iOS has proven to be a great platform for exploring alternative music making interfaces, and more evidence of this can be found in Seaquence, a new app that enables you to compose using “collections of organic creatures, each with their own synth voice”.
Think of this as your own audio/visual aquarium: each creature’s body and tail is created from the parameters of its synth and sequencer, with these in turn adjusting its swimming patterns. Only the voices that you have in view can be heard.
Despite the novelty of the interface, Seaquence has a proper synth and sequencing engine working away in its briny depths, and if you pay $6.99 for the one in-app purchase you’ll get even more features (see below).
You can download the app for free from the Apple App Store. It’s compatible with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices running iOS 9.
Seaquence features
- Fully featured polyphonic synthesis module with support of up to 5 note polyphony per voice
- Dynamic spatial mixer and stereo-panning engine
- A true multitouch experience, up to 11 simultaneous touch points supported.
- Unique swimming physics and swim behaviors - swim patterns are based on synth voice parameters
- Up to 8 voices can be heard simultaneously
- Precision, sample-based clock and sequencing engine
- Intuitive visual multitouch voice editor
- 16x16 multitouch sequencer matrix
- Chromatic scale editor
- Octave editor
- Amplitude envelope + length (ADSR+L) with curves and “hold”
- 5 oscillator waveform shapes: Square, Saw, Tri, Sin, Noise
- Social sharing features - Get a link to share your creations to friends
- Parent links are maintained - trace back the history of a composition, see who remixed your creations
In-app purchase features
- State-variable filter with hi-pass, band-pass, lo-pass, and notch modes
- Filter attack envelope with resonance Q and curve editor
- Swing/Shuffle
- Note step editor: 1/1 to 1/64, including triplets
- Global transpose
- Tempo/BPM
- Portamento/Glide with curve editor
- Additional voice modes in addition to Polyphonic: Monophonic with sub-oscillator tuned to a 5th
- Unison with detune
- Delay FX module with feedback and individual voice FX-Send
- MIDI Notes In/Out: Send/Receive MIDI notes from external gear, up to 16 MIDI channels, addressable per voice
- MIDI Ctrl In/Out: Send/Receive MIDI ctrl data from external gear, up to 16 MIDI channels, addressable per voice
- MIDI clock sync: master or slave
