stars is a collection of my favorite solos from previous releases, with some of the original tracks shortened and most of them mastered for an enhanced listening experience. As usual these live Animoog, Model 15, Seaboard and Minimoog improvisations are downloadable for free on Bandcamp and available thought most music services including Apple Music and Spotify.
On stars you get selected solos starting with Animoog tracks from my Unanimoog, escape inside the music and Pianimoog •• discoverY albums, then Moog Model 15 tracks from the album of the same name, followed by my ROLI Seaboard tracks from the RISE 42 album. The last track is a Minimoog Model D solo. In the respective announcements you’ll find which presets was used for each improvisation. Here’s one of the Animoog tracks on stars, une vision pour notre futur.
The Minimoog is celebrating 50 years in 2020! Our family trip to the Canary Islands coincided with the beta testing timeframe for the iOS Minimoog Model D synth. The following montage shows photos from Cesar Manrique’s Jardin de Cactus in Lanzarote along with the Seaboard track ‘Thinking about it‘. It is a Strobe2 synth solo with preset ‘AR Stranger Arp 5D‘ improvised on the ROLI Seaboard RISE 49, available on stars. The album’s cover art is also a picture from these gorgeous islands.
Thinking about it – ROLI Seaboard solo, photos from Manrique’s Jardin de Cactus, Lanzaroteat Los Muchachos, La Palma, Canary Islands
intergalactic masters
Current automated online audio mastering services are appealing with their ease of use and 5-minutes delivery time ; upload your track, select a few options and download the resulting mastered track. CloudBounce and LANDR offer such services for a reasonable fee. I haven’t worked with professional audio engineers yet but consider these services did a pretty good job at enhancing the enjoyment of the stars tracks. On the album you get a mix of tracks mastered by CloudBounce and LANDR, as well as a few unmastered tracks given the algorithms had a hard time handling some of the synthesized sounds.
a limitless sonic universe
Our beloved award-winning Animoog was released in 2011 and so much happened since the first wave of mature mobile music apps. Anyone with a tablet or smartphone has access to these ‘appstruments’ and lots of them are sophisticated musical instruments, far from being toy apps on a touch screen.
« I play the synthesizer the same way somebody else would play cello or violin » — Suzanne Ciani, Patch & Tweak
And it continues to get better on multiple levels ; protocols, hardware and software. Standards are crucial for interoperability and this January, the MIDI 2.0 specification has been officially adopted. MIDI 2.0 capabilities are game changing and pave the way for a blissful musical future. I particularly enjoy the new expressivity opportunities made possible by MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE), and Moog were amongst the first and added support for MIDI MPE in Animoog 2.4 in 2016.
On the hardware realm, on top of the resurgence of modular synthesizers, the past few years brought plentiful new synths, controllers and other tools. The ROLI Seaboard and its ‘5 dimensions of touch’ is one of them I’ve been lucky to get familiar with. Moreover since RISE 42, I usually play synths with Audiofront’s hands-liberating MIDI Expression interfaces, which I wholeheartedly recommend – I’m slowly preparing a post explaining how I’m leveraging these devices.
On the software side, there are tens of new worthwhile synths and music apps launched yearly. In addition to unmatched mobility, those appstruments are diverse and affordable. If you’re curious to discover what’s available, I recommend Jakob Haq’s music apps top lists and his outstanding reviews. We even have access to an excellent open source and free mobile synth, AudioKit’s Synth One.
a universe of digital musical instruments to explore
I care
Sincere thanks to all of you for listening to my music and your support. Special kudos to the ones amongst you whom directly contributed to my projects through Bandcamp contributions or other means. For instance I recently got contacted by Eli Schwanz, the third nice person whom created a video with one of my Animoog tracks ; his FORESTSSS FORTRESSS video with the ‘and dance‘ track from the ‘Unanimoog, escape into the music‘ album (track not available on stars though). Thanks Eli!
Eli Schwanz’s FORESTSSS FORTRESSS video featuring my Animoog solo ‘and dance‘
engage
I hope you’ll enjoy stars dear synth enthusiasts. It took a while in the making and I’m readying myself to dive into new sonic dimensions.
These stars are where I come from, I’m eager to show you where I’m going. The stars are where we’re coming from, I’m eager to discover where we’re going.
I’ll also try to complete and publish some Animoog-related posts, I accumulated lots I’d like to share with you :-)
What to expect in this article: what is the Model D app, link to Model D presets, video tutorials and which documentation to read. You’ll find more, even newly free Animoog presets and timbres! Enjoy :-)
Welcome, Minimoog Model D
Dear Animoog enthusiasts, rejoice! A few weeks ago Moog Music released a new stellar app-instrument, modern replication of their Model 15 modular synth from 1973 as an app, this time we get a modern version of the iconic Minimoog synthesizer initially built in 1970. The Minimoog is absolutely relevant today and remains an excellent tool not only to play great synth sounds live, but also for learning and experimenting with sound synthesis.
I’ve been fortunate and have helped beta testing Moog’s Minimoog Model D app before it launched. While my contributions were clearly minor, there’s a little of me in it! Many others have said it and I confirm with confidence that you’re in front of an outstanding app and a wonderful synth. Wikipedia introduces the original Minimoog this way:
[…] the Minimoog was designed to include the most important parts of a modular synthesizer in a compact package, without the need for patch cords. It later surpassed this original purpose, however, and became a distinctive and popular instrument in its own right. It remains in demand today, over four decades after its introduction, for its intuitive design and powerful bass and lead sounds
Amongst the significant new features Moog added to the app over the real-life Model D, you get “[…] the ability to play chords with up to four-note polyphony, an easy-to-use arpeggiator for rhythmic pattern creation, a real time looping recorder with unlimited overdubbing capacity, a tempo-synchronizable stereo ping pong delay module, and the Bender — a wide-range stereo time modulation effect module. The Minimoog Model D App also supports AUv3 Audio Unit extensions, which allows multiple instances of this powerful instrument to be used simultaneously […]” All these features brings lots of value to players and tinkerers amongst us. Here’s the official Model D announcement video.
This Moog app goes beyond the current versions of Model 15 and Animoog in terms of features and I can only hope these older Moog apps will eventually benefit from the nice things Model D can do.
Given that Model D’s price is less than a meal at a restaurant and considering that a physical Minimoog Model D synth will cost you several thousand dollars, it’s a bargain and the sensible thing to do is to head right away to the App Store!
If you read Geert Bevin’s interview on Synthopia, Geert being a Senior Software Engineer at Moog Music and leading the development of the Model D app, you’ll learn about this interesting difference between in the hardware Model D and its app incarnation:
“One thing that took a completely different approach was the actual feedback path – where you have the external audio which is normalized to the output of the mains. That’s really, really hard to do in DSP, because you have a buffer size which prevents you from having a real feedback path. Because of latency, you don’t get the same behavior.”
In the interview we’re also advised not to expect desktop or Android versions anytime soon, “It’s going to be a lot of work, if we go to other platforms. It doesn’t meant we won’t do it, but we’re going to need a lot of additional resources. We’re in the process of discovering how we can move through this software world, while building synths in the way we build them, which is with a lot of love and care and attention to detail.”
A Fountain of Presets
While the Minimoog really invites you to explore sound synthesis from scratch, I personally like presets as starting points and inspiration. It feels like standing on the shoulders of giants. Model D ships with over 160 presets and offers hundreds more in its in-app store.
If you search the web, you’ll find a lot more. And I’m going to give you a head start, here’s the 3 thousands presets we have for Animoog. Furthermore, in Tom Rhea’s Minimoog Sound Charts, you can even find the appropriate settings to play classic instruments such as the harpsichord, the cello, the flute, the clarinet, the trumpet, the xylophone and so on.
Here’s a test solo track I improvised with Model D made with haQ attaQ’s ‘init’ preset, which I modified a bit. Jakob gives this Model D preset to RISE 42 synth solos album heavily rely on this incredible product. I didn’t told anyone at the time, my apologies. I’m excited and have been writing a detailed article on using MIDI Expression with synths, you can simply subscribe to Animoog.org’s newsletter, or follow the Facebook page or the Twitter account to ensure you don’t miss it once I publish it. Meanwhile, the following ‘Embrace m’ track provides an example of improvising with two expression pedals connected to the Model D app.
Watch the (Tech) Doc
While I started by reading the Model D manual — reviews were obviously not available during the Beta testing phase — I’ll completely understand if you favor watching videos first! Amongst the most interesting ones, I selected the next two videos from haQ attaQ to share with you. They clearly explain modulation sources and how the filter works on the Minimoog. Absolutely valuable.
Read the (Tech) Doc
Years ago when I was looking for documentation on sound synthesis and synthesizers, one of the nice people who replied suggested experimenting with sound as one of the best way to understand sound synthesis.
