Members KJI Posted December 24, 2011 Members Share Posted December 24, 2011 I've been wanting to get a simple system for sketching out song ideas. By this, I mean avoiding opening up Logic or getting audio interfaces connected to the laptop - something that just turns on and starts working. All my compositions start on the piano, and I just LOVE the Yamaha P95 that I've finally got - turn on the power button and you're up and running in seconds! So now I need something to record with... I feel like I'm really close with what I want using Garageband on the ipad. The problem is, I find the pianos in GB to be very lacking... I would be content if I could run the audio from the p95 (although it only has headphone outs, the one significant shortcoming of the p95:facepalm:) into GB. Unfortunately getting stero audio into the ipad seems tricky at this point, from what I have been able to research, and I'm not sure that I can record mono well with the p95's headphone outs... The second option would be to enhance the sound libraries in the ipad. I see stuff like sampletank, which probably means I can't use GB. Then, there are things like the ipad samples that Jamal Hartwell makes for GB (http://store.gospelmusicians.com/iPad/), but those seem to be more oroented towards EPs and Rhodes (there's a Yamaha DX7 piano sample in his MKS sound library, but I'm not sure I'd be totally happy with them...). So, is there anyone who's using the ipad (and perhaps GB) as a composition tool, especially in regards to pianos? I'd love to hear if someone has figured out a good workflow for using the ipad. Dream setup: using Pianoteq Touch as an AU instrument in GB. The way things are changing, I figure that day isn't too far off! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 25, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 25, 2011 Well, so I found this. GBSamplerManager It allows you to get custom samples(in the form of exs instruments) in and out of GB for ipad conveniently. So it looks like if I can find a good piano sample that I can take into GB through this application, and then most of my needs will be met. Maybe one of the pianos in Logic Pro will work? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mcpepe Posted December 25, 2011 Members Share Posted December 25, 2011 Very interesting! Thanks for the link. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hogger Posted December 26, 2011 Members Share Posted December 26, 2011 I use Bismarck, loaded up with soundfonts. An Alesia's io dock takes care of the audio and midi I/O. I found GB's polyphony completely unacceptable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 26, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 26, 2011 I use Bismarck, loaded up with soundfonts. An Alesia's io dock takes care of the audio and midi I/O.I found GB's polyphony completely unacceptable. Hi hogger, I think you mean "Bismark BS-16i" app, right? I didn't realize there was an app for sound fonts, thanks! Just out of curiosity, how big are your sound font files? Do you get a sense of how big an instrument that the iPad can handle? Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 26, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 26, 2011 Very interesting! Thanks for the link. Hey, glad to be of help I'm now looking through some piano samples at sampletekk. The demos sound really nice, and they have a 50% sale through the end of the year. I'm just stuck with trying to fathom how large an instrument that the iPad will be able to handle, before I pull the plug on one... Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hogger Posted December 26, 2011 Members Share Posted December 26, 2011 The largest soundfont I have used is a cut-down scarbee rhodes, four velocity layers, about 220 megabytes. It loads up almost instantly. I think I tried one that was about 300 megabytes one time and it didn't work. I suspect the max is 250 or so. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 27, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 27, 2011 I suspect that's about right. The total memory is 512, so about half of that being used by one app alone may be the realistic limit. Thanks for the info! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 27, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 27, 2011 Hello all, So I've been doing some more research, and check this video around the 7min mark: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=iICtztPXqZA If you can get by his excitement, he actually has an interesting point: the samples loaded into GB for iPad are not coming off the RAM, but streaming off the Flash drive. So he thinks that the size of the instruments are not necessarily restricted by the 512MB RAM. He actually backs up his theory with his products: his iPad samples (http://store.gospelmusicians.com/iPad/) are actually just .band files pre-formatted for the iPad with the .exs instruments already imported in, and the .band files are more than a 1GB in size! Now he does say in one of the promotional videos that he's had to downsize his original sample instrument a little bit, but I get the impression that that's because he supposed that his users would like enough horsepower left in the iPad to playback 7 .wav tracks to play along with his samples, but I might be wrong there. So, as long as you keep in mind the iPad's playback specs (16bits at 44.1Khz), I'm thinking that you might be able to load in some large sample libraries - at least in the way the iPad manages memory and disk. I'm waiting for my Logic Pro disks to arrive from home, and then I will have some larger exs instruments to test around with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members mcpepe Posted December 31, 2011 Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 I use Garagaband too with my IPad to play Rhodes presets, BUT the polyphony is very low. I think is like 5 voices in my Ipad1.Can someone recommend some good Rhodes sound fonts to use with BS16? Or any other good IPad app for Rhodes? