Tag Archives: Animoog

Animoog Z Announced by Moog Music — my Beta Testing Perspective

Synths are like friends. It’s not how many you have that matters, it’s the time you spent developing familiarity and building a relationship with your synth that brings joy and value.

And today, our dear friend Animoog comes back to us
with a new dimension. Welcome Animoog Z !

I’m happy to announce Moog Music has introduced Animoog Z, a major new version of the iconic Animoog ‘appstrument’ for iPadOS, iOS, and for the first times, on macOS and as an AUv3 plugin. Here’s the official Animoog Z announcement, the direct link to Animoog Z on the App Store and Moog’s video introducing Animoog Z and its new features:

Animoog is now a free appstrument for which there is plenty to have fun with. If you’re reading this, chances are you’ll want to unlock all features for $9,99, which will enable you to modify the envelopes, the LFOs, modulations, apply effects, as well as support for the accelerometer and the Apple Pencil. Three expansion packs add new presets and timbres for $4,99 each. They’re named ‘Fundamental Elements’, ‘Evolving Oscillations’ and ‘Outer Orbits’.

Providing Animoog for free to everyone is a brilliant idea. You can play with the built-in presets and if you like Animoog, how it sounds, how you can interact and glide over its touch keys, then you can get the full appstrument for only $9,99. This is incredibly affordable if you consider this is one of the flagship appstruments out there. Here’s the second video Moog released for the occasion, an Animoog Z performance by Suzanne Ciani and her Buchla:

Z — The New Dimension

The Animoog keys and configurable scales have been allowing us to play with a dimension of sound, live with our fingers gliding on the touch screen. Animoog Z adds a third dimension to draw a path in a space of timbres named the Wave Cube ; the notes we play now follow a path in this 3D space of timbres. As Moog puts it in its manual, this third dimension allows “more dynamic waveshaping than was possible within the original Animoog.” Funny this website’s title since 2014 has been ‘Animoog Love — an other dimension of music’!

Animoog comes to macOS and AUv3

This will please many, Animoog is now available on macOS and as an AUv3 plugin. The macOS version offers plenty of playing expressivity and you can use your mouse or your keyboard to trigger Animoog keys. Might not be as expressive as gliding our fingers on the iPad, but works well for plenty of use cases and playing styles. Animoog is not the first Moog appstrument to have jumped from mobile to desktop, Model 15 made the leap in January 2021.

Animoog AUv3 is a welcomed new feature requested by many players. This will ease integration into various workflows involving DAWs and other tools. There are a number of additional new features for us to discover in Animoog Z, such as the timbre editor, the arpeggiator and now a 16-voice polyphonic synthesizer. Animoog was one of the first synths to support the MIDI MPE specification and Animoog Z is no exception.

Lots of New Presets & Timbres

Let’s start with good news: the 3,000+ presets and 5,000+ timbres available for Animoog 2 can be imported in Animoog Z with a relatively simple process. Before we get to it, this now possible thanks to a recent update to Animoog 2 which adds an important new feature ; Animoog 2’s files are now accessible through the Files app. This is major given managing our collections of presets and timbres has been cumbersome until now. You can import your presets and timbres into Animoog Z by copying the presets and timbres from Animoog 2, zipping them altogether and opening the resulting zip file in Animoog Z. The manual will walk you through with screenshots in the ‘Importing Legacy Presets & Timbres’ section. I’ve been able to import thousands of Animoog 2 presets and timbres in Animoog Z in a single attempt.

One of Animoog’s strength is its large fanbase and community of players. This is exemplified by the diversity of unofficial expansion packs already available for Animoog 2. And I have multiple new free Animoog expansion packs to announce!

Obviously, you’ll need to play with and edit Animoog 2 presets to make use of Animoog Z’s third dimension. This also means I’ll need to update the list of available presets and timbres, stay tuned! Let us know in a comment if you have new Animoog presets to submit for our list of third party expansion packs. Presets and timbres can now be easily managed and shared in Animoog Z and this is immensely useful.

Animoog 10 years anniversary

The initial award-winning Animoog was release in 2011. Ten years later, we’re being offered a large diversity of incredible appstruments, musical instruments in their own rights, which lets you play music in ways not possible before. Animoog has its place in Jakob Haq’s video on the evolution of the iOS/iPadOS music making platform from 2007 to 2021.

Despite being 10 years old, Animoog still get lots of attention. I’ve seen Jean-Michel Jarre and Suzanne Ciani playing Animoog live in shows. Another recent example is Animoog’s presence in Apple TV+ Watch the Sound with Mark Ronson documentary.

