4Pockets have reduced the price of some of their apps for a limited time. The offers end October 27th. The deals are:
- Helium – from $10.99 to $6.99
- SideBand Remix – from $7.99 to $5.99
- Chameleon – from $7.99 to $5.99
- DigiKeys – from $8.99 to $5.99
Helium Audio Editor
Helium is a lightweight AUv3 MIDI sequencer plugin designed specifically for AUM. It supports up to 16 tracks of unlimited length with the ability to direct output to 16 channels on up to 16 MIDI output ports.
One of the great features is the ability to import and maintain libraries of MIDI clips using Helium’s ‘Media Bay’. These clips are freely available all over the internet and may contain individual chord sets, chord progressions or drum tracks. You can quickly build a song by dragging and dropping your MIDI clips from the media bay onto your timeline. You can also save your own clips directly to the media bay to create your own personal MIDI clips libraries. Long press on a clip to preview its contents using the currently selected MIDI device.
Helium now ships with a library of over 7000 MIDI clips, consisting of every chord and chord progression you could ever need.
Helium allows many different ways to import additional MIDI clip libraries. Simply drag and drop your ZIP collections directly to your PC/MAC web browser and they are automatically unpacked into the clips library folder. You can also drag and drop files between the Media Bay and the iOS Files app.
Helium supports a sync mode called ‘Remote Looping’. This was something we recently introduced into our MultiTrack Recorder plugin and is very useful for breaking down the timeline into sections. You can define up to 12 loops which can be used to specify the locations of say the intro, verse, chorus, and outro within your song, then trigger these loops seemlessly in sync with the host tempo. Once captured, these loops can then be triggered by incoming MIDI notes.
A new addition to Helium is the ability to piece together loops into songs, so you just concentrate on creating a single verse, chorus, bridge etc. and piece everything together without the headache of having to re-arrange your timeline.
SideBand Remix
SideBand Remix is an AUv3 plugin for final mixing and mastering. It separates the phantom center from sideband (L/R) content which is what give a stereo track its width, and lets you remix it.
This is ideal for adjusting the level of centrally panned vocals without affecting everything else. SideBand Remix is great for post-production engineers who want to reposition, isolate, and even eliminate elements of their mix.
Audio can be additionally split into 3 channels, LOW, MID and HIGH frequency bands which are all processed separately and eventually re-combined after processing. This allows you to control the bass and treble portions of your mix separately from the mids where the vocals naturally sit. Being able to push content from the center of the mix opens up room for a vocal to sit comfortably. The punch knob can be used to boost low and high band content or presence, while the shelf filter are there to make sure they never get out of control. As if that wasn’t enough you can enable the harmonic exciter to inject top end sparkle into the mix or enhance low end frequencies.
This is a versatile little tool that can be used on drums as well as vocals. Remove reverb from those snares and give your drum beat that punch it deserves.
Chameleon
Chameleon is an AUv3 compatible sampler instrument plugin for your favourite DAW.
The program can run as a standalone app in order to record audio samples from the internal microphone or professional audio interface. It also supports incoming Inter-App Audio connections for sampling directly from other iOS applications, however it is primarily intended to be used as an AUv3 Instrument plugin for applications such as Cubasis, AUM, Auria, Meteor, Gargeband etc. The plugin can additionally be loaded as an AUv3 effect in order to record audio passing through it from other AUv3 Instrument sources, which makes it a very versatile and useful tool.
So what is a sampler? A sampler is a device that allows you to imitate other instruments with just a few short audio snippits. Although it comes with a library of presets it also allows you to create your own. You do this by recording multiple audio clips and mapping them to the notes on a MIDI keyboard and Chameleon does the rest using a sophisticated pitch shifting algorithm to fill in the blanks. Recorded samples can either be layered or mapped freely over a 7 octave range and saved as individual presets. Presets are then organised into custom categorised banks which can be exported and shared with others.
