Elastic Melody, Oliver Greschke’s brilliant melodic sequencing app, now supports MIDI send/receive, for other apps and for hardware. That makes your iPhone/iPad a perfect companion to your synth hardware – including our own MeeBlip geode. Watch:
A big thanks to Oliver (MoMInstruments, with Mouse on Mars) for this unsolicited video. He’s made a brilliant, ultra-compact rig here, and Elastic Drums makes an ideal companion to the geode’s grimy bass. The funny thing is, while this is an iOS rig, it really gets back to hardware roots – make a pattern, tweak some knobs, keep the groove going.
And that’s really the spirit of Elastic Melody itself. Oliver took inspiration from the terrific sequencer on Dave Smith’s brilliant Evolver. It’s a great tribute to Dave’s approach, and now adding MIDI support makes it complete.
New in this version (from the developer):
- Midi Input: Select your Midi Input source and the track that should receive Midi Notes
- Midi Output: Select where track Notes should get routed to
- Midi Bluetooth: Search for Midi Bluetooth connections
- New: Copy function to copy Sound, Notes or Automation data to another track
- New: Shift Notes up and down
- Presets by DJ Puzzle
- Several small bugfixes and improvements
And that’s on top of a 3-track sequencer with per-track polyrhythmic/polymetric operation, plus song mode for stringing together patterns in the studio or live. Each of those three tracks features an internal analog subtractive synth, too, with full parameter control. And as you’d expect from the Elastic series, you get a full set of effects (EQ, chorus, delay, and reverb) in the deal, too, though of course you can also add your own with other apps.
As before, Elastic Drums runs both as a standalone app and as an AUv3 plug-in, on both iPhone and iPad (though iPad will naturally give you more screen room).
Elastic Melody @ MoMinstruments
The app works with any class-compliant MIDI interface, making it a great choice both for desktop synths and Eurorack modular (expect I’ll wind up using it even more with the latter). As it happens, we make a compatible interface, too – MeeBlip cubit duo is about the same size and price as some competing 1×1 interfaces, but gives you a full four outputs (as a thru, so effectively zero-latency). If you have a newer iPad or iPhone with USB-C, you don’t need any adapter; you can just buy a USB-C to B cable. (I just did via Prime myself, I guess as I want to send Jeff Bezos even further into space or something.)
Our synth is now shipping direct from Canada (internationally) and Germany (for Europe):
And if you need an interface that doubles as a thru box – but is roughly the size/weight of a 1×1 option, I mean, I definitely use the one we make as I haven’t found a better solution, either:
More on version 1.1 of Elastic Melody:
SoundTestRoom has done a great tutorial video on the update, if Oliver’s jam caught your attention:
Going to have fun with this one.