Great news! Italian sound designer Tiziano Gileno Fasano, aka Subconscience, recorded a video tutorial just for us, showing how to connect Animoog to Model 15 with Audiobus, a process which further opens the door to endless possibilities!
Here’s the short video which shows every step and ends with a quick demonstration of how Animoog presets can be morphed from within the Model 15 app itself:
Dear fellow Animoog players, I’m delighted to announce version 1.4 of Animoog.org’s table of expansion packs. This expansion packs table lists third-party presets and timbres that you won’t find anywhere else.
328 new Animoog presets are now available as part of this update. There’s now a total of 2,224 presets and over 4,500 timbres available for Animoog, lots of them free!
Version 1.4 brings presets from 4 sound designers: Steffen Presley, Rusk(i)k, Sound of Izrael and Subconscience. Here’s the updated version of the table of Animoog expansion packs. The table’s page includes the links to download/purchase the presets and timbres and installation instructions. Three of the four new packs are free, the fourth one being available at a very reasonable price. The full changelog is as well available at the bottom of the expansion packs page.
(click table to open the large version)
Steffen Presley
I’m happy that sound designer Steffen Presley contacted me and that we’re now able to provide his expansion pack named Song-Haven. It is available for $6,99 by sending money directly to Steffen via Paypal. There’s a total of 50 new presets, with some of them requiring that you already purchased the Acoustic and R. Devine packs in order to access their timbres.
As you can see in the following YouTube demonstration video, those are high quality presets. They just got released and I haven’t tested them yet, but I soon will!
Steffen is also the nice sound designer who recently shared with us free Theremini presets.
Rust(i)k
Sound designer Rust(i)k is freely sharing with us 132 excellent presets. Here’s a part of Rust(i)k bio: “RUST(I)K is currently working on several projects and remains a major part of some of house music’s greatest venues and artists over the last 20 years. He now is experimenting with a variety of musical styles and methods as the IOS music world grows by the day. In doing so, he routinely puts out preset or sample banks to various sites and several companies.” His full bio is available here. Rust(i)k’s excellent presets are freely available directly on Animoog.org: Rust(i)k presets.
Here’s two improvised Animoog solos, the one I just recorded named ‘San Andreas’ played with the ‘Lead PolyAnna’ preset, and the second one named ‘Going Rust(i)k’ I made with Rust(i)k’s ‘Lead Axe’ preset.
Here’s an improvised Animoog solo named ‘Fatal Duel’ I made with Sound of Izrael’s ‘R Rusty boy’ preset.
Subconscience
Sound designer Tiziano Gileno Fasano, aka Subconscience, is sharing with us 25 free Animoog presets! Here’s Subconscience presets.
Here’s an improvised Animoog solo named ‘It’s ongoing’ I made with Subconscience’s ‘Lead-polymulti’ preset.
Submitting presets
I added a new section to the page providing the table of Animoog expansion packs, here’s its content: Here’s what I need to know from you if you created great Animoog presets yourself and would like to share them with the community of Animoog players, please provide the following information:
Many thanks in the name of the Animoog community of players if you decide to provide your presets for free, otherwise, 5$ is usually a good price for professional presets, pricing is up to you
Link to purchase
We’ll gladly host free presets on Animoog.org if you want us to, otherwise you are responsible to provide a download/purchase link that will endure
Some way for potential players to hear what the submitted presets sound like
Such as a YouTube video or a SoundCloud track
Description and anything else you’d like us to consider sharing in the preset’s availability announcement post
I’ll probably improve that list over time. Please understand that this list is updated only every few months.
Big thanks to Sound of Izrael, Subconscience, Rust(i)k and Steffen. Hope you’ll enjoy their presets as much as I do :-) Don’t hesitate to share this announcement with other Animoog players, the intention here is to ensure as many players as possible to benefit from those excellent presets! Cheers — Alex / Satri
I started to populate YouTube playlists with the intended benefit of providing an extensive list of videos to help us learn more about playing Animoog and increase our fun with it. The playlists I created and populated so far the the following ones:
Videos showcasing the use of Animoog along with other apps
If you found other videos that should be included in these playlists, let me know and I’ll be glad to add them! If you think we should maintain another complementary Playlist, let us know! :-)
Here’s what videos currently in those lists look like.
