Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
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iTunes is the most common program to backup iOS data. For the most of time, it is iPhone users' first choice to upload music to computer for backup. Here is what you should do to sync music via iTunes.
Connect iPhone to PC or Mac either through USB or Wi-Fi > Open iTunes and click on the iPhone icon > Check the option “Sync Music” > “Include voice memos” in the “Music” tab > Press “Apply” (or Sync) in the bottom right corner.
After that, you will transfer iPhone music to PC.
Store everything in iCloud Drive, and have it mirrored on your Mac. Then backup the Mac.
If an audio productivity app, i.e. any app that I sample/loop/compose with, doesn't support at least iTunes file sharing and file access over ftp, http and/or WebDAV, I really hesitate to use it at all.
Fortunately, a few developers have been wise enough to include this kind of access.
Dropbox is a joke because it only works as long as I have a working internet connection.
iTunes backup is not a solution because I can not selectively back up or restore, only all or nothing. The iOS11 Files app doesn't help either, no access to app-specific storage except explicitly opened by the developer (which is rare).
This is, and has been for a long time, one big difference between an iPad and a serious system like Mac or Win.
It's also a reason I'll never pay $50 for an iOS app, not as long as I need to switch to my laptop again and again.
To be fair, Files is still brand new. Apps are slowly including it. AudioShare and AUM have it, as does GarageBand, Auria and BM3 to, I believe. Plus, any app which can already save to iCloud Drive can use it too.
WebDAV and access via a browser is fine for nerds, but who the hell else will bother with that? Give Files a while. It’ll become a standard. Maybe not with Cubasis, though (which still doesn’t support the 13-inch iPad Pro!)
I’d really like a way to locally back up an iOS device though, one that doesn’t require plugging it into iTunes. Something like Time Machine for iOS.
I might be more patient if app file access hadn't been available years ago already (using ifunbox and the likes). But watching Apple removing all that without offering an alternative, then after years adding a restrictive replacement that again asks for even more time until the poor devs jump on that new train again? Of course it will evolve with time, but such fiddly procedures don't look like the user experience that Apple promotes with these expensive iOS toys.
With WebDAV, I could run a local server on my laptop and transparently access all my audio and midi loops or samples over WiFi from both my laptop DAW and the iOS app, this is not for nerds, this is for musicians who want to access their files directly.