I’ve been playing around with OSCemote, an iPhone application that sends Open Sound Control messages over a wi-fi network. The OSC protocol is specifically designed for the transfer of real-time control information for synthesis devices over existing information networks. The protocol is far more comprehensive than MIDI and serves devices like the coveted Lemur. So being the geek that I am, this app seemed more attractive than the other MIDI control systems available.

OSCemote is available in two flavors: a free version which has a 15 button interface, and a paid version that has three different interfaces including a multi-touch XY pad and accelerometer response. Being somewhat skeptical, I downloaded the free version to test it out, and was happy to discover that it worked really well with some old max/msp patches. I then downloaded the paid version to try the other control interfaces. The slider/switch interface left something to be desired, but the multi-touch surface is very cool.

The obvious next step for me was to convert the OSC Data to MIDI so that I could interface the control into Reason. I managed to get a translation patch working on my old workstation and had a bit of fun using my iPhone to control Thor. I don’t have max/msp on my new Mac Pro workstation, and so by recommendation i tried OSCulator - which is more popularly used as the Wiimote bridge. It was pretty easy to get this configuration working, as the latest version of OSCulator has a configuration template for OSCemote. In Reason, you manually add a generic ‘ Midi Control Surface’ remote map, and launch and establish a connection between OSCemote and OSCulator. Once the connection is established, touch the iPhone to send data, and Reason will see “OSCulator Out” as a MIDI source.

I’ve posted a few items related to my experiments. You can find these on my YouTube page, and for those who want to give this a try, I will get a few configuration patches available for download shortly.

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