note: ChatGPT audio transcription, lightly edited for structure and clarity by GPT 
Okay, so I had a little bit of a chance to play around with this yesterday, both on my iPad Pro (first-generation 12.9-inch) and my iPhone, and a couple of things.
It’s not so immediate at first. They’ve tried to make the interface very ultra-minimal, but hid everything behind menus in other kinds of strange ways. I think they tried to group things logically, but it’s not really making sense to me. Maybe it’s because I work in user interface or something, but it’s confusing. I thought it might be an interesting exercise to go through and maybe critique it, or think about how I might change it. That might be a fun YouTube video for me, and something I could share on my LinkedIn or YouTube channel.
There are some things related to accessibility that make it difficult for me. The text is very small, and very light gray against a dark gray background. It seems like a developer-led UI, trying to make it look nice. In some ways it does look polished, but in other ways it feels like too many things are being shoved into too many places. There are also some very strange patterns. I found it a bit hard to figure out how to do basic things, like saving a pattern, or changing the tempo, or changing the key.
Strange, Flexible, Unfinished
But aside from those things, it’s very interesting. I haven’t even gotten into anything more complex yet, things that break the confines of the original version. For example, I could create a one-bar loop, or not even have it set in a bar. You can have different playheads looping at different points independently. Each one kind of becomes its own thing, with its own time, looping division, start point, and so on.
With more flexibility comes fewer constraints, and with fewer constraints, there is also less immediacy.
What it seems like to me is that it feels a bit like unfinished software. They took the original, which to me feels more polished (although maybe it’s not, maybe it’s just the simplicity of it), and tried to make it more advanced. But instead of that, it feels more like someone’s strange dream of how a sequencer might work in another world, in another time, or in another space.
It has some connection to the piano roll, in some ways, but it’s not tied to one in particular. It’s not chromatic. That’s one point of reference. Otherwise, it’s quite different. It’s kind of like an analog sequencer, but not exactly. Kind of like modular, but not quite.
Deep MIDI, Confusing UI, Real Potential
It is doing some interesting and possibly profound things with MIDI. For example, it has an echo effect that repeats MIDI notes in an echoing pattern. That could be musically interesting.
It is also very computationally light, depending on what you feed into it, especially if it’s outboard gear.
I think I might go back and forth and keep playing around with both versions—the original Fugue Machine and Rubato. The biggest advantage seems to be in routing. If you use AUM, you get access to multiple playheads. I think it’s eight. Each one has its own individual MIDI output. You don’t have to worry about setting channels and dividing things up manually. A lot of the MIDI soft synths I use don’t let you set a specific channel they respond to, so that becomes a problem with the old version unless you add custom routing using something like Mosaic.
A Video, Maybe?
Overall, it’s a very interesting tool.
I feel like I might make a video about it and talk through my thoughts. It could be helpful, and maybe something people are searching for. Not a full tutorial—just more of a systems-based critique or a reflection. What’s hard, what’s strange, what’s worth exploring.
Field Notes Audio – Real Process Thinking
Another thing I enjoyed was watching this YouTube channel. I think it’s called Field Notes Audio. The guy who runs it—I’m not sure what he does for a living. He mentions doing music soundtracks, but I don’t know for what or how. Maybe he’s a full-time professional musician, or maybe not.
He has a pretty minimal setup, and he makes this kind of low-fidelity ambient music. He made a video that worked as a gateway into his channel for me. It was about using Fugue Machine in a more musical way. More musically interesting than usual. He was using the demo version, so he hadn’t even bought it. But he created some chords and then used modifiers—maybe jitter, or repeats, or stuttering, I’m not sure—to fragment and play those chords in very different ways.
Then he built a full track out of it by layering effects and so on, while explaining his thinking the whole time. He talked through what he was doing, how he was adding things, and what his settings were. It was actually very interesting to watch.
A lot of times, I don’t want to say it’s not real musicians making these YouTube videos, but it feels something like that. They open the software, load some presets, tweak a few things, play around a bit, and that’s the end of it. But this guy was taking a concept and building a full composition out of it. Thinking about it. Thinking through the process.
Summary
So those were two really nice things that came out of yesterday’s exploration of the purchase:
- Some real hands-on experience with Rubato. The UI has friction, but there is a deep system underneath it.
- Inspiration from Field Notes Audio. A way of seeing Fugue Machine (and maybe Rubato too) as tools for actual composition, not just note generation.
It’s still early. I’m still sitting in that space between confusion and curiosity.
But I’m glad I bought it.
And I think I might have something to say about it.