G-Stomper Producer (Android) in early access - like a full-featured Elektron box

The Lounge Other Gear
#1

So this is in beta / early access right now. It’s an overhaul of G-Stomper Studio, which has been around in some form or another for many years. G-Stomper Studio has seen regular updates that add impressive features, but it still had the basic limitations of old hardware grooveboxes, i.e. 1 sequencer, 1 pattern and timing at a time, all tracks bound to that single pattern/timing/sequencer.

G-Stomper Producer has been redesigned from the ground up to include per-track independent sequencers, each with their own patterns, timing and swing, as well as a song arrangement mode, among other things. So full songs can be arranged, and there’s a huge amount of polyrhythmic capability and per-track sequencing power.

The functionality is VERY full-featured, and approaches Elektron levels of flexibility and instant compositional power. A few highlights:

  • Elektron-style per-step parameter locking (“step edit” button) as well as live motion recording on every page, for just about any parameter you can see, for samples, synths, effects, etc.
  • Per-step conditional trigs, including probability
  • Per-step microtiming adjustment
  • Live sampling/recording (from microphone) with waveform trimming
  • Load in user samples
  • For samples, you can optionally adjust pitch and speed independently (this is apparently CPU-intensive)
  • Huge amount of effects to choose from (47 of them), which can be chained as well as added to individual tracks
  • LFO and mod envelope for each track
  • MIDI enabled, including Bluetooth MIDI
  • Ableton link enabled

There’s probably more, but I’ve only just learned about it. I happened upon it almost by accident, and there’s no buzz in any of the usual places, so I thought it was worthwhile to bring it to attention here.

I do want to note that G-Stomper has a pretty busy UI - it’s almost certainly designed with tablets in mind, not phones. But I have a Galaxy Note 8 with a stylus, and the interface works perfectly for my particular use case, at least. Screen real estate aside, I find it pretty intuitive to navigate your way around, arrange, tweak, record, etc.

8 Likes
#2

Pretty cool indeed. I was tempted to pick up a used nexus 9 a year or 2 ago just for this. For on the travels and that!

#3

Hey, thanks a lot for mentioning our newest creation, vaporlanes. It’s great to see that it’s getting some attention:)

3 Likes
#4

No problem, thanks for the amazing app. It deserves serious attention!

Playing around a bit more, the “lock pattern” function seems to work similarly to the “temporary save” and “reload pattern” commands in the Digitakt. That is, when you lock the pattern, it creates a restore point of sorts. Any tweaking you do from then on is temporary, and when you unlock the pattern, everything restores back to that earlier point. A very useful feature for live performance and jamming, as anyone who’s done it on the Digitakt can attest to.

So much stuff that’s well thought out here.

#5

Any plans for iOS? Lot of music makers on iPads out here, I imagine it would be very well received

#6

Much appreciation, vaporlanes:)

That is, when you lock the pattern, it creates a restore point of sorts. Any tweaking you do from then on is temporary, and when you unlock the pattern, everything restores back to that earlier point.

Yes, exactly, but it does not only that. While the pattern lock is enabled, you can tweak a pattern in a live situation, e.g. doing some real-time fill/break, and then just switch to another pattern in the selector. In the moment you switch to another pattern in the list (that is A01 - D16), all changes in the previous pattern will be discarded. So when you go back to that pattern later in your session, you’ll find it in its original state. That way you can use the lock very quickly, and without having to lock/unlock every time you want to restore the original pattern state.

1 Like
#7

Any plans for iOS? Lot of music makers on iPads out here, I imagine it would be very well received

Not in the near future. Our apps have been specially designed for Android. Therefore it would be far more than a trivial port to iOS.

#8

Can we ask what current android tablets your testing on? I seen to remember the nexus 9 was the weapon of choice a few years ago, but what’s currently running the program smooth/fast etc?

#9

Sure.
Which of them is actually the best choice strongly depends on your personal priorities.

If MIDI over USB is not important for you, then I’d always recommend to get a Chromebook, and not a normal Android tablet. Chromebooks have a fantastic performance. We’re testing with an ASUS flip, which runs easily G-Stomper Studio, G-Stomper Rhythm and G-Stomper Producer at the same time while having them synchronized using Ableton Link.

