Here are this weekend’s trio of offer from 4Pockets which includes a first price drop for PolyPipe Sequencer.
- PolyPipe Sequencer – $14.99 to $7.99
- Helium MIDI Editor – $14.99 to $8.99
- MIDIStep Sequencer – $14.99 to $8.99
PolyPipe Sequencer
PolyPipe is an AUv3 MIDI Sequencer plugin for iOS which can be loaded into your favorite DAW. It comprises elements of some of my favorite sequencers of all time, all rolled into a single interface.
PolyPipe is a multi-lane, polyphonic sequencer designed for creating evolving musical patterns rather than fixed, repetitive loops. Instead of thinking in terms of a single step sequence, PolyPipe lets you build multiple independent lanes, each with its own rhythm, pitch logic, octave behavior, probability, and modulation data all running together as a coherent musical system.
At its core, PolyPipe takes incoming MIDI notes (or internally generated notes) and uses them as a musical “seed.
These notes are then processed through patterns, scales, transposition rules, and step logic to generate new musical phrases in real time. This makes it especially suited for generative music, complex arpeggiation, bass-and-chord splitting, and long-form evolving sequences.
Each lane in PolyPipe is its own sequencer voice. A lane contains one or more patterns, and each pattern is made up of steps. Steps don’t just define when a note plays they can also define how it plays. A step can include pitch offsets, velocity, gate length, strumming, probability, repeats (ratchets), ties for legato behavior, and even chord information.
Patterns can be enabled or disabled independently, shifted by octaves, and combined with global transposition. Because lanes can have different lengths, directions, and step modes, the resulting sequences naturally phase against each other, creating variation without manual intervention.
PolyPipe applies musical logic at the MIDI output stage rather than hard-coding notes upfront. Pitch values can be forced into a chosen scale and key, allowing even highly experimental patterns to stay musically coherent. Different step modes (such as forward, backward, ping-pong, random, chord, bass, or hybrid note/chord modes) let each lane behave differently, from traditional arpeggios to controlled chaos.
PolyPipe Sequencer is built for musicians who want to explore ideas quickly, create unique patterns, and discover results they wouldn’t think to program manually. It rewards experimentation: small changes to probability, repeats, or step logic can dramatically alter the musical output while staying rhythmically locked and musically usable.
Helium MIDI 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.
MIDIStep Sequencer
MidiStep is a powerful and inspirational polyphonic step sequencer, and a dream for lovers of complex rhythms and generative music creation tools. The program uses sophisticated, user-controlled randomization to generate notes with a variety of parameters, including note values, note length, chords, patterns, velocity, gate, dividers, repeats, swing, and many more.
You have complete control over what, when, and how much is randomized on a step-by-step basis. You can easily create patterns that have little to no variation, patterns that maintain a recognizable pattern but have some degree of variations to the notes, velocity, etc., all the way to patterns with extreme randomness with every pass – the degree of randomization is completely under your control for every parameter and for every step of a pattern.
Features include per-step polyphonic chord playback, variable step sequence lengths for all parameters such as pitch, octave, velocity, note duration, beat divisions etc, and the capability to create multiple patterns which can be linked together in various ways.
MidiStep also features 8 additional modulation lanes with independent play speeds. These can be used to automate parameters within your favourite synths.
MidiStep uses sophisticated randomization settings for note values, note lengths, velocity, gate, dividers, repeats, swing, and modulation. In addition, by setting different cycle lengths, step skips, step repeats, jumps, rewinds, cursor positions, pattern jumps, octave shifts, and many other parameters, you can create an infinite number of non-repeating sequences. The degree and types of randomizations for each of these parameters is up to you!
Aleatoric music, also known as chance music, allows you to create patterns and entire compositions with user-controlled randomisation. The word ‘aleatory’ is derived from the Latin word ‘alea’ meaning dice. MidiStep allows you to turn on/off randomisation on a stepwise basis for almost all parameters, set the percent probability that the randomisation will occur, set min/max values, set exactly which parameters will be randomized, etc. The exact realization of the music will vary with each pass of the sequence, resulting in unique and captivating aleatoric renditions. All randomization controls can be modified in real-time.
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