The desktop trial versions are fully functional MIDI Guitar for iOS is a simple but surprisingly effective app implementation of Jam Origin's technology. Except for occasional interruptions to the MIDI and VST/AU operation.
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This post is for people who are trying to get their iPhone or iPad apps to connect to their hardware synthesizers or controllers via Wi-Fi. For instance, if you're using one of my synth patch editing apps, or trying to play a synth app on your iPad with a MIDI keyboard, then this is what you want. If you're using an iPhone, or if you don't have a way to connect a MIDI interface directly to your iPad (e.g. The Camera Connection Kit), then this approach is the easiest way to get things going without buying anything (assuming you have a computer with a MIDI interface!). I connect my to my synths this way, to edit sounds on them. For playing or sequencing (where the timing of MIDI matters), a Wi-Fi setup can be less reliable to use, just FYI!
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This setup process can be slightly confusing without some instruction, as there are multiple parts to the setup, but once you get it right, it's an easy way to work. In this article, everywhere that I say 'iPad' it could also mean 'iPhone', everywhere I say 'desktop' could just as easily be 'laptop', and everywhere I say 'synth' I mean a hardware synthesizer, or MIDI controller (basically any machine that talks MIDI). There are some differences between Mac and Windows here, but I'll cover that as well! So, what is the basic idea going on here? You're trying to get MIDI data (which is basically just a big stream of numbers) to go from your iPad, over Wi-FI, to your desktop, and then your desktop in turn forwards that data on to your synth. You also want the reverse happening, where your synth can send MIDI data back to your iPad via your desktop and Wi-Fi connection. This way, you have two-way communication going on between your synth and your iPad.
Wireless MIDI Between Your iPad and Desktop This is the first and main part of the setup. Both your iPad and Desktop need to be connected to the same Wi-Fi network, so they can talk to each other. Some articles will recommend setting up an Ad-Hoc network to do this, but I'm going to go the simpler route here, where I assume you already have an existing Wi-Fi network. If you want to set up an Ad-Hoc network though, just do a quick search and you'll find a tutorial. Real quick: Ad-Hoc network upsides:. They're a substitute if you don't have an existing Wi-Fi network to connect to.
Or, if you want the fastest communication over Wi-Fi. If you're trying to play music rather than just edit synth patches) The downsides:. It's a little more of a pain to set up. It seems more prone to dropping connections. Your desktop and iPad can't also be connected to another Wi-Fi network at the same time, which means no googling or what-have-you while the Ad-Hoc network is going. I don't know about you, but I do a lot of googling. Whichever you choose, the first step is just to make sure that your iPad and desktop are both connected to the same network.
Midirouter Is A Simple App For Routing Midi For Machine
The next part is slightly different for Mac vs. For Mac On a Mac, you open the 'Audio MIDI Setup' program (it's built-in on OS X, in the 'Utilities' folder of 'Applications'). You'll want to be able to see the MIDI window, so select the 'Window' menu and choose 'Show MIDI Window' if you don't already see it. It will look something like this.
Midiflow allows you to send MIDI from app to app in a similar way to what you already do with audio. That way, you can sync apps with each other or send MIDI parts from a sequencer app to different synth apps. You can also route the MIDI from your keyboard to apps and assign different key zones to them. The iConnectMIDI4+ iConfig app is pretty involved and allows lots of routing and MIDI processing (filtering and channel remapping) but the interface can be arcane, it doesn't allow saving and switching configurations internally, and changing configurations on the fly is difficult.
The 'Directory' on the left is a list of devices that can connect with wireless MIDI. If you don't see your iPad there, then make sure you have an app running that uses MIDI on your iPad! It won't show up until that's the case. Once you see your iPad in that list, click on it, then click the 'Connect' button. Voila, you should now be connected. I leave that 'Who may connect to me' dropdown set to 'Anyone' because it makes things easiest, but if you're concerned about security (rogue MIDI devices connecting to you!
Does that happen?), then you can select something more private. Depending on the iPad app you're using, you might need to do some setup there as well, to make sure your iPad is sending and receiving MIDI data to the network. My apps just automatically connect to whatever device is available, so no further setup is needed. Also, you can initiate the wireless MIDI connection from the app, if that's supported (mine do). The catch there is that you.will.
need to make sure the 'Who may connect to me' is set to 'Anyone' in that case. On Windows On Windows this process is very similar to the one on OS X, with one big exception: Wireless MIDI isn't built into Windows like it is on OS X. Instead, you'll need a driver called. That site has instructions on how to install it.
Once installed, the steps to connect are very similar to the ones I've outlined above, as the rtpMIDI interface was designed to look like the OS X interface. Making Your Desktop Forward MIDI Data to Your Synth At this point in the process, your iPad can send and receive MIDI data from your desktop. The other part of the process is setting up your desktop to automatically send that MIDI data on to your synth (as well as send MIDI data it gets from your synth on to your iPad via Wi-Fi). There are (at least) two approaches here, both of which I'll outline. Live Routings: Simpler, but Sometimes Broken The first approach is to use 'Live Routings' which is built into the wireless MIDI setup. The idea with Live Routings is that it takes any MIDI data received from your network MIDI connection and automatically passes it on to the MIDI interface of your choosing (e.g.
The MIDI interface your synth is connected to). This is exactly what we want! The catch is that sometimes Live Routings does not pass on some of the data! It seems to be some sort of bug with certain types of sysex data not being sent. So, bottom line, you can try this approach first, but if your app isn't working, this might be the reason! To set it up, just use the dropdown menus in the bottom-right corner of the network MIDI interface (see the picture above).
