Ipad dj control software

[difference]

Hi folks

I know there's info on the forum about this but I'm a bit confused and would appreciate some up to date advice.

I've recently bought an ipad and would like to put an app on it to act as a DJ controller for Live (effectively replacing my uc33e).

There's a few apps out there - touchosc, lemur and touchable.

Lemur is more than I want to pay.

Touchable seems not to be really geared for what I want - which is a DJ controller (happy to be corrected on this point though).

TouchOsc is cheap and you can build what you like with it - which is cool in the long run but short term I want something I can just use and surprisingly I can't seem to find many templates out there. It also seems to be a real faff.. I'm really confused about what I would need aside from the app. Puredata / osculator / hexlar bridge / livecontrol ??

An important question as well - will these apps work with my desktop computer? It doesn't have wifi but is connected to the wifi router by Ethernet. I can access my iTunes library via wifi so hoping that proves you can connect that way.

Any recommendations or info from people using these apps (or anything else I am not aware of) would be cool.

Cheers

[Tarekith]

For Live specific control, there's not too much out there on the DJ front other than the TouchOSC templates you can find to be honest. It's not THAT hard these days to set up your own template, and given that Live can be used in SOOO many different ways for DJing (compared to other DJ software), probably the easiest option IMO.

Otherwise, I highly recommend checking out the djay app. Looks kind of cheesy, but I found it to be the best iPad DJ app out for most of my needs. Yes it's not controlling Live, but for portable DJing with a decent set up options, worth a look.

[difference]

I may get djay as well.. But really looking for a solution for Live.

If I get touchosc on the ipad, what do I need on my PC to make it work? seems to be a choice of oscillator / puredata or bridge. What are the pros and cons? (Just want something that works!)

[Tarekith]

I thought OSCillator was the easiest, but I think you might not even need it now? Not sure, been awhile since I looked, but in the past OSCillator was used to convert the OSC mesages TouchOSC sent to MIDI. Now TouchOSC can send midi natively I believe.

[difference]

Touchosc website seems to tell me to download puredata... More reading on this I think.

[Tarekith]

It could be, I haven't used it much lately, so my info might be a year or so old.

[evangelink]

I was in the same boat, although my PC has wireless, and went for TouchOSC for its price and flexibility. Spent a whole weekend trying to get it working properly. Tried all options. The trick was getting the OSC signals converted into MIDI and the only way I made progress was in using PureData.

The main drawback is that I have no idea how to program PureData, and no intention of spending time learning, so I dropped $10 on somebody's template online for DJing. Cam with an Ableton file and PureData file, but I can't change change anything around!

In short, it looks much easier to do on a Mac.

[33tetragammon]

Afaik you don't need Puredata to convert OSC to midi. There is this application called TouchOsc Bridge that handles the midi signals back and forth.

Look here:

http://hexler.net/docs/touchosc-configu ... ons-bridge

I always used this for plain midi control with TouchOsc. I'm on Mac btw, don't know if it works different on a PC.

[difference]

Yeah I think I've seen the same template online. Seems a little basic tbh. I'd definitely need to tweak it.

To be honest I assumed that you designed the templates on touchosc on the ipad, and whatever you had running on the PC was just a server to receive the network messages and pass them on as MIDI. Have little interest in learning PureData just to be able to do this .

These apps have been out a while now and I was kind of expecting to find loads of people who had built templates for themselves and were sharing them online. There fact there are so few (literally have seen just one or two which are aimed at DJIng in Live) makes me think that it's perhaps not that workable.

Not seen anything that makes it seem easier on a mac though - needs the same apps AFAIK.

[difference]

Afaik you don't need Puredata to convert OSC to midi. There is this application called TouchOsc Bridge that handles the midi signals back and forth.

Look here:

http://hexler.net/docs/touchosc-configu ... ons-bridge

I always used this for plain midi control with TouchOsc. I'm on Mac btw, don't know if it works different on a PC.

Cheers, I missed your post before.

Just had a look at touch osc editor as well. Looks relatively straightforward. I'm just surprised there aren't more templates around to get you started.

Where's the touchosc forums with loads of people sharing their latest Live set / touch osc DJing templates that I can pinch?!

[evangelink]

My experience/inability maybe, TouchOsc bridge refused to work for me on PC. I could get a template goin in TouchOsc editor, and I was setting up TouchOSC bridge correctly in Ableton, but there was something not happening, Ableton wouldn't receive MIDI signals, even when I set up the most basic template. There must have been something I was doing wrong, and if you work it out ten do let me know!

The trick I couldn't work out with PureData was telling it to send the OSC signal to a corresponding CC number. The template I downloaded is very complex, and I haven't even able to reverse engineer it. Yet.

Doesn't help that most resources I found online were for Mac users, with the guidance assuming it woul work on PC!

[difference]

Right, I have just downloaded touchosc app, touchosc bridge and touchosc editor.

Just to check it works, did a test template with 3 vertical faders. All seems to be working - have been able to use midi learn in live to get these controlling paramters

evangelink - the most obscure thing I think was to go into the Ipad settings, select "Midi Bridge" under the connections heading and choose your computer or input the IP address there.

Other than that, just need to make sure you've enabled TouchOsc Bridge as a remote MIDI input in Live's settings.

If it's still not working for you, let me know and I will go through step by step what I did.

In terms of actually getting it talking to Live then, I'm sorted. Just need to sort myself out with a cool live template set and touch osc template now. I'm all ears now if anyone has anything to share or can point me in the right direction!

[difference]

Thought I would post back for the benefit of anybody else who was in the same position as me.

All up and running now with my ipad as a controller for my DJ setup in Live.

Was confusing reading up about it but all I needed was:

- TouchOsc App for iPad (£2.99)
- TouchOsc Editor (free)
- TouchOsc Bridge (free)

Then to get up and running:

1) Design a template in TouchOsc Editor, making sure each control in the template is assigned a Midi CC number
2) Sync the template to the App on the iPad
3) Run TouchOsc Bridge
4) Open Live and select TouchOsc Bridge as an Midi input for remote control in the preferences
5) Use Live's Midi learn to Map all the controls on the Ipad to the relevant parameters in Live.

The most time consuming part was using the editor. It was pretty easy but took a while to design a template, setting a midi cc number for each control.

I'm on a PC by the way.

[evangelink]

Thanks for posting your further info, good to read.

I actually re-tried the Bridge after reading this post last week, must have been inspired by your positive story. Clearly I did something differently as it started working! Think I may have had an issue before with the template not set up to send out MIDI or something.

Now running an Ad-Hoc network and speaking perfectly to the ipad, and putting the finishing touches to my template. Lots of fun.