Audio MIDI Connect

Every so often, we post codes for free copies of the app; Sunday is usually a good day to check out our Facebook page....

"a dream come true" -- Damian Erskine, on No Treble.

Audio Midi Connect lets you capture the notes from live vocals or instruments such as guitar, bass, or trumpet, and transcribe songs without taking your hands off of the instrument. The musical pitch of the live instruments are detected by the app, and translated into MIDI notes for applications such as Garage Band, Logic, or Pro Tools.

The app has been covered by No Treble, Discchord, iOS Musician, Apps4iDevices, 1ikkai.com (Japanese), DTM Station (Japanese), and on YouTube by Rafport.

The app supports both Apple Core MIDI, and the DSMIDIWifi standard, making it easy to connect to Mac OSX, Windows, and Linux. You can also use CoreMIDI to control synthesizer apps on the same device -- Animoog and Sunriser are just two that work. Be aware that many synthesizer apps require a lot of processing power -- when both the synthesizer and Audio Midi Connect are running, glitches can happen to the audio -- you might need a faster device, or a less compute intensive synth.

The pitch detection is fast enough to capture playing at moderate speeds in real time. With a clear signal, and a MIDI connection that is either through a cable, or on a WiFi connection with little traffic, there can be a lag of roughly 0.1 seconds. For faster melodies, you can record the audio with the app, and then convert to MIDI notes later. You can also play slowly, and then adjust the speed of the MIDI playback with your sequencer. The app detects a single pitch at a time.

For anyone developing a sense of pitch, the app also provides a visual cue to the note being played -- the display is large and clear, making it easy to see when your device is sitting on a music stand.

Rafport has done a very nice demonstration of how you can use the app in a guitar recording situation. In particular, he covers the lag issue very well.

Apps4iDevices has done a video review of the app. Here's a video demo from them:

The app is available now in the iTunes Store.

Here's a video on setting up MIDI for our app Live Guitar; Audio Midi Connect uses the same system.

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