In both of those menus, choose the MIDI interface that your synth is connected to. The top dropdown specifies the MIDI connection that Live Routings will pass all data from (passing it on to the network MIDI connection). The bottom dropdown picks the MIDI connection to forward all network MIDI data to (from the network connection).
That might be a little confusing. Basically, you probably want to pick the same MIDI interface on both of those dropdowns, to establish a full two-way communication between your iPad and your synth! Better Live Routings! The other approach is using a small (free) app I've made which I call (it's hosted on Github). It basically does exactly what Live Routings does, but without the bugs! To use it, you'll have to install Max, which you can download for free from (it's free to run apps/patches, but costs if you want to make your own).
I say this approach is more complicated just because you have to install Max to use it, and you need to make sure that Better Live Routings is running when you're using your wireless MIDI connection. But really, it's pretty easy. Once you have Max installed, and have downloaded Better Live Routings, you open Better Live Routings, and it will look like this. In the top two dropdowns, select your MIDI interface on your desktop, and then your wireless MIDI connection (which is named 'Network Session 1' by default). In the bottom two dropdowns, select the same two things but in reverse order.
Here, you're doing the same thing as you do in Live Routings: telling the program where to pass MIDI data to and from, to establish a two-way connection. The circles on the right are to show you when MIDI data is being sent, so if you set it up like I have above, the top circle will light up when ever your synth sends MIDI data to your iPad, and the bottom will light up whenever there's MIDI data going from your iPad to your synth. This can be helpful when things don't seem to be working right. The other piece to note here is that if you're using Better Live Routings, then make sure that the 'Live Routings' dropdowns in your network MIDI setup (again, see the photo above from OS X) are set to be blank (just as they are in the picture)!
If not, then you're sending MIDI data twice every time it shows up, which is no good. That Should Do It At this point, you should be done!
You now have full two-way MIDI communication between your iPad and your synth, over Wi-Fi. Like I said, this stuff can be confusing. I'm thinking about making more software to help ease the pain of some of this.
But until then, please ask any questions you have in the comments, or on Twitter.
I'm fairly puzzled by this: In Logic 8, when creating a new track it lets me specify: audio software instrument external MIDI Fine for audio files, plugin software instruments and physical external MIDI devices (presumably via USB), but what about non-hosted plugins that are standalone? I've been trying to get the standalone G-Player tool to work (yes, I have the plugin version also, which works, but read on.) but the MIDI needs to go from Logic to G-Player via the the VSL performance tool-essentially just a MIDI router. G-Player can see the VSL perf tool and the perf tool has IN and OUT selectable (which appear sufficient), but how do you tell Logic to send a track's MIDI data outside of the application? I downloaded a 'MIDI patchbay' freeware app thinking maybe I needed another virtual router to tell Logic what to do, but this hasn't worked-there's nothing listed anywhere in any application or preference panel about MIDI data generated by Logic. I know this seems complicated, but I'm hoping maybe there's something simple I've overlooked (in Logic?) that someone might know. I'm fairly puzzled by this: In Logic 8, when creating a new track it lets me specify: audio software instrument external MIDI Fine for audio files, plugin software instruments and physical external MIDI devices (presumably via USB), but what about non-hosted plugins that are standalone? Those would be considered 'External MIDI'.
Logic doesn't make a difference whether your external MIDI instrument is hardware, software, on the same computer, on another computer, etc.: it's just 'external' (to Logic). Create an external MIDI track and choose its destination in the Library. If the destination you want is not available in the Library, you can use Audio MIDI Setup to create IAC busses and those will show up in the Library. You then use the same IAC bus as the MIDI source in your other app. Very helpful answer, thanks. But I haven't got it working and I can't seem to figure out why.
It.seems. like it should be totally working. Using the 'external MIDI' setting in Logic, I see 'tovsltool 1', 'tovsltool 2' etc and in the G-Player software instrument I see 'fromvsltool 1', etc but during playback I get no MIDI signal at all even after setting the VSL tool to 'thru'. I've successfully used the VSL tool on windows, but have never tried the Mac version (which looks identical actually). I never see the G-player app show up in any of the MIDI routing; anywhere. So I tried the new IAC bus approach, calling it 'G-Player' but it doesn't show up in Logic (even after restart) and I've tried launching the 3 apps in different order. (What's troubling is that while I can see 'tovsl' in Logic and 'fromvsl' in G-player, all I get in the VSL tool is 'IN' and 'OUT'.which may be all that's needed.but it ain't working.) Can't figure out why the signal is not getting through.or why I can't route Logic directly to G-player just to test.
So I can see Bus 1 showing up, and at one point I got some nasty loud clicks from g-player, but no playback.and logic seems to encounter a system overload on each pass.mostly randomly. (When I switch it to a different MIDI out the overloads stop.) I'll have to play around with this some more and figure out what's causing the overload. You've created a MIDI feedback loop. If you're sending MIDI out of Logic via the IAC bus, make sure you block it at Logic's physical input object by patching a cable to a 'dead end' object.a monitor object, for instance. Attachments dead end.png (48.76 KiB) Viewed 2043 times.
Thanks jordito and David-that definitely fixed the overload problem and I've managed to get sound coming out of g-player, so that's one battle won! However, no matter what I try I cannot seem to get any response from the VSL perf tool-either via the 'tovsltool' option or even using the Bus 1 (or combinations, which I tried). Something tells me there's a problem with the perf tool, not the MIDI setup. Very puzzling.
My only option is to contact VSL but they've already stated that they no longer offer support for this. A $6,000 library of which I can only use 3/5ths!
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December 2022
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