4Pockets have reduced a couple of their apps for this weekend. The apps in this weekend price drops are:
- MIDI Layers – from $7.99 to $5.99
- Flux – Liquid Audio – from $7.99 to $5.99
- Chameleon Sampler from $7.99 to $5.99
- Analyser Plugin from $7.99 to $5.99
MIDI Layers
MIDI Layers is an AUv3 MIDI plugin designed to allow sophisticated routing of MIDI data in hosts such as AUM or Cubasis.
Have you ever wanted to play multiple instruments from a single master keyboard during a live performance? Would you like to be able to set up keyboard splits, crossfade layers or create an ensemble of layered instruments? If you answered yes to either of those questions, then MIDI Layers may be your solution.
Layers allows you to create up to 12 scenes, each with up to 127 layers, spanning your entire master keyboard. These scenes allow you to seamlessly switch between various layer mappings at any time during a performance.
Each layer controls the MIDI output, which can be routed to one of MIDI Layers 16 output ports and 16 channels. So if you have 5 layers in your scene, each layer is able to divert MIDI key input to 5 destinations, allowing you to control 5 instruments from one master keyboard.
Layers can overlap, meaning you can create an ensemble of two or more instruments. Layers can also have cross fades so that you can fade from one instrument to another across a specified range. You can also control the velocity curves of a layer if you need to emphasize note velocity at a certain set of octaves.
Each layer can also be remapped so that you can target a different key range on the destination instrument. This allows you to have several single note layers that can target specific drum machine samples for instance.
You can assign a song per scene, or have several scenes containing parts of the same song. Switching scenes is simple, using the on screen scene buttons, via AU parameters, or you can even add a special control layer to a scene which can then be triggered via your master keyboard.
It is also possible to assign a Program Changes to a layer. When you switch scenes, each layer can fire off its own program change to your destination instruments.
Each scene can be assigned its own scale, which enables you to play using only the white notes so say goodbye to wrong notes.
Finally, layers can be assigned to mute groups, allowing you to quickly turn on/off groups of layers with a single key or button press.
Flux
Flux Liquid Audio is a real time multi-effects processor and sequencer designed to be used as an AUv3 plugin within your favourite DAW such as Cubasis, NanoStudio, BM3, AUM etc.
The plugin allows you to create patterns containing multiple effects which are triggered on beat boundaries. Patterns can be contuously looped or you can chain multiple patterns into a song. The advantage of this is that you can for instance add a delay to a particular vocal phrase rather than have a continuous delay effect on the entire vocal. You could add varying harmonies using the pitch effect or create gated stutter effects on specific parts of a string section.
A pattern can be 16 to 64 beats in length and can be run at one of two speeds, standard or fast which is great for gate type effects. You can create up to 24 patterns which can be automated in any order along with your host DAW’s beat position.
An effect is added using nodes. A ‘node’ is layed on the timeline over one or more beats, each node has its own unique settings. The node divisions control varying aspects of the effects such as number of repeats, delay time, modulation speed etc. all perfectly synced to the beat using the node division buttons.
There are 11 effects in total, Filter, Repeat, Gate, Pan, Delay, Pitch, Tape Stop, Reverb, Bit Cruncher, Reverse and Flanger, all of which can be used at the same time.
Effects Descriptions:
The filter effect allows LP, HP, BandPass and Notch filters which have definable cutoff, resonance and modulation amount. Turn the modulation up to max to start generating random cutoff and resonance values.
The Repeat function was specifically designed for beat synced sources such as drum machines, allowing sections of the previous sub-beats to be repeated at varying speeds and lengths.
The Gate effect can be used to create holes in the sound and generate stutter patterns or fades. This effect allows definable attack and release for each individual node.
Pan allows automated panning at varying speeds, but you get to mix different panning modes and speeds at each step of the pattern.
Delay is a beat synced delay which allows you to create multiple delays with varying delay times within the same pattern allowing some nice cascading effects that are not possible from a single delay alone.
Pitch allows you to add independant left and right channel pitch shifting of up to +/- 12 semitones. ‘Harmony’ mode allows you to add vocal harmonies at specific sections of a song, while ‘Glide’ mode allows you to gradually transition from the current pitch to another.
Tape Stop is a great addition allowing you to simulate a tape recorder stopping and starting, as well as some interesting scratch, warble, bounce and elastic effects.
Bit Cruncher is a great for dirtying up specific drum hits by downsampling the audio.
Flanger allows you to create subtle chorus/Celeste or heavy flanging effects which can be re-triggered or free running.
Reverse is great for creating shadow notes on drum patterns by reversing the last section of audio.
Reverb allows some interesting gate reverb type effects on specific sections of audio. The node divisions let you modulate the reverb trail for some interesting ambient effects.
Chameleon Sampler
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!
Analyser
This is a AUv3 compatible analyser / tuner which can be used as plugin with your favourite DAW such as Cubasis, Meteor, Auria or GarageBand.
This plugin can be used directly within your DAW to analyse either the monitored input signal from your audio device or your mixer output. It uses Apple’s accelerate framework to perform fast high resolution 8K fast fourier transformations to display a real time frequency spectrum. The result is an accurate representation of the sampled sound broken down into its frequency components.
You can use this plugin in conjunction with equalisers and parametric filters to obtain a nice flat mix or eliminate hard to find unwanted noise or hiss.
Various display modes include, linear narrow band, logarithmic narrow band, Octave, 1/3 Octave, 1/6 Octave and Mixer Mode with selectable ANSI A and C weighting curves. Up to 64 times oversampling can be applied to obtain more stable readings.
This plugin also includes a Digital Tuner mode which allows real time note detection, frequency and cents deviation from true pitch.
This is one of a suite of AUv3 compatible plugins which will also soon be available from 4Pockets.
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