- Whatever opinion you may hold about Apple as a corporation, at this point there is no denying the effect that the iPhone and iPad have had on music production. One need travel no further back than last year's review of Mu for the Jazzmutant Lemur to get an idea of the sea change. When considering the options for touch-control of Ableton Live, at that point there were essentially two options (short of creating your own hardware): the Lemur, or an iPad running LiveControl. Fast forward to the present day, and the Lemur has been discontinued and there is now a mini arms-race on the iOS platform between a handful of software developers to see who can create the best Ableton Live controller. Among the generic control apps like Konkreet Performer that can be configured to control portions of an Ableton Live session, there are four sophisticated apps devoted to controlling Live: the pioneering TouchOSC template LiveControl, the flashy options from Liine (Griid and KapturePad), a new APC-inspired addition called LiveRemote and, finally, the jack of all trades that we'll be looking at in this review, TouchAble.
Originally released in September of 2010, the first version of TouchAble supported a healthy feature set that included controls for clip launching, mixing, device control, transport and MIDI keyboard and drum pad controls. Since then, that initial version has gone through a handful of updates, each of which added a surprising amount of improvement on the original. The newest version, 1.2, came out recently and added a new module called the XYZ Pad, which lets you control up to twelve parameters within a Live session via dots which can be shuttled around the screen via multi-touch control. The promo video that accompanied the new version showed how the dots' movements can be recorded and played back via tempo-synced automation. This left us intrigued, so we took the new version for a thorough test drive to see how it compares to other options.
The first thing that needs to be done with any iPad Live-control app like TouchAble is to connect it to a Live session. This is one area in which the relative youth of the technology shows up, as each developer has come up with their own solution to the problem, which results in a wide variation in ease-of-use from app to app. There are apps which require a healthy amount of know-how and effort (like Konkreet Performer) and apps that make it very easy on the user (like the Liine apps). TouchAble falls somewhere in between. The one-time setup tasks include setting the required Control Surface entries within the Ableton Live preferences menu—and if you're on Windows you'll also need to install Midi-Yoke (or an equivalent software MIDI router) to get the full functionality. From that point, the ability to setup an ad-hoc network and knowledge of IP addresses is required to get communication going between the iPad and the computer. It would be nice to see the need for IP addresses eliminated by using Bonjour, but that's a minor complaint.
Once you have everything working correctly, you'll see the default TouchAble layout on your iPad, with the clip matrix on top, the mixer on the bottom, and the layout controls on the right. The layout controls are one of the best features of TouchAble. The main screen is split in half horizontally and you can pick and choose from the modules available—Clips, Mixer, Devices, Keys and Pads—to occupy either the top or bottom half, or the full screen. The XY panel requires the full screen, so you will need to practice switching back and forth between it and the main layout if you plan on using it live. In addition to the layout choices, the right side of the screen also houses the extra clip functions and the transport controls, which "pop up" over the layout controls when needed.
With regards to the individual core modules of TouchAble, each comes with just the right amount of tricks up its sleeve, without going overboard. While the clip launch matrix might not give you a fancy full-set navigation overview like you'd find in Griid, it does what is expected: mirroring clip names, color, and play status (including playback position) straight from Live to the iPad. The mixer module is the same, offering volume faders with visual feedback of channel levels, and a helpful set of toggles to control stuff like monitoring. Both the clip and mixer modules can be navigated via swipe, with support for faster scrolling when using more fingers. You can also zoom in and out of the clip matrix and there are a few edit functions you can perform on a clip if you feel like it—like changing the pitch, the length or the start point, or turning loop mode on or off. Perhaps the only thing missing from the clip edit features is the ability to alter the contents of a MIDI clip—an admittedly large effort that is reportedly in development.
While these core modules are certainly nice, the two modules where TouchAble has set itself apart from the competition are undoubtedly the Devices and XY Pad modules. Within the Devices module, you can pick from any device within a live set (either native or VST/AU plugin) and load it up to adjust the parameters in real-time. Once loaded, you get a choice of a fader bank (with either 8 or 32 faders) or a native template designed specifically for that Live device. Currently, only two Live devices have native template support: EQ8 and Arpeggiator. While this is just enough to leave us hungry for more, it is a promising sign of what's to come. The fader bank is nice in its own right—the behavior of each fader is dynamically adjusted to match the parameter being controlled, and there's even a "snap" button off to the right which allows for wild changes that snap back to the original value when released.
The XY Pad is the newest and most adventurous of the modules, with a surprising amount of functionality packed into a relatively mysterious UI. I use the word mysterious here because without reading the manual, it's quite difficult to suss out exactly how the thing is supposed to work. After a few uses though, it starts to become second nature and the XY pad begins to reveal itself as a pretty incredible tool. Once you have your parameters mapped, there are many ways to exert control over them—whether it be via manual control, recorded automation, simulated gravity or snapshot morphing. Your parameter maps and any recorded automation associated with those parameters (except for the snapshots, a curious omission) can be saved for future recall. These saved presets can be backed up and transferred via iTunes, but it would be nice if you could somehow recall these presets from Ableton when loading a session. (Even being able to name the presets would be a big help!) My only other complaint initially was that you can't define the range of the effect that the XY pad has on a given parameter within TouchAble itself. However, I soon realized that you can work around this by nesting the device in an Instrument or Audio Effect Rack and then using the macro controls to define the range.
So having said all that, is it safe to say that TouchAble is currently winning the Ableton iOS arms race? With its substantial core modules, MIDI pad and keys, and most importantly device control, the 1.2 update certainly makes a strong case. There will undoubtedly be users who agree (especially once they get over the learning curve) and will use TouchAble and nothing else. However, with the affordability of iOS apps and the ability to multitask within iOS as of version 4.2 you really don't need to choose. You can run TouchAble alongside the other apps like Griid Pro, Kapture Pad, or Konkreet Performer to find the combination that works best for you, and in doing so support the developers who are creating these incredibly useful apps.
Ratings /
Cost: 4.5/5
Versatility: 4/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5