Midi Designer Pro 2

[Cinebient]

While i was searching for some good midi controllers i stumbled over Midi Designer Pro 2.
Looks really awesome. Not cheap (for an app) but seems very open for editing to personal likes and needs. Even 14 bit midi cc messages...
Anyone used it?
Could i create Animoog like control surface with it?
I would consider it then with an iPad Pro to replace my Seaboard

[pdxindy]

While i was searching for some good midi controllers i stumbled over Midi Designer Pro 2.
Looks really awesome. Not cheap (for an app) but seems very open for editing to personal likes and needs. Even 14 bit midi cc messages...
Anyone used it?
Could i create Animoog like control surface with it?
I would consider it then with an iPad Pro to replace my Seaboard

I have the big iPad Pro... so am interested in this as well. I have no interest in synths in the iPad, but rather using it as a controller for my VST synths in Bitwig and using MPE...

It is hard to find much info online

[Cinebient]

While i was searching for some good midi controllers i stumbled over Midi Designer Pro 2.
Looks really awesome. Not cheap (for an app) but seems very open for editing to personal likes and needs. Even 14 bit midi cc messages...
Anyone used it?
Could i create Animoog like control surface with it?
I would consider it then with an iPad Pro to replace my Seaboard

I have the big iPad Pro... so am interested in this as well. I have no interest in synths in the iPad, but rather using it as a controller for my VST synths in Bitwig and using MPE...

It is hard to find much info online

I know ThumbJam offer midi MPE out but otherwise there is no iOS app i'm aware of.
...but i wonder because there are some great iOS synths there. In a few years it might be really interesting.

[pdxindy]

While i was searching for some good midi controllers i stumbled over Midi Designer Pro 2.
Looks really awesome. Not cheap (for an app) but seems very open for editing to personal likes and needs. Even 14 bit midi cc messages...
Anyone used it?
Could i create Animoog like control surface with it?
I would consider it then with an iPad Pro to replace my Seaboard

I have the big iPad Pro... so am interested in this as well. I have no interest in synths in the iPad, but rather using it as a controller for my VST synths in Bitwig and using MPE...

It is hard to find much info online

I know ThumbJam offer midi MPE out but otherwise there is no iOS app i'm aware of.
...but i wonder because there are some great iOS synths there. In a few years it might be really interesting.

It is an area waiting to be developed!

[iPlogger]

I have looked at their lite version and another version that limited you to 12 controls. I think they removed those apps after their recent major release. It will definitely work as a control surface, but I already used "TB MIDI Stuff" and did not see myself switching to MIDI Designer Pro so I never spent too much time with it. I just reinstalled MIDI Designer 12 and one thing I noticed, it sems to lack a keyboard control. Maybe they added that to the new version. If a keyboard control is important, then I recommend finding out if a control like that exists. Maybe I just missed it in the list of items.

I have enjoyed using TB MIDI Stuff. I've used it to control a rack synth with patch changes and make live changes to things like attack, release, cutoff, etc. I have also worked a bit on an editor for it as well as some other synths (all Yamaha Motif series synths). It can get a little difficult to figure things out, but I tend to find some answers on the forum. It's been good, I recommend it, but it does crash during long editing sessions and can be difficult to figure some stuff out.

Then there is also Lemur. Probably the best of the bunch but I got it just about the time I started using a Surface for music and haven't spent much time with it. I made some X/Y controls to control the X/Y controls in Synthmaster and it worked great. Also fiddled with some sliders and knobs. But that's about it.

All three are capable as control surfaces. All three have their own unique learning curve. Simple things like a knob or slider sending out a MIDI CC value is easy on all of them. Where things get tricky is when you want one control to effect others or have a switch cause certain behavior in another control.

[Cinebient]

I have looked at their lite version and another version that limited you to 12 controls. I think they removed those apps after their recent major release. It will definitely work as a control surface, but I already used "TB MIDI Stuff" and did not see myself switching to MIDI Designer Pro so I never spent too much time with it. I just reinstalled MIDI Designer 12 and one thing I noticed, it sems to lack a keyboard control. Maybe they added that to the new version. If a keyboard control is important, then I recommend finding out if a control like that exists. Maybe I just missed it in the list of items.

I have enjoyed using TB MIDI Stuff. I've used it to control a rack synth with patch changes and make live changes to things like attack, release, cutoff, etc. I have also worked a bit on an editor for it as well as some other synths (all Yamaha Motif series synths). It can get a little difficult to figure things out, but I tend to find some answers on the forum. It's been good, I recommend it, but it does crash during long editing sessions and can be difficult to figure some stuff out.

Then there is also Lemur. Probably the best of the bunch but I got it just about the time I started using a Surface for music and haven't spent much time with it. I made some X/Y controls to control the X/Y controls in Synthmaster and it worked great. Also fiddled with some sliders and knobs. But that's about it.

All three are capable as control surfaces. All three have their own unique learning curve. Simple things like a knob or slider sending out a MIDI CC value is easy on all of them. Where things get tricky is when you want one control to effect others or have a switch cause certain behavior in another control.

