Today Apple released iOS 9. Many music apps which haven’t been recently updated break with such major iOS revisions. I’m glad to inform you that according to early reports from players, the latest Animoog version works fine with iOS 9. A Moog developer also indicated today that a minor update will be submitted this week in order to support the latest Audiobus SDK. Yes, that means Audiobus doesn’t currently work properly with iOS 9 and the update has been submitted to Apple. Be aware that this might be true for other music apps, they may not work as expected until their developers take care of compatibilities issues. For Animoog itself, we’re apparently on the safe side with iOS 9 and Moog developers are ensuring that if bugs are found, they’ll quickly be addressed.
On an unrelated topic, yesterday I invited you, Animoog enthusiasts and users of this site, to contribute Animoog fan art. I was pleasantly surprised to receive submissions in such a short time! Thanks!
Here’s this one from Heide Hoffmann:
And this one from Andre Wild:
Big thanks to Heide and Andre! I’ll copy all Animoog Fan Art contributions to a page of its own. Cheers! — Alex / Satri
While Animoog.org launched over 18 months ago, we haven’t published Animoog video tutorials, until now! The first set of videos I’m proposing, from Dubspot instructor Matt Cellitti, are from 2012! But despite their age, content is still pretty pertinent.
I particularly invite you to watch the first two 10-minutes videos which focus on understanding how sound design works in Animoog. While I consider myself more of an Animoog player than a sound designer, it quickly become useful to learn how to shape and sculpt Animoog presets to your taste. The videos obviously don’t cover everything Animoog players should know, but it’s an excellent introduction and chances are you’ll learn useful things you didn’t know. So here they are!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Hope you’ll learn something useful in there! :-) — Alex / Satri
I was playing Blokus with my daughters, well not really playing since they’re too young to understand the rules so we’re making colorful shapes instead. I ended up doing this:
Granted, that’s not exactly ‘art’ and I was fairly limited by the pieces of the game, but it gave me the idea of collecting Animoog fan art! So there you go, if you made anything that could qualify as ‘Animoog fan art’, I’ll give it a home here on Animoog.org. Contact me by leaving a comment below. Cheers and have fun! — Alex / Satri
This week Moog Music published a video of Chas Llewellyn showing his large-scale light sculpture controlled by Animoog.
While we previously listed nice alternative controllers for Animoog, this example demonstrates that with Animoog’s MIDI capabilities and programming skills, you can really control anything you want.
From the Moog announcement:
«Sculptor / programmer / interactive interface designer, Chas Llewellyn, explores the form and function of a large-scale light sculpture he designed using Moog Music’s Animoog app as the control source.»
These Animoog news cover versions 2.2.6 and 2.2.8 and Animoog for iPhone 1.1.10, both supporting the new Audiobus Remote app.
Animoog version 2.2.8 has been released yesterday and here’s the official release notes:
Added support for AudioBus Remote with triggers for Recorder, Preset Navigation, Scale Lock, Hold and Orbit Time Change
Added support for mixing down to AudioCopy and AudioShare in the 4-track recorder
Stability improvements
As an happy Animoog beta tester, I can confirm there’s useful fixes in the ‘stability improvements’ category. The big addition here is Audiobus Remote support. Audiobus itself is a popular app to route audio from one app to other apps, making it easy to add filters and effects, adding tracks from other apps, and more, all this in real-time. As an example, you can run drums from the Sector app and play Animoog live while recording both in a third app. With version 2.2.8 released yesterday, Animoog can now be controlled on another iOS device with Audiobus Remote. Moog developer Geert Bevin shared the following screenshot of Animoog and Filtatron in Audiobus Remote.
Animoog version 2.2.6 was released on June 29th, 2015, while I was on holidays and away from computers (but with my dear Animoog alongside), and its official release notes are:
Stability improvements for a very rare crash at launch
Stability improvements in situations where the audio engine is reset by iOS itself
Improvements to restore purchase functionality
That’s correct, Animoog version 2.2.7 never made it to the public.
Updates to Animoog for iPhone were also released, with version 1.1.7 released on June 15, then v1.1.8 on June 17, followed by v1.1.9 on June 27. And now, lucky us, we’re at version 1.1.10 released on July 30.
Moog developers taking care of Animoog since last Spring continue to be closer than ever to its users and the iOS musicians community, and that’s great news for the future of Animoog!
1,713 presets, that’s how many presets sound designers gave us to explore. Thank you. Without you, Animoog wouldn’t be the Animoog I love so much today. As a mean to thank you dear sound designers and to highlight your work, I’m pleased to provide this major update to the List of Animoog Expansion Packs.
