Recording - November 2011 - 48

Blip InteractiveNanoStudio
$14.99; 16-instrument expansion $4.99; www.blipinteractive.co.uk

When I purchased my first iPad in March of 2011, I naturally started to look for new music production applications to get down to business with. With all my searching, I curiously found a common theme among almost all the serious music creation apps like software synths, drum machines, effects, and MIDI sequencers; no matter what product was being discussed, there was at least one review that would read something along the lines of “...or you could just get NanoStudio.” My interest was piqued— here was a program that seemed to do most of what a music composer would want to do, minus audio recording, and didn’t need an iPad to do it. What is this thing? NanoStudio is a portable recording studio for iOS 3.1.2 or later, that runs on the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. On the iPad it displays as a blown-up “2x” graphic; there is no native iPad version. It includes a virtual analog synth, a 16pad sample-based drum machine, a MIDI-based sequencer, a sample editor, a mixer, and a handful of effects, all bundled into one suite. There is also a version of NanoStudio on the Blip Interactive website that’ll run on the PC and Macintosh, and it’s free of charge. Obvious iDevice features like swiping with your fingers are absent from the non-iDevice program. The documentation inside NanoStudio is thorough and does a good job at describing the feature sets in detail. On the website, there is a PDF version of the manual that’s much easier on the eyes. In-A-Gadda-Da-Eden, Baby Eden is a subtractive virtual analog synthesizer with 16 notes of polyphony per instance. It features two oscillators with a multimode resonant filter, three envelope generators, a modulation matrix with 11 sources and 11 or more destinations for each slot, and two dedicated insert effects. Of particular note about Eden, the two oscillators can be swapped out for a single sample of your choosing. The effects choices include the aptly named 5th Planet Waveshaper and the Chronos Digital Delay. Chronos can be switched between a Chorus, Flanger, Delay, and Cross Delay effect, each with their own set of limited parameters.
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TRG-16 Drum Sampler TRG-16 is a lightly programmable drum machine that allows any sample to load into any available slot. You can use any sample you like from the internal library, use something you’ve recorded off of the internal microphone in the iDevice, import something from your own sample library, or you can even resample a portion of the song. Speaking of samples, by the way, we should note that the Blip website offers a number of free sample libraries for NanoStudio owners, provided by the folks at Loopmasters (who are apparently fans of NanoStudio). Each slot can independently adjust volume, pan, amplitude attack and release, pitch, transposition, sample playback direction (forward, backward, and two loop modes), offer sample playback modes of trigger, hold and loop, and finally a “group mode” which only allows one sample to play within that group at any one time. This last feature gives you the ability to choke an open hihat with a closed one, for example. Any individual pad can be sent to one of three bus effects groups within TRG. The bus effect section is comprised of a single low-, band-, or highpass filter with cutoff and Q. From there, you also have the option to send the audio to either or both of the two master effects sends in the mixer (more coming up in a bit.) All in sequence The MIDI sequencer is the real heart of NanoStudio. NanoStudio is designed to trigger Eden or TRG-16 in real-time from either the iDevice itself, it can import MIDI files for playback, or can be controlled via a MIDI keyboard with the appropriate attachment kit for your iDevice. The sequencer can play back up to 64 tracks of data, and offers a full set of MIDI editing tools that can be used in real time as sequences play, intuitive controller and note data drawing and editing, multiple levels of undo for each track, and more. The sequencer in NanoStudio offers a nice visual display of all the MIDI note data currently recorded, separated into tracks. Once a track is recorded, you can edit, delete, move, or draw in new notes within the piano roll. From there, you can copy and paste any of the recorded measures or drag them around in the sequencer. Other nice features: MIDI quantization at various note divisions, the

http://www.blipinteractive.co.uk

Recording - November 2011

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