Sing a note and out comes MIDI. Selkie Hum listens to your voice and sends the note to any instrument you own, with low enough latency to feel like playing it. Play synths with your mouth. Hum a bass line, whistle a lead, sing a pad in. It's an AUv3 plugin for your host, and an app that runs on its own.
AS A PLUGIN
Put Hum on a vocal channel in Loopy Pro, AUM or any other AUv3 host that routes MIDI between plugins, and point its MIDI at an instrument. That instrument plays what you sing. Your voice can carry on down the channel or stop at the plugin, your choice.
ON ITS OWN
Open the app, then open a synth app and choose Selkie Hum as its MIDI input. Hum keeps listening in the background while the synth is in front. Plug the iPad into a Mac and the notes arrive there too. Pair a Bluetooth MIDI keyboard or sound module from a button at the top. The app makes no sound of its own, so there's nothing to feed back into the microphone.
WHAT IT DOES
• One clean note at a time, from E2 to C6: the range of a singing voice
• Snap to a scale: pick a key and every note you sing lands in it, or leave it off and sing anything
• Eight scales: major, minor, harmonic and melodic minor, both pentatonics, blues and dorian, from any root
• Octave shift, so you can play a bass or a piccolo
• Velocity from how loud you start a note, or fixed if you'd rather every note came out the same
• Aftertouch, for swelling a pad with volume
• A gate you drag on the meter, to reduce breath and room noise becoming notes
• Smoothing, so a wobble in your voice doesn't flit around
• A panic button that ends the note and silences the channel
• Twenty-five presets, one for each key in major and minor
• Any MIDI channel
• Dark and light looks that follow the system, or whichever you prefer
• Sharps or flats, and middle C as C4 or C3, to match whatever you're used to
• Help built in, including how I use it on stage
WHAT IT DOESN'T DO
One note at a time; play a chord on a guitar and it picks a note. No pitch bend; a slide between notes is a step. No sound of its own; it needs a synth on the other end. No Mac version yet.
WHO MADE IT
One person, who wanted to play synths with his mouth at gigs and found nothing fast enough to feel like an instrument. Hum is what came out of that. There's no account, no network, no analytics and nothing stored. What you sing stays in the room.
Terms of use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