What’s new and improved
Version 1.2 brings:
Added Alba Ecstasy’s 429 presets bundle
I find those presets pretty amazing, however, they don’t fully leverage Animoog’s polypressure by default — you need to go to the ENV/MOD tab and manually configure polypressure (I plan to eventually write documentation describing how to do that)
Added Sunsine Audio’s 254 presets bundle
As far as I’ve tested so far, Sunsine Audio presets don’t leverage Animoog’s polypressure by default — you need to go to the ENV/MOD tab and manually configure polypressure
Added ‘Luftrum 8’ 64 presets
Updated the ‘BASE Pack’ info, which is now free and available from the in-app store
Added the number of presets for the Halloween pack
Changed & added colors to the table
Improved third-party packs installation instructions — yes, it’s much easier with iFunbox than with the official instructions
And a few other minor modifications such as: ordered the list in a way that makes more sense, removed the reference to the html and csv versions of the table, and various other minor improvements
Here’s two examples of improvisations done with the Alba Ecstasy presets bundle. Since stereo ping pong is abused, headphones are required.
I need your help. Can someone tell us in the comments below how many presets and timbres there are in the vanilla Animoog? That info is missing from the table. Thanks!
Unrelated, I also updated the Animoog improvements wish list with a few enhancements and ideas, such as leveraging the iPad’s accelerometer sensor and allowing it to act as a ‘control’ in the ENV/MOD tab, thus enabling vibratos and pitch bending by shaking and turning (changing the orientation of) your iPad
I’ll be away for the upcoming weeks until the end of July. Expect Animoog news upon my return. Meanwhile, enjoy Animoog! — Alex / Satri
Mapped controls now respond to MIDI when Animoog is in the background
Fixed MIDI input and output port selection sometimes tacitly picking another one
External pitch bend now behaves linearly across the pitch bend range
Pitch bend strip is more usable by reducing the sensitivity in the middle
Stability improvements of the 4-track recorder
The recording length of the basic recorder has been doubled
Invalid timbre files are marked and don’t cause crashes anymore
New installations now by default map CC64 to the Hold switch
Version number is now shown at the bottom of configuration screen
Improvement of in-app store layout
Overall stability improvements
There’s also a little nice surprise the official changelog won’t tell you, look in the in-app store, scroll down and you’ll find that the ‘BASE Pack’, an expansion pack containing 25 presets and 40 timbres, is now not only available for in-app purchase, but it’s also free to everybody! Thanks Moog!
« To demonstrate some of what you can do, I’ve created a few sample videos based on music I improvised with the award-winning Animoog app for iPad ($29.99). Music made on mobile devices is quickly growing in popularity with tons of innovative musical instruments disguised as apps being available for iOS »
Here’s the third video I recorded live in the context of this article. It’s for the ‘don’t June’ track. It’s voluntarily less diverse than the previous two videos since I used it to showcase a specific technique with the iTunes visualizer.
Animoog for iPhone 1.1.7 Released
The smaller but very capable version of Animoog also got an update, Animoog for iPhone version 1.1.7 has been released. This is the first update since November 2014 and brings major bug fixes and new features, here’s the official changelog.
Stable support for iOS 8
Stable support for 64-bit devices
Revised timbres panel with categories (touch-hold timbre in category for preview)
Added ‘hold’ switch to keyboard for iPhone 5 and later
New installations now by default map CC64 to the Hold switch for iPhone 5 and later
Audiobus input slot compatibility fixes
Pitch bend range can now be selected in MIDI settings
Pitch bend strip is more usable by reducing the sensitivity in the middle
External pitch bend now behaves linearly across the pitch bend range
Pitch and mod strips now light up with incoming MIDI
MIDI CC mapping can be edited through the dialog after double-tapping a control
Mapped controls now respond to MIDI when Animoog is in the background
Virtual Animoog MIDI ports are now always available even if no port is explicitly selected
Fixed MIDI input and output port selection sometimes tacitly picking another one
Preset menu doesn’t cover minimized keyboard anymore
Improved IAA instrument compatibility (IAA transport panel will be done for a future release)
Use with any buffer size from 128 to 4096 (256 being the intended size for all supported devices)
Fixes for restore purchase functionality
Improved in-app store layout and interaction
iTunes File Sharing access to timbres, presets and projects
Removed import/export preset from setup panel since iTunes File Sharing should cover all needs
Added timbre category list under ‘random preset’ to enable/disable categories to randomize timbres from
Page selector can now be latched by tapping without dragging the menu
All drop-down menus now support latched operation
Invalid timbre files are marked and don’t cause crashes anymore
Keyboard scale selection now doesn’t misbehave after selecting the whole tone scale
Resuming after interruptions from Siri now reactivates audio
Proper handling of large amounts of MIDI expression data, coming from alternative controllers
Page selection widget now appears below the active page title for easier visibility
Added store entry to the page menu
Proper launch screen across all iPad and iPhone devices
Version number is now shown at the bottom of configuration screen
Overall stability improvements
Moog Music is now employee-owned
I can’t tell how this will affect Animoog’s future, but this is a major change for the creators and developers of Animoog. Earlier this month, Moog Music became an employee-owned company.
