General workflow with Audiobus : need advice

saxophonick

Hi people,

This one takes a bit of time to explain properly, so if you're in a hurry you can skip this topic.

I need some advice regarding Audiobus in the context of creating & developing tracks.
I am an iOS music enthusiast for a bit more than 3 years now, and when I looked recently at the amount of apps I've bought over the years and the amount of music I created, it looks like a perfect opposite...which I am not very happy about. Somewhere along the lines, I must have misunderstood something(s), or am not seeing the full potential of Audiobus ( and other tools that try to help the inter application use ), or plain and simply got overwhelmed with all apps and their case by case general compatibility with other apps or lack thereof.

I started out with iPolysix, which in my opinion & to this day remains a very useful and fast, fun tool to create ideas. It's limitations and all-in-one aspects are what I think compelled me to finish quite a few tracks and even get some nice contacts and reviews out of it.

My background is computer DAWs for a bit more than 15 years now ( Cubase, Ableton, Logic Pro and now Reaper + Ableton, chronologically ). In those environments, which offer much less limitations, thus should theoretically be harder to work with, I am way more productive than on iOS in creating tracks.

Right now, I mostly use my apps individually, or in some Audiobus routings for adding effects, layering or bouncing multi-app ideas.

I've created tons of beats, layered synths carpets, arpeggios, sample manglings, and their live tweaking through effects/parameters via Audiobus or Audioshare.

I must say Audiobus for me is primarily like a mixer, to create fx chains and record the results, for that it works very nice.

But from the moment I try to combine a drum/beats app and try to add a simple synth track or vice versa with Audiobus, IAA, Auria, Garageband or other, something goes wrong ( timing, sync, incompatibility, crashing, freezing, weird behaviour or other iOS oddities )

All these ideas end then up in Audioshare, as I abandon developing them further on iOS, where they are organized in track basic ideas, with a folder, a name and bpm for further work on computer DAW ( Ableton or Reaper, depending the genre )

I won't share a full list of apps I bought as it might be pointless, but the following ones are the ones I use right now or would like to use more, in a cohesive and intuitive iOS biotope...is that even doable right now?
Or is it better to await further Audio Unit development?
Or just use the 'Pad as a deluxe beatsketching/ideasketching platform, with some fun functionalities?
Other than for : beat creation, effects, sound mangling, synth layers and arps, and all of those separately, anyone has an idea where my use or expectations of the iOS platform might be wrong?

Apps :
Synths : Animoog, Sunrizer, iSem, iMini, Addictive Synth, Cyclop and FM4
Keyboards : iM1 and Neo Soulkeys
Drums & beats : Seekbeats, iMaschine, Patterning and Poly
Live effects : Turnado, Wow, DFX, Borderlands, Filtatron, Auria Pro ( Fabfilter & PSP + old school daw editing ), Bias, Bias FX, Flection, Holderness bundle, Mobile Convolution, Audioreverb, Korvpressor
Sound editing : Beat Twirl, Beat Time, Audioshare, Auria Pro, Samplr
Sequencing : Step Poly Arp, Fugue Machine, Auria Pro

Any ideas, point of views, remarks, even critics ( please stay civil though welcome!

Thanks

Nico

u0421793

I read it all.

db909

I hear ya. I'm fairly new to making music on iOS, before that used daws. What I try to do is always use the least amount of apps as possible and I've rarely had problems. I see the benefits as follows:
A. Forces me to spend some quality time to really learn each app inside and out, which often forces me to be more creative in terms of doing things differently than I normally would, on an app to app basis.
B. Saves time. To my ears most of these apps are built to sound amazing on their own, I'm talking about synths and other sound generators. For example i use animoog a lot I just love it and know it inside out. I like the way it sounds. So if animoog inspires me on a given day, I'll probably just stick with it for the whole track and use something simple like multitrack daw or GarageBand to sequence it. (I just have iPhone so no Auria for me

db909

Oops my post got cut in half. Long story short iOS forces me to stay focused on the music and I try not to run more than two apps at once. Sometimes three if I want to tweak drums live but not often. So maybe you should try doing more with less and see if that suits you.

Samu

To me this all sounds (similar to myself) a bit of a 'creative stall' and 'lack of ideas' rather than a technical problem.

I too have made a 'ton' of loops and soundscapes all stored in AudioShare and sometimes I'm thinking maybe it's possible to make something out of them. Sometimes I just import a few of the loops into Cubasis mix and match and end up with 'backgrounds'. Time flies when say a 16-32 bar loop repeats in the background...

To be honest I don't use AudioBus that much nowadays, don't see the point really since most of the apps already act as IAA-Generators making it easy to record them into almost anything and for effects processing AudioShare offers a chain of 3 effects and 'rendering' to file and with the upcoming AUM i suspect my AudioShare usage will drop even more. For 'live jamming' AudioBus is cool with the remote features, that is for those apps that support it.

Being an appaholic doesn't help the situation

saxophonick

Hi DB909 & Samu, thanks for the feedback!

DB909 I hear you on the less simultaneous apps together, although I want to combine more well not 10 but 3 or 4 ( like 1 synth, 1 drum app, a couple of live effects, an output recorder....seems pretty modest and easy but to me it does not work out fine when trying to combine.

Samu : yes we seem to be hoarding ideas in a similar way It's not really a lack of ideas, more a lack of time to develop them how I want on iOS. Somehow I am stuck in iOS's big brothers DAWS workflow out of habit, where one idea or instrument equals a track : once you have one you add another, pretty effortlessly, be it audio or instrument.

On iOS with IAA mostly it's a nightmare, always something out of sync ( can I hear a loud "MIDI" everyone ? ), or crashing, or not behaving properly.

Which is why all my ideas end up in a library in Audioshare, as a midway station to the computer DAWs.

In the end you're right, being an appaholic does not help...

But who will support the devs if not those appaholics

Tbh, even on DAWs after 15 years of purchases, I maybe use 10% of all software I own since then, even for a few new softs each year that end up in the computer's cellar.
I don't mind really, I see it as investing in the future, but that's the appaholic talking

Thanks

Any more ideas?

MrNezumi

Find what works and then use it.

[Deleted User]

I think the number of apps you can run simultaneously depends on the iOS device you're using and which apps. @MrNezumi offers good advice about finding what works for you and then work within those limitations.

robosardine

Yes- too many apps can fankle de head mi man. Try something like Gadget synths into Turnado recording all the time in Audioshare. After