Animoog tutorials
There has been a surge of Animoog tutorial videos when the app came out but few recent ones as far as I could find. That said, do not miss watching those ‘old’ videos! They have been instrumental to my understanding of how Animoog works and how to exploit its features in order to have even more fun playing it.
One of those examples is the following video, an amazing live Animoog performance by Argon Vancouver in which layers of Animoog are added one after the other, along with additions from other apps. In the long intro, Argon Vancouver provides the details to help you create your own Animoog tracks with such beats and loops.
It’s great to see the variety of ways Animoog can be leveraged to play music. The next video below is alternatives controllers that players can experiment with and this is an excellent example.
Many Animoog musicians within the community are playing Animoog along with other instruments. In the following video we get two Animoog players playing together, along with a few other instruments, including Improvox, an app to sing in tune for those amongst us who aren’t Pavarottis.
Another example of Animoog’s flexibility is the following example in which Animoog is played from a MIDI Guitar along with the ToneStack app.
Animoog is great in itself, and you juxtapose it to other music creation apps, you can play wonderful things! Watching how others leverage Animoog clearly inspired me to try some new combinations myself. Here’s a nice example of Animoog and the moodscaper app, currently in beta. Developer Rob Jackson informed us that moodscaper is itself using heavily-processed Animoog timbres.
Think I should create a new and share a new Animoog playlist? Let me know about your suggestions :-) Don’t forget to watch the ones directly coming from Moog Music. One of such Animoog videos from Moog is the funny announcement of the ‘Biomimetically Augmented Synthesis Expansion’, also known as the ‘B.A.S.E.’ expansion pack, presented by Jordan Rudess of Dream Theater and iOS music app developer.
I plan to maintain these playlists up to date when new Animoog videos are posted online. If I miss any, let me know :-) I have to thank Animoog enthusiast Tiziano, who suggested me to pull together those playlists. You’ll hear again from Tiziano soon since I hope to update the list of third-party presets: there’s two new excellent free Animoog presets packs and he is one of the sound designers freely sharing his presets with the community of Animoog players. Cheers — Alex / Satri
Welcome! I’m one of many who thinks that we’re experiencing new levels of ‘live music creation’ thanks to the recent advances in computing. Even though their existence mainly consists of computer algorithms, today’s music creation apps really are ‘new musical instruments’ and are progressively gaining greater widespread recognition. One of these popular new musical instruments is the award-winning Animoog app by Moog Music. I happen to be a enamored of Animoog! :-)
Animoog allows us to play the synthesizer like never before. I sincerely hope more musicians will discover its amazing expressiveness capabilities
It’s my pleasure to present to you my second album of improvised Animoog solos named ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’. This time these improvised single-preset solos leverage a classic external MIDI piano controller to create Animoog tracks. They are provided raw, no sequencing or external effects applied in any way — what you hear is how it sounded played live. Anyone with the Animoog app and an affordable MIDI controller can play similar tracks live.
Don’t expect perfect execution ~~ it’s live single-take improvisations! What’s great about it is you can play similar tracks yourself by launching Animoog and selecting the same preset. This genre of music is named ‘freetronica’: electronic music played live without any part of the track pre-recorded. No excuses and no preparation required: pick the instrument and have fun exploring sounds!
You don’t have to like all of the album. The list of presets I played is provided and helps you identify sounds and melodies you can play yourself on Animoog even with little or no previous experience with this novel musical instrument
Next is the ‘Recording decades’ video, 10th out of 29 tracks on the album. The track leverages the ‘Apocalead’ preset from Alba Ecstasy, and yes, it’s monophonic: a single note played at a time for the whole track.