Animoog Z Beta Testing Experience

I’ve got the chance to do beta testing for Moog since March 2015. Animoog Z has come a long way since the initial version I got access to as a Beta tester. The entire process lasted several weeks and we thus had the opportunity of discovering Animoog Z, finding bugs and providing feedback on features. Both the desktop and mobile versions were provided. This has been a unique opportunity to influence and contribute a bit to the design and features of Animoog Z. There’s some of me in it! :-)

We got our hands on presets only at the very end of the process. Presets obviously comes last. While I played quite a lot with Animoog Z, I didn’t record much of it at all. My previous Animoog solo performances are available for free in my ‘stars’ best-of album. Here’s the only video I have and it’s for my very first short test with an Animoog Z preset, the ‘The Meaning Of…’ pad preset. Nothing stellar, but you’ll quickly find out why I choose this preset to begin my journey into Animoog Z ;-)

Moog is pretty open to suggestions that makes sense. I focused testing for the context of my own music setup, which led me to find some edge bugs while getting familiar with Animoog Z. They have an excellent software development team led by Geert Bevin, which have been blazing at fast triaging and handling issues and requests. In the following interview, well worth watching in full, Geert explains how he initially got involved in the development of Animoog, which ultimately led him to become Moog’s software engineering and software product manager:

Onwards

Over the years, Animoog got updates with some new features and compatibility updates. Moog never abandoned Animoog. On the contrary, today we leap to the next level. This familiar yet new Animoog Z version offers an additional sonic dimension which promesses hours of fun explorations and inspired music playing.

I expect new community presets to become available over the coming months. Subscribe to our newsletter to learn about them and upcoming Animoog Z news.

Enjoy Animoog Z! – Alex / Satri

Satri stars album cover

Announcing ‘stars’ by Satri, an album of Moog and Seaboard synth solos

A gift to myself, a gift to my fans.

stars

stars is a collection of my favorite solos from previous releases, with some of the original tracks shortened and most of them mastered for an enhanced listening experience. As usual these live Animoog, Model 15, Seaboard and Minimoog improvisations are downloadable for free on Bandcamp and available thought most music services including Apple Music and Spotify.

Satri stars album cover

On stars you get selected solos starting with Animoog tracks from my Unanimoog, escape inside the music and Pianimoog •• discoverY albums, then Moog Model 15 tracks from the album of the same name, followed by my ROLI Seaboard tracks from the RISE 42 album. The last track is a Minimoog Model D solo. In the respective announcements you’ll find which presets was used for each improvisation. Here’s one of the Animoog tracks on stars, une vision pour notre futur.

The Minimoog is celebrating 50 years in 2020! Our family trip to the Canary Islands coincided with the beta testing timeframe for the iOS Minimoog Model D synth. The following montage shows photos from Cesar Manrique’s Jardin de Cactus in Lanzarote along with the Seaboard track ‘Thinking about it‘. It is a Strobe2 synth solo with preset ‘AR Stranger Arp 5D‘ improvised on the ROLI Seaboard RISE 49, available on stars. The album’s cover art is also a picture from these gorgeous islands.

Thinking about it – ROLI Seaboard solo, photos from Manrique’s Jardin de Cactus, Lanzarote
Satri at Los Muchachos, La Palma, Canary Islands
at Los Muchachos, La Palma, Canary Islands

intergalactic masters

Current automated online audio mastering services are appealing with their ease of use and 5-minutes delivery time ; upload your track, select a few options and download the resulting mastered track. CloudBounce and LANDR offer such services for a reasonable fee. I haven’t worked with professional audio engineers yet but consider these services did a pretty good job at enhancing the enjoyment of the stars tracks. On the album you get a mix of tracks mastered by CloudBounce and LANDR, as well as a few unmastered tracks given the algorithms had a hard time handling some of the synthesized sounds.

a limitless sonic universe

Our beloved award-winning Animoog was released in 2011 and so much happened since the first wave of mature mobile music apps. Anyone with a tablet or smartphone has access to these ‘appstruments’ and lots of them are sophisticated musical instruments, far from being toy apps on a touch screen.

« I play the synthesizer the same way somebody else would play cello or violin »
— Suzanne Ciani, Patch & Tweak

And it continues to get better on multiple levels ; protocols, hardware and software. Standards are crucial for interoperability and this January, the MIDI 2.0 specification has been officially adopted. MIDI 2.0 capabilities are game changing and pave the way for a blissful musical future. I particularly enjoy the new expressivity opportunities made possible by MIDI Polyphonic Expression (MPE), and Moog were amongst the first and added support for MIDI MPE in Animoog 2.4 in 2016.

On the hardware realm, on top of the resurgence of modular synthesizers, the past few years brought plentiful new synths, controllers and other tools. The ROLI Seaboard and its ‘5 dimensions of touch’ is one of them I’ve been lucky to get familiar with. Moreover since RISE 42, I usually play synths with Audiofront’s hands-liberating MIDI Expression interfaces, which I wholeheartedly recommend – I’m slowly preparing a post explaining how I’m leveraging these devices.

