Skip to main content

iPad as a Midi Controller

Lesson 16 from: Mastering The Maschine

JK Swopes

iPad as a Midi Controller

Lesson 16 from: Mastering The Maschine

JK Swopes

buy this class

$00

$00
Sale Ends Soon!

starting under

$13/month*

Unlock this classplus 2000+ more >

Lesson Info

16. iPad as a Midi Controller

Lesson Info

iPad as a Midi Controller

So of course I got my I've got my trusty turntable again, so this time we're not going to be doing any turntable ish stuff this is going to be a little bit more creative in the way they like to use my machine in my ipad, so a lot of times I'll get questions there's a lot of plug ins that do like, you know, aarp educator stuff or cord stuff for, you know, step sequencers and just a lot of little stuff that the way machine is set up it's really difficult to really route it inside of it, you know? You know, we always get question for people coming from different dolls how'd I set up this plug in or this plug in because I want to play chords and I want to do this and I always say, you know, you khun, I kind of do it there's a lot of different work arounds for, but what how he suggests is if you have an ios device ipad or, you know, I phone that you look into the different acts they're out there because there's really, really cool stuff that you could do with a lot of these aps and, you kno...

w, there most of time they're a lot cheaper than the plug is there out there anyway, which is, you know, my ipad is kind of like my unless me feed my my junkie nous the junkie of trying to buy gear. No. When the wife says you need to kind of slow down, I say, okay, I just go buy a new app. It's only ten books, you know, it's a lot easier to sneak a ten dollar happen to the house in a box, you know, sitting on the front. So it's one of those things, but there's really some cool stuff in there. So what I want to show first is I think I want to show, um, a cord app because that's, when that I get a lot. So I think we're we will send it up there. You know, we should be good to go, so I want to put this up here. I'm gonna open up cord polly pad. This is ap called cord polly pad. Now, what this does is it lets me go through and pretty much it has a bunch of different courts now, you know, for all you guys out there that are awesome piano players and you know your cords more power to you that's, not me. I played by air, and I only know probably one or two courts and I couldn't tell you what they are I just put my hands on the keys and that's what I play you know and you know I definitely like playing cord and I'm always trying to learn new stuff but you know, I don't read music I don't really never had training so any time I can make my court playing easier I'm all for it and I've tried tons and tons of aps and this one right here is a really, really good at because all it does is it puts all the cords out on the pad for you and just really quick I have this hooked up to machine with the ira dignity it just plugs into your data port and it has a mini input and many output port I gotta plug it right into the back of machine now normally when I'm at home I'll do have set them both up on the same wireless network and do it that way and I really don't get any late and see. But I figured for this situation to be a lot simpler for everybody if I showed the eirik so it's basically just a mini interface connected to my ipad and I had that going into machine and as long as you have those input ports and output ports set up inside of machine you're good to go so now I can basically go through and play different chords, different pads or whatever. So get back over here to the sound that I had wanted to have had it all sound too I think what I'm hitting my when I'm hitting my pads is trying to change on me, so but anyway, you get the idea so let's say I had that and what it does is it has a lot of different presets, so let's say, I want to do maybe a pop style, you know, court of common kind of pop court progression, I could pull that up now could just go I could not play that on the keys to save my life, you know? And so for everybody out there that feels bad that you you want to play chords and you just don't know it look there's stuff out there for guys like us, trust me, you know, if I played this in someone heard that my old man, you also no, I just hit for pat on what's what's so good about this one in a way it's laid out because I prefer this one over a lot of the other ones is the padley out? Because I'm so used to machine I'm so used to playing pads that month, my fingers just kind of naturally gravitate to that now let's say I got that record that progress on another good thing about this one is if you look if you see the ipad it actually shows the courts that I'm playing keep on and then I can actually go in and pick my pick what key I'm in and pick different courts to add to this if I want to go in and you know audition if I wanted to audition any of these different chords I could just drag him over now I got that one in there on the good thing about this is if you if you look in here eyes actually playing the courts so because there's some like court plug ins that if you trigger on a machine and only kind of plays that note that triggers the chords in the plug in this well actually print these chords into machine for u s so you could see it actually it's actually claims court so if I want to re record those into machine I now actually have those courts a list actually this is I'll just do it really quick when he said a tempo because there's something else I want to show you what that so it might be fine you know, just make a patter and stay late for bar pattern and we're just going to play some like thiss we'll see wait this app is also so I just think