An affordable M-Audio KeyRig 49 was used on the first track and I then continued on my old Roland RD-300SX MIDI keyboard. No sustain or expression pedals were used, just the raw Animoog app played from the MIDI keyboard. For the ‘Retenue’ track, I played one hand on the Roland and the other on the iPad. Tracks are offered in chronological order, the listener being able to appreciate the evolution in my discovery of playing Animoog from a MIDI controller within the 5 months it took me to put to record the tracks during spare time. Credit is given to the sound designers for each preset I used.
The main drawbacks of using a classic MIDI controller are the loss of precise polypressure control, one of the best expressive capabilities of Animoog , and the loss of the sliding finger gesture. The use of an alternative MIDI controller may alleviate these shortcomings.
Next is ‘A beginner’s demo’ video. This track leverages the ‘4072 – Finger Detune’ preset from Vintage Vibe collection. It’s another monophonic track, one note at a time for the whole track, but this time I modified some of the preset’s parameters while playing, showcasing how a preset can sound different by tweaking it live.
By watching the ‘I dream of wires’ documentary I understood where Animoog comes from and its roots in modular synthesizer, and in the process came to believe that Animoog’s potential has much remaining to be explored.
My previous album, ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’, featured raw improvised Animoog solos played live directly on the iPad. I was deeply honoured by the kind words of encouragement from many listeners and music publications, some nice strangers paid up to 15$ for it while is it available for free. I also felt privileged when Moog Music featured the album on their front page. I confirm all of this motivated me and I’m delighted to offer you this third album.
Next video is for ‘Le secret du nucléaire’. This track leverages the ‘WhereUpress’ preset from Daemian. It’s a melodic polyphonic track.
The ‘Pianimoog •• discoverY’ album is ‘unmastered’, the sound levels of the raw tracks have not been corrected and no adjustments were done to convey an enhanced listening experience. These types of sounds and performances are best enjoyed by listening with quality headphones. The visuals for the tracks have been so far created using the amazing Uzu app. My two Animoog albums are brought forward by the Apptronica label, a warm and welcoming home for several ‘iOS musicians’. The album is freely available on Bandcamp and available in many other places online. Tracks are available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, use and transform.
Thank you for your interest in my musical projects, I hope you enjoy Animoog as much as I do! — Alex / Satri
There’s no doubt how passionate Animoog players can be! Len Burge built a wonderful custom Animoog controller and told us about it in a comment on this very site. Here’s what it looks and sounds like!
The description that comes with it goes like this:
« This is the Animoog controller. Like the iVCS3 controller it is a custom controller for iPad mini app “Animoog” with a custom Animoog template that lays over original iVCS3 graphics. Front panel-keyboard is a customized Arturia minilab. The 30 knobs on upper panel controlled by livid instruments brain V2. 3 ten-turn potentiometers now controlling Animoog’s Attack. Joystick modular provided by Doepfer. For construction pics please visit www.lenburge.com »
There’s plenty of construction pictures on Len’s website! Here are the references to not the first time we mention custom Animoog controllers, it was actually one of our first posts in June 2014, if you have an interest in those, you might also for alternative MIDI controllers that are not dedicated to Animoog but inspiring nonetheless!
Thank you for your patience Len! He contacted me in mid-December it’s only today I’m able to follow up! Expect a lot more in the coming weeks, including an update to the list of third-party expansion packs with new packs of free presets from readers of Animoog.org, and yes, they’re good! :-) Cheers — Alex / Satri
Animoog and modern alternative controllers push the MIDI standard beyond its current capabilities — not surprising considering it’s a protocol devised in 1983! A few major stakeholders including Apple, ROLI and Moog Music are working on an extension to the MIDI standard, currently named Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression specification. You guessed right, Animoog would directly benefit from this new specification.
For the past two years I’ve been looking for an iPad app that would properly record Animoog in MIDI. By properly I mean that the replay from the MIDI app to Animoog sounds exactly like the initial Animoog take. Apps I tried fail to record Animoog‘s MIDI properly for fast polypressure changes / legato and all the crucial subtleties that Animoog does. I asked around to no avail. One of the Animoog developers at Moog publicly confirmed there is no such app yet. I badly want this, full MIDI support was even at the top of my initial wish list for Animoog in March 2014.