On the software side, there are tens of new worthwhile synths and music apps launched yearly. In addition to unmatched mobility, those appstruments are diverse and affordable. If you’re curious to discover what’s available, I recommend Jakob Haq’s music apps top lists and his outstanding reviews. We even have access to an excellent open source and free mobile synth, AudioKit’s Synth One.

a universe of digital musical instruments to explore

I care

Sincere thanks to all of you for listening to my music and your support. Special kudos to the ones amongst you whom directly contributed to my projects through Bandcamp contributions or other means. For instance I recently got contacted by Eli Schwanz, the third nice person whom created a video with one of my Animoog tracks ; his FORESTSSS FORTRESSS video with the ‘and dance‘ track from the ‘Unanimoog, escape into the music‘ album (track not available on stars though). Thanks Eli!

Eli Schwanz’s FORESTSSS FORTRESSS video featuring my Animoog solo ‘and dance

engage

I hope you’ll enjoy stars dear synth enthusiasts. It took a while in the making and I’m readying myself to dive into new sonic dimensions.

These stars are where I come from,
I’m eager to show you where I’m going.
The stars are where we’re coming from,
I’m eager to discover where we’re going.

I’ll also try to complete and publish some Animoog-related posts, I accumulated lots I’d like to share with you :-)

Kind regards — Alex / Satri

Animoog version 2.2.8 and Animoog for iPhone 1.1.10 Released

These Animoog news cover versions 2.2.6 and 2.2.8 and Animoog for iPhone 1.1.10, both supporting the new Audiobus Remote app.

Animoog version 2.2.8 has been released yesterday and here’s the official release notes:

  • Added support for AudioBus Remote with triggers for Recorder, Preset Navigation, Scale Lock, Hold and Orbit Time Change
  • Added support for mixing down to AudioCopy and AudioShare in the 4-track recorder
  • Stability improvements

As an happy Animoog beta tester, I can confirm there’s useful fixes in the ‘stability improvements’ category. The big addition here is Audiobus Remote support. Audiobus itself is a popular app to route audio from one app to other apps, making it easy to add filters and effects, adding tracks from other apps, and more, all this in real-time. As an example, you can run drums from the Sector app and play Animoog live while recording both in a third app. With version 2.2.8 released yesterday, Animoog can now be controlled on another iOS device with Audiobus Remote. Moog developer Geert Bevin shared the following screenshot of Animoog and Filtatron in Audiobus Remote.

animoog_audiobus-remote

Animoog version 2.2.6 was released on June 29th, 2015, while I was on holidays and away from computers (but with my dear Animoog alongside), and its official release notes are:

  • Stability improvements for a very rare crash at launch
  • Stability improvements in situations where the audio engine is reset by iOS itself
  • Improvements to restore purchase functionality

That’s correct, Animoog version 2.2.7 never made it to the public.

Updates to Animoog for iPhone were also released, with version 1.1.7 released on June 15, then v1.1.8 on June 17, followed by v1.1.9 on June 27. And now, lucky us, we’re at version 1.1.10 released on July 30.

Moog developers taking care of Animoog since last Spring continue to be closer than ever to its users and the iOS musicians community, and that’s great news for the future of Animoog!

Animoog 2.2.4 Released – Major bugfix update

We told you it was coming and now the wait is over! And don’t let you mislead by the it’s name, version 2.2.4 is a major Animoog update considering it brings lots of significant fixes, including stable support for iOS 8. Version 2.2.3 came out in October 2014, over 6 months ago. And now that Moog is putting more love to Animoog development, I expect we’ll have good news from Moog more frequently.

So 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)
  • Fixes for timbres showing up with domain name prefixes
  • Audiobus input slot compatibility fixes
  • Virtual Animoog MIDI ports are now always available even if no port is explicitly selected
  • 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
  • 4-track recorder fixes for loading clips, pasting clips and AudioPaste
  • 4-track project fixes for save/load/delete/share
  • 4-track now remains unlocked when not connected to network
  • Pitch bend range is now always saved with presets and correctly loads from presets when this option is active
  • Pitch and mod strips now light up with incoming MIDI
  • Hold button now more clearly shows when it’s active
  • Manual MIDI CC input now ensures only numbers can be entered
  • Keyboard scale selection now doesn’t misbehave after selecting the whole tone scale
  • Preset panel is laid out more consistently
  • Resuming after interruptions from Siri now reactivates audio
  • Proper handling of large amounts of MIDI expression data, coming from alternative controllers
  • Updated built-in manual

Enjoy! And if you find bugs, Moog, more than ever before, provide feedbacks to its users in order to fix those, so let them know about the remaining bugs! — Alex / Satri

Animoog solos: free ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’ album

Animoog.org wasn’t built for self-promotion but this announcement is an exception and does focus on my creations with Animoog. Happy new year!

