MIDI Tape Recorder

MIDI Tape Recorder takes a radically different approach to MIDI recording. Now in version 2.0, it runs both as an Audio Unit v3 plugin inside your favorite host and as a standalone app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

MIDI messages are recorded and played back with the same accuracy and precision as audio recordings. Most modern DAWs, even at their highest resolution, still change the timing of MIDI messages to accommodate their editing features. These changes impact the playback of your performance as MIDI messages get reordered and delayed, altering how they influence sound, sometimes in very significant ways.

MIDI Tape Recorder records your performance exactly as you play it, just like an audio recorder, accurately reproducing every nuance.

It purposefully has no MIDI note editing, no quantization, no individual CC tweaking, nothing you wouldn't do with audio. Instead, very expressive and ultra-dense MIDI streams are perfectly stored and reproduced. It excels at capturing and playing back expressive performances with MPE controllers and MPE plugins.

The controls are purposefully simple and intuitive, like a traditional four-track tape recorder, making it fun to record, play back, and loop your MIDI performance. Even with non-MPE MIDI, it keeps you in the flow and creative, without being interrupted by the technical nature of most DAWs.

New in the standalone app: run MIDI Tape Recorder on its own, with CoreMIDI input and output to route your performance to any of your MIDI apps, synths, and hardware. Sessions are autosaved and can be saved, opened, and shared as documents. Recording keeps running in the background and with the screen locked, so you never lose a take.

MIDI Tape Recorder makes no sound on its own: as a plugin it records inside your host; as a standalone app it routes MIDI to your instruments.

Features:

• Runs as an AUv3 plugin or as a standalone app on iPhone, iPad, and Mac
• Four independent tracks for recording MIDI channel voice messages
• Sample-accurate MIDI recording and playback
• Real-time display of active recorded notes and other received messages
• Full MPE support
• Continuous loop recording that re-records over the loop on each cycle instead of stopping at the loop end
• Multi-level undo and redo
• Overdub recording, with punch-in/punch-out for automated regional overdubbing
• CoreMIDI input and output routing in the standalone app
• Autosaved, shareable session documents in the standalone app
• Background and screen-locked recording in the standalone app
• Automated storage and recall of all recordings inside the AUv3 host project
• MIDI file import and export, for the whole project or each individual track
• Repeated playback with start and stop locators
• AUv3 parameters for all controls
• Snap-to-beat positioning for the playhead and locators
• Per-track MPE configuration (MCM) detection and envoy
• Host transport and host tempo sync
• Clear all recordings or a single track, and crop the session to a new duration
• Fully resizable UI with per-track input/output activity indicators
• Optional per-track record enable, input monitoring, and mute
• Four virtual MIDI cable inputs, with optional routing of the first cable to all tracks
• AUv3 user presets when the host supports them
• Open source, freely distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Version 2.0.2 release notes

• Moved the crop marker flags to the bottom so two markers on the same position can be told apart. • Improved cropping to keep the punch in and out markers, adapting them to the cropped take. • Raised the MIDI buffer sizes so dense playing and MPE expression are not dropped. • Fixed the first recorded event of a take landing slightly early when the recording starts the transport. • Fixed other armed tracks missing the message that starts the transport when several tracks record at once. • Fixed stopping a loop recording partway through a silent pass erasing the start of the loop. • Fixed MIDI arriving right after Record is engaged from the host being dropped until the tracks were armed. • Fixed recording over existing content erasing the recorded range when nothing was played. • Fixed continuous loop recording losing what was played after a silent cycle. • Fixed the track display blanking while a recording pass that played nothing was running. • Fixed a loop recording pass inside a punch in and out region only being added when the playhead returned to the punch-in point. • Fixed clearing a track while it was recording leaving behind an undo step that did nothing. • Fixed a recording that captured nothing creating an undo step that did nothing. • Fixed a recording never finishing when the playhead never reached the punch in and out region. • Fixed undoing a take also reverting a MIDI file imported into that track while it was recording. • Fixed cropping while recording leaving the running take behind in the uncropped timeline. • Fixed crop and punch markers being impossible to grab where another marker or range covers them.