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.
Lemur on sale for 9.99
I think I might get that one, it looks very cool and powerfull. And apparently has never been in this price range.
Can any one share their experience with Lemur? Is it easy enough to create templates etc, any problems or frustrations you encountered etc ?
Comments
Once a year, last year did.
tempting...
I recently bought Lemur at full price - and while it would have been nice to get the discount, I am already getting more than my money's worth out of it. You can do quite a bit with it without diving into it's scripting capabilities, though if you're interested in building some unique control surfaces, the scripting options really set it apart IMO.
I've been using TB Midi Stuff, and have been in and out of Midi Designer Pro, and both are good - but within a day of getting Lemur, I was building some live performance tools - both control surfaces and some specialized midi filters - that I just couldn't quite get out of the other apps.
If you're just going to build basic control surfaces, and need more power than what you can get out of something like TouchOSC - Lemur is a no-brainer at $10. And if you're interested in a little scripting, it's one the most powerful iOS tools you can have.
@rad3d
Thanks a lot, I think you just convinced me to get it!
I went and bought it, I have to say that I think this might be one of my rare app purchase regrets. Firstly it seems to be more geared towards controlling desktop apps rather than iOS ones, and secondly it's definitely not an app you can just dive into and use, I have no idea what any of the templates do apart from the hexagon one, or how to link them up to my apps.
Some manual reading is going to be required, but I fear that I'm not the target audience for this one. Also you have to register on the website just to read the rather essential manual, that sucks.
I was gonna get it & then I realized I haven't made a single in anything in TB Midi or TouchOSC so I should probably use what I already have first, & also my DAW is FL Studio which forces you to manually assign all CCs for VSTs so using Lemur templates would be not quite so smooth as elsewhere.
I think there are few ( only a few ) templates you can pick, e.g. Ccequencer, ivcs3 Lemurized and Turnado one. But I found those templates are nothing deeper than apps. For desktop users, they might need an iPad for those, but iPad musicians hava many new apps to explore, plus some deep old excellent stuffs. That is the reason I don't want to learn to program it to save my time.
mh, good points. Lemur's strength seems to be controlling external hardware and desktop apps. I would use it for controlling iOS apps.
I do like some of the screenshots and the possibility to use physics and some scripting but it all depends on how easy it is to get something going
I'm using it 'only' for controlling iOS apps - still one of the best controller apps in that department.
No doubt Lemur got it's start being used as an Ableton Live controller, and it's ability to control external PC based apps like Ableton are definitely a strong point - but that's only one facet. Of course, many of the demos are definitely geared specifically toward external control, so I can understand it may look like it's primary purpose, but I'd just say that's a deeper part of it's feature set, but not it's primary strength. This thing can control anything that can talk MIDI or OSC.
But I also wouldn't look at Lemur as a tool that's going to give you gratification in 5 minutes. It's the app to use when you want to build something that your current apps can't do on their own - or, for me, when I want a single performance interface that can do IO with multiple apps at the same time. Assume you need to dedicate a little time to it to take it to that level.
But I would agree with @rhcball. Play around with the free TouchOSC, or other midi tools that you already own first, to make sure you need more than one of those offers. I always ran into limitations with those tools for my needs. I never have a problem paying a premium price for an app that solves complex workflow needs for me - and that's what Lemur's strength is.
On their website their are quite a few controllers people have made and you can go in and customize which MIDI notes and messages it sends out. One simple but quite useful tool someone made are knobs that can record movements. You put as many of the knobs you want wherever in a Lemur setup, assign them to a CC, and then you record your movement of the knob, Lemur then loops these movements for you. It's great for setting up automation in apps as you can get the knob(s) going, and return to your synth app to do midi learn and all kinds of modulations of the controls.
You don't need a PC or iTunes file sharing to create, modify or download templates.
There are lots of useful sequencers and specialized keyboards available.
I believe you have just saved me the ten dollars I can now spend on the new brass thingie. I salute you Sir.
thanks @rad3d and @Paul
I just bought it and my impression after 20 minutes is that I like it. I haven't built anything yet just tried a few things etc looking at templates and so on, but the impression is really good and I'm looking forward to spend some more time with it. No regrets so far.
http://main.iosmars.com/2013/05/31/lemur-demo-template-download/
More templates for ios apps
Waited till sale to download.
Finally I get to try it out!
Neat. Looks like maybe I'll figure out how to work this someday.
Ooooh! An update!
Aaaaaaand...
Crashy crashy crashers.
Oh well.
@nick I always do a save as with Lemur Projects in case I screw the pooch while tweaking them and also to save the settings for particular setups.
thanks for the tip!
Also keep in mind that while you 'can' edit in the Lemur IOS app, editing on a PC - with a live connection to the app to test updates - is a much faster way to work and gives you a better understanding of all the capabilities, even if you're creating a standalone IOS controller.
ah, good to know. I'm hoping to do most things on the ipad, but I can imagine the more complex stuff will be easier and more straightforward on the PC
If I ever wanted to do a live performance controlling external devices via core midi (which is probably never) I would be all over it.
