Fugue Machine Rubato User Reviews

Name: Fugue Machine Rubato
Rating: 4.8 (25 reviews)

Fugue Machine Rubato

Alexandernaut

🔧 Utilities

🎵 Music

What users say

Summarized from real user reviews of Fugue Machine Rubato. Based on 25 reviews and a 4.8/5 average, it highlights the 6 positives and 2 negatives reviewers mention most about this Music app.

Positive things

🚀Powerful and flexible
🚀Stable and reliable
👍Inspiring and creative
👍Intuitive and easy to use
👍Lots of presets to get started
👍Works great on iPad and iPhone

Negative things

🐛Lacks a parameter randomizer feature
🐛Doesn't work with Logic Pro (only standalone)

Top reviews

Most Recent Highest Rated Lowest Rated

Karamba 🧑‍🚀 🛸

Was für ein komplexer und aufregend-intuitiv bedienbarer Monster-Sequenzer. 🧌
Mit seinen vielen einstellbaren Verläufen, welche nochmal mit Automationen beeinflusst werden können, fliegt man durch Galaxiencluster benachbarter Universen.
Und dann noch für Mac verfügbar - ein Träumchen.
Etwas klein im unteren Menübereich, trotz 13er IPad - hier würde ich mir ein Fenster zum nach oben verschieben oder nen Zoom wünschen.
Danke für diese wunderbare Neuauflage❕

Honky de Tonky

16 days ago

interesting but poor usability

Seems like an interesting and promising app but the documentation is still very basic for such a complex app and the UI is quite bad (small text, low contrast, three-finger-tap on small button, how?).
Contacted support over a month ago but no reaction.
I hope for a future update to significantly improve overall usability. Until then, there fortunately are others apps making music with is actually fun.

cyxious

a month ago

Response from developer

Apologies for missing your email, it seems to have slipped through the cracks on my end. I've been focused on some other projects recently, but will be getting back to Rubato soon. The manual, text, and contrast will be addressed. Re: 3-finger-tap on a small button, if you're referring to the shift buttons, you can tap down on the shift button and pan your finger anywhere on the screen and it will remained pressed. So you can put one finger down at a time and pan it out of the way for the next finger. This was designed to have parity between the iOS and Mac versions and to have modifiers on a touchscreen without having 4 separate modifier buttons. I find it hilarious that it actually works well, but for the record, 2/3-finger shift operations can mostly be achieved in other ways on a touchscreen

Amazing but..

I want to give this 5 stars, but I can’t do anything with this cool sequence I just did on my phone, there’s no way to render it to audio or midi or inter app audio or load this as an audio unit or anything which makes it worthless.. add any one of those and I’ll change this to a 5 star, but for a 20 something dollar app I expect at least one of those options

Axiom Crux

a month ago

Response from developer

It runs very well as an AUv3 MIDI plugin, just gotta make sure the AUv3 host supports MIDI plugins and if so, how to add them. IAA is deprecated, so I didn’t support it. And bouncing to MIDI is planned for a future update. Feel free to email me at alexander@alexandernaut.com if you have any questions

Impressive

Had this app, upon ChatGPT recommending the classic one, just a couple of days ago. I didn’t know this monster of a MIDI app existed.
2 days in, with zero knowledge, and I’m already having a blast!

Raff Santabarbara

4 months ago

Response from developer

🙏

Innovative Sequencer

I’m pretty satisfied with this unique sequencer. It’s one of a kind and will be one of the few sequencers I’ll use out of the 10 I already have. It’s feature packed and the layout is well designed. Alex added lots of his own presets to get things moving but for the price I REALLY wish this app had the ability to import midi files, as I literally have thousands of them. Also, I agree with the other reviewer who is asking for a randomization feature. I’ll give this app 5 stars if these two requests are implemented.

Kensington Slagger

4 months ago

Needs more scale options, note bending,and better documentation

In many ways it’s a great tool that offers solutions to help create complex rhythmic phrasing / sequencing.

¿ Is there a way to bend notes ?
¿ Why is there NOT an easy / simple way to BEND notes?

Bending notes is very VERY important for expression.
Please implement that or explain how to glissando/bend pitches

The manual does not offer much information.

You can only have maximum 128 steps to a sequence !!!
Increasing that would be appreciated.

The lack of scale/modes/tuning is frustrating.

Please PLEASE add more scales …. There should be at least 30 scales and tunings to choose from

Porchglider

5 months ago

Stellar app let down by lack of MIDI input

A very deep app, capable of totally unique sequences. The glaring omission is the lack of midi keyboard inputting of notes - it REALLY REALLY needs this - it’s the only thing holding back the app - I want to connect my Axis49 hexagonal midi controller via USB!

juliziz

5 months ago

Great progression

I had the demo, but never had enough time to get really deep into this. Since the price dropped, I bought it and I’ve been working with it for hours and hours. It’s quite deep and I had to look into the manual which isn’t quite finished, for more information. I find it quite musical now much more than the first one. If you’ve got an Apple Pencil, it makes using this quite a lot better. And as people have been saying, the printing could be much easier if it was white. Anyway I think it’s a WOW sequencer and I have got a lot to compare to.

Like it 2

5 months ago

Innovative

If you dig it, you will love it!