I claim the Minimoog and its subtractive synthesis, centered on oscilloscopes, the famous Moog ladder filter, envelopes and modulations, is a great synth for learning and understanding sound synthesis
To help you in the process, Moog provides useful documentation. You can have fun with Model D without reading the manual, but to improve your understanding of the synth, and thus your ability to make it sound like you envision, you’ll likely need time reading and experimenting. Unless you’re already an expert, you’ll want to read the ‘Understanding Sound and Synthesis’ section. And even more important to learn to use the Model D app-instrument, head to the ‘Features and controls’ and ‘Using the effects’ sections. Here’s a tip before you dive. In my experience, the in-app manual is a bit awkward to use (as an example, it doesn’t remember where we were reading if you leave it momentarily to turn knobs a bit and go back to the manual), but there’s a workaround: you can access the full Model D manual on this official webpage. It’s easier to search and to switch back and forth to the app.
Here’s the diagram presenting the Model D audio and control pathways. After some time tweaking Model D, it becomes more intelligible! :-)
Bring in more (synth) joy
While we’re into exploring sound synthesis with Model D, the timing is good for an insightful introduction to synthesizer basics by the Suzanne Ciani herself.
https://youtu.be/36WMySitV74
I mentioned MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) several times in the past — this crucial modern MIDI standard elevates synth expressiveness to new levels. Unsurprisingly, Model D supports MPE as shown in this short demo where Jordan Rudess’ GeoShred app is used to control Model D through MPE.
The Model D app was only 5$ for its first days, and at the same time, our dear Animoog was on sale as well. So what I do to ensure fellow enthusiasts amongst us don’t miss such opportunities is by mentioning it on the Animoog Love Twitter feed:
Major temporary discount of #Animoog, down to 5$ from 30$, with the iPhone version down to 2$. Tell your friends! :-) #Moog#synth
Hey, this is still an Animoog-focused website! I have several updates I’d like to share with you. While time is infinite, I’m not! Thanks for your patience and meanwhile, I’m glad to inform you that Table of Animoog presets and timbres eventually :-)
In the previous picture, I’m saying hi to all synth enthusiasts from at Moogfest 2016 and it’s only now, thanks to this new Model D app, that I’m happily renewing ties with it. I’m glad we all have this opportunity now.
I recently turned 43 and I am proud to give you —= RISE 42 =— , my fifth music album. It entirely consists of improvised solos played live on the innovative and multiple award-winning ROLI Seaboard RISE 49 keyboard. I particularly enjoyed the freedom it provides for exploring and playing with soundscapes in new ways.
I acquired my Seaboard near my 42th birthday. Over the past year, about once in a week when the girls were asleep, I recorded these 42 tracks for ‘RISE 42’ — showcasing for an hour and a half what this modern keyboard can sound like
I’m rather happy with the result of these explorations, especially given it’s pure freetronica; electronic music improvised live in a single take, just like my three previous albums made of Animoog and Model 15 solos. Here’s the album cover for RISE 42, leveraging a fortunate photo I took while traveling and getting started with the album.
The Seaboard RISE is a controller and needs a synth to make sound. I leveraged a diversity of presets from ROLI’s Equator synth as well as FXpansion’s Strobe2 synth, the two being bundled with the Seaboard.
Both Equator and Strobe2 offer many impressive presets which provide a wealth of sonic expressivity when connected to a MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE) -capable controller such as the Seaboard RISE
Here’s one of my favorite tracks on the album named ‘Snow falling slowly‘, improvised live on March 14th with the Equator Broomstick preset during a significant snow storm in Montreal. Just like for Animoog tracks, quality headphones are required to fully enjoy the depth of those sounds.
The saturated audio segments present on some of the tracks are a good example that these are indeed live improvisations in multiple sound dimensions, where exploring the edges of live sound manipulation can lead to sound saturation.
At some point I inadvertently had the standalone Equator synth launched at the same time as the Equator Audio Unit plugin version. This unplanned but happy combination resulted in tracks which showcase two presets simultaneously. The RISE 42 track list provided below indicates which presets has been used.
The following track named ‘Confiance’ has been improvised June 17th with Equator’s Little Master Synth preset. It shows how precise the control we have on the Seaboard RISE can be.
The Seaboard RISE’s keys, named keywaves, are made of silicon and are very sensitive to multidimensional pressure, allowing you to glide your fingers not only left and right, but up and down while varying the downward pressure at the mean time. Each finger expression is considered individually, a significant evolution over the classic MIDI standard. MPE-compatible synths and presets take advantage of this potential of expressivity at the tip of our fingers. You’ve been witness of the decision process before I bought my Seaboard RISE 49 when I published last year the article on two popular MPE-compatible controllers, the LinnStrument and the ROLI Seaboard.
At the time I wondered if I would like the Seaboard after trying it, now I know the answer’s yes!