So, what is this Multidimensional Polyphonic Expression specification? From the specification’s Executive Summary:
“The goal of this specification is to provide an agreed method for hardware and software manufacturers to communicate multidimensional data between controllers, synthesizers, workstations, and other products. The proposed extensions define rules for using MIDI channels to represent one note each, and to use per-channel control parameters to represent note changes in three or more dimensions.”
Multidimensional expression… funny that Animoog.org launched in early 2014 with the following subtitle (still in use!) ‘an other dimension of music’! If the MIDI Manufacturers Association accepts this proposal, which I hope they will, the final name for the specification might become ‘Expressive MIDI’.
To demonstrate that I’m not extrapolating or fabulating a bit too much, Animoog is actually mentioned as an example right in the technical specification document:
“Sentences like ‘Linnstrument is an Expressive MIDI [compatible] controller’ and ‘Animoog is an Expressive MIDI [compatible] sound engine’ are easy to formulate correctly, and provide a clear sense of the value proposition.”
The specification is still considered Draft and its supporters hope to have a final version by the end of 2015. A link to the Expressive MIDI specification was publicly shared at least last April. To access it yourself, follow this link to Google Docs. Revision 1.25 is only three weeks old.
I’m no MIDI expert myself, but that doesn’t stop me from rejoicing at specifications that will allow me to further enjoy Animoog! As usual, don’t hesitate to share additional info in the comments section below. Cheers! — Alex / Satri
While Animoog.org launched over 18 months ago, we haven’t published Animoog video tutorials, until now! The first set of videos I’m proposing, from Dubspot instructor Matt Cellitti, are from 2012! But despite their age, content is still pretty pertinent.
I particularly invite you to watch the first two 10-minutes videos which focus on understanding how sound design works in Animoog. While I consider myself more of an Animoog player than a sound designer, it quickly become useful to learn how to shape and sculpt Animoog presets to your taste. The videos obviously don’t cover everything Animoog players should know, but it’s an excellent introduction and chances are you’ll learn useful things you didn’t know. So here they are!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
Hope you’ll learn something useful in there! :-) — Alex / Satri
This week Moog Music published a video of Chas Llewellyn showing his large-scale light sculpture controlled by Animoog.
While we previously listed nice alternative controllers for Animoog, this example demonstrates that with Animoog’s MIDI capabilities and programming skills, you can really control anything you want.
From the Moog announcement:
«Sculptor / programmer / interactive interface designer, Chas Llewellyn, explores the form and function of a large-scale light sculpture he designed using Moog Music’s Animoog app as the control source.»
1,713 presets, that’s how many presets sound designers gave us to explore. Thank you. Without you, Animoog wouldn’t be the Animoog I love so much today. As a mean to thank you dear sound designers and to highlight your work, I’m pleased to provide this major update to the List of Animoog Expansion Packs.
What’s new and improved
Version 1.2 brings:
Added Alba Ecstasy’s 429 presets bundle
I find those presets pretty amazing, however, they don’t fully leverage Animoog’s polypressure by default — you need to go to the ENV/MOD tab and manually configure polypressure (I plan to eventually write documentation describing how to do that)
Added Sunsine Audio’s 254 presets bundle
As far as I’ve tested so far, Sunsine Audio presets don’t leverage Animoog’s polypressure by default — you need to go to the ENV/MOD tab and manually configure polypressure
Added ‘Luftrum 8’ 64 presets
Updated the ‘BASE Pack’ info, which is now free and available from the in-app store
Added the number of presets for the Halloween pack
Changed & added colors to the table
Improved third-party packs installation instructions — yes, it’s much easier with iFunbox than with the official instructions
And a few other minor modifications such as: ordered the list in a way that makes more sense, removed the reference to the html and csv versions of the table, and various other minor improvements
Here’s two examples of improvisations done with the Alba Ecstasy presets bundle. Since stereo ping pong is abused, headphones are required.
I need your help. Can someone tell us in the comments below how many presets and timbres there are in the vanilla Animoog? That info is missing from the table. Thanks!