Mokkakanne

6 months ago

Nice idea, but hard to use

I really like the idea and the output is great. The big problem I have is the UI. The background is black. The text is a darkish gray and very small. It’s very very hard to read. I can make the window larger, but the text stays the same size. Why does the text have to be gray on a black background? This is on my iMac with a 27” screen. Great idea, but the app is very hard to use. If I could read the text I’d give the app five stars.

turnley

6 months ago

Mind bending time bending

Go past the inbuilt sound engine and route some MIDI… fugue machine rubato will take you to new planes!! It’s such a deep and rich system to explore…

Jernoiro

6 months ago

Solid and unique

Any video of this software will quickly demonstrate that its output can be captivating. The interface is excellent and feels only a little cramped on iPhone. However, it lacks support for batch operations or other quality of life features which might ease an otherwise tedious and repetitive workflow. Documentation is good but incomplete, and interface elements such as menus can be idiosyncratic; the learning process remains mostly intuitive. MIDI support is robust, and routing works well in Cubasis. The app is overall elegant, flexible and stable.

L. Laine

7 months ago

Doesn’t work as AUv3 in Ableton

Despite saying that it supports AUv3 on Mac it doesn’t work in Ableton as a plugin. Misleading description at best.

awdwon

7 months ago

Bad beginning

The first thing I wanted to do was: a preset with eight playheads running, to edit one playhead. However, in order to listen to what a single playhead is actually doing you need to disable the other seven playheads one by one (!!), instead of hitting a solo button, which obviously has been forgotten to provide. If you take this basic action further, listen to all the playheads and repeatedly pick one to fine-tune the settings you literally have to do hundreds of clicks or taps for simple editing. Next thing: the fonts are too small with no contrast, partly barely readable.

misterms

7 months ago

Response from developer

The solo/mute buttons are in the global module. Tap the globe button in the bottom toolbar to show the global module, then tap the grabber button on the right side of the module to show its second page of parameters. There you'll find solo/mute buttons for the playheads, effects, midi outputs, and drum triggers.

Totally unique

Original and inspiring take on composing, learning curve is real but worth it!
I’d request midi import, and more note names to extend composing power

Masked ninja assassin samurai

7 months ago

Incredible, just needs..

So unique, learning curve is might take 3 days.
Logic Pro on ipad is fiddly and the manual and tutorials need more work.
But get this , it's incredible

Masked ninja assassin samurai

7 months ago

Sequenzer-Monster!!!

Was für ein geniales Sequenzer-Monster!!! Alles, was man sich vorstellen kann (und noch mehr) ist mit diesem genialen Werkzeug möglich. Für fast jeden Parameter kann man Hüllkurven einzeichnen und phantastische Verläufe aus einfachsten Sequenzen bauen.
Trotz seiner Komplexität ist die Fugue Rubato einfach zu bedienen.

Honky de Tonky

8 months ago

Good, but on Mac, only works standalone

A truly great sequencer, but I really thought the point of this app bragging MacOS compatibility was that it would function in DAWs like Ableton Live as an AUV3 but it doesn’t and so can only be run standalone a send notes to a DAW over midi, which is not a good workflow. I hope this gets addressed so I can actually use it.

JohnProbeio

8 months ago

Response from developer

Hi John, Thanks for the review and feedback. Rubato currently includes an AUv3 MIDI plugin, but unfortunately Live does not support this format — they do support AUv3 audio plugins though. I'm considering ways for Rubato to run as a MIDI plugin within Live (as I would love this too), but tbd on that. The AUv3 MIDI plugin currently works great in Logic Pro and other AUv3 MIDI hosts on iOS and macOS. In the meantime, the best way to use Rubato with Live is side-by-side in standalone mode, with Ableton Link enabled on both Live and Rubato. This is actually preferred in one critical way compared to using a MIDI plugin within Live, as you can use the single instance of Rubato to route to multiple Live tracks simultaneously. Hope this helps, and please feel free to reach out at fuguemachinerubato@alexandernaut.com for any reason. All the best, Alexander

Absolutely briliant

For my use case of writing deterministic, evolving generative pieces this is the best tool I’ve found. Most other things I’ve found use randomness as the primary method of producing variation; I’m not critical of that but it’s not for me. I tried things like orca, Midinous (nodal doesn’t seem to work anymore), others, but didn’t get on with them. With far I seem to be unable to produce anything I don’t like so far. With other tools I often get frustrated with the ui, the limitations, and the results. The ui in fmr is amazing, some really next-level concepts that I think will be copied as other devs see how well they work; it appears to have nearly bottomless complexity if you want it but can be dead simple if you want that too, and I haven’t yet thought “I wish it could do …” (except for sending of midi cc, hope that gets added). I was on the fence due to the price but when the sale came I decided to give it a shot. I would not hesitate to buy it at full price now that I know what it does. Can’t recommend it enough

Mmmmmmmmmmmm2873646362

8 months ago

Great but needs more scale options and documentation

In many ways it’s a great tool that offers solutions to help create complex rhythmic phrasing / sequencing.

But the manual does not offer much information, and I have yet to see a video that really explains how everything works.

You can only have maximum 128 steps to a sequence !!!
Increasing that would be appreciated.

The lack of scale/modes/tuning is frustrating.

Please PLEASE add more scales …. There should be at least 30 scales and tunings to choose from

Porchglider

8 months ago