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Musix Pro

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The most powerful isomorphic MIDI keyboard —

Download on the App Store!

For Apple iPhone and iPad

Musix Pro is a unique instrument where you can learn every major and minor chord in two minutes! The hexagon note layout allows songwriters to discover new melodies and musical relations. Novices find the note layout easy to learn and play. Musix Pro even offers MIDI and OSC support for your favourite programs.

feature art for musix pro unlocking harmonic potential


The Definitive Isomorphic Keyboard

Why Musix Pro?

  • Learn how to play every major and minor chord in minutes
  • Learn one pattern and instantly play in any key
  • Explore the harmonic relationships between notes
  • Play along with your friends without being an expert
  • Realize your own personal musicality

What is Musix Pro?

  • The easiest way to play music
  • A professional musical instrument and MIDI controller
  • An isomorphic layout creator and experimentation app
  • A music theory learning tool
  • A melody exploration device
iPad View

About Musix Pro

Features

  • Core/Virtual Midi, OSC (works with almost all MIDI Programs)
  • 8 Built-in instruments (2 New)
  • Audiobus Support
  • Custom layout generation and saving
  • Colourize different notes based on key, scale, and mode
  • Label notes based on Solfege, or Note name
  • Multiple note sizes
  • Multiple color patterns
  • Note Overlap (play 3-note chords with one finger)
  • Retina Support
  • Full iPhone Support

Works as a controller for:

  • Addictive Synth
  • Alchemy
  • Animoog
  • Arctic Keys
  • bs-16i
  • Cassini
  • Drum Pad
  • DXi
  • Grain Science
  • iGrand
  • iMS-20
  • iPulsaret
  • Korg iPolysix
  • MidiBridge
  • NLog Synth Pro
  • PPG Wave Generator
  • SampleTank
  • SampleWiz
  • Sunrizer
  • Sunvox
  • Thumbjam
  • Yamaha Synth Arp
  • Many other apps and devices

Please note: You cannot record audio, add effects, or do looping in Musix Pro. That is why Audiobus exists!

If your having issues with Musix Pro, Audiobus, and MIDI (or other issues) check the versions page for known bugs.

Background

Musix Pro is "key agnostic", which means is that once you have learned a musical pattern (like a chord or a scale), that pattern is the same for all keys, even the dreaded C-flat! Sharps and flats appear in the right place automatically, through the mathematical magic of isomorphism. You can learn to play melodies on a traditional keyboard by playing them on Musix Pro and watching where the sharps and flats go.

Songwriters can use Musix Pro to discover new melodies and musical relationships. Novices find Musix Pro easy to learn to play. Experienced musicians enjoy the an intuitive but powerful interface. Keys can be resized to fit your style or ability - try starting with "epic"-sized keys, and as you get better you can shrink the keys to fill the screen with notes.

Isomorphic keyboards are found on both traditional and new musical instruments, from concertinas, accordions, and "jammers" to Janko keyboards, harmonic-table devices, and more. Musix Pro is the only way to access all isomorphic note arrangements in one powerful customizable application. Want to try a custom note arrangement of your own? Musix Pro can help you build and play any note arrangement you like!

Musix Pro comes with a set of built-in layouts, each with its own pros and cons. The harmonic table layout allows you to play any major chord by touching three hexes with one finger. The Wicki-Hayden layout makes modulating between pentatonic scales a breeze. Try them all and find one that works for you.

The app allows you to change the colour of the notes in your layout. You can colour the notes white and black like a piano; you can colour the notes of any scale or mode (like D-flat mixolidian) and you can colour notes based on tone centre. Notes can be labeled with movable or fixed solfege or with the traditional note name (spelled based on the key and mode).

Musix Pro Feature Demo

Layouts

Musix Pro comes bundled with a set of pre-fab layouts which includes several of the more popular isomorphic layouts as well as two we designed as part of the development of the app. In addition, we are including more layouts at no extra cost, but we are not providing detailed pattern sets for those keyboards. Each layout has its strengths and weaknesses, and we encourage you to try them all and find one that works for you.

