The patch is controlled by a MPK 49 MIDI keyboard with faders for volume on each instrument, cutoff filter, and reverb for each. The setup is fairly standard on a PC or Mac with synths and instrument plugins, nothing terribly noteworthy. What makes this unusual is that the entire rig is based around an iPhone 5 with no other computer hardware!
For a lower budget keyboardist, the iPhone can actually make a workable keystation with the right setup. Here is a brief walk thru of iPhone applications I am using.
AUM - iPhone MixerThe hub of this patch is a new app called AUM, by Kymatica. AUM is a live mixing host which routes live audio and MIDI using iOS music japps via Inter-App Audio (IAA), a tool created by Apple. Each of the instruments I use is connected to AUM thru its own IAA channel then routed thru bus sends to headphones or an audio interface.
Rhodes
My Rhodes patch starts with the stock Rhodes instrument in ThumbJam . Thumbjam has dozens of instruments, all of which are a lot of fun. In my patch I turned off Thumbjam's default reverb to get the dry Rhodes sound, and mixed that signal into the reverb bus inside AUM. I also added a bit of saturation.
Animoog. This is hands down my all-time favorite instrument for iPhone. The app is created by Moog and the sounds are truly astonishing. There is also a separate version of Animoog for iPad. The VA synth comes with great patches, I find each one has to be tweaked a bit just to hide some of the weaknesses of a digital synth emulation. This demo uses the stock patch "Sync Chorus" with an synced LFO modifying the filter frequency to create the synchronized pulsing. In AUM I just added in a low-pass filter control which you can hear at the end of the demo. The filter is built in to AUM.
Magellan is a fairly straight forward iPhone synth. There are two versions on the app store, they are nearly identical but the iPad only version includes two synth engines that can load two patches simultaneously. I'm using the stock pad "Angels" in the demo. I also have an fx send going to the Reverb bus in AUM.
AUFX:Space - Reverb
Reverb bus, you ask? Yes! AUM can also host aux channels using IAA which can be used for an FX bus among other things. There are actually quite a few apps for iPhone that are designed and sold solely to function as an effect in an IAA effects chain of multiple iOS audio apps. The series of "AUFX" apps are all great, and they are made by Kymatica, the same developer who makes AUM. So for this patch, I loaded AUFX:Space into a bus in AUM and send a bit of the Rhodes and the Angels pad to fill in the sound.
Thats the whole software side of this setup. I am impressed that the iPhone 5 can run all of this simultaneously. You do have to be very careful with ram and CPU resources, it is easy to get CPU problems. In this demo, I've got the audio frame rate set at 256, so if it starts glitching out, I could bump that up to 512 frames. Fortunately AUM has this setting built in. From a fresh reboot of the iPhone, you have to load AUM, then change the frame rate setting before doing anything else. (even opening up Safari or YouTube apps can mess this up.)
The newer iPhones will obviously handle this even better and should be able to add more layers of sounds and effects.
In my next post I'll do a review of the hardware setup for this iPhone keyboard rig. I'll watch comments here and YouTube if anyone has questions.
UPDATE:
I also wanted to mention that a new iPad can run this setup and a whole lot more. Here is a short list of top quality iOS synths that will run in AUM on an iPad:
Korg iM1
Korg Module (pianos)
Animoog (iPad version)
Thor - by Propellerhead
Nave Wavetable Synthesizer- Waldorf Music
Viking Synth - (barebones VA mono synth)
