I built an MPC-style iOS MIDI controller for melodic ideas
Hey everyone, I’ve been building my first app, MIDI MACHINE, an iOS MIDI performance tool for creating melodic ideas in a more playful, hands-on way.
I originally wanted to make something that could spark my own creative process, especially when I’m working with a limited setup or simply when I’m stuck in familiar habits.
The rough idea was: what if an MPC-style pad workflow was used for chopped MIDI sequences instead of samples? Rather than programming everything into a piano roll, I wanted to load a set of musical fragments and play with them directly.
In SPARK mode, MIDI MACHINE creates harmonically matched MIDI phrases for a chosen key, chops them into playable pieces, and lets you trigger, combine, repeat, reverse, and reshape them in real time. It’s designed to create melodic “happy accidents”.
STRUCTURE mode gives you a mapped across related key pairs for a theory based approach.
The App is intended as a versatile and fun tool, while still being useful when you want to sketch ideas without experimenting too much.
It’s now on the App Store:
https://apps.apple.com/de/app/midi-machine/id6760569464
I’d love to hear if this would fit into your setup and what features would make it genuinely useful for you.