4Pockets have launched some new deals and extended others, ending July 1st.
- Oscidia – $14.99 to $8.99
- Helium MIDI Sequencer – $14.99 to $8.99
- MIDI Layers – $12.99 to $7.99
- MeloVox – $14.99 to $7.99
- Fontstack – $14.99 to $8.99
Oscidia
Oscidia is an AUv3 plugin for iOS which can be loaded into your favourite DAW allowing you to use it as a sound source for any MIDI source. Its wide range of features and oscillator types allow it to produce a vast variety of sounds. In particular, the inclusion of Wavetable greatly expands the traditional wave types and brings a wealth of modulation options. Oscidia has 3 oscillators per voice, and each oscillator can be a different wavetable – all working and morphing together to create some incredibly amazing sounds.
Oscidia includes SINE, SAW, SQUARE, TRIANGLE, SUPERSAW, SUPERSQUARE, WAVETABLE and ADDITIVE wave types. You can import and export compatible wavetables using drag and drop directly to the Wavetable manager. Wavetables support morphing and warping (phase distortion), all controlled by the Mod Matrix routing. The SINE and TRIANGLE wave types both support several wave folding modes which allow dramatic real-time morphing too.
Oscidia supports 5 filter types which support 12/24dB modes and morphable LP/BP/HP filter modes which can be automated from the Mod Matrix or via the Sequencer. The sequencer itself is very unique and allows up to 3 simultaneous ARPs to play at the same time. Each ARP can directly control the 3 oscillator levels independently per step, as well as the pitch, filter morph, cutoff frequency, probability, gate, note repeat and ties. This allows for complex rhythms to be created that are not tied to pitch.
Helium MIDI Sequencer
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.
MIDI Layers
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.
MeloVox
MeloVox is a vocal harmonizer designed to allow up to 5 simultaneous harmonies. You can choose to have MeloVox automatically generate harmonies by listening to live input and creating harmonies based on the pitch of the incoming vocal, or you can use MIDI input to choose how to pitch the harmonies.
You can choose from one of two algorithms, one more suitable to vocals which includes formant preservation, and another more traditional option for instruments.
Unlike many pitch shifters, MeloVox is build on a phase vocoder capable of formant preservation, meaning much more natural sounding vocal harmonies. This is especially noticeable when pitching a vocal up an octave, which results in what is often called the Mickey Mouse effect. This is due to the fact that all frequencies are transposed up, along with the respective peaks in harmonics. This results in a sound which the vocal tract is incapable of producing, so it no longer sounds like a natural voice. MeloVox fixes this issue by preserving the formants.
MelVox is capable of producing up to 5 additional harmonies on top of the original vocal, and how it does that is down to the control mode setting. There are 5 different modes to choose from including Auto Sense, Fixed Pitch and three MIDI controllable modes called Chords, Melody and Vocoder.
Auto Sense mode detects the frequency of the incoming vocal, and automatically harmonises using the specified key and scale. Fixed Pitch allows you to specify fixed offsets in a scale without the need to detect pitch. Chord and Melody modes use incoming MIDI data to precisely control the harmonies using MIDI notes from your master keyboard or DAW. And to top if off we have a traditional 12 band Vocoder which is incredibly easy to setup and use due to its internal carrier source.
MeloVox includes a build in noise gate to remove unwanted background noise that helps with pitch tracking, and a vocal doubler which adds a spacious stereo effect to any monophonic vocal. MeloVox also features a 10 Band EQ add a reverb. All effects can be applied to either the original vocal or just the harmonies.
A built-in preset manager helps organize presets into categories using drag and drop, and the Set List can be created to provide quick real-time switching between presets and snapshots during a live session. You can even add your own acapella vocals to test out presets as you create them.
Fontstack
FontStack is a ‘fontastic’ AUv3 plugin for iOS which can be loaded into your favourite DAW allowing you to utilise all those wonderful and nostalgic SF2 SoundFonts you’ve collected over the years.
The SoundFont standard was created back in the early 90s and made famous by the SoundBlaster series of sound cards. With the introduction of the Amiga, it spawned a host of musical creation tools called Trackers, which allowed the Amiga to load these SoundFonts and create sophisticated musical scores of 4 or 8 tracks. These days we don’t use this standard so much, but there is a wealth of free SF2 files available on the internet just waiting to be loaded into FontStack.
A SoundFont comprises a file with an .sf2 file extension. This file contains a set of samples, instruments, and presets. FontStack enables you to load one or more SoundFonts into its 4 layers, and use them in lots of creative ways.
You can stack layers to create a rich combination of multiple tones, or assign each layer its own key range on the keyboard to create virtual splits, or a mixture of the two. Each layer can also be assigned its own MIDI channel for true OMNI mode.
One great feature of FontStack is its ability to cache all your SoundFonts and the instruments they contain. This allows quick searching for specific instrument types without the need to physically search SoundFonts to find them.
Another great feature is the ability to optionally link to a remote folder containing a global set of SoundFonts, so that they can be shared between apps. Both internal and external SoundFonts and their instruments will be cached, and searching is just as easy as it is using internal SoundFonts.
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