Here are this weekend’s deals from the 4Pockets camp. The deals end August 6th.
- FontStack SoundFont Player – $14.99 to $6.99
- Euclidean Sequencer – $14.99 to $6.99
- Midi Mixer – $9.99 to $4.99
FontStack SoundFont Player
FontStack is a ‘fontastic’ new 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.
Euclidean Sequencer
Euclidean Sequencer is an alternative incarnation of the classic step sequencer that has become very popular in the modular realm. It is based on Euclidean rhythms developed by computer scientist Godfried Toussaint in 2004. Euclidean rhythms have their roots in Greek mathematician Euclid’s algorithm, which involves using the greatest common divisor of two numbers to place hits in a sequence as evenly as possible across a set timing divisions.
In practice this is actually simpler than you might think, and Euclidean Sequencer is a great way to auto generate complex musical sequences with no prior knowledge of how it actually works.
Euclidean Sequencer is an AUv3 plugin that can be loaded inside any popular host application that has flexible MIDI routing.
You can define up to 4 Euclidean rhythm parts, each part is referred to as a band. The bands are labelled A-D and colour coded RED, ORANGE, GREEN and CYAN. Together these 4 bands create a pattern, and you can create up to 16 separate patterns per song patch.
Since each band can specify its own note sequence and output MIDI channel, you can create some quite sophisticated rhythms patterns, driving 4 separate instruments at once. Even better you can seamlessly switch patterns to create even longer evolving sequences. Patterns follow a specified key, scale, or defined chord.
You can even use MIDI input to automatically make note sequences conform to the currently playing chords.
Euclidean Sequencer now supports 4 different modes, traditional Euclidean, PolyRhythm, PolyMeter and PolyTempo. We have many great ways to automatically generate complex rhythms making it an invaluable tool for experimental music creation.
Midi Mixer
MidiMixer is an AUv3 plugin specifically designed for AUM which allows you to control your mix and record automation synced to AUM’s timeline. You can control up to 12 AUM channels at once and create up to 8 snapshots of the mixing desk. You can smoothly fade from one snapshot into another at the touch of a button and even record these transitions as part of the automation for your song.
Automation recording is a big part of MidiMixer, and as such can record real-time movement of controls or add them directly to the visual editor. Editor tools allow you to draw automation for each control in real time as your song plays.
MidiMixer ships with a couple of default AUM session templates that will help you quickly configure AUM and MidiMixer ready to create your new song.
MidiMixer works by sending control messages to AUM. It relies on the default settings for AUM which makes setup very quick and easy. By default, you have control over 12 AUM tracks and a single group track for overall volume. You can control AUM’s fader, pan, mute and solo settings for each of the 12 channels. We also provide a user option which allows you to send custom data to control other AUM settings (or a piece of MIDI equipment of your choice).
For more information on these and other 4Pockets apps, click here:
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