This is a simple interface for finger-drumming, sample-triggering, sound manipulation, surround panning etc.

The screen is divided into two halves and by default shows a drumpad interface and an XY controller. The basic layout can be changed in the app's preferences (Setup / MIDI Utilities / XY-Controllers), where you will also find settings that control the number of pads, basic notelayouts and CC numbers for the XY-Pads.

See Presets for further documentation of the predefined functionality.
Besides all the preset stuff, the screen can also be widely customized. You can adjust the pad controllers to your needs regarding the MIDI they generate and can change their visual appearance to some degree.

XY-Pads can be overlaid with fully user definable controllers.

Customization options are described under XY Customization and on the Custom Controllers page.

This screen
  • primarily sends and receives via the second MIDI port.
    Floating transport controls and things you configure to do DAW control stuff use the first port.


Finger-drumming demo using the (customized) pad controllers. Courtesy of The Neon Syndicate ( YouTube link )




Globals

Both XY and pad controllers will usually fill the entire screen, leaving no space for menu buttons or the like. Some additional controls including a contextmenu are provided in a little floating window that is brought up by edge-swipes from the lower or right side of the screen.





Edge-swipes will become increasingly more tricky with Android's newer gesture navigation. On Android 10+ TouchDAW reserves the lower third part of left and right screen edges for triggering its floating controls. The upper two thirds will be used by Android's back gestures. Swipes from the bottom are entirely consumed by system navigation.

The app's floating controls can alternatively be brought up with the volume up button or by short touches with a second finger on XY pads.


Buttons in the lower row of the floating controlbar contain basic DAW transport controls.

The upper row consists of mute buttons for the controller streams generated by the XY controllers. These are mainly of interest when you want to make use of some 3rd party software's MIDI learn functionality, which would otherwise always pick up the X controller.

In between the mute buttons you will find a menu shortcut that will bring up links to other parts of the app plus an "Edit Pads" entry that will switch the screen into edit mode where you can then customize MIDI output and appearance of seperate controls.




XY Pad Axes, Sensors

XY-pads are primarily for touchscreen operation but the lower / right one can be assigned to one of the device's sensors in the app's setup. Accelerometer, orientation, magnetic field sensors etc. will then control the onscreen pointer and generate MIDI on up to three axes.

The right pad will not only send X and Y positions, but can also generate an additional third controller. When a sensor is active this will represent an eventual z-axis of that sensor. In touchscreen mode there are a number of options for the source of this controller incl. stylus pressure and tilt (req. hardware support of course). By default the third value will represent the sum of X & Y / 2 (Kaosspad style).



XY-pads may also be assigned with various pitchbend ranges, possibly assigning MSB and LSB values to seperate axes.
Launchpads are multitouch in the payed version. Moving a finger out of a touched pad may enforce triggered notes to stay active - i.e. suppress the sending of MIDI note-off commands. This can be useful when you want to manipulate playing samples with the controllers. Note that this is an option. Since version 1.5 it is off by default and only one pad will offer that functionality at any given time in the free version.