that it's really really cool so this yeah we'll see with it yeah, we'll just do that that's not going to fire you change that. Change that there's. Another way to change the metrodome outside of the the preferences. If you if you do a shift and grid, it gets you into the recording mode and you can actually change it right there. So you could change your metric level. You could change the timing of your mention home. You can have it. Come on. When you press the record button, you can change the county and lethal. If you need a longer count and you could do all that stuff, you could change the quantities mode. We turn that off, put it none again. So shift and grid. So few press shift and greed, and on the on the studio control is going to say, record mode above it. So if you press that is the record most green and again, you got your mention on levels off it's too loud for you going and turn it down quickly. You could change the time. You know that if you wanted to be, like, double time like flux that you wanted to be regular, if you want to come on, when you press the record button, you can set that if you want to change your county and maybe, you know, maybe you're working with a guitar player somebody that needs a longer counted or maybe it's you yourself like me when I'm in my studio by myself and maybe I need to go over to my road that's not by machines so maybe I'll turn up my count in and send it to two now we've got to bar counting so you can set that there and also your qantas stating so cool all right so you sound better threw me off all right so now I got my court player a k a turntable a k a little box of awesomeness right here so taking ap is called court player it's called cord polly pad cloud probably pad and they also make one called step pagliaro which I'll get into is the same person but you could just go into the app store and get it ipad or iphone whatever I can't rember the price may be ten or fifteen books whatever it is it's worth it we'll see so some cool stuff I want to show you so we got this way s actually in there I messed it up when I switched to that last one so I let go that no too soon but you get the idea you see the actual cords are in there and I can actually go in and not do that don't do that you got excuse me I'm not a mac users so I'm used to pc er notes her pc navigation so sometimes I do stuff in there that so I want to select all those and I can just kind of fix him no good so you like oh yeah that's cool but check this is wait there's more so so so say you've got that and you're again you're like me like man, this is a really really like how that came out it's a really cool progression I'd like to probably use that later and what some other stuff just to save it so of course machine can export many so what you could do is you could go right here, right? Click and stay export many you bring up here you're whatever you want and I have a thing on my desktop so it's called mind midi so awesome. So now my media what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna put a new photo in there and I'm say, uh, pop cords so now I got popped cords and airman named this pop tart bulls, so I got pop tart popcorn, right? So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to clear this actually, this is, uh clear all that so clear that out I'm going over to my files and there's my mind maybe force what I'd like to do stuff like this like anything that you want you can do this with pattern's the state like we talked about you're safe, you got drum panders don't you want to save? You can export the media do it this way, but what I like to do is I'll just right click on this folder I want to say I want to add that to my favorites so now anytime I go here, I could just go directly to my chords folder and I got my popcorn and there's gonna load it in the state, so now I can use it any time question you could load that in with any sound, right? Yeah. So this was clear and so let's say, ok, I played it originally played it with une p and now I'm going to go and maybe I want, um, go to the machine library and now I'm going to go to instruments and I'm going to go find maybe I want pat, so I'll go into massive and I'll look for sin pad and maybe I want something that's kind of basic, so I got something basic and I'm just a little so that was seeming I want this one, so that sounds like so you know, little so we'll see what that one sounds like, so let's, just go back over to my file section and I got my pop tart raising go and you see it like what's it look like that it was different you mess it up no it's in a different view right now it's just in the main group view where it just shows the notes for each sound if you want to see the courts they're in a way s so yes you can build up your own library of your very own chord progressions even if you don't know how to play the courts and you can make people generally I do when you get to the core from the left but I had a whole library full of course I could just pull up anytime you know if you got some of your favorite cores that you play again like me I always play a lot of the same course you know when I go to the especially when I'm playing tpp is probably my favorite sound ever so I always play similar cords when I go there but with this I can play stuff that I normally wouldn't play I just don't know how to play I could save it and then now I can pull it back any time I want I can use it with any sound so maybe maybe you you want to play something on the piano and you might play a different if you were playing with its scent right? You know if you play something the piano it may not sound exactly the same you may not play it the same as you would play it if it was a sin patter something so you can lay down a bunch