iMIDIPatchbay Tutorials: Getting Started

In this video, you'll learn about the basic concepts of iMIDIPatchbay. iMIDIPatchbay is an app that allows you to control your MIDI devices in your musical setup, and it is designed especially for keyboard players. One main feature is that you can send Program Changes to your keyboards and sound expanders. Another main feature lets you easily create split zones on your keyboards and assign your sounds to them. This can be very useful for you, especially if your keyboard doesn't have any built-in capabilities for splitting and layering sounds. And even if it does, there is a big chance that iMIDIPatchbay makes some related tasks a lot easier.

Before we go into the details of the app, let me give you a short demonstration of what this is all about. My example setup consists of a Nord Piano of the first generation, and a Yamaha Motif Rack-ES which is a multi-timbral sound expander. Both are connected via MIDI DIN to an iConnect MIDI interface, which, in turn, is connected to my iPad. With this interface, my iPad can receive the MIDI data from the devices and send data back to them. You can use any other interface that is "CoreMIDI compatible" and that has enough MIDI ports to connect your devices.

The Nord, the Yamaha, and the iPad are furthermore connected to an audio interface for recording this tutorial.

As a first example, I've used iMIDIPatchbay to create a split on the keyboard. On the upper part, I have the internal sound of the Nord Piano, which is an e-piano sound. And on the lower part, I have a bass sound from the Yamaha.

At this point, it is important to note that the Nord Piano itself doesn't have a feature which could send MIDI to the Yamaha when I only play on this part of the keyboard. And, even more importantly, it cannot mute its internal sound on a key range either. The Yamaha, in turn, has some MIDI functionality which I could have used to make the bass sound play only for notes lower than a certain note. But doing that on this small display is really a bit fiddly, and again, the Nord would still play its sound on the lower part of the keyboard.

However, with iMIDIPatchbay, I can overcome these limitations of my sound devices and I'm going to show you how. But first, I want to show you another example configuration. I'll actually switch to another song in iMIDIPatchbay and you'll see that each of my sound devices switch to a different program as a result.

In this configuration I don't have a split as before but a layering. In other words, I play two sounds at the same time across the whole keyboard.

The piano sound comes from the Nord, and the String sound comes from the Yamaha. Well, I also could have achieved that by simply connecting the MIDI OUT of the Nord to the MIDI IN of the Yamaha and, by that, send all notes of the Nord to the Yamaha. But what I wanted in this configuration besides the simple layering, is that the sustain pedal only affects the piano sound, but not the strings.

So, in this case, iMIDIPatchbay is filtering out the MIDI data of the sustain pedal before sending MIDI to the Yamaha. For comparison, let me switch on the sustain pedal now, and I do that just by holding one button here and shortly pressing the sustain pedal, and from now on the pedal will control the Yamaha, too:

Well, these were two little examples. I could have combined more sounds and used more than one split point, but I think you already got the idea of what you can do with iMIDIPatchbay. So, now let me show you in detail how you actually work with the app.

1.1 Concepts

When you start iMIDIPatchbay for the first time, it looks like this. At the top, there is a display showing the selected song, and these buttons here allow me to save the song, make a copy, or step through my songs. However, the most important part of the app is the lower part. These columns here are called "sections" and each of them can be used to send MIDI data to a MIDI device.

Actually, there are two different types of sections. Those on the right side are "extern sections" and they are used to control sound devices that only receive MIDI, like my Yamaha Motif-Rack ES, which doesn't have any keys or drum pads which I could play and which would produce MIDI. It only has a sound engine which can be controlled via MIDI.

So, an "extern section" is used to send MIDI data to a sound device.

On the left side, there are "master sections". In iMIDIpatchbay, a "Master" represents a MIDI device that generates MIDI and that you want to use as a controller for other devices. So in my case, my Nord Piano acts as a master. When I play on it, it will generate MIDI according to the keys that I press, and I'm going to use that to play sounds on my Yamaha for example...

[perrypelican]

Your apps are fantastic and so well thought out. Please don't stop supporting imidipatchbay or tell me what to use instead. It's so annoying to learn how to use an app very well and then the developer stops updating it to work with new IOS versions etc.

[michaelkragten]

This is really exactly what I am looking for, but I do not have any Apple hardware nor a tablet. I would like to use it on my Android phone. Can I? If so, how does it work? Using Blue Tooth?

[Iain]

Thank you. Answered a lot of questions I had.

[wireguy]

Great program....to bad you cannot name the external 1 external 2 ect with keyboard names

[alexcusenza]

I was wondering if you could use the different MASTERS on the same keyboard, but utilize the different zones of a keyboard (separate MIDI channels) so that you can layer or split sounds.  I need to utilize this feature.

[ViRtUaLmOnKeY]

What is the stand holding the ipad? Many thanks.

[michaelkragten]

I posted a request for support on the forum. Would you please respond to it, Johannes? Many thanks!

[musicahoy]

the button to show information does not work well, it is erratic in version for iphone

[soureel]

I'm setting up a song in iMidiPatchbay which uses one of my Korg Module programs. There seems to be no way to assign Volume in the iMidiP song because Volume is set to send on CC7 in iMidiP and Korg, for some reason I can't fathom, has Volume assigned to CC11. There seems to be no way in either of these apps to reassign the CC number assignments, all of which are factory set. Suggestions?

[JimAtwood]

Can I split and make more than 3 zones?  Is it also possible to mute midi channels?

[shawno]

Thank you for this fantastic app. It has saved me probably hundreds of hours programming keyboards and makes playing live with sound modules easy. Thank you!!

[danmijs]

Greetings, not so much a technical guy when it comes
to midi, control changes, etc.I bought iMIDIpatchbay 1.5 on the app store. I researched
and watched many videos on Youtube but nothing helped me when it comes to configuring my setup, may you help me configure?I have an old YAMAHA PF80 88-key keyboard and many music
apps like iGrand, Sample Tank, iFretless bass etc. im just trying to use those apps be
controlled by a Yamaha external keyboard using a 5-pin midi sport UNO cable. I tried but cant produce any sound much more do splits and layering. All im trying to do now is
make it sound then split and layer just as your product says.
Thanks in Advance...

[ivanyokhna]

Its s very recommended to improve this App by adding feature like sending not only MSB LSB data but System Exclusive messages as

[bluesteam]

Just watched this video for the first time. Great app. I've always been looking for a good midi router in order to work with expanders and midi zones. I understand I can have only 3 zones :( I would like to know - I may ask silly question, since my english understanding it's not very good.. sorry - if it's possible to change zone's volume on the fly, live gigging, and also if other real time controls are possible, e.g. cutoff. Thank you.

[pulsarbirdbirdy]

I've your ios app, I don't see where : if I can change an anotter the split point (ex c3; not c4) - my controllers are always red;, not green sometime, and where I can disactivate the sustain for example, somewhere is available an pdf documentation ? thanks

[dom]

How do i change program/patch with imidipatchbay in my master keyboard while playing a song, usually there more than just one sound used throughout a song, i'm using korg triton extreme appreciate anyone can help on this..tq

[guyperreault]

I bought this app and I'm experiencing audio latency issues. Is there a guide where we can better understand the parameters to use in the midi interface to fix this? If it wasn’t for this problem, I love the app and it gave a second life to couple of keyboards that had broken buttons to change the sounds and with this all I need is to program the patch change.