Thank's!
I think Midi Designer Pro 2 offers also keyboard control. I just don't know if it would let me do multi channel support. Or even MPE.
That's the odd thing with iOS, not much info sometimes, no demo, no official videos.
I will searching a bit more.

[pdxindy]

Thank's!
I think Midi Designer Pro 2 offers also keyboard control. I just don't know if it would let me do multi channel support. Or even MPE.
That's the odd thing with iOS, not much info sometimes, no demo, no official videos.
I will searching a bit more.

I rather dislike that about the whole iOS ecosystem... so hard to find info, anything more than cursory reviews.

I gave in to that and purchased Midi Designer Pro 2 last night... installed it and started playing around with it some.

There is quite a bit of functionality in there but it will take a while to figure out. I have to look and see if there is any sort of help documentation.

There is no keyboard object... so a keyboard would have to be constructed key by key. You can give each key its own midi channel and note #. There are X/Y pads. You can also have a control trigger multiple controls.

[iPlogger]

I was looking over their documentation this morning at http://mididesigner.com/wiki/doku.php/manual:10_intro

As pdxindy said, you have to create a keyboard one key at a time. That documentation looks like it might be for V1, but may probably still carry over to V2.

Yes, a lot of times there is such minimal information. Forums are often my go to for help. I had to look at the many project samples in TB MIDI Stuff to understand it. Then perused and asked questions on the forum. The dev is very helpful.

[Cinebient]

I was looking over their documentation this morning at http://mididesigner.com/wiki/doku.php/manual:10_intro

As pdxindy said, you have to create a keyboard one key at a time. That documentation looks like it might be for V1, but may probably still carry over to V2.

Yes, a lot of times there is such minimal information. Forums are often my go to for help. I had to look at the many project samples in TB MIDI Stuff to understand it. Then perused and asked questions on the forum. The dev is very helpful.

I guess iOS developer have no money for marketing
There are also not much real in depth reviews to find. Mostly some tiny "promotion" videos.
I see TB Midi stuff latest update is 2 years ago.
Midi Designer 2 just a few days.
3D touch support for polyphonic aftertouch would be great.

[pdxindy]

I've given up for the time being on creating a complex template with Midi Designer Pro. I'm just not that into building templates and all the learning that goes into it. I am gonna make a simple 4 X/Y pad layout to control the Zebra performance pads though. That seems easy enough.

[drosenstark]

Hey all, I'm Dan, the author of MIDI Designer Pro 2 here. I'm glad to answer any and all questions. Also: I didn't realize this conversation was going on, so I'll respond quickly (and perhaps missing some thing):

1. Regarding a keyboard control: you have to create it one page at a time, but you could always grab a layout that has a keyboard control, save a page of it, and then load that into any layout you want (or a new layout).
2. Regarding version of MD: yes, there is only MIDI Designer Pro 2 for now.
3. We're surprised that people find the online information about MDP to be minimalist... we've been building it for years and quite diligently. It's definitely got some holes, but anyway, here are some examples:

• Our YouTube Channel (it's been a while, but this Fall we're getting back into it): I just Googled "MIDI Designer Youtube" (no quotes) but it's here: http://www.youtube.com/c/mididesignerpro
• The manual! midiDesigner.com/manual (there's a section at the end detailing some new features of MDP2... it's a work in progress)
• The Q&A site has tons and tons of information, and we're adding more all the time: midiDesigner.com/qa ... it's also REALLY well indexed by Google
• hit us up via support [at] mididesigner.com ... we answer fast

Anyway, I'm excited to be conversing about MDP2 and take a moment away from coding MDP 2.3 (due out next week) to see if I can insert something  useful in the conversation. If possible, whenever someone is discussing MDP and wants to get me into the conversation, please email me at dan [at] mididesigner.com

Thanks!
Dan

Dan Rosenstark 
Author :: MIDI Designer
dream | create | play
http://www.mididesigner.com

[drosenstark]

Oh yeah, forgot to mention: to see stuff our users have done with MDP, check out midiDesigner.com/community#list ... there's a huge list at the bottom and little by little stuff is floating to the top. Notably, Animoog is on there.

Thanks!
Dan

Dan Rosenstark
Author :: MIDI Designer
dream | create | play
http://www.mididesigner.com

[pdxindy]

Hi Dan,

Is it possible to make a note per midi channel keyboard where each note can modulate based on the position in the key? Like keys that are also X-Y pads?

[pdxindy]

Just a follow up on this thread.

I never managed to get Midi Designer working between my laptop and ipad pro. It is way too complicated and I did not find any clear instructions that worked. I wanted to connect via a usb cable.

I just want something that works, and I can go buy any midi controller and simply plug it in.

So this is a warning for anyone who just wants to use this tool and not delve into a deep pit of learning just to do stuff... avoid it... for ease of use, it sucks.

[TabSel]

I wonder why WebMidi doesn't take off.
So easy to build your own, browser based, touch based, platform independent midi controller with plain html, css and JavaScript.