However, for some reasons, Chromebooks have still a lot of problems when it comes to access of the USB ports. Therefore, if you want to hook a tablet up with your other MIDI equipment like hardware synths or samplers, then you should better go for an Android tablet. This does only apply to USB MIDI. Bluetooth LE MIDI works very well on Chromebooks. But due to the limited Bluetooth bandwidth, it’s usable to connect controllers, but not suitable for firing real-time MIDI events towards MIDI hardware.

If you go for a Chromebook, be sure to keep the following in mind:
Utra high resolution screens like the Pixel Slate eat tons of memory and CPU (an ideal screen resolution is 1920x1080/1200)
Cheap Celeron CPUs are too slow.
I’d say, generally, Chromebooks with a price lower than 400-500$ will work, but won’t be a great experience (there’ll surely be exceptions).

If it should be a normal Android tablet, then still one of the best devices is the Pixel C. But Google doesn’t ship it anymore, therefore probably only used devices are available.

Also OK is the Samsung Galaxy Tab S3. Only “OK” because for whatever reason, Samsung devices tend to rarely have minor audio glitches/dropouts, even if these are well powered. Nevertheless, the Galaxy Tab S3 is overall a very good tablet.

If it must be cheap, then a Nexus 9 is still a great device, but it might be difficult to find a newish looking one.

3 Likes
#10

When applying a trig condition, it is nearly impossible to see what condition I’m applying because my finger is covering up the text…

Google Pixel XL2

I just recorded audio in using my smartphone microphone. The recording and audio editing feature is very exciting.

Microstep fader should be centered allowing the user to shift timing to before or after the quantized trig.

#11

Yeh!
Demo works flawlessly on my galaxy s9…cool…

2 Likes
#12

Once your finger is locked on a slider, you can move it everywhere you want and it remains locked. So on a vertical slider, just touch it, and then move your finger to the left or right to get a free view to the slider and the tooltip above the slider thumb;).

Unfortunately the internal concept does not allow that, at least not without massive changes in the sequencer core. Sorry.

2 Likes
#13

Very promising app!

I’ve tried making music on Android. But I always run into audio on Android still being very hit and miss. It will be some time before it’s on par with iOS and core audio/audio units.

#14

Hey can I be cheeky and borrow your Android knowledge?

I need an android mobile to test my iOS games on, but nothing too fancy so I’m sure it runs on older phones too.

I’m thinking Galaxy 7 or 6, would that make sense?

#15

Going for an intermediate device is generally a good choice. And going for a Samsung device is the best you can do if you will use only one device for testing, as Samsung phones hold around 50% of the market (that’s just an approximate number, based on the analytics data over the last few years).

As the Samsung s6/s7 both come with hardware home and back buttons, I’d recommend to go at least for one more device without hardware buttons, e.g. a Pixel (first edition, these are pretty cheap now), as the presence/absence of the hardware menu buttons makes a big difference.

Also, be sure to take a closer look at the different screen aspect ratios. These can be a headache.

1 Like
#16

Is there a way to adjust BPM while sequence is playing? I have to long press the transport panel whole sequence is stopped.

#17

I guess what you did was clicking the green project display on top, but specifically the pattern/song indicator. When you click that area, then you toggle between pattern and song operation. Switching to song operation without having a song arrangement might result in silence.

However, there are 3 ways to change the tempo, and neither of them stops the sequencer nor requires the sequencer to be stopped.

  1. Short click the green project display on top (avoid to click the pattern/song indicator) to show up the quick sequencer settings, including the tempo selector.
  2. Long press the Play button in the upper right corner to show up the quick sequencer settings, including the tempo selector.
  3. On the Mixer use the << or >> to navigate to the last mixer channel page (where the master out is). There you’ll find the general tempo track, where you can change the tempo at any time.

Hope that solves your problem

2 Likes
#18

Thanks!

#19

Has anyone successfully gotten MIDI Out to work with any of the G-Stompers? For the life of me, I have not been able to get any of their apps to send MIDI out via my Galaxy Tab 4 or Note 8.

#20

In order to send MIDI out, you must select an out port, there where you map a MIDI channel.
Sending MIDI out is not possible when the MIDI channel is set to “All”.
And since the MIDI channel is set to “All” by default, sending MIDI out is disabled by default as well.
All you have to do is to learn your MIDI channel (main screen / setup / midi / …) and then set an IN Port and an OUT Port. Usually both should be set to “1”.

Likewise you can also set the Default IN an OUT Port in the MIDI settings. If you do so, then all learned channels after the moment you have set the default ports, will get these ports automatically.

If you need further assistance, always feel free to mail us (main menu / help / contact developer).