of different chords with maybe triggered a piano sound and save them and now you can pull him back and trigger anything in triggered your scent pads you can trigger strange you know anything so in theirs I don't even go through there's tons and tons of court libraries and core progression in there so you can do a lot of different styles so let's say I don't like that style for that, so we'll go back in here because I'm really a big uh I'm not really a pop guy I know not got excited with the pop in the the gm type stuff because he did he makes everything you know live so let's say I'm more of a more of a chill out and me and you know, type of person so let's say I want to pull up something this more of a chill out sounds listen with that sounds like, well, that's a little bit too much courts for this sound we had right? So what I'm going to do is find something a little bit simpler just so we can audition these these core progression so so that might that might sound a little better because as I'm looking at these cords there's a lot of keys be impressed oh yes that's kind of that's kind of cool and kind of look and see what type of sounds are in there go through the little library over here because there's a whole little browse over here that kind of has all different type of course you're going to go through and just build your own core progressions you don't have to use the presets but I find the prisons are a good place to start again like maybe I want a few more solis must go here and so I get it man I like I like that that sounds good that sounds like something I would actually play if I could write you know saying but I can't but I can so I can but I can't so that's why I'm saying this is apples work because you can come up with stuff even if it's even a good learning tool because it gives you a lot of presets that air or common to the style that you're looking forward gives you those common core progression so you could just kind of hear him and say ok that's that's kind of how it would go so on the good thing about it is you can hit any of the chords in the preset because they all go together and you have to hit him in any specific order so see I like that so what I want to do is I want to actually I want to actually lay that down so let me I think that sounds about right. Well see uh so we're gonna see if this's what? What? It sounds like that so we'll get you can lay down uh I'm probably gonna you can go in and fix your notes maybe you want to hold it a little bit longer different parts just elected main thing you want to do if you're selected notes and anything inside the machine, make sure you have this arrow click instead of the pain if you have the papers clicked and you try to you know select everything, you're going to start drawing it notes and it's going to get you all crazy. So when you pull this out a little bit we'll pull this one out a little bit again, I can say this, but I think I want to kind of, uh, receive weaken thousand drums behind it or something and just go through a few different styles just to show you the different styles you can make with this app and these I want to kind of probably shortened a little bit so in question so far about this see when can get giddy about his effects, I get getting about court because I can't play court so when I can, when I have a whole library full of course that I just get excited so oh you can just talk about the physical connection between the ipad and the machine so well if you couldn't you can see this but it's a so I rigged media it connects to the data port on you're the same way that you charge it plugged van has two cables for input and output in the end of him I mean the front part kind of looks like a one eighth inch cable but the end is they just looked just like many cables just acts like a regular maybe controller so so what whatever happened you would be using would have to have many support right because I'm sure there's some keyboard app we don't have minutes yeah most most of them have many output but there are some that don't have many output it just depends on that but nowadays if its support if its core many capable you can set it up and then again you don't have to use the physical like islamic jihad here I've had in your computer on the same wifi network it'll work that way as well so that's usually I usually like that at home sometimes as well you know and that way you're not tethered to your computer and you kind of sit back on and your chair where if you got a count in your studio and just kind of go through cords and you know so it is really it's really flexible and then also my, my mohr permanent set up at home is actually have and audio interface hooked up to my ipad, so I use, like the think I used a tractor audio ten from native instruments, and as long as you have a powered hub, you can plug that plug that into your ipad with the camera connection kit, and now I have audio and middie for my ipad, and then I'll just treat it just like it was one of these external pieces of gear, so I'll run the mini input into my actual audio interface or machine, and I'll run the audio out of that that interface into my main interface. So I I use that I used that that audio interface to basically turn my ipad into a new external piece of gear, and I'll get into some or in terms of how you use it as a sound module as well, because that's another thing that I do again, you know, these absolute, like, five, ten, fifteen I think the prices after party that dolls, but if you're just talking about this, since and stuff you know from from ten to nineteen books is what you're going to pay for a lot of these applications, so again, it's a lot easier. To sneak into the house, passed the wife, then then a big box because, you