Announcement: Wotja A 2018 for iOS - with Voiceover support
We've today announced that we've added Voiceover support to Wotja A for macOS; available now from the Mac App Store. We've just announced that in the macOS forum on AppleVis.
However, we suspect that only a few of you will know that we have supported Voiceover in the iOS version of Wotja A for quite some time now, and for those of you who didn't already know, we though we should let you know, and encourage you to find out more.
Weâve put a lot of work into Voiceover support for Wotja A for iOS, and we are hopeful that our efforts will be appreciated by musicians and creative writers in the AppleVis community.
What is Wotja for?
Use Wotja (sounds like âwot-jahâ) to create your own relaxing ambient generative music & reflective music, MIDI and âtext-to-musicâ melodies. Make 'cut-up' text for creative writing, too. Wotja uses generative techniques weâve been crafting for nearly 30 years and is the evolution of SSEYO Koan, Noatikl, Mixtikl, Liptikl and Tiklbox.
By way of history, âGenerative Musicâ is a term coined in 1995 by Brian Eno whilst working with SSEYO Koan Pro.
Information link: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/
User guide: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/guide/
As youâd expect of generative system with a long history of continuous development, Wotja is deep, unique & powerful. However, you don't need to be a musician or expert to use it. Anyone inquisitive can learn to master its power. That said, we certainly recommend you take the time to read through at least some of the user guide before first running the app!
Download links:
Wotja A 2018 for iOS (paid app): https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1281471637
Wotja A for iOS (free to use, but uses in-app purchases to unlock features): https://itunes.apple.com/app/id945655868
Best wishes to all,
Tim and Pete from Intermorphic Limited - https://www.intermorphic.com
Comments
Nice
Could I take my creations and put them up on a site to share with the world for download, E.G. Bandcamp?
When you create an album, a mix is continous right? Is there a way to separate it into indevidual tracks?
Recordings and tracks
Hi! We have a FAQ entry on this subject right here: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/faq/#faq-recording-ownership
Actually, we have a lot of FAQs :)
Yes, the mix is a continuous stream of audio - the tracks aren't separated in the final mix.
However, you can get the MIDI events associated with each track if you want to use Wotja as a MIDI composer; these are available though the normal VirtualMIDI system. More info on that in the user guide here: https://intermorphic.com/wotja/guide/#settings-midi-out
Hoping that helps,
Pete
What About Wotja X?
When I was looking at the App Store page for Wotja A 2018 (the version you can download for free), I saw a message saying that new users should download Wotja X. Thinking that it was a newer version, I downloaded Wotja X instead, only to find that other than the screen asking where I wanted documents saved, the app seemed not to work with Voiceover. All I could see was the status line. If that's the case, will Voiceover support be added in the future?
Wotja X and Wotja A
Hi Kelly,
Thanks for asking the question!
Wotja X has been a rewrite from scratch of the Wotja User interface, and has been created such that the one set of code can be built by us to run on all of iOS, macOS, Windows and Android.
Wotja A is the previous version of the Wotja User interface, and has by necessity been written separately for both iOS and macOS.
So, as you can imagine, we've created Wotja X as for every line of code we write, we can reuse it for four different platforms; whereas for every line of code we write for (say) Wotja A for iOS, we have to write an equivalent line of code for Wotja A for macOS.
Anyhow - we'd hoped to move wholesale over to Wotja X, but alas the user interface library we've built Wotja X on top of - which is called Juce, by a company called ROLI, does not yet support Voiceover. Clearly, that is really frustrating for us, but that is why we still have Wotja A available for iOS and macOS.
We're hopeful that at some point, Juce will support Voiceover, and at that point we'll ask our Wotja A customers who rely on Voiceover to move over to Wotja X. However, that is very much out of our control - and is in the hands of ROLI.
Hoping that explains things.
With best wishes,
Pete
What can I use it for?
Hi Pete, and thank you so much for putting in the effort of making this app accessible for us VoiceOver users! :)
I'm extremely thankful for every developer who takes this extra step!
But I would like to know a litle bit more about what this app can do and how it can benefit me as a blind musician.
I'm a fulltime musician here in Norway, who's made a living of performing mostly solo gigs for people all over the country now for 20 years. The last years I've worked a lot on my own material in Pro Tools on Mac, and I've lately released my first own single on all the large music streaming services. I'm telling you this only to let you know a bit where I'm coming from.
Yesterday, when I saw your post, I downloaded the free iOS app just to take a look, but I didn't emediately catch what exactly this app can do for me. I saw in the settings section that this app has some pretty sofisticated features, especially leaning towards the MIDI side of things. So that certainly peaked my interest. But I must admit that I haven't even opened the user manual, as you suggested, and I would probably get a fair amount of clues right there. :)
But what can this app do for me? I tried creating a new file or project, and it generated some random, rather meditative piano and ambiance tracks. But for meditation and relaxation, I already have my share of favorite go-to apps. So what I would like to know is, can this app in some way help me while writing new stuff? Or can it help me e.g. while practicing my jazz guitar chops? Is it in some regards something simular to Band-In-A-Box?
Or can I map out some chord progression and have it repeat while figuring out my lyrics and melody..? Or what is the scenarios that I as a musician, guitarist and singer, and sometimes a keyboard player, would think that I now absolutely should whip out this app and give it a go? :)
Thanks for all clarifying info you can give me in advance! :)
And keep up the good work!
Using Wotja...
Hi Cliff,
Thanks for the questions!
There are a lot of ways to use Wotja, of course - everybody seems to use it differently!
Thinking about your own working model, as a live-playing musician who is "out on the road".
I don't know your style of playing, but you could think about using Wotja as a live background that you can improvise over.
Just by way of example, this video has a really talented musician called Michael Futreal playing over a Noatikl background (Noatikl is one of the precursor apps to Wotja).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXavLHrm4lw&frags=pl%2Cwn
One advantage of using Wotja like this, is that you just start it playing (with no need for any external synths or MIDI cables) and start playhing over it!
As you've discovered, we make it easy for Wotja users to create new mixes, or even complete albums of mixes, just by pressing a couple of buttons. That is great for idea generation, and make the learning curve much more gentle. In years gone by, you'd have had to create all your music with Noatikl from sratch, and while that is great fos some people, many others certainly seem to benefit from a helping hand to get started!
Following this approach, you can "roll the dice" (so to speak) a few times until you come up with a track you like, and you can then start to play with the rules, sounds and what have you from a starting point that *already* sounds great to you.
Thinking back again to your own style of music, if you're an improviser, you could try creating a new random mix and simple start playing over it. Then, maybe, change or add cells from the many templates we have built-in. Then, you could start playing with rules, say changing the Scale rule to suit your mood.
It really depends on how you like to work.
It is true to say that Wotja is particularly powerful when it comes to creating ambient music; we have a lot of history in this area, as I'll hope you discover when you find time to cruise through our website. We've got our own rich seam of music that we're exploring; we're not focused at all on style-based composition, or sequencing of chord progressions, for example; other app developers can focus on those areas!
Anyhow, I hope you have fun with Wotja. If nothing else, Wotja might be a great thing to try if you're looking for a few new musical ideas, or maybe create some lyrics, or just fancy relaxing to something that doesn't require any effort on your part!
With best wishes,
Pete