Animoog players rejoice, a new version has come :-) And the official list of new features is long, there’s possibly something for you in there. Amongst the highlights, you find Bluetooth LE MIDI devices support, support for MPE input with note-per-channel MIDI (see this previous post on Expressive MIDI and Animoog) and Apple Pencil support for the lucky ones amongst us who have an iPad Pro.

Here’s the official changelog:

• Animoog now requires iOS 8.2 or later
• Fully optimized graphics, keyboard layout and interaction for the 12.9-inch iPad Pro
• Support for Apple Pencil pressure on the keyboard
• Support for Apple Pencil angle as a ‘pencil-angle’ modulation control on the keyboard
• Support for Apple Pencil angle as a ‘path-width’ modulation source along the path
• Support for Bluetooth LE MIDI devices
• Support for MPE input with note-per-channel MIDI controllers
• Added collapsible Inter-App Audio transport bar
• Consolidated ‘poly-pressure’ and ‘chan-pressure’ into one ‘pressure’ modulation source
• The vertical position of the keys on initial touch is now used as the ‘velocity’ modulation source
• Left and right tapping next to the scale slider will now transpose octaves down and up
• Timbres panel improvements to make sound design easier
• Single-tapping a timbre on the left panel now highlights it, while double-tapping scrolls to its location in the Timbres list
• The Timbres list on the right panel is no longer collapsed when switching presets
• Values of CC mapped controls are now sent out at preset changes
• Incoming MIDI CC 120 now turns off all active sound
• Incoming MIDI RPN 0 now sets the active pitch bend range
• Minor user experience improvements when working with modal dialogs
• Settings are now saved immediately when changes occur
• Fixes to timbre list where auto-scroll would overshoot at times
• Fixes to some built-in scale definitions

If you’re on a non-retina iPad, please wait before updating. We learned there’s a startup crash on non-retina iPads and the fix is coming. From a publicly accessible comment on the iPad Musician Facebook group: “We’ve implemented and tested the fix, submitted it to Apple for review and requested this to be expedited. While waiting for that to go through, we continue testing on all other devices. Sorry for this!” Update: less than 24 hours after 2.4.0, Animoog 2.4.1 came to us to fix this issue.

The previous version, Animoog 2.3.5, came out on March 11th. While Animoog for iPhone has not been updated since February 4th, this iPad update might be a sign for an upcoming Animoog for iPhone update as well?

Here’s a bonus for Animoog Love readers, most of you know I’m fond of Animoog solos, even considering myself an Animoog soloist — I’m always genuinely interested in how others are playing Animoog and I’m happy that Animoog player ‘Brother El’ contacted me to share the following video of his own Animoog performance earlier this month. Hey, there’s even other players that made full albums out of Animoog, such as Luigi Bairo.

I have quite a few unfinished posts to share with you Animoog enthusiasts, while I somehow find the time to complete and publish them, enjoy the new version of Animoog! :-) Cheers — Alex / Satri