TOUCHOSC: REMOTE CONTROL YOUR MUSIC SOFTWARE & HARDWARE!

TouchOSC from Hexler is an application that allows you to remote control your music software and hardware with your iPhone or iPod Touch over a Wi-Fi network using the UDP protocol.

What it actually does is it sends and receives messages over the network from your software and hardware that support the OSC protocol such as Ableton Live, Reaktor, Cycling 74 Max/MSP and Resolume Avenue.

OSC stands for Open Sound Control and is a new format for messaging among computers, sound synthesizers, and other multimedia devices that are optimized for modern networking technology.

Nowadays OSC is used in various distributed music systems, web tools, soft-synths and other apps as an alternative to the MIDI protocol because the messages are commonly transported across the internet or any other type of network. Features (pdf).

TouchOSC supports full multi-touch operation, five controls can be used at the same time. The application comes with five default layouts but custom layouts can be constructed using the TouchOSC Editor application. If you like to translate OSC messages to MIDI you have to use another piece of software called Pure Data. Read this article about controlling Ableton Live with TouchOSC and Pure Data. It's a very cheap alternative for an expensive MIDI controller solution such as the Jazzmutant Lemur. Check it out!

TouchOSC v1.4.2 for iPhone/iPod Touch is available from the AppStore. Android version is coming up!

  TouchOSC