Watch the new Fiddlewax Pro video on YouTube.

When I introduced Fiddlewax Pro two months ago, I knew there was something big inside waiting to be explored. The edges were still rough, but the overall approach to music making and interaction were unlike any other instrument on the market.

Instead of polishing out all of Fiddlewax Pro’s rough edges based on what I thought it should be, I decided to release it to the broader community of musicians who were eager to be early adopters so that I could directly respond their reactions as the instrument took shape. It was important to me to make something that wasn’t just skin deep, but that truly fit the needs of musicians from top to bottom.

Over the past two months Fiddlewax Pro has received significant user feedback, and subsequently updates, to address what musicians want most. Musicians from around the world have grown in their support for Fiddlewax Pro and many have already made it a part of their workflow to create new music. Their enthusiasm has propelled its development forward in new and fantastic ways.

And with that, I’m happy to introduce the redesigned and updated Fiddlewax Pro 2.0 – music sketchpad and MIDI Controller.

Fiddlewax Pro 2.0 incorporates the best of both worlds: Fiddlewax’s music-first vision and the specific needs of musicians who want to save, share, import, and export audio throughout their workflow. It’s a music sketchpad that enables you to quickly transform the ideas in your head into songs you can hear and share.

Since version 1.0, Fiddlewax Pro has become more expressive for songwriters, more intuitive for players, and more capable for experts. All of these changes have culminated in an experience that’s greater than the sum of its parts and opens up a new form of professional music composition, sequencing, playing, improvisation, layering, and exploration.

MORE EXPRESSIVE FOR SONGWRITERS

The size and range of all playable areas of Fiddlewax Pro have been fine-tuned to give you full control over notes and velocities as you create music. Every pixel has been pushed to give maximum playing area within clearly defined expressive regions. The sizing of each key takes into account the precision of your hands’ fine motor skills, which are capable of making adjustments much smaller than you might expect (consider the space between guitar strings). With this in mind, the space between keys is minimized (for quick transitions) and the total playable keys on-screen are maximized (for greater tonal range). Beyond playing, you can also record sessions with or without microphone audio to add vocals as you compose. Adjust tempo and pitch beyond common values to explore interesting textures and add in filter and reverb effects to simulate different acoustic environments. Fiddlewax Pro now also enables you to load entire general MIDI SoundFonts (.sf2 files) to replace Fiddlewax’s default instrument sounds with your own bank of presets – mapped to drum kits, instruments, or both. And if you’re looking to create a truly unique sound, sample overrides allow you to replace an instrument with any audio file (.m4a, .mp3, .wav, etc.) or microphone recording. Your custom sample is then mapped to the keyboard for pitched performance and also gives you full control over attack, release, gain, and offset parameters.

MORE INTUITIVE FOR PLAYERS

Fiddlewax Pro has been designed to help musicians focus on what they’re playing, while also indicating how notes are related. Press a note and all other similar notes light up. Play multiple notes and see realtime feedback labelling the chord that was formed. Press a push-button chord and see the corresponding notes highlight in the keyboard. This holistic integration ensures that you can easily move around the instrument as inspiration strikes without ever missing a beat. Loop indication has also been improved to leverage preattentive processing (read: intuitively simple) in a circular format. This enables you to be peripherally aware of each loop’s state and more easily keep things in sync. And when you’re stuck, the redesigned info overlay helps you quickly figure out what each part of the instrument does, allows for advanced settings, and links to the Fiddlewax Pro Guide Book when you’re looking to dig in and learn about a feature in greater depth.

MORE CAPABLE FOR EXPERTS

Many expert users requested additional control over MIDI and Audiobus to integrate Fiddlewax Pro with their existing workflows. These features are hidden by default, but contextually turn on as you enable more advanced options. To simplify advanced mapping configurations, Fiddlewax Pro now shows MIDI output channels beside each instrument when MIDI output is enabled. MIDI also works seamlessly with local iOS apps, WiFi, and Bluetooth so you can just turn it on and start playing. Additionally, expert MIDI mode can be enabled from the Advanced Settings to give direct control over the volume of each MIDI channel. Want that bass line to be a bit louder? Just press on the instrument’s icon and slide upward to increase its volume. Integration with Audiobus has a few new tricks up its sleeve, too. State saving is now included to give Audiobus experts more control over their process and easily recall configurations. You can also quickly start and stop loops from outside Fiddlewax Pro when connected via Audiobus using the remote play / pause trigger.

Fiddlewax Pro 2.0 opens up a lot of new possibilities, and I look forward to hearing what musicians create with it next.

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Fiddlewax Pro is available for iPad in the App Store. Read more detailed information in the Fiddlewax Pro Guide Book and listen to audio samples on SoundCloud.

Fiddlewax Pro is designed and developed by Adam Kumpf at Fiddlewax LLC. For press inquiries, contact us.