It’s been a busy summer, there’s a lot of exciting things happening at Be Better Studios! Expect some big launches and releases in early fall. In the meantime, I thought I’d take the time to share some stuff about Liine’s wonderful Lemur app for the iPad. I was never one of the lucky ones to have an original Jazz Mutant, but as the old adage goes: “good things come to those who wait”. Now-a-days this custom controller environment is available for the iPad at reasonable price of around $50. I picked it up earlier this summer from the Apple app store and in addition to all the great Live and MAX uses, I recently discovered a use for this tool that I don’t see enough people writing about. This is the ability to make custom controller interfaces for your hardware synths that may be lacking in knobs, faders, or buttons.
Many of you who have been producing synth based electronic music for years, may have a collection of synths that you purchased at a deal, favoring cost savings over buttons and knob ratios. The truth is many of these instruments sound great out of the box with many having presets created by some of the industry’s best sound designer. However; as your own style of music develops, programming your own unique sounds through a little LCD window and a couple knobs can be a great source of frustration, forever preventing you from getting to the bottom of any advanced synth engine that may lay under the hood.
I had a discussion with another local electronic musician just the other day, and he had suggested that a factor contributing to the sudden renaissance in analog synths might simply be that your typical analog synth is more likely to have 1 knob per function layouts. I would agree with this theory because to me roughly 75% of what makes a good synth is the interface. You will simply get a different sound if you have a friendly programming interface, than if you have to wade through a hundred little LCD screens to make edits to the sound features, or if you are programming a synth with a mouse in your DAW.
Liine’s Lemur is great solution to adding the missing controls to your hardware synths. Of course, a proper midi specification in your synth will be required and unlike a normal hardware midi controller, the Lemur app will not run out of knobs, faders, switches or buttons. In addition to building templates yourself, the Lemur community already has a lot of templates available for free that you can start from. I’ll be making and releasing a few myself and you’ll be able to download them on here the website as they become available or are updated. The first one I have to share is one for the amazing Waldorf Micro Q. Programming this instrument through the Lemur interface has breathed an entirely new life into this instrument. I’ve been programming this synth for years, but using this interface has helped me produce sounds I’ve never heard from it before. It makes me wonder how many vintage synths are out there on ebay that this app could bring back to life…
Here are some screenshots:
Master controller page where most performance features are available for tweaking
Filter page with access to the parameters of both filters and common filter modulators
Modulation page where you can control the common modulation sources and the arppegiator
Click Here to Download Waldorf Micro Q Lemure Template v 0.8 template*.
Simply open it in your Lemur editor on your PC and transfer the project to your Lemur instance on your iPad app from there. You can connect to your Micro Q via a wireless adhoc via your DAW or a dedicated iPad midi interface. I use the Alesis I/O dock and connect that directly to the Micro Q, this interface works great and I would highly recommend trying the dock if you haven’t yet already. And that’s it, tweak away! Don’t forget to save your settings on the Micro Q.
*Please note, that this template is still in progress, although it is highly usable. I’m still working on a better implementation of the drum mapping and the multi-mixer. Feel free to ignore those pages in the template for now, or go ahead and build on them yourself via the Lemur editor. Have fun!
Additional links:
Liine’s website: http://liine.net/en/products/lemur/
Waldorf website: http://www.waldorf-music.info/en.html
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Hi, first thanks for this template that has given life to my microQ, was thinking of getting rid of the possibility when I found this, thanks.
But ultilizarla, all mappings still do not work, right?
and I have problems with recognizing the synth parameters.
thanks
Hello Ana, you’re welcome, I hope the template helps you rediscover this great instrument. Every parameter on the Micro Q is mapped according to Waldorf’s midi spec in the MicroQ manual. The only things that aren’t really well implemented at the moment are the drum mapping and multi mixer pages. But those were afterthoughts really and on my list to revisit.
What sort of problems are you having with the parameters being recognized maybe I can help?
Hi,
I am enjoying your lemur patch for the microQ, thanks alot for all the efforts!
Is it possible to edit the patch so i select the next preset in the microQ?
Also i am wondering if there is a way to recieve the current patch parameters direct on the ipads screen, it makes it easier to edit 🙂
Thanks alot!!
Hi Michel, great to hear you’re using the template! I didn’t facilitate program changes in the template just yet, but that’s a great idea for an addition. I’ll look into incorporating that into an update. And yeah, receiving current patch parameters and have them reflected in the Lemur was a challenge that I haven’t found a solution for just yet.
There may be a way via a sysex dump to preload cc values from a current patch to the Lemur, but it still wouldn’t be user friendly. Especially if you switch patches. I’ll also explore this more. Where the template really comes in handy is programming new sounds from an initialized patch, it makes this process easier than ever. That was the goal for the first go round. The goal for improving the template in the next update will be to include more performance oriented features like you inquired about. If you have any more ideas, let me know. Also, feel free to add to the template yourself if you wish and we can build off your work as well.
Hi Ethan, I’m reading this note and is very interesting. I have one question, but is not related to this particular topic. I’m sequencing Waldorf MicroQ rack version from an MPC1000 and when I send cc (ie 69, to filter 1 cutoff) from the MPC to the MQ it works ok, but the cutoff filter knob in the MQ only shows the cut off for the filter 1 (or the filter 2 witch is active at the moment I press play) in every parts of the multimode.
I’m not sure if this is a limitation to MQ or maybe I’m doing something wrong…
Do you know what might be happening? There’s something I can do about this?
I hope you understand what I’m asking you… Please let me know if you have any doubts.
Thanks in advance for your help!
Best
Mauro
Hello Mauro,
The MicroQ’s visual display doesn’t update in realtime when controlling a parameter with a midi controller. It’s best to rely on what you are seeing on your midi controller. This is one of the benefits from using the Lemur to program the MicroQ, you can see many more parameter values at the same time. I hope that helps!
Best Regards,
Ethan
Looks like a nice interface for the uQ.
However, I am 100% OTB no midi, no computer, no ipad
and I still program all my synths from the front panel
(JX-3P/8P Blofeld/uQ)
I really think that making it tougher, can make for some interesting sounds when you DO NOT have it too easy with a mouse!
I agree, sometimes less is more. However, the great thing about the Lemur app is it uses a touch device, so it’s essentially adding a touch interface to the Micro Q, requiring you to use your hands almost like turning a knob. No mouse needed!