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted December 31, 2011 Author Members Share Posted December 31, 2011 I use Garagaband too with my IPad to play Rhodes presets, BUT the polyphony is very low. I think is like 5 voices in my Ipad1.Can someone recommend some good Rhodes sound fonts to use with BS16? Or any other good IPad app for Rhodes? If you like using GarageBand on the iPad, you can try using the iPad Rhodes samples from http://store.gospelmusicians.com/iPad/. GB is certainly capable of more polyphony when using a higher quality instrument, although I'm not sure what the performance is going to be like on an iPad 1. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members KJI Posted January 2, 2012 Author Members Share Posted January 2, 2012 OK, so I've got some results to share! My idea was to modify the "Black Grand Ambient" samples from Sampletekk in Logic Pro and then import the modified instrument into GarageBand using GBSampleManager. The original instrument has individual samples for every whole note (well, the white keys, to be clear), with 16 velocity layers and separate pedal up/down samples, which adds up to quite a lot of samples. The bit rate of the samples were 24bits, so I had to change them to 16 bits. My first test was to try importing the "Black Grand 3" patch, which excludes the top two velocities (resulting in 14 velocity layers), but everything else is left in. It was about 4GB worth of samples, and the whole process took a really long time (exporting the instrument out of Logic, importing it into GBSampleManager, getting the instrument transferred to the iPad, etc.), but everything did seem to work up until actually opening the samples up in GB for iPad, at which point GB crashed. In my second test I reduced the size of the "Black Grand 3" instrument, by removing about half the samples used while keeping the 14 velocity layers intact. This was my first interaction with that part of the EXS sampler, and the process turned out to be a lot easier than I originally imagined. The resulting instrument uses 896 samples totaling 2.49 GB, so still quite a big instrument. Well, this time GB didn't crash, and in fact I was able to play the instrument just fine! Now, here's the problem I encountered. This reduced instrument only had 5 notes of polyphony on the GB for iPad. Now, I had exchanged some e-mails with the developer of the GBSamplerManager software (Andrea, a really nice guy by the way). He told me that the 5-note polyphony was a limitation in GBSamplerManager, and a new version of the software fixes this by letting the user change the polyphony to ~32 (this new version is already on the Redmatica website, and currently awaiting approval from Apple on the App Store, I'm told). Well, I found another way to get around the polyphony problem. After GBSamplerManager had finished putting in the samples into the .band file, I opened up the contents of the .band file and located the .exs instrument file (under /Media/Sampler/Sampler Instruments), and replaced the .exs instrument file with the original I had exported out from Logic. This way, I wasn't restricted by any noticeable polyphony limitations in GB for iPad (although I can't be sure I have all of the 64 set up in Logic). In conclusion, it seems like GB for iPad can in fact import sample libraries much larger than the 512 RAM, although there seems to be a limit on the size (somewhere between 2.58 and 4 GB). The somewhat disappointing part of all this is that I'm not completely happy with the piano I'm currently hearing from GB. Maybe it's the DA converters on the iPad, maybe I've cut too much corners while reducing the instrument size, maybe the whole goal of getting decent pianos out of the iPad was flawed; whatever the reason, the piano just doesn't feel "right" at the moment. I also notice that the velocity range going out from my Yamaha P-95 through a cheapo no-brand USB-to-MIDI converter and into the iPad seems to be somewhat limited (the volume range on the track meters are quite low). Maybe the velocity curves on the GB for iPad are tuned to the on-screen keyboard? I wonder if using a more "official" midi interface (like the iRig Midi) will be any different? Anyways, so it seems my quest for a usable piano on the iPad is not done yet... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hogger Posted January 2, 2012 Members Share Posted January 2, 2012 There are some great soundfonts here that work fine in bs16 - learjeff.net/sf/sf.html Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Members hogger Posted January 2, 2012 Members Share Posted January 2, 2012 Thanks for posting all the details of your GB/EXS experiments! Your polyphony results sound promising. I have noticed that polyphony isn't a problem in BS16, but I have also noticed the "feel" issue of which you speak. I think it is a result of midi lag. I don't know how to time it, but I think there's just a tad too much delay between my fingers hitting the keys, and the sound exiting the ipad. I'm using the Alesis IO Dock with the latest firmware. I have a camera connection kit, but I haven't gotten anything to work without it complaining about not enough USB power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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