Since then I’ve been lucky to have experimented with the Haken Continuum fingerboard at MUTEK 2017 and I felt it’s quite different to play and full of potential as well.
The next track, ‘Empire‘ has been improvised with Equator’s Dark Hall Synth Lead preset on March 8.
I owe immense gratitude to my wife and daughters for having supported the making of this album, on top of our crowded family schedule. The next picture is work from one of my wonderful daughters who knows well her dad, showcasing a doll with the music gear I play with and love — you’ll recognize Animoog and the Seaboard :-)
The following track named ‘Field trip‘ has been played on February 4th with the preset named TX Saturated Tremolo Texture 5D, the day I started recording FXpansion’s Strobe2 tracks with my Seaboard RISE.
If you like my music, get all my albums for free and do what you want with them! They’re all released under a Creative Commons license. Immense thanks in advance for any support and I hope you’ll enjoy listening and discovering what the Seaboard RISE and those presets have to offer. The CC-BY Creative Commons license means the tracks are free to anyone to copy, use and transform. Let me know if you mix or use RISE 42 tracks for your projects, I’m eager to hear the results!
In addition to being free on Bandcamp, the album is available on all major streaming services and digital stores such as…
Apple Music:
Spotify:
Google Play:
I hope you’ll enjoy RISE 42, thanks for listening :-) — Alex / Satri
RISE 42 tracks
track name
time
improvisation recording date
played with preset
01
Diving underwater
1:00
2016-12-10
unknown
02
Listening carefully
2:07
2016-12-10
Equator Faeries Synth
03
Coming back to share
3:21
2016-12-18
Equator Granular Flute & Analog Funk Lead
04
Raise the castle
2:47
2016-12-18
unknown
05
Welcome dead year
0:45
2017-01-01
Equator CLAPS Analog Splash
06
Open Passage
3:40
2017-01-07
unknown
07
Interlude %
0:55
2017-01-07
Equator Analog Funk Lead & Mono Razor Lead
08
Aquarium
3:15
2017-01-07
Equator Little Master Synth & Press Control Overtone Series
I’m happy to write to you and I bring good news: an updated version of the Table of Animoog Presets, adding 572 new presets and 274 new timbres to Animoog from 6 expansion packs. This table that I’m gladly compiling for the community of Animoog players now lists a total of 3,148 presets and 5,129 timbres for Animoog. This gives us access to a large diversity of presets to explore for hours and hours.
For this Animaal pack announced in October 2016, I presented three improvised solos done with the Animaal Animoog presets. Here’s a fourth one with Animaal’s Ear Worm preset:
Otherness: “119 presets containing otherworldly textures, ambient pads, unruly FX, and many other eccentric sounds only Animoog could produce!”
Stranger Things: “22 presets inspired by the warm vintage mood of the “Stranger Things” Netflix series soundtrack”
I like these presets. The following track is an improvised solo played with the Animoog preset named ‘PWM soft chords’ from William McFarland / analogue, I wish you were’s Otherness pack:
and it provides direct download links to these presets packs, contains guidelines for submitting presets along with some more info. Don’t forget the instructions to easily install those presets on your iPad without relying on iTunes.
Players will also be happy to hear that since my last blog entry, two minor versions of Animoog have been released, version 2.4.6 in April and 2.4.7 in June, bringing minor bugfixes and one small feature for those wanting to play along with existing tracks: Animoog now allows Apple Music to continue playing when Animoog is in the foreground. Animoog for iPhone followed the same path and got the same new feature, reporting now as version 1.3.3.
I read reports that the current version of Animoog doesn’t support iOS 11, Apple’s upcoming iOS version currently only available as a public beta. It’s extremely likely that Moog Music will update Animoog over the coming weeks to fix compatibility issues with iOS 11 before it launches.
It’s not zombies targeting Animoog players, but yes, this post really is about playing Animoog with your brain! You read that right, the tool I was invited to test leverages brain fluctuations and converts the signal to MIDI messages. This tool is Brain2MIDI from ‘Vision EEG‘. EEG stands for electroencephalography which essentially is “an electrophysiological monitoring method to record electrical activity of the brain”.
About a year ago, Brain2MIDI’s developer Laurent Allen-Guerard invited me to testdrive his software with Animoog. That’s how I got to play Animoog with my brain! Two recording sessions were enough for me to understand the potential of Brain2MIDI. Here’s the 3-minutes video that Vision EEG created from this experiment of playing Animoog with your brain. The video demonstrates Brain2MIDI in action with Animoog.