Unrelated, I also updated the Animoog improvements wish list with a few enhancements and ideas, such as leveraging the iPad’s accelerometer sensor and allowing it to act as a ‘control’ in the ENV/MOD tab, thus enabling vibratos and pitch bending by shaking and turning (changing the orientation of) your iPad
I’ll be away for the upcoming weeks until the end of July. Expect Animoog news upon my return. Meanwhile, enjoy Animoog! — Alex / Satri
Mapped controls now respond to MIDI when Animoog is in the background
Fixed MIDI input and output port selection sometimes tacitly picking another one
External pitch bend now behaves linearly across the pitch bend range
Pitch bend strip is more usable by reducing the sensitivity in the middle
Stability improvements of the 4-track recorder
The recording length of the basic recorder has been doubled
Invalid timbre files are marked and don’t cause crashes anymore
New installations now by default map CC64 to the Hold switch
Version number is now shown at the bottom of configuration screen
Improvement of in-app store layout
Overall stability improvements
There’s also a little nice surprise the official changelog won’t tell you, look in the in-app store, scroll down and you’ll find that the ‘BASE Pack’, an expansion pack containing 25 presets and 40 timbres, is now not only available for in-app purchase, but it’s also free to everybody! Thanks Moog!
« To demonstrate some of what you can do, I’ve created a few sample videos based on music I improvised with the award-winning Animoog app for iPad ($29.99). Music made on mobile devices is quickly growing in popularity with tons of innovative musical instruments disguised as apps being available for iOS »
Here’s the third video I recorded live in the context of this article. It’s for the ‘don’t June’ track. It’s voluntarily less diverse than the previous two videos since I used it to showcase a specific technique with the iTunes visualizer.
Animoog for iPhone 1.1.7 Released
The smaller but very capable version of Animoog also got an update, Animoog for iPhone version 1.1.7 has been released. This is the first update since November 2014 and brings major bug fixes and new features, here’s the official changelog.
Stable support for iOS 8
Stable support for 64-bit devices
Revised timbres panel with categories (touch-hold timbre in category for preview)
Added ‘hold’ switch to keyboard for iPhone 5 and later
New installations now by default map CC64 to the Hold switch for iPhone 5 and later
Audiobus input slot compatibility fixes
Pitch bend range can now be selected in MIDI settings
Pitch bend strip is more usable by reducing the sensitivity in the middle
External pitch bend now behaves linearly across the pitch bend range
Pitch and mod strips now light up with incoming MIDI
MIDI CC mapping can be edited through the dialog after double-tapping a control
Mapped controls now respond to MIDI when Animoog is in the background
Virtual Animoog MIDI ports are now always available even if no port is explicitly selected
Fixed MIDI input and output port selection sometimes tacitly picking another one
Preset menu doesn’t cover minimized keyboard anymore
Improved IAA instrument compatibility (IAA transport panel will be done for a future release)
Use with any buffer size from 128 to 4096 (256 being the intended size for all supported devices)
Fixes for restore purchase functionality
Improved in-app store layout and interaction
iTunes File Sharing access to timbres, presets and projects
Removed import/export preset from setup panel since iTunes File Sharing should cover all needs
Added timbre category list under ‘random preset’ to enable/disable categories to randomize timbres from
Page selector can now be latched by tapping without dragging the menu
All drop-down menus now support latched operation
Invalid timbre files are marked and don’t cause crashes anymore
Keyboard scale selection now doesn’t misbehave after selecting the whole tone scale
Resuming after interruptions from Siri now reactivates audio
Proper handling of large amounts of MIDI expression data, coming from alternative controllers
Page selection widget now appears below the active page title for easier visibility
Added store entry to the page menu
Proper launch screen across all iPad and iPhone devices
Version number is now shown at the bottom of configuration screen
Overall stability improvements
Moog Music is now employee-owned
I can’t tell how this will affect Animoog’s future, but this is a major change for the creators and developers of Animoog. Earlier this month, Moog Music became an employee-owned company.
