… Nanostudio for iOS …

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, many of the songs for my new record are being sketched out in Nanostudio while I ride the railroad to/from work everyday. I have to resist the temptation to waste my time, but once I force myself to press the NS icon and open up the app, I am rewarded with a well thought out, fully functional sequencer.

NS has four synths and a sample based drum trigger instrument. You can import your own samples in the TRG sampler (I’ve loaded it with all of my own drum samples). The “Eden” synths have a good mod matrix, four LFOs, 2 XY pads, an assignable envelope, insert effects and more. In fact, the “Eden” synths seem to be more versatile than my “real” synth (Microkorg XL).

I like the synth so much that I recently voiced a request to the developer to be able to trigger it via MIDI IN while docked in the Synthstation25. This request was implemented in the last update! Unfortunately, iOS 4.2 introduces a considerable amount of latency into the stream so synching to my host sequencer is out for now. It looks like I’ll have to let my fingers do the walking …

You can export .wav and MIDI files from NS, making it compatible with just about any sequencer (OSX or PC) out there. My work flow is basically:

1) Sit on public transpo and doodle on iPod.
2) Get home and dock iPod in Synthstation25. Refine doodle with real keyboard.
3) Export MIDI files and bring them into Reaper for further development.

It has been working great so far. The app and the developer Blip Interactive are both 10/10.

Here is a little track I started today. Who knows where it will go.