In Praise of Mozaic: Scripting Language to Create MIDI Plugins

In Praise of Mozaic

I’m writing this blog to encourage everyone to go out and buy Mozaic, a new audio programming app by Bram Bos.  It does not use AudioKit, but it fits so perfectly into my goals as an open-source audio developer, that I think anyone who appreciates the work we do with AudioKit will also love Mozaic.

In my talk at the 2018 ADC, I talked about the slippery slope of programming where interest in music can lead to configuring equipment, which can lead to writing your own scripts, which can lead to writing your own apps, and so on all the way down to writing your own DSP.

AudioKit tries to ease each step in that process, but we don’t address the very top level of going from a configurator to a programmer.  AudioKit expects you to at least be able to program Swift and probably be able to get Xcode running (not the easiest)!

This is where Mozaic comes in.  You’ve got your signal chain configured in AUM or Audiobus and it’s almost perfect, but wouldn’t be great if… something worked differently. What you thought was too specific or unique that nobody could have been expected to “make an app for that”.  Well, with Mozaic, you can write a simple script to basically tie any of your audio apps that do MIDI (most do!) together to achieve incredible results.

A simple example would be if you just want change your sounds on the chorus. The first time you play a C chord, you can check for those notes and when they come in, send MIDI CC messages off to change parameters automatically.

Soon, you’ll be coding more and more complex things and you might actually find you have a gift for it and want to go deeper and maybe pick up AudioKit and start with our playgrounds.

Thank you Bram, for making such an important, fun, and useful app. Mozaic is as important as Audiobus or AUM to have on your iPad.

Download Mozaic:

Learn more about Mozaic:
http://ruismaker.com/mozaic/

Mozaic Manual:
http://ruismaker.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozaic.pdf

Mozaic WIKI + User Scripts:
https://wiki.audiob.us/mozaic_plugin_engine