The ability to have a generative music engine in such a portable form is quite useful. I'd been using Mixtikl on the iPad for awhile and its great to have its 'big brother' there now as well.
As I've experimented, I've found the iPad version much more limited in number of tracks which is primarily due to the CPU on the iPad rather than anything else. When I try 4 different Virtual MIDI programs, my 3rd gen iPad gasps for air.
As this tutorial showed, Noatikl with Virtual MIDI works best if you can use apps that can handle multiple MIDI channels with one instance such as SampleTank.
So, where and how might you use Noatikl going forward? If you can limit your tracks to one or two host Virtual MIDI sessions, you can easily create complete pieces in Noatikl and use Audiobus to record the results. If you want to go well beyond that, I think you should consider the desktop version (roughly $50 at the time of this writing).
The desktop has the added advantage that it integrates with your DAW and will record the actual MIDI notes into the DAW and not just Audio. You can then edit the MIDI data further if you wish or replace instruments.
On the iPad, I've used Noatikl in several ways - as a complete composition tool, as a "jump start" for a hybrid song and as just a chord progression starter.
Here is a complete composition from the iPad version:
Here is a composition from the iPad with an added track played "manually" after the Noatikl (the flute is played in Thumbjam):
And just for grins, this "alliterative" piece, I used Noatikl with Addictive synth just to create some chord progressions and the rest are tracks I recorded afterwards:
I hope this gave you a good overview of Noatikl and how to use it. There are many great tutorials and videos at the Noatikl site at: http://intermorphic.com.
Next post I need to start getting into Logic X which I recently purchased :)
Wow, I can't believe it has taken me so long to sit down and go through this tutorial. Awesome intro! I don't have Sampletank but was able to work through the tutorial connecting Noatikl to NanoStudio. Seems similar to your Cubasis experience - I can record MIDI and it has a nasty habit of sending odd patch change messages. But definitely workable. I need to dive deeper though cuz so far it all sounds very much like your stuff - not that that's a bad thing. :-)
ReplyDeleteGlad it was helpful! I never tried Noatikl with NanoStudio - just started today and it is pretty impressive ! Make sure that you turn off the switch that says "Use Patch" and I think the patch change issue goes away. The only weird part is that the TRG pads aren't exactly GM Midi. I translated the MIDI range in Nano but have to go sequentially on the patch numbers to program the pads. Thanks for the post and the tip!
DeleteRight, the default TRG banks are not GM. I had fixed up the factory banks to be more GM and you can download from here if you like: http://jimhanksmusic.com/ipad.html . Good point about the MIDI Input Transpose to 12 for TRG.
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