Swar Systems has released SwarPlug for iPad – a new collection of Indian Virtual instruments.
Here’s what they have to say about it:
Add up to 79* perfectly sampled virtual Indian instruments to your iPad’s sequencer!
SwarPlug is an Audio Unit Extension that will load in AUv3 compatible hosts like Garageband, Cubasis, AUM, etc… as additional voices that can be played through the keyboard, in new loops created from scratch through your MIDI editor, or by using the thousands of MIDI loops included in the plugin.
Pricing and Availability
SwarPlug for iPad is available now for US $2.99. This app includes the Tabla instrument, and additional sounds are available as In App purcheses. You can listen to a short demo clip of each instruments at the Swar Systems site.
This looks great for an introductory sampling of those sounds and rhythms. The base price for the tabla sounds & MIDI loops is good. There are IAP for many additional sounds (79 of them!?). I heard there is a motherload price, all for $99.
I’m going to sound a little nit-picky here. Though the samples might be “perfect”, I think they only contain three velocity layers at most (usually one, I think). On the plus side, this app and its IAPs will have a reasonably small memory footprint. But it won’t have the realism you get with more velocity switching.
The pitch bending is global from the bender– which is what most controllers can do. However, with these kinds of tones, this always sounds pretty fake. It would have made sense to implement/allow polyphonic aftertouch to control pitch so that drones and other ringing notes can stay put while the melodic note bends. Though most controllers don’t have poly AT, it would be possible to program it within the host DAW.
Ok, for $3 for the base app with tabla, and $3 for your choice of other sounds is a reasonably good deal for improvisation practice and cultural détournement. However, I can’t help but wish that they would have offered more than tabla in the base instrument, and offered offered additional velocity layers in the IAPs.