can’t find the developer interested implementing all my ideas.
Good to see these types of apps appearing, but this is really an emulation of the Nord Stage controller. For live use I would find this rather difficult to use as the volume controllers are fiddly and jump quite quickly. I would imagine if you were stepping from one discrete set up to the next in a well rehearsed and soundchecked environment it would be OK, but I often need to make quick tweaks on the fly or to fade parts in and out.
Whilst this is nice for a simple use case of four parts what if I wanted to use more? For nearly £40 I would want to be able to customise the controller a bit – add extra parts – scale the size of user interface elements etc etc. I would also like to be able to have a user defined number of zones (not that I use zones that often). As far as I can see, I can only use one “master” keyboard as well. An app like this would come into its own with a multi keyboard setup but if I’m right, it can’t do that.
Finally – I could just use mainstage (cheaper than this iPad app but requiring the ownership of a Mac admittedly) which gives me a much greater level of system control. It can be controlled by any number of iPad apps which can be fully customised.
So… my thoughts for what they are worth is that this is a great little app, but it is overpriced for what it offers. At this price it is aimed at semi-pros and above and most of these guys would have cheaper better alternatives. If the price was less than £10 it might make it a worthwhile proposition, but it is too expensive for a casual purchase and anyone seriously facing the problems it addresses has better alternatives elsewhere…
I have a Devil’s Advocate question: Is it generally recognized (by this forum) that the iPad is a heavy-duty industrial-strength piece of music hardware? Is its reliability comparable to a MacBook? My music needs are reaching a crossroads where I have to decide to spend my available time on either a controller/iPad combination or look to dedicated music hardware. In the context of this post, would professional musicians seriously consider iMIDIPatchbay over a Nord Stage controller or MacBook/Mainstage setup. How many professional musicians would really entrust their performance to an iPad?
It’s really too expensive just to be curious.. And i don’t understand what’s the point with the app. Those things, split keyboard, midi channel, etc, are controlled by my keyboard, or by the app. I can do everything with my actual stuff, so why another app?
Hey Pier,
It all depends on budget (and your setup) .. But I wouldn’t seriously consider iMidiPatchbay over a Nord Stage /Mainstage setup (which is – in fact – exactly what I have!). I’ve played with using the iPad to control Mainstage, but I still prefer having a fader I can grab and move than the iPad surface. When I am playing the nord stage with both hands, I want to be able to grab a fader and move it without having to look too hard or check I haven’t accidently moved something else. If I were a laptop musician (by which I mean I used my laptop as an instrument rather than as a sound source/controller) I would be much happier using the iPad as a controller. In the studio, I find the iPad to be an excellent tool – the omnisphere controller is brilliant – but even that I find a bit of a struggle to use live – because I don’t want to be “playing” the iPad and a keyboard at the same time. It really depends on what you want to be doing.
For me iMidiPatchbay has no place in a studio environment (I have other tools to do that) and doesn’t really make sense in a live playing environment (where the assumption appears to be you have no computer around) where I want to focus on playing the keys. It could work in a theatre type environment or a well rehearsed show with specific setups for each song, but I think you can do everything it does with most modern keyboards (with a little effort) and you probably have been doing so already if you are in this environment.
Hope that is helpful and clear and apologies to the creator of the app who has obviously worked hard to get something which looks great and has some good functionality – it just (at this price) doesn’t seem to fit any niche I can see!
Looking at all the comments around the internet, it’s clear the developer has goofed perhaps on his price point. ( Or he’s just sticking it to us good! ) While most are saying the app is decent, if not very good, it seems most are in agreement that the price is just way too much for what you get. Although we MAY be spoiled about the price points of these ipad apps, it is what it is right now and I would hope that more featured rich apps would pave the way to higher pricing and not apps like these. I have many apps that I would most definitely would have paid $55 bucks for instead of $5.
Fortunately for me, iMIDIPatchBay will not be getting my money. It will be interesting to see how the developer responds to all of this price criticism. It certainly enhances the debate about ipad app prices. While it’s inevitable that ipad prices will increase, I certainly wouldn’t want this app to lead the way. Yikes!
Hi everybody.
It all comes down to what features one needs. What I wanted to accomplish was to change presets on all my hardware gear, plus send some extra midi data to some synths (eg. volume, resonance, chorus) upon starting next song, plus to display sheet music plus organize playlists and set lists flawlessly, and to do all this as simply as possible.
This app nails it. I spend a lot of time searching the market for an app that could do this. I’ve tried many of them. Got this one, and it gave me the ALL the functionality I was after. The price for this was 27 Euro. At first this seemed a lot, but after trying it out I was very happy with the purchase.
Real-time control is something different, though. I adjust volume while I am playing when absolutely necessary, and it works alright for me. But for serious sound tweaking I would go with a hardware controller. Whoever is after realtime control will find that almost nothing beats having physical knobs and/or sliders.
This app is about something else. It is a serious midi powerhouse, that sets your environment so that you are ready to perform.