I got this about a year ago and spent a few hours tinkering. being able to control a couple different apps at once on the same screen was quite cool and had potential. Where i ultimately bailed though was after making an animoog/egoist interface controlling one ipad with another, which was going well, but when i wanted to tweak it to control animoog/egoist on the same ipad it just could not happen. For controlling external devices via core midi it seemed great but virtual midi was a nightmare. maybe was just virtual midi syndrome at the time
Editing involves so much hunting and pecking around menus it really isn't a good experience on a mobile device. These build your own interface apps are a good idea but no-one has solved the issue of connecting up to control others apps via midi that is simple, enjoyable or playful yet. So unless you have huge reserves of patience and time, I would suggest you pass on this.
mh yes, editing seems to be a bit fiddly, I agree. And apparently, Lemur can speak to different apps, but not to different Midi channels, so no several Sample Tank, iM1 etc instruments at the same time (unless I'm missing something).
I bought it. Couldn't resist at this price. One day it might come in useful.
And that's where Lemur gives you a great option of being able to build on a laptop, while monitoring and testing on your device. Very fluid, and much easier to deal with the complex components. But, not mandatory for basic editing.
I understand your point, as patience is involved, but everything worth doing can't always be about instant gratification. Many times, the complexity isn't with the control surface application, but the differences in - or lack of - midi/osc support from the apps you want to control. And in a live situation, where automation and monitoring are essential, iOS can be hard to work with when running multiple apps.
I'll put Lemur as the best I've used in this category as it's the easiest to not only get something up and running quickly without scripting, but when you want to go further, it has the depth to support.
I'm looking forward to your discoveries with lemur and gadget
Sure it can. Lemur has 8 Midi 'Targets' that can be used to route to external Midi Ports or virtual apps, though you can also filter to/from Midi Channels from each component. No problem isolating apps - as long as the apps themselves support that type of isolation.
Yes I get it, but it defeats the whole notion of us moving to a post-PC world. If I wanted to use a laptop I probably wouldn't be all that bothered about iOS apps. As it is I enjoy the touch interface a great deal more for music making. Having to hookup a laptop turns it into a different experience.
I'm not necessarily asking for instant gratification. Creating software is my day job so I have no problem with spending many, many hours to understand the process where needed. It's just that I find programming to be a very different thought process to writing songs and it is too easy to get distracted by technical issues.
Lemur is very good and has amassed quite a following. I was just warning people that it may not be the touch experience they are used to. I also still think that there is a great opportunity here for some dev to find a more enjoyable paradigm that would satisfy this need.
Of course, understood - but the point here is that you're creating something specifically to help you make better use of your portable device's touch interface. But - you're essentially creating an application, and that process may never work well with touch only.
Agree 100% to avoiding technical distractions, though the first few projects I've put together in Lemur have allowed me to be much more creative with the use of these apps, specifically because I'm not dealing with the inherent iOS or app's limitations. I'm molding them to my workflow instead of being restricted to someone else's. Some limitations/distractions I've been living with for the last year, ever since I made the move from a PC/Ableton environment to iOS for live use, are now available to me again.
If only all app developers would make it that easy by standardizing how they implement midi and osc specs, these apps wouldn't need to be quite so complex. Regardless, I'd love to see it, as well.
indeed. The 5.3 update does not run at all. I guess this will be fixed soon as it does not seem to run on any device or iOS version. Do not update, wait for a fix.
I'm glad I still have 5.2.2 on my 'main' Lemur iPad.
A viable work around for getting midi to multiple apps especially if you're sequencing is to use an app like Midiflow to duplicate and/or filter MIDI coming from an app like Lemur to multipled apps.
Not sure about it never working well with touch but yes it is essentially a custom application and massively simpler to create with a little scripting in Lemur than starting from scratch with Xcode.
I think live performance is an excellent use case for lemur. When using it that way, it makes perfect sense to collect all the functionality you need into dedicated pages giving quicker access to triggers and settings during your performance. It would also make perfect sense that a person would put aside some time to work on these technical issues.
Where it makes less sense for me, is in the much less hectic and more thoughtful process of writing and recording music. I generally want to be focussed on the content. I did write a lemur page to allow me to quickly manipulate both effects in gadget err, gadgets so that they could be recorded (after Matt fletcher mentioning the idea) but found the effort involved much greater than the payoff. There are probably cases where I might want tweak a value in two running synths at the same time but I think most people would be more likely to reach for a hardware controller.
There is a lot can be done with standard midi. I think one path forward is for the devs of lemur or the competition, to build in higher level controls that are specific to an individual synth to save people having to grub around in midi implementation charts.
Catnip to boffins.