Included Layouts and Their Definitions

Click on a layout name for more information:

  • Gerhard (- Maj. 3rd; + Min. 3rd; Vertical) Designed specifically for the iPhone/iPad and Musix Pro, this layout attempts to balance the advantages and disadvantages of other layouts listed below. Scales are tight and chords fit naturally on the fingers.
  • Park (- Min. 3rd; + Maj. 2nd; Horizontal) A variation on the Wicki-Hayden (listed below). In this layout, white notes are together, making patterns easier to see, and scales can be played by sliding fingers along the screen. Alternate and jazz chords are compact, which means this pattern sounds great when button mashing.
  • Wicki-Hayden (- Perf. 4th; - Perf 5th; Horizontal) This is a classic layout, used for centuries on accordions and concertinas. White notes are together, and the I-IV-V pattern (used in many, many songs) forms a compact triangle. Scales play linearly left-to-right (like a piano) with jumps for each semitone. Whole-tone scales are linear. Simple chords are comfortable, more complex chords are more challenging. This is also the preferred layout for "jammer" instruments.
  • Harmonic (- Maj. 3rd; - Min 3rd; Horizontal) Also called the "Harmonic Table", this relatively modern layout was developed and popularized by C-Thru Music, the makers of the excellent Axis line of isomorphic MIDI keyboards. The harmonic table provides impossibly easy chords, with major and minor triads in triangles playable with a single finger. Scales are somewhat cumbersome, but as with all layouts, once learned in one key, that scale in all other keys follows the same pattern.
  • Maupin
  • Janko
  • C-System
  • B-System
  • Bajan
  • LinnStrument

Note Overlap

The note overlap attribute describes the overlap area on a key in which the neighbouring key can be played simultaneously with one touch. A low overlap value will result in a small overlapping area. Likewise a high overlap value will result in a larger overlapping area.

Musix

Adjust Note Overlap in Settings

Musix

Note Overlap Amount

Instruments

Eight instrument sounds are included in Musix Pro:


  • Accordion
  • Asonic
  • Bell
  • Brass
  • Clarinet
  • Square Ham
  • Spaceylophone
  • Xylophone

Each sound is created from scratch using FM-Synthesis or Wave-Synthesis. This allows the creation of complex harmonic spectra, or in other words, full and rich sound.

OSC/Midi Support

Musix Pro has built in Core / Virtual Midi support which allows you to use the synthesizers and audio software you already own to make great music wirelessly with the Musix Pro interface. This can be done between apps or between an iPad and a computer wirelessly. If you really want to grab all the advanced information about note press location you can OSC. For more details see below:

How to Configure OSC/Midi

How-to: Roll Your Own Isomorphic Layout

Quick Start

To roll your own layout, choose an interval for each direction (South-east and South-west) and a choose whether to use Horizontal or Vertical Layout.

Musix

Left-to-right: South-west interval, South-east interval, Orientation.

You can also choose the note size:

Musix

Details

All hexagonal layouts are defined by the intervals in each of the six directions. For a layout to be isomorphic (making patterns the same in all keys), an interval in one direction must be the same for each note, meaning that regardless of where you start, going south-east will always be, say, a major fifth, and therefore going the opposite direction (north-west) will always be the opposite interval (a descending major fifth, in this case)

Musix

Horizontal Layout

Musix

Vertical Layout

So while it looks like you can define six intervals (one for each direction), three of the directions are constrained to be the opposite interval of the opposing direction, and thus can't be defined. But if you look a little deeper, you can only define two intervals.

If you go south-east, and then south-west, and then north, you end up back at the same note, making those three notes a triangle. If you know two of those intervals, the third must take you back to the original note for the keyboard to stay isomorphic. So really, all you need to do is choose two intervals to define the layout. The third is the sum of the other two, in the opposing direction.

Musix

Interval Relationships

For example, in the Harmonic layout, the south-east direction is a descending minor third (3 semitones), and the south-west direction is a descending major third (4 semitones). the sum of these intervals is seven semitones (a fifth), so the north direction (the third leg in the triangle) must be an ascending fifth.

In Musix Pro, you can define the interval for the south-east direction and the south-west direction, and all other intervals will be calculated and filled in. For example, for the wicki-hayden layout, south-east is a descending perfect fourth, and south-west is a descending perfect fifth.

Musix

Define South-east Interval

Musix

Define South-west Interval

One more feature to choose is whether the layout is horizontal or vertical. Horizontal layouts have an east-west direction but no north-south direction, and vertical layouts have a north-south direction but no east-west direction.

Musix

Select Layout Orientation

Showcase

Musix Pro: Feature Demo and Original Song

Musix Pro Original - Braten

Musix Pro Original - Escape

The most powerful isomorphic MIDI keyboard —

Download on the App Store!

For Apple iPhone and iPad


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