MIDI Designer to control other iPad apps

Question

OK, this may sound a bit weird, but I'm hoping MIDI Designer can solve this for me. Here's what I'm looking to accomplish...

For live performance, I'd like to bring nothing other than my iPad and a simple MIDI keyboard controller to control various soft synths on the iPad. The issue I'd like to overcome is that in some soft synths (Zeta, Sunrizer, Thor, etc) the controllers are often too small to see. Here's what I'd like to do:

Say in Sunrizer, for each particular track in our playlist, I'd like to have a preset in MIDI Designer that has knobs/faders/etc. mapped out to that particular synth for exactly what I'm going to be fiddling with on that track. When we move on to the next track in the playlist, I can recall another MIDI Designer page that has a completely different set of knobs/faders/etc.

That way I'm not fumbling around in (again, say Sunrizer's) interface looking for the right knob to monkey with.

Also, ideally, each MIDI Designer page could control a different synth/effects processor. So say I'm running Sunrizer through AudioBus with Turnado in the Effects channel; can I set Sunrizer as MIDI channel 1 and Turnado as MIDI channel 2, and then create a template in MIDI Designer that has some knobs/sliders/faders that control channel 1 and some more knobs that control channel 2 (Turnado?)

Hope this makes sense... I know I can do this sort of thing in TouchOSC, but the inability to modify templates/pages on the fly WITHOUT a laptop is what's making me lean towards MIDI Designer (and yes, I do have the free version, I'm just trying to suss all this out in my mind before dropping $30 for the real thing).

Many thanks, all! From what I've seen from it thus far, it IS prety incredible...

Answer 1

First off, thanks for your kind words and the question.

Why It's Feasible

As far as I can tell from your question, the answer is yes: by using different MIDI channels (or even unique Channel-CC combinations) you could get the job done, and never have to leave MIDI Designer while controlling your various iPad MIDI targets (= iOS apps).

We added MIDI Thru in 1.6.0, so you can send the external MIDI keyboard to the MIDI targets via MD, or not.

Should I Buy Pro?

We're not accepting new users for Lite, but since you're an existing user, you could:

1. Try out what you need in miniature in Lite
2. Or try out the *entire* thing in Lite
3. Just try it out in Pro: this setup is not that strange, really
4. Either way, you can mail the layout to yourself and open it in MIDI Designer Pro with no issues

Either way, we're here for the support to get you through any issues, but talking to other iPad apps is pretty well sealed up thanks to CoreMIDI.

And yeah, having the editor on the iPad is absolutely essential, but watch the Walkthrough Video on MIDI Designer and you'll see other advantages that the App has, which are huge.

Thanks!
Dan

Dan Rosenstark
Author & CEO

Answer 2

First off, thanks for your kind words and the question.

Why It's Feasible

As far as I can tell from your question, the answer is yes: by using different MIDI channels (or even unique Channel-CC combinations) you could get the job done, and never have to leave MIDI Designer while controlling your various iPad MIDI targets (= iOS apps).

We added MIDI Thru in 1.6.0, so you can send the external MIDI keyboard to the MIDI targets via MD, or not.

Should I Buy Pro?

We're not accepting new users for Lite, but since you're an existing user, you could:

1. Try out what you need in miniature in Lite
2. Or try out the *entire* thing in Lite
3. Just try it out in Pro: this setup is not that strange, really
4. Either way, you can mail the layout to yourself and open it in MIDI Designer Pro with no issues

Either way, we're here for the support to get you through any issues, but talking to other iPad apps is pretty well sealed up thanks to CoreMIDI.

And yeah, having the editor on the iPad is absolutely essential, but watch the Walkthrough Video on MIDI Designer and you'll see other advantages that the App has, which are huge.

Thanks!
Dan

Dan Rosenstark
Author & CEO