This video is also available in French, as it is obvious from the video that English is not our native language! ;-)
Here’s a few points about Brain2MIDI and the experience as a whole. Connecting Animoog to Brain2MIDI is straightforward and I could easily map multiple Animoog parameters to the brain sensors. I would not recommend using your brain to actually play notes, unless you like erratic music! Assigning brain fluctuations to other parameters such as Animoog’s stereo delay mix, orbit time and the key’s glide resulted in pretty fun and melodious results. Was I able to control what came out of my brain? Not entirely, but despite the little experience I had, I felt like I could really control something. There’s also certainly a feedback loop: my brain is influenced by the music I’m hearing and this very music is directly influencing my brain in real time, creating a positive feedback loop! What The Brain2MIDI software provided visual indications of what is going on and allow users to fine tune the signal configuration.
I consider myself lucky to have experienced playing Animoog with my brain. If you’re interested as well, you’ll need a Muse headband, which can be put to other uses than playing music, such as for meditating.
You’ll of course need some way to connect Animoog to Brain2MIDI. At the time of recording the videos, Bluetooth MIDI networks were not supported in Animoog and that’s why I used my iRig MIDI 2. One thing that may constitute an annoyance to you is that the Brain2MIDI app is Android-only at this point. So you’ll need an Android device to run it. An iOS version is under consideration if enough users express interest. Brain2MIDI is currently available on the Google Play store for $19,99, which is a bargain considering you need a Muse headband which is much more expensive.
Brain2MIDI’s developer Laurent is also a Trance musician and published lots of music already. I felt his track ‘Brain Stimulation’ was appropriately named for this post! Here it is :-)
Playing music your brain sounds esoteric? With the upcoming omnipresence of augmented and virtual realities and their current and future inroads in music creation, I would not be surprised to see more and more of our physical selves making its way in our music creation processes.
I wish us all an excellent year 2017 with our favorite synths, such as Animoog! Cheers — Alex / Satri
One of my ongoing quests is to find an alternative controller for Animoog that would suit my playing style. This post focuses on the compatibility and capabilities of the Linnstrument and the ROLI Seaboard with Animoog now that Animoog supports MPE, aka Expressive MIDI.
Animoog MIDI MPE Support
Animoog 2.4.0 released about a month ago brought support for MPE input with note-per-channel MIDI controllers. This changes everything. Everything when it comes for Animoog to support sophisticated MIDI controllers.
What is MPE and why it matters so much? MPE is an extension of the MIDI standard that stands for the Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression specification. It is also known as ‘Expressive MIDI’. You’ll learn a lot more in this previous post a year ago about MIDI MPE’s development and its technical specification.
In short, this new way of leveraging MIDI messages makes it possible to control the multiple expressive parameters of a single Animoog note over the same old MIDI cables. The ‘core MIDI specification’ wasn’t built to handle multiple dimensions per note. Dimensions in Animoog? Think of modulations such as the different polypressures or orbit rates for every note played.
The advent of MIDI MPE significantly reduces the limitations external controllers had when it comes to controlling advanced sound synthesis instruments such as Animoog and Model 15. If I’m not mistaken, it also enables better means to record Animoog performances over MIDI (I haven’t made experimentations myself yet, but I plan to — and of course, I’ll publish my findings on this very site). Expect more and more controllers and apps to support MIDI MPE over time. And be happy, thanks to Moog developers, Animoog now supports it! :-)
The LinnStrument
The LinnStrument by Roger Linn Design is one of the alternative controllers for serious players. Yes, it’s different from the MIDI controllers we’re used to, but don’t be afraid by this grid of lights, just look at how others play with it and you’ll understand why it attracts that much interest. Every cell will reacts to z-axis pressure as well as x / y-axises for vibrato and modulation. Pitch slides are easily performed on the LinnStrument’s x-axis. The Sonic Lab video below will show this to you.
The LinnStrument also happens to be built and played by incredibly friendly people! I wanted to try the LinnStrument and Roger Linn himself nicely arranged a meeting with a LinnStrument owner in my home city of Montreal. That’s how I met with the wonderful Nathanaël last April. Nathanaël happens to work for the famous Moment Factory studio. He generously spent time with me on his LinnStrument, testing not only Animoog (which at the time didn’t support MIDI MPE) but also let me test how it feels to actually play on the LinnStrument. Thanks a lot Nathanaël!
Nathanaël on the LinnStrument
Unrelated to the LinnStrument, here’s a short video by Nathanaël showing Animoog controlling LED lights with note velocity and polyphonic aftertouch.