know, when the labor man comes, the box comes to my front door and I know ken is the same as me are our setups or downstairs? So there's no way to hide the box unless I say, man, look, you have to meet me by the garage by the, you know, because you don't want to go through all that so again, let's see, you know, you could get after blank, ok? I really you know, I don't need to buy nothing right now, but I can just spend a little ten dollars on the new app on newsstands now, I got a whole new, you know, set of sounds or a whole new functionality I didn't have, so I'm definitely a big pile lists, you know, where there's is the ipod touch the ipad or, you know, iphone, if you could get an apple in it, you can hook up many to it and, you know, it is pretty cool, so and I'm using the ipad two I'm not fancy don't got the newest ipad, so yeah, anybody out there that wants to get an extra eye paddling around, you want to send over, we'll be more than happy. You know, one of these days I'll get a new one, but again, so stuff like this works just fine on this is the ipad two, so you don't have to have the fastest, newest stuff to run, you know, many control absolute when you start getting into since there's some sense that I'm just not going to pull up during this broadcast because it's really going to make me feel bad about myself with his old ipad, so I'm just going to take this stuff way can work with, but anyway, so let's say we got this in here and say, I kind of like that just went down here, probably it used to be stretched out a little bit, and again, I'm just going to say this one again again, I'm just gonna export many you can also do a drag and drop many just like we show what audio if you drag right here, I can just drag this media and it's going to drag it to my desktop it wherever I want, but I find it quicker to just export because I know where I want to go, so right there and this one isn't pop, so I'm a name this one, huh? She'll course, so you basically didn't go through as you're building this stuff and build up your own cord libraries and that way you don't always have to pull up the impact. If you don't want a black man, I like that core progression. I could pull it out. And since is maybe you can go in and kind of, you know, move the notes around and do whatever you want. And the gamma name, this one chili bowl. All right, so I got chilly ball in their question. Just a small question. Uh, can you import and tagged those as well so that you can browse him from the navy's role? No, no, no. You can't there's no there's, no many file, um, option here. And a lot of a lot of people from machine one. We're used to being able to save your patterns and tag moment. This is the this is the only way that off I suggest that people do it if you make your own little, uh, favorite photo. That way, all your stuff is going to show up in there. So boom and I got my chilled cords and there's my chili bowl, and I got my pop cords and pop tart. Um, they asked me earlier follows. Hungry? I kind of think maybe I am, you know, pop tarts chilly, but I think the next move might be staked steak fingers so I don't know, but anyway, you get the idea, you know we're good, so, you know, good to go on there now I can actually just go in and start building stuff let's say we want to we'll just pull up some kind of kid and I'll try to go through a few different stiles just to give you an idea of the type of stuff you can do with this so let's, go over here and pull up a kid so again, let the kids go to browse groups and I must say for this are probably want uh, maybe something e vinyl or maybe that urban no, yeah, we'll try our best urban might be a little bit too much for what I'm doing and let's do it, so I'm just gonna go through and try to find a good kid that kind of fits with that. I kind of go back and forth between turning my group down and my sound just to get to where I want so there's some weird kid name there, gypsy gigolo I think I want something vital. Wait a minute, wait flux kids have that search, so I love when stuff like that happens because it happens, all of us you saw, I was looking, I couldn't see any of my results and I was like where's my stuff at and that I'm starting to sweat and like to everything's gone on to lead it. No, it was because when earlier, when flux, say that multi effect and we actually search for it, it was still in the search that was only pulling up the stuff that was relevant to that search. He had a that in there, so if he doesn't have any, any kids, if there's no kits that start with those letters or have those letters and it is only going to show that stuff so that's why I wasn't showing up so yeah, one stuff like that happen, so we'll see if we can find a kid to go with this. I know flux is born bad, but he may have something here for my chili bowl. So and you talk about crazy names for kids. We'll see some of these I'm not gonna be able to say on the broadcast is keep it going, keep it pg but I'm gonna see if this one works and dedication toe flux his facial here like that way. I think I got a little double. Yeah, I had a little double kick right there that's not right now I got the start of a chill out track.

Class Materials

bonus material with enrollment

JK Swopes Gear Guide.pdf

Ratings and Reviews

George D
 

Even though it's a bit old now this is still a fantastic walkthrough of Maschine. Lots of great content here!

Joseph Castaneda
 

Pretty dated, but an excellent class. JK walks through everything he explains with thorough, real-time examples. Extremely helpful!

William Parmlee
 

Just what i needed, great work flow an easy to follow. looking forward to the next level . Thanks

Student Work

RELATED ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES