midi vs iSimpleLoop

midi-sink models a tray of water with ink floating on it. Every gesture is an exact, area-preserving transformation of the whole sheet — Aubrey Jaffer's mathematical marbling — so the rings stay crisp after a thousand strokes. Two modes. MARBLE MODE is the tray under your hands: tap for a drop, drag to comb, twist two fingers for a vortex, pinch to fold, draw with the Pencil and a wake follows the tip. Plug in a MIDI instrument and it plays into the same water: an MPE controller's strike, pressure, glide and slide become drop, feed, comb and hue; a wind controller draws a single calligraphic line; any keyboard plays drops on the circle of fifths. PLAY MODE turns the iPad into an MPE instrument. A pitch lattice — chromatic grid, Jankó or piano grid — sits under your fingers; every touch is a joystick (sideways bends in semitones, push to feed ink, pull back to stir). The Apple Pencil plays legato across the keys with real force as velocity, its barrel roll deepens vibrato and the Pencil Pro's squeeze is the sustain pedal. A floating strip carries pitch, mod, two assignable wheels and sustain on the MPE master channel. The stream goes out over a virtual CoreMIDI source (also to a USB-tethered Mac), the MIDI network session and Bluetooth LE MIDI, so any DAW or synth records a standard MPE performance while the water paints it. Made for MPE controllers — ROLI Piano and Seaboard, Expressive E Osmose — the ROLI Airwave's gesture CCs, wind controllers (Roland Aerophone, Odisei Travel Sax) and classic keyboards. midi-sink makes no sound of its own: it is a visualizer and a controller. Free software (AGPL-3.0). Collects nothing.

iSimpleLoop is a pocket sketchpad for songs. Record a loop, stack takes over it, play the guitar, the keys and the pads on top, keep the lyrics in front of you — and take the result out as audio or MIDI. Everything runs on the device. No account, no subscription, no cloud, no internet connection. LOOPER • Up to 8 tracks. Looped tracks follow the master loop, linear ones run the whole length of the song. • The first take sets the loop length; an overdub stops itself after one lap. • Count-in, metronome, and a per-track input: microphone, the app's instruments, or both. • Latency compensation, so a take lands where you played it. INSTRUMENTS • Guitar: strum and pluck six strings with your fingers, chords of the chosen key, power chords, capo, four tones from nylon to overdrive. • Keys: a polyphonic synth with piano, e-piano, pad, bass and lead, sustain and an octave shift. • Pads: 16 pads, 62 built-in sounds, pitch, filter and decay knobs, reverse. • Sampling from the microphone straight onto a pad, plus import of WAV, MP3, M4A, AIFF and FLAC with a trim screen. ARRANGEMENT AND EDITING • The whole song on one timeline: bar ruler, waveforms, playhead, scrubbing. • Select a fragment and trim, cut, silence, fade, normalise, reverse or nudge it by a beat — or drag it onto another track. • Three-band EQ and pan on every track. EFFECTS • Inserts on each track: compressor, overdrive, chorus and flanger. • Two project-wide send buses: a tempo-synced delay and a reverb. • Live instruments sound with the effect but are recorded dry, so the decision stays reversible. LYRICS • The lyrics live in the project, split into sections, and can sit next to the guitar while you play. NOTE EDITOR • Piano roll for the keys, a drum grid for the pads and six-line tabs for the guitar. • Move, stretch, copy, quantize, change pitch, fret, string and velocity — the track rebuilds from the notes right away, so you hear the change in the mix. • Undo and redo; cancel brings the track back exactly as it was. SLICE • Chop a sample by hits, into equal parts or on the tempo grid, drag the markers, tap a slice to hear it. • Slices land on consecutive pads — optionally together with a notes track that plays them in the original order. CHORDS • Any chord on any of the eight buttons: major, minor, 7, maj7, m7, sus2, sus4, add9, 6, m6, dim, aug. • Playable shapes are found automatically; pick a variant or place your own fingers on the fretboard. HARDWARE • USB audio interfaces: choose the input and the channel to record; other sample rates are converted on the fly. • MIDI keyboards over USB and Bluetooth play the synth and record like the on-screen keys; channel 10 plays the pads. • Foot controllers: MIDI Learn for play, record and stop; keyboard-style page-turner pedals work out of the box. EXPORT • WAV 24-bit, M4A (AAC) and MIDI — a track per instrument, pads on channel 10. • A home screen widget records a sample straight into the library. Landscape on iPhone and iPad. Interface in English, Russian, German and Italian.