Sonic Lab just released a 22-minutes video review of the Linnstrument, and guess what, it extensively features Animoog! :-) This video not only gives you an idea of the capabilities of the LinnStrument, Gaz Williams goes into the details of many of its features. This is a must-see video to anyone looking for an alternative controller for Animoog.
After trying the LinnStrument last April, there’s one question I asked the LinnStrument developers: can we select playable notes ourselves, just like we can select which Animoog keys show up on the iPad? The answer is essentially no. From their FAQ:
Q: LinnStrument's rows always contain consecutive semitones (chromatic scales). Is it possible to set it so that the rows contain consecutive notes of a specific scale, for example only major scale notes while skipping over the accidentals?
A: It is fundamental to LinnStrument’s design that each of the eight rows always contain only chromatic scales. While it is true that some controllers (like our Tempest drum machine) permit you to set consecutive pads to play only scale notes (for example, only major scale notes, skipping accidentals), this is really only useful for controllers with few pads like drum pad controllers or Ableton Push. However, LinnStrument has 200 note pads so it is not necessary to delete any notes of the chromatic scale. The problem with removing the notes outside of the scale is that you can't play them, which is useful in all but very simple music. There are other problems with non-chromatic scales: 1) you must always change the scales to play in different musical modes so you never get a chance to develop any playing skills because the notes are always moving. 2) Pitch slides will no longer be consistent, with larger jumps between note pads that are a whole tone apart than between those that are a semitone apart. 3) Vibratos on a pad with a semitone interval on one side and a whole tone interval on the other will be asymmetrical, bending twice as much on the whole tone side than on the semitone side. Instead of preventing you from playing accidentals, LinnStrument borrows an idea similar to the piano keyboard's black and white keys: it provides access to all the notes but highlights the naturals. By default, it highlights the natural notes (C, D, E, F, G, A and B) in green lights and highlights all “C” notes in light blue lights, but you can change it to highlight any scale and in any of 6 colors (red, green, blue, cyan, magenta or yellow). This is done in Global Settings / Note Lights.
While I understand their valid arguments, I still think that it’s the single absent feature that stops me from purchasing a LinnStrument. The good news is that the LinnStrument firmware is open source, anyone can modify the LinnStrument’s software. Enthusiastic players could thus implement this features themselves. I thought of crowdfunding this feature with Bountysource for everyone to benefit from it. I went as far as creating this little explanation of what I was looking for.
My recent discussions with the main LinnStrument firmware developer highlighted the following: “there are physical spacers between the rows of LinnStrument that prevent smooth transitions across cells in the vertical axis.” Despite this limitation, I still foresee this LinnStrument keys layout as valuable and being a useful way to play Animoog on it, similar to how we can configure Animoog’s keys on the iPad. At this point, the LinnStrument developers aren’t interested in even maintaining this feature if we successfully implemented it. I of course respect their decision and it made sense to me to postpone working on crowdfunding this feature.
But don’t stop yourself at my sentiment regarding this feature absent from the LinnStrument, the LinnStrument is clearly an excellent alternative controller and it usually pleases bass and guitar players because of its keys layout, Gaz Williams explains why in his extensive review. Here’s a nice LinnStrument track from Geert Bevin to give you a sense of how it can be played.
If you haven’t seen the ROLI Seaboard yet, I’m glad you’re reading this. One could dare think this keyboard came to existence to be Animoog’s companion. Let’s first have a quick look at what the Seaboard can do — notice the x & y gliding effects in the video, akin to the slides our fingers do on the Animoog keys on the iPad.
The following impressive video successfully demonstrate the Seaboard capabilities with human-like voice. No wonder why the ROLI Seaboard won several awards!
Ok, but how does this the ROLI Seaboard sounds with Animoog? We’re very lucky, Steffen Presley, the sound designer who created the Song Haven pack of presets for Animoog, recorded the following video showcasing Animoog on the ROLI Seaboard Grand.
The ROLI Seaboard has the scales physically locked to the piano scale, meaning my main reticence to adopt the LinnStrument is also valid for the Seaboard. Steffen Presley also warns us that playing micro-tonally, which was possible on the GRAND but never the RISE, is not an option anymore. Steffen provide the details in the description of the following video. Those interested in having access to this feature again should request it to ROLI directly.
Can I have a ROLI Seaboard? You can and you have multiple options. The smaller ROLI Seaboard version available is named the Seaboard RISE, the 25-keys is priced at $799 and the 49-keys is $1,199. The latter is currently out of stock. I haven’t found a comparison of the RISE and its bigger brother the Seaboard GRAND, but the GRAND features more inputs and outputs and has different keywaves. It also costs more, the 37-keywaves GRAND Studio is $1,999, the 61-keywaves GRAND Stage is $2,999 and the ultimate Limited First Edition version featuring 88 keywaves is $8,888.
For such an expense, you’ll probably want to try how a Seaboard feels like and sounds like before purchasing one. Here’s the worldwide map of ROLI Seaboard retailers. Trying one is the next step for me — despite the fixed scale, will I fall in love with it?
Expect more surprises
We’re just at the beginning of a new era of controllers and advances like the LinnStrument and the ROLI Seaboard are pretty exciting. Combined with Animoog, the most popular iPad synth, there’s certainly lots of wonderful explorations ahead! And expect even more surprises in the future, hey, synths are even making it to the augmented and virtual worlds. You got that right and this is nicely demonstrated by the Behringer DeepMind 12, which crosses the chasm and dives into augmented reality. The future is already here, it’s just unevenly distributed ;-)
Wrapping up this article, you might want to revisit this June 2015 article named Alternative Controllers for Animoog and the few posts on customAnimoog controllers. Now that we have MPE support in Animoog, the doors of the LinnStrument and the ROLI Seaboard are wide open to all Animoog players!
If you have comments or if some of the info I shared is wrong, let us know in the comments! Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy the numerous ways we can be expressive with our beloved Animoog! — Alex / Satri
While I’m preparing a few other Animoog posts, I’d like to share with you two nice live Animoog performances that found their way to me. I usually find it inspiring to hear and see what other Animoog players do with our beloved instrument.
The first video is from Discophone_ and it’s a mix of apps played in a car, with Animoog providing the melody.
The next one of is a live performance by Makers of Sense, and in this one as well, Animoog is at the forefront.
I’m slowly gathering more and more Animoog videos in curated playlists where everyone can find more of such Animoog gems. If I missed any other worthy video on Animoog, let us know in the comments! Take care — Alex / Satri
When I published version 1.4 of the table of Animoog presets and timbres last May, I wasn’t expecting a new version coming this fast. Rejoice, today I’m announcing 352 new free Animoog presets, and they’re excellent! This expansion packs table lists third-party presets and timbres that you won’t find anywhere else.
352 new Animoog presets are now available as part of this update. There’s now a total of 2,576 presets and over 4,500 timbres available for Animoog, lots of them free!
Sound designer named ‘analogue I wish you were’ contacted me to share with you not one, but two packs of free Animoog presets. I’ve been playing with them the past few weeks and I can confirm that these are great presets! I’m amazed at the quality of what the sound designers amongst us are able to create for us, the players, to play with!
analogue I wish you were provided a preview for its Retro Futurism pack:
But never stop yourself at a preview, download and install the free presets for you to explore their capabilities. Next is “À la rescousse”, an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘analogue I wish you were’ preset named ‘PAD ramp pur’ from the ‘Retro Futurism’ presets.
“La vue” is an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘analogue, I wish you were’ preset named ‘FM PAD – no way back’ from the ‘RPG Fantasy Sounds’ free Animoog presets pack. ‘RPG Fantasy Sounds’ is now one of my favorite pack of presets.
After the nice presets we got from him last May, sound designer Rust(i)k offers us a second pack of free Animoog presets! Nothing less than 169 new and free presets which are, once again, of pretty good quality :-) Rust(i)k informed me that some of the presets’ timbres might be missing and may simply be replaced with Basic Sine.
Here’s one of the numerous tracks I recorded with these presets, “Japon turquoise” is an improvised Animoog solo played live with ‘Rust(i)k’ preset named ‘Keys Iluminati’ from the ‘RePrison’ free Animoog presets pack.
Timbre requirements
During an online discussion with another Animoog player, we came to the topic of which timbres are required for a pack of third-party presets to sound as intended. With this information available, an Animoog player can know in advance if he has all the required timbres before downloading and installing a new third-party pack. The table version 1.5 now includes the list of official In-App-Purchase packs you need installed for the third-party presets to sound as designed without any [missing] timbres.
If you’re a sound designer that contributed one of those packs, please contact me to let me know which timbres are required for your presets and I’ll add the info for the next version.
YouTube Channels and an Improvisation
Remember that I provide a list of Animoog-focused YouTube channels? Here’s an Animoog improvisation played by Subconscience. I’m amazed at the variety of sounds and styles that can be played with Animoog.
Enjoy summertime — Animoog can be played anywhere, like shown on this photo from Lukas Gec (thanks Lucas!).
Big thanks to ‘analogue I wish you were’ and Rust(i)k. Hope you’ll enjoy their presets as much as I do :-) Don’t hesitate to share this announcement with other Animoog players, the intention here is to ensure that as many players as possible are benefiting from those excellent presets! Cheers — Alex / Satri
I’m happy to have completed and now share with you the final version of my ‘Model 15’ album of improvised solos made with Moog Music’s ‘Model 15’ app during its Beta testing phase. I couldn’t resist the fun of releasing an album the very day the musical instrument becomes available to the world :-) That’s why you got an incomplete preview version. Please read the initial announcement if you haven’t do so already.
Those who have purchased the album already, THANKS AGAIN! :-) and please redownload the album for free on Bandcamp in order to get the full album as I intended it. My apologies for not having told you in advanced that I wasn’t done reviewing all the improvisations I did with the ‘Model 15’ app during its beta testing phase. I thought my first track triage was good enough but it wasn’t.
The four tracks I added are quite different from the previously released ones and I hope that you’ll like them as well :-)
The new total is 17 tracks and a running time now of 40 minutes. I also slightly shortened the ‘There will be more’ track for it to begin and end more smoothly. In a minority of cases, I truncated the beginning or the end of a track, which is provided raw without any mastering: that’s really how great the ‘Model 15’ app sounds by itself and played live :-) We really need quality headphones to fully enjoy such an app and the resulting tracks.
Here’s the updated list of tracks with the presets I used to play the improvised solos with Model 15. For the new version of the Album, I admit I haven’t respected the chronological ordering of tracks I used for the initial release, the new tracks haven been inserted attempting to make track transitions pleasant as much as possible.
Track list for the 'Model 15' album by Satri
#
track name
time
Model 15 preset
1
The wind
0:41
Pad / Drew Neumann Polynoise
2
Another blow
1:09
Pad / Drew Neumann Polynoise
3
Lumières
2:01
Brass / Fabio Di Mauro Sperimenting in
4
Learning to walk
1:54
Arpeggio / Kevin Lamb Play one note at a time
5
Constrained nonetheless
2:49
Brass / Trent Thompson Wod wheelopoly
6
Take off
0:59
FX / Trent Thompson Ghost in the record
7
Being real
3:04
Keys / Geert Bevin Soft poly
8
La foule
1:22
Brass / Trent Thompson Wod wheelopoly
9
Yourself alive
6:05
Tom Wies Sequence I
10
There will be more
2:07
Tom Wies Sequence I
11
Three trees
2:25
Tom Wies Sequence III
12
Through the rift
2:59
Modern / Geert Bevin Between The Edges
13
Steam loco
1:50
FX / Tony Saunders Steam loco
14
Ledom 51 test 14
5:54
Tom Wies Sequence I
15
Légère
2:04
Keys / Geert Bevin Soft poly
16
Flat Earth horizon
1:46
Modern Cosmic Organ Grinder
17
D'autres traces
0:39
Modern / Geert Bevin Sagittent Voluris
I’m rather happy with this album, I feel it brings something new I never heard elsewhere. That’s the feeling I get when I play solos with the Model 15 app. That’s fun music anyone can play live with the ‘Model 15’ app just like I did.
The album is of course still free, better actually as it is available as Creative Commons CC-BY, and you can ready for Moogfest 2016! I think I’m now done working on Animoog albums for some time, there’s another music project I want to work on first. And yes, it’s Animoog related :-) I obviously won’t stop playing since I like it so much. And you’ll still hear from me since I have a few other Animoog-related posts to share with you.
While we can find lots of music tracks featuring Animoog on the web, I haven’t found anyone else focusing on Animoog-driven albums. Until now! :-)
Italian artist Luigi Bairo contacted me to me to share his my own albums of Animoog solos, Luigi rode his bicycle around Turin in February 2016 to create a ‘geomusical traveling project’; all the tracks have been composed during his bicycle explorations in the suburbs and the woods around Turin, recorded directly in the places that inspired them. Here’s his Animoog tracks map!
Luigi Bairo is a writer, music journalist and musician from Turin, Italy. He published adventure books, pedagogy essays and books about bicycle philosophy. As a musician he has played in several underground bands of Turin as Stray King, Arigret and Harp1. In 2011 he began a solo career. In 2012, he released his album Valis in which he played all the instruments and in 2013, Forbidden Planet which combines traditional instruments with iPad apps such as Animoog. He is now a member of the Lefigurine duo since 2015.
That’s a pretty good and interesting album :-) I’m amazed at what others can do today with apps such as Animoog. Hope you’ll enjoy Luigi’s Animoog bicycle-driven creations! — Alex / Satri
