It’s time to escape mechanical loops and rigid, on-the-grid timing. Fugue Machine Rubato does everything Alexandernaut’s brilliant Fugue Machine did with multiple playheads. But now it can also accelerate, decelerate, bounce, echo, strum, swing, and bend, for both pitches and rhythmic triggers. It’s what has been missing in our digital sequencers: freedom.
We’ve had expressive instruments. How about an expressive playhead?
Fugue Machine was wonderful, polyphonic, articulate. But Fugue Machine Rubato is deep – you just keep peeling back more and more layers of possibilities. I’ve been working with some late test builds and preliminary documentation, and I found that any one element offered a lot to explore. Just adding note echo to Fugue Machine is already powerful, as is the ability to sequence instruments on the Mac. Each time you’ve finished getting lost in one set of features, you discover you’re a tap away from another row of parameters.
The main interface presents the Note Grid – a piano roll-style editor, over which your multiple playheads can breeze across a collection of pitches. The Fugue Machine interface is firmly rooted in 12-TET and western modes, but you don’t have to restrict yourself to that. In my example below, I just set the mode to chromatic and then adjusted Tuning Systems in Ableton Live, for instance.
You can move, shift, and spawn notes easily. And you can think of this in a non-linear way: the pattern can be a directional melody, or the DNA for multiple melodies and variations, or a collection of pitches where the position becomes more weighting than melody per se. Or it can be drum triggers. Or both. (Oh yes, you can get very post-tonal here.)
Even before you get into all the various rhythmic variations, you can automate navigation between points for modulating how playheads move and how you shape any given parameter.
And then you have loads of parameters you can transform:
- Direction
- Rate
- Acceleration and deceleration curves
- Offsets
- Set pitches or triggers (including drum triggers)
- Width (effective note length) and velocity offsets
To that, add two effects, configurable per playhead: pitch “blend” (which determines how notes overlap) and note echo.
There’s an onboard internal synth – and actually, I welcome that it’s so simple, because it helps to keep you focused on the sequencer. But mostly you’ll connect it to other iOS or macOS instruments. And then… ooh wow. (I imagine someone might even find visual applications for this.)
The combination of multiple playhead behaviors, modes, and envelopes spawns an extraordinary number of permutations. You can create logic structures that generate patterns. You can produce elaborate, organic shapes with the automation. You can make slow, stuttering sounds, elaborate time-stretched motions and gestures.
To navigate all those possibilities, Alexadernaut has included a lovely array of presets – each serving a distinct pedagogical purpose, so that you’ll come away having learned about an important feature, not just listening as the developer shows off. There’s also a clever file-augmenting system so you can keep iterating through new ideas and save snapshots of your work.
More specs from the dev:
- Bend time with curves, rates, and offsets
- Automate notes and nearly everything else
- Sculpt envelopes with curves and shapes
- Position playheads anywhere on the grid
- Play up to eight playheads at once
- Apply note echoes per-playhead
- Arpeggiate notes from multiple playheads
- Blend notes from multiple playheads
- Offset, stack, spread, and invert pitches
- Clamp, compress, and expand velocities
- Program drums via per-note Drum Trigs
- Route notes to up to eight MIDI outputs
- Organize patterns in nestable folders
- Launch patterns quantized to the beat
- Revert state via auto-saved Snapshots
- Learn contextually via popovers
- Explore ~150 built-in patterns
- Control via touch, keyboard, and cursor
- Resize Mac window at native resolution (YES – emphasis mine)
It’s instantly my favorite pattern sequencer. And you never feel lost in some overly complex structure because the basic interface is so easy to control directly. This is the opposite of every sequencer I’ve given up on. You want to keep trying new ideas, and you can keep tweaking it as you play, like you would a synth.
I can imagine so many possibilities for this, too – MIDI interface, modular, you go. Note that to route MIDI, you’ll need to dive into settings – the main strip shows bus, not output MIDI channel. To aid your MIDI routing adventures, Alexandernaut has included a virtual MIDI driver on macOS:
I will say, Alexandernaut’s work feels most at home on iOS. On macOS, the experience can be a bit clunky; I almost would have wished for a separate version with more Mac UI conventions, at least when it comes to menu navigation. The primary interface feels just as usable on the Mac as on iOS, though. And this is compact enough that you can use on an iPhone. The usability on desktop also means you can use hybrid mouse/iPad setups – I rather like swapping between touch and mouse and keyboard.
Alexandernaut has done it again. As with Fugue Machine and Arpeggionome, Fugue Machine Rubato becomes an instant must-have sequencer tool. And it’s good enough that you’ll absolutely be glad for having the Mac version alongside the mobile one. It’s just too addictive.
Here’s a quick example just demonstrating MIDI output to Ableton Live, working with AAS’ excellent Collision so as to demonstrate that you can use alternative tuning systems. (It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that pelog.)
But wow oh wow is this great. The sticker price may not scream “iOS app” but – no mind. This is a brain-bending new approach to sequencing that will work across all your Apple devices. It’s worth it.
Fugue Machine Rubato [Alexandernaut]