Drag and Drop: MIDI

Over the past few weeks we’ve seen how iOS 11’s Drag and Drop gestures can really speed things up and make working with apps like forScore more natural and efficient than ever before. Our final topic today explores how these gestures help you work with MIDI commands.

In forScore, there’s no single place to access MIDI features—since MIDI is a language that can handle all sorts of musical tasks, we chose to weave support for it into forScore in many different contexts. You can play musical information stored in a MIDI file using the media box, use incoming MIDI signals to control some of forScore’s most popular functions, or play notes on your MIDI controller and hear them through forScore’s software piano keyboard.

Most importantly, you can use MIDI commands with scores to automate your workflow and quickly adjust your setup or call up specific songs with ease. Within the MIDI tab of forScore’s metadata panel, you can set up a single command as a shortcut—any time forScore receives that command it’ll open the corresponding score automatically. Or, you can set up specific commands that will be sent out to connected devices whenever that score or bookmark is opened. If you plan to reuse a set of sent commands, Presets help you package them up and apply them to multiple scores. Finally, you can send commands with the press of a Button placed on any page.

Drag and Drop helps by allowing you to drag specific commands between scores, bookmarks, buttons, or presets so you don’t have to type them in over and over again. You can even drag and drop one or more commands onto the page to create a new button with them, so you can send those commands with a single tap while playing.

We’ve covered a lot of ground with this series of posts, and we still haven’t explored the full depths of what these gestures allow you to do. Drag and Drop isn’t just a different way of working, it’s an entirely different approach: instead of pushing content through panels and options, just grab what you want and put it where you want it. For us, it’s how things should have always been and we’ll keep looking for new ways to bring the power of these gestures to the work you do every day.