Pianist Pro 1.5 for the iPad adds MIDI Mobilizer support from Line 6

From MooCowMusic comes the latest iteration of their renowned iPad app, Pianist Pro 1.5 (£5.99). Most notably, Pianist Pro now incorporates the MIDI Mobilizer technology from Line 6, enabling Pianist Pro on your iPad, with the Line 6 MIDI Mobilizer adapter (£45) or wirelessly over Wi-Fi, to be used as a MIDI controller as well as connecting with your existing MIDI devices and your DAW.

Pianist Pro has been extended further to work seamlessly with MIDI. Two of Its best features, the programmable arpeggiator and the Scale Piano (allowing for scales to be soloed with the swipe of a finger), are both now MIDI compatible, making the functionality of these features applicable to other MIDI devices. Pianist Pro becomes more than just a passive keyboard.

The built-in sampled sounds can also be used with an external MIDI hardware device or DAW, allowing Pianist Pro to become a sound source in itself (taking full advantage of its 88 key professionally-sampled virtual piano as well as the sampled organ, synth sounds and guitars). And let's not forget the drum machine, too.

Another of Pianist Pro's features is recording and overdubbing. Now, being MIDI compatible, you can do some composing / performing on the road, save it, and when you're ready, export it in a Standard Midi File (SMF) for use with other compatible MIDI devices or your favorite DAW. And don't worry, Piano Pro 1.5 imports SMFs, too.

MooCowMusic describes Piano Pro as a "a musical scratchpad or live performance tool." Now with built-in MIDI support, thanks to Line 6's MIDI Mobilizer adapter, it's that, but to a whole new level!

Check out the demo video after the break.

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Source: http://moocowmusic.com/PianistPro/index.html

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From MooCowMusic comes the latest iteration of their renowned iPad app, Pianist Pro 1.5 (£5.99). Most notably, Pianist Pro now...

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Novation X-25 rules! Good to see it here...

September 13 2010 at 6:55 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Nik

Or you could just get pOSCa, a free OSC client for the iPhone, works also on the iPad (yes, shameless self promotion, but it's free and there are no ads or strings attached)

September 13 2010 at 6:22 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Grant Buell

The only thing keeping me from ditching the laptop for an iPad right now is the fact that I can hook my laptop to my large digital piano with a MIDI USB cable and input MIDI information into Garage Band. If I could get MIDI into an iPad instead, that'd be great. It looks like Line6 has figured this out. Now, if Apple could port GarageBand to the iPad...

September 13 2010 at 4:49 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Brian

Interesting, wonder if it supports key velocity information.

September 13 2010 at 4:07 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

1 reply to Brian's comment

Andrew Hodgkinson

It is possible to turn on or off velocity information in the application settings. The velocity is chosen from the position of your finger on the key - highest velocity towards the bottom edge, lowest towards the top. This can get fiddly in between the black keys, so it's most easily used when the number of concurrently visible keys used on the keyboard is set to a fairly low value.

Velocity information isn't sent when the software is showing its dual keyboard (one above the other) or unusual scale-based view; it only works for the normal single keyboard view. An optional volume "pedal" can be shown to the left of the keyboard with a wheel above it set for pitch or modulation control too (but only one of pitch or modulation). You can find out more, with screenshots, from MooCowMusic:

http://moocowmusic.com/PianistPro/index.html

In addition to the hardware option, there's OSC and DSMI support. You run a small server process on your Mac which receives WiFi packets from the iPad and turns them into MIDI messages for applications on the Mac host. The author finds OSC works well but I found the Mac-side software for that very clumsy (though very flexible) and prefer DSMI. Support for DSMI got added after I asked about it, so I can't fault the developers for their responsiveness to queries and suggestions.

There are indeed free alternatives as other commenters suggest. The combination of control features, views, playability and so-on all added up for me though - I was happy to see the app featured on TUAW as, of the various piano / controller style applications I've used, it's my favourite, even if the price is relatively high by app standards.

September 14 2010 at 7:46 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply