Using BandHelper Midi to trigger computer music player

[NeilS]

Searched for ideas but nothing came up (failure of search terms quite likely).

I love using BandHelper on my iPad but it doesn't have enough storage to play all the audio tracks I'm using - is there a way to have it trigger a player on my computer (MacBook Pro)?

[arlo]

BandHelper can send just about any MIDI message you would want, so it depends on whether the music player you want to control can respond to incoming MIDI messages.

If you're going to have a Mac involved anyway but still want to control BandHelper from an iPad, you could...

1. Load your recordings into your BandHelper account but set the iPad not to download them, with the Settings > Account Sync > Auto-Download setting
2. Use the Live Sharing function to make BandHelper on the Mac follow your song selections on the iPad
3. Play the recordings on the Mac as you select songs by setting Settings > App Control > Actions > Start/Stop Recording to Layout Actions > Song Selection

Then if you get an iPad with more storage space later, it will already be set up to play the recordings directly from the iPad.

BTW it would take a lot of recordings in a compressed (MP3) format to fill up an iPad. Are your recordings in an uncompressed format (AIFF or WAV)? If so, you could attach a compressed version in the first position of each song and the uncompressed version in the second position, then set Auto-Download Files on the iPad to only download the smaller files, and set Settings > General > Defaults > Recording to 2 on the Mac. Then your Mac will play the uncompressed files during a performance but you can still have easy access to your compressed files while practicing.

[NeilS]

Thanks for the advice - I'll set that up. As for my iPad I've taken most of the apps off and it's still almost full with only a few MP3s on it. Older and very little storage.

[arlo]

I think the lowest storage capacity ever offered on an iPad is 16 GB. Assuming half that is used by the OS and some other apps, that's 8 GB of available storage. A typical MP3 is 5 MB, or maybe 10 MB if you use a high bit rate. Let's say 7.5 MB on average. At that rate, you would have space for almost 1100 MP3s. I'm not trying to argue with you, just to suggest that you look again at your storage and make sure you can't keep the MP3s on your iPad, which would be simpler than linking two devices.