App Shopper: AirPipes - Wireless Bagpipes MIDI Control Surface (Music)

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Jul 17 '10	Version 1.4
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AirPipes - Wireless Bagpipes MIDI Control Surface

iOS iPad

AirPipes is a WiFi-based wireless MIDI Bagpipes control surface for the iPad.

Please visit my website for a video of the app controlling both a Roland JV-1080 MIDI synth module and the ePipes.co.uk "Studio Piper" VST for Windows.

The chanter fingerings are based on those used for the Scottish Highland or Irish Uilleann pipes and will also be immediately familiar to Irish whistle and flute players.

This app supports two independent wireless MIDI channels, emulating the the drones and chanter of a half set of Uilleann or full set of Highland bagpipes.

The app doesn't produce any sound itself, it is used for controlling hardware or software VST-style MIDI synthesizers via a WiFi connection to a Windows or Mac OS X based computer.

Multiple iPads can run the app simultaneously on the same wireless network, each sending messages on its own set of MIDI channels to the hardware or software synthesizer.

You may select the MIDI channel, attack velocity and volume for the chanter and drones independently using the sliders at the top of the screen.

The entire range may be transposed up or down up to one octaves in semitone increments using the chanter and drone transpose sliders.

All MIDI settings are saved when the app quits and restored the next time it is run.

Touch the '!' icon at the lower left to quiet any "stuck" notes if they occur.

Switch between Uilleann and Highland fingerings using the selector below the drone image.

To play the chanter, place your fingers over the holes on the two halves of the chanter. The left side represents the "top" hand, the right side is the "bottom" hand.

Touch the drone puck to start/stop the drones.

In Uilleann chanter mode, several additional playing options are available:

Touch the green bar on the left side with your left little finger to play the notes one octave higher.

Touch the blue bar at the bottom left center with your left thumb to play the second octave "Back-D" selectable on either a press or release.

Touch the red bar at the bottom right center with your right thumb to stop the chanter sound for staccato techniques.

Touch the purple bar on the lower right with your right little finger to bend the pitch. You may also do vibrato on most notes with the middle finger of the right hand.

On the fingering chart, touch the blue Back-D bar image to toggle between whether the bar on the main screen plays the second-octave D note on a touch (default) or release.

Also on the fingering chart, you may toggle between "Loose" and "Strict" closed chanter modes by touching the red bar.

Rotate the iPad to Portrait orientation to see the fingering chart. Rotate back to Landscape orientation to play.

AirPipes requires two pieces of software to do its job. The first is the AirPipes app itself, running on your iPad.

The other is a small free open-source DSWiFiMIDI server application that you run on your PC or Mac before launching AirPipes.

The server application receives the MIDI messages from the app via WiFi, and sends them along to either an external MIDI interface or a loopback MIDI driver to talk to software synthesizers running on the same computer.

Please visit the AirPipes website for information on downloading and installing the required open-source DSMIDIWiFi server application for your system.

For the most reliable performance with the lowest possible latency, I highly recommend that the PC or Mac should be on a wired network. The computer and wireless gateway that the iPad is connected to must be on the same network.

To get the full benefit from the app, you should be familiar with the use of MIDI control surfaces, hardware and/or software VST synthesizers.