Just think, you can sample all your favourite synth sounds and carry them around on your iPhone/iPad without the inconvenience of lugging heavy gear around with you. Sample anything from musical instruments to vocal snippits, drum machines or ambient noises. The possibilities are endless.
Recording is incredible easy. Just create a New Patch and press record. Chameleon will wait for you to play a note before recording begins. Once recorded press the LEARN button and tap the note range on the virtual or MIDI keyboard to map the sample. Repeat this as many times as required, tweak the settings and save your patch. Additionally you can setup loop points with the ability to apply crossfade. If all that sounds too complicated, just press auto sample and let Chameleon do all the sampling for you.
Chameleon also has a quite sophisticated arpeggiator which allows you to create complex mixtures of notes and chords with glide, hold and re-triggering options.
On board reverb, digital delay and chorus effects are available to give your samples a more polished touch. We also include 4 touch pads for quickly dialing in on a sound or for easy effect automation. Configurable touch ADSR and modulation options are available too.
Chameleon can also import audio samples using iOS Files integration or you can make use of Copy / Paste to quickly drop one of more samples into a patch. You can also freely edit samples using the built in tools such as normalise, fade in, fade out, crop, clear options etc.
You can run Cameleon as a standalone app and map external MIDI keyboards (Bluetooth MIDI support also included) and perform audio sampling outside of your DAW. This is provided for convenience since you can’t record input when hosted as an AUv3 Instrument plugin.
Yes some DAW’s have built in samplers which only have the ability to playback libraries provided with the software. Chameleon allows you to built your own libraries of sounds and share them with others. There’s a budding rapper in you dying to get out and we have just the tool!
DigiKeys
DigiKeys is an AUv3 compatible MIDI sequencer plugin for AUM or other AUv3 compatible host applications.
DigiKeys is a pattern based sequencer which can be used to drive either external MIDI based AUv3 instruments, or the internal sample based audio engine. It can also be used as a 16 channel multi-timbral sound source accepting MIDI data on each of the 16 MIDI channels and routing to 16 internal instruments. This flexible design allows you to experiment with pattern based song construction using the DigiKeys sound engine, then map to external MIDI based synth engines once an idea needs expanding. The program was created specifically for AUM, but should function fine under any DAW of your choice (routing options permitting). The advantage of AUM is its unlimited routing flexibility, and the ability to split MIDI output in order to feed multiple AV3 sound sources
DigiKeys allows you to create looped patterns which can later be chained into songs. Each pattern has 16 tracks (one for each MIDI channel) which can be up to 32 steps in length. Each track can have its own playback speed, transposition and effects routings. You can chain up to 256 of these patterns together into a song, and since each song is tied to a scale, you can use the transpose function to quickly create chord changes without needing to redesign your patterns.
DigiKeys was designed to drive other MIDI compatible AUv3 plugins, but comes equiped with its own internal synth engine with over 100 custom presets. If you own the 4Pockets Chameleon sampler plugin, DigiKeys will auotmatically make those instruments available to you, so its easy to expand the library of instruments using Chameleon.
The app has its own custom MIDI mixer, which controls incoming / outgoing MIDI velocity levels rather than traditional audio levels. This allows you to control relative volumes of internal as well as external MIDI instruments. It also allows DigiKeys to be used as a multi-timbral sound source with level mixing, by routing MIDI data on each of the 16 incoming ports to seperate instruments.
DigiKeys features a sophisticated random pattern generator capable of taking advantage of random velocities, probability, note length, sub beats and reverse hits. It can even randomize targetted notes that comply to a chord in the song scale.
The latest update introduces a live matrix performance mode that lets you mix tracks from different patterns in real time, creating scenes to aid your performance. Patterns and scenes can be triggered remotely from MIDI equipment sending simple note data on MIDI channel 16. Also recently added is the ability to route internal sound to different output busses for adding external effects in AUM.
We also include 3 global effects, reverb, chorus and digital delay which allow per track routing.
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