Dear fellow Animoog fans, let me share with you this ‘Animoog improvements wish list’. It’s located here: http://animoog.org/playing/wish-list/ but since I have no intention of forcing you to visit this site, here’s a current copy of the content below. Yeah, I know, a large ‘Animoog wish list’ discussion took place already on this very forum, but that previous discussion was started in 2011! We’re in 2014 now and lots of things changed for Animoog since then.
So here’s the copy of the page mentioned above. Please feel free to share comments and better ideas here or over the animoog.org website. I plan to aggregate everyone’s comments and ideas at this latter location. Thanks and enjoy Animoog!
We love Animoog so much that we desire to make it even better! This wish list applies to the latest Animoog release, version 2.1.1 available since June 2013. Please contribute your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.
*** Sequencer ***
Animoog already supports midi output and input, but the problem rather lies in the absence, as far as I’m aware, of iOS apps that fully support Animoog’s expressive capabilities
Currently, we can record the tracks in Animoog, but that gets recorded in audio format – we lose the capability to modify tracks at the note level
We need to be able 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
Once we’ll have this, I foresee an explosion of Animoog-made professional music
*** Saving session state ***
There’s currently no way to save our Animoog session’s state
It would be seriously useful 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
** Preset navigation **
An improved user interface for preset navigation, selection and customization would be welcomed
A simple search-by-name capability would certainly also help
There’s way too many expansion packs that have their presets ending up in the ‘root’ folder, where it’s a mess
Allow user-set color coding of presets
** In-app interactive help **
Animoog is a fairly complex app when it comes to modifying sounds
An in-app help could overlay descriptions of the various controls on the different screens
Currently, the in-app Manual looks like a pdf that is in no way integrated with the app itself
An even more sophisticated help could invite the user to interactively play with the various controls while providing descriptions of what is happening to the produced sounds
** Other ideas **
Two rows of Keyboard input: yes, that would impact the current layout of the app and reduce the size of the x/y pad, but the option of adding a row of keyboard keys would significantly increase expressiveness capabilities
And one of major items I forgot in the initial version is this section:
**** Presets and tracks transfer and sync ****
** Getting data in and out Animoog could be much easier and straightforward, especially for (A) 4-track projects, and (B) user-saved presets and timbres
** For tracks, we can use ‘AudioCopy’ to move to Garageband and then export away, or use Audiobus to export to yet another app. For copying presets out, we currently have to rely on iFunBox. In both cases, it requires lots of manipulations and third-party software
** What about a simple ‘Send by email’ feature for tracks? That would be a great start
** Tracks and user-saved presets could also be synced in and out via DropBox, ownCloud or a similar file syncing services, that would really be easy to use and immensely useful
** Moog could be rightfully worried that paid-for presets and timbres could be shared amongst users if they becomes easy to share them. I suggest the following solution; let Animoog users share the presets they modified and are proud of, let them build a sense of community around sharing user-modified presets and timbres, but in order to avoid the piracy of presets sold as in-app purchases, make it a requirement that in order to use a preset coming from another user, someone has to have bought, if applicable, the original preset on which the shared preset is based on. Technically, Animoog simply needs to validate that the preset the user is loading is based on a preset that the user already has rights to, if not, let the user know that it needs to buy the original preset in order to use the modified preset
** Tracks could be pushed to SoundCloud directly, but this is of lower priority in my opinion
Ah! That’s a topic very dear to me. You successfully made me write way too many words about that. Here’s the post: http://animoog.org/2014/06/11/open-sourcing-animoogs-code/
It’s a bit long so I won’t copy it here, but you can react to it either in this forum’s post or on the blog entry itself, up to you.
(and yes, I added syncing to iCloud Drive (announced for iOS 8 ) to the wish list page )
Wow. I forgot another ‘important’ potential improvement for Animoog… here it is (added to the web page):
with two rows of keyboard input, > playing two different Animoog presets on the same screen > becomes possible. When Animoog was launched, iPads and iPhones were far from delivering as much performance as today (over 5x increase between the iPad 2 and iPad Air). Yes, such a feature would have impact of many other aspects of the app (such as midi messages, 4-tracks recording, two xy pads?, etc), but at the same time, would bring Animoog to another level of blissfulness
I’m excited by this possibility of playing two Animoog presets at the same time (on a single iPad)… that would dramatically extend Animoog’s expressiveness capabilities. Do you agree?
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