Playing Animoog on the iPad is great, but what if your iPad was a meter wide and 20cm large? Wouldn’t that allow you to better play Animoog with such large touch keys instead of the rather small keys we get on our iPad? That’s what alternative controllers are about, and we have great news today for Animoog players.
But wait, does such controllers can be used with Animoog? Yes! Here’s the good news from Moog Developer Geert Bevin shared after the recent release of Animoog 2.2.4:
« An important improvement is that Animoog will now properly handle full-rate MIDI coming from the Eigenharp, LinnStrument, Continuum, … The massive amount of expression messages used to sometimes put Animoog into a weird state. We tracked this bug down and fixed it, making Animoog an excellent choice for any controller that supports polyphonic aftertouch! »
Excited? I am! I encourage you to read Jordan’s entry. Amongst the alternatives controllers Jordan reviews you’ll find:
That last one looks the most unusual. The LinnStrument is also currently the less expensive of those alternative controllers, the ROLI Seaboard being the second less expensive. Over a year ago already, Geert posted the following short but insightful video testing Animoog with the LinnStrument.
Options for controlling Animoog have been one of my main interests as soon as I got Animoog in my hands. The proof is my first two entries on the official Moog forum, the first one posted less than three weeks after the launch of Animoog in 2011, were specifically asking about controllers. I was lucky to get answers from the community at the time that pointed to two alternative controllers, the Endeavour EVO and the VAX77 from Infinite Response, but those two controllers don’t seem to be available anymore. Today is a day to rejoice, we now have plenty of excellent alternative controllers available to us and Moog is really spending time to ensure those controllers are well supported by Animoog. Great times ahead!
Are you aware of other alternative controllers suitable for Animoog? If so, let us know in the comments below! Cheers — Alex / Satri
Lots more than I expected has happened over the weekend! A book on iOS music which mentions Animoog, Animoog currently discounted to half its regular price, and an Animoog article on the ‘Create Digital Music’ website featuring my ‘Unanimoog’ album.
Animoog discounted to $14,99 / $1,99
If Animoog discounts matter to you, follow our Animoog version 2.2.4 released this week, there’s no better time to acquire Animoog if you don’t have it already.
Animoog on ‘Create Digital Music’
Second time I get honored this month, in an interesting article named ‘Unanimoog’ Animoog improvisations album. 2,000 people heard my album in the 3 days following this publication, thanks ‘Create Digital Music’ for highlighting Animoog capabilities!
The article includes a great quote for those who might be ambiguous because of Animoog’s price tag:
« And yes, I’d rather pay thirty bucks for that once than 3 bucks a hundred times for stuff I won’t use »
The book mentions Animoog in a section specific to iOS instrument interfaces:
« In my opinion, Animoog offers one of the best keyboard- like interfaces with full custom scale support. Animoog sounds great itself, but it can also send MIDI to control other apps in the background. You can save custom keyboard configurations with each preset, or lock the current scale in place so you can change presets while keeping the current configuration »
We told you it was coming and now the wait is over! And don’t let you mislead by the it’s name, version 2.2.4 is a major Animoog update considering it brings lots of significant fixes, including stable support for iOS 8. Version 2.2.3 came out in October 2014, over 6 months ago. And now that Moog is putting more love to Animoog development, I expect we’ll have good news from Moog more frequently.
So here’s the official changelog:
Stable support for iOS 8
Stable support for 64-bit devices
Revised timbres panel with categories (touch-hold timbre in category for preview)
Fixes for timbres showing up with domain name prefixes
Audiobus input slot compatibility fixes
Virtual Animoog MIDI ports are now always available even if no port is explicitly selected
Improved IAA instrument compatibility (IAA transport panel will be done for a future release)
Use with any buffer size from 128 to 4096 (256 being the intended size for all supported devices)
Fixes for restore purchase functionality
Improved in-app store layout and interaction
iTunes File Sharing access to timbres, presets and projects
Removed import/export preset from setup panel since iTunes File Sharing should cover all needs
Added timbre category list under ‘random preset’ to enable/disable categories to randomize timbres from
4-track recorder fixes for loading clips, pasting clips and AudioPaste
4-track project fixes for save/load/delete/share
4-track now remains unlocked when not connected to network
Pitch bend range is now always saved with presets and correctly loads from presets when this option is active
Pitch and mod strips now light up with incoming MIDI
Hold button now more clearly shows when it’s active
Manual MIDI CC input now ensures only numbers can be entered
Keyboard scale selection now doesn’t misbehave after selecting the whole tone scale
Preset panel is laid out more consistently
Resuming after interruptions from Siri now reactivates audio
Proper handling of large amounts of MIDI expression data, coming from alternative controllers
Updated built-in manual
Enjoy! And if you find bugs, Moog, more than ever before, provide feedbacks to its users in order to fix those, so let them know about the remaining bugs! — Alex / Satri