41_uzu_480pxI’m delighted to introduce you to my second music album named ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’, exclusively made with Moog’s award-winning Animoog iPad app.

In a world where there’s hundreds of excellent albums being made available daily, what excites me about what I propose with this album is you don’t need anything special other than the Animoog app to reproduce or play similar tracks. They’re single-track improvisations with no loops, no sequencer, no external effects, no complex or expensive music gear, everything is played live leveraging a single Animoog preset. It’s music you can listen to and music you can play in the comfort of your home or anywhere you’d like. The app is played and enjoyed just like any other musical instrument would be. I hope it inspires you to create your own tracks and discover that nowadays, we can have deep fun creating live music with accessible instruments and some practice.

[…] single-track improvisations with no loops, no sequencer, no external effects, no complex or expensive music gear, everything is played live leveraging a single Animoog preset

05_Uzu_20140823_960pxIt’s only recently that I discovered the richness of sophisticated electronic sounds. This new chapter really begun with the advent of Moog Music’s award-winning Animoog music instrument. After I came to know Animoog through unexpected lucky events, I became enamored with its expressive capabilities. It became a hobby to explore Animoog sounds on quiet Friday nights. Wanting to share my enthusiasm and contribute to a same-minded community, I launched Animoog.org in March 2014 to discuss and document everything revolving around the app. While lots of the work remain to be done, the website does offer value and is the only place where you’ll find a list of third-party Animoog expansion packs. My early 2013 Animoog improvisations sounded good enough to me that I decided to make a collection. While my playing improved, I started a second collection in January 2014 with the intention of making an album out of it. In August of the year I had enough material to prepare the release of most of those tracks on what became the ‘Unanimoog, escape inside the music’ album.

04_uzu_20141103b_960pxSimilarly to my ‘Beau temps’ music album, released in 2002 under the royalty-free ‘open audio’ license – before Creative Commons licenses existed and at a time when it was unusual to provide albums for free on the Internet, this new album is available under the CC-BY Creative Commons license and consequently, free to anyone to copy, remix and transform. Each track has its cover art made with the amazing Uzu app.

Ironically after recording the last track, I learned about and watched ‘PressPausePlay’, an insightful documentary on the democratization of culture production in the digital era. I’m a child of PressPausePlay in the sense that I’m one of the many scouts of the new generation of musicians having fun and exploring the newly accessible ways of making music through the exposure and use of modern software-based music tools. Music has accompanied humanity for thousands of years and it’s reassuring that the means of expressing emotions through music are still evolving. While music production is getting democratized, just like a traditional instrument, it requires practice, experimentation and time to begin to master the most complex tablet-based music creation apps.

[…] I’m one of the many scouts of the new generation of musicians having fun and exploring the newly accessible ways of making music […]

29_uzu_20140425_1280pxThis album is ‘unmastered’, it’s the raw tracks for which sound levels have not been corrected and no adjustments were done to convey an enhanced listening experience. I resorted to a diversity of Animoog presets to create the 47 tracks of the album. Those presets were created by several sound designers and I have to thank them for making it possible for us to play with their soundscapes. Preset ambiances range from soft and harmonious sounds, with ping pong stereo delay or not, to rhythmic and more brutal sounds. Credit is given to the tracks’ presets and thus anyone can launch Animoog and replay a track they liked and make it much better, just like when someone sits in front of a piano to jam on an existing song.

alex_sandbanks-2014_1464pxI invite you to listen to the tracks which are available for free. These types of sounds and performances are best enjoyed by listening with quality headphones. This album is distributed and promoted by the Apptronica label. Like any music genre, you might not like it and that’s fine. I hope you’re amongst those who might get inspired by this album and enjoy playing Animoog yourself.

Alex . . Satri

Listen and get the album for free : https://www.animoog.org/satri/unanimoog

Info and links:

Satri_UEITM_coverart_640px

Artist: Satri
Album title: Unanimoog, escape inside the music [Unmastered]
Album genre tags: Apptronica, electronic, instrumental, improvisation, solo

Animoog Configuration

Announcing the Animoog Improvements Wish List

It’s my pleasure to provide an initial version of the Animoog improvements wish list.

The two main items in there to start with, detailed in the associated page:

  • A Sequencer for Animoog – to record and easily modify, in an easy to use user interface, played notes, the subtle changes to poly-pressure, x/y pad changes and ideally anything players usually modify while playing Animoog
  • Saving session states – to be able to save session’s states, which would include the selected preset, x/y pad location, keys and scale settings, and essentially any settings your can set via Animoog’s interface

Everyone is welcome to share ideas, thoughts and comments directly over the wish list page.