Back to overview

Last edited: 17. November 2021|Publishing date: 19. May 2020

Making music with apps – you ought to know this

Girl_with_iPhone_2000px_1x1

With the VARIO App we would like to provide you with a tool for setting up and controlling the VARIO digital system that is as easy to use as possible. This is meant quite literally: Smartphones, as well as tablets, are used worldwide and have become a familiar and useful companion that many people cannot imagine their everyday life without.

Wherever possible and useful, we would also like to make digital functions relevant to your piano playing as accessible as possible. This is not only the purpose of our app: thanks to Bluetooth or USB connectivity, the entire system is prepared for just about everything that is possible in digital music.

Many possibilities with music apps & the VARIO

In principle everything that speaks “MIDI” is compatible with the VARIO digital system. MIDI is a very robust standard, established for decades, for networking musical instruments. All VARIO systems, whether VARIO duet, VARIO connect (available soon), or the predecessor system, VARIO classic, support the MIDI protocol.

The range of applications is therefore enormous, just to name a few:

Music-related learning and training processes
Exchange with other musicians or (learning) groups
Notation, or the writing of musical scores
Professional music production
Sound generation (e.g. as a supplement / layer to the acoustic instrument)
Visualization of game data during live performances or in education
Games in an audio or music context

VARIO_connectplus_studio_2021_quadrat-scaled

The VARIO also offers advantages especially for music lessons:

The VARIO digital system can also be used without muting (i.e. with the acoustic instrument). It fades pleasantly into the background during lessons and serves e.g. for the visualization of playing data (dynamics, chords, etc.) or the direct recording in notation programs.
The VARIO app (for iOS) offers easy-to-use features that allow teachers to interact with their students. Under Android individual applications of third offerers are available for this. There are also web-based solutions for platform-independent work on shared music projects (see also our Apps Catalog).
Two headphone sockets can be used on the VARIO duet to practice on the instrument together.

The VARIO App – Features of the iOS version vs. Android

The iOS version of the VARIO app offers “musical functions” in addition to controlling the VARIO:

A metronome
An easy to use recorder
The ability to share recordings of the recorder

There is also a sample-based sound generation under iOS. This makes the piano sound (and some other sounds) available through the mobile device’s speaker or headphones. This function also allows you to share music as “MP3 files” (or more precisely: MPEG-4 AAC; also MIDI SMF1).

Certain functions of the VARIO app are only available under iOS. iOS, and also the Apple operating systems iPadOS and macOS, offer (integrated) functions in their core, which allow professional use of “musical” functions. In our case, this concerns mainly the audio and MIDI functions listed above.

Music applications are very demanding here, e.g. in terms of timing (think of the beat of a metronome). The uninterrupted playback of audio streams, as required when playing back samples, is also a mandatory prerequisite, as is the most immediate playback of sounds (the so-called latency).

Unfortunately, some (not all!) Android devices already fail to establish a stable MIDI connection. 🙁

In addition, there is the following aspect which is often overlooked: the available app landscape is (unfortunately) much less musical under Android than under iOS/iPadOS. Users can choose from a wide range of partly very sophisticated applications in the Apple environment. In addition, the core functions described above often allow an exchange within the music applications. An example: the VARIO app for iOS records data via MIDI recorder, which can then be passed on directly to a notation application or audio editing. This is, in a way intuitive for our target groups, not available in the Android world.

Alternatives.

Nevertheless, there are applications for Android devices that you can use with the VARIO digital system. We would like to introduce some of them to you in our Apps Catalog for musicians on this page.

Compatibility with VARIO classic

The connection of the VARIO classic with the VARIO app (for iOS) is possible and useful, for example, if you want to use the recording and music sharing functions.

However, we are currently not planning to control the VARIO classic with the VARIO Apps, as the VARIO classic system can be operated conveniently via the integrated touch screen. In addition, there are functions and technical concepts that are solved fundamentally differently in the VARIO classic than in the VARIO duet.

As described, some functions are not possible (or can be used sensibly) in the Android version of the VARIO app. Since the Android version is primarily concerned with the control of the VARIO, the use of the VARIO app for Android on the VARIO classic is not intended.

In this context, however, we would like to point out once again that you can of course also connect a VARIO classic to mobile devices such as desktop PCs. Many of the applications described above – from learning to music production – are possible with all variants of the C. Bechstein VARIO digital system.

Do you have questions about using your instrument with digital applications? Please feel free to contact us at any time, whether here via the website, via phone or on site in your next C. Bechstein Center.

Last edited: 17. November 2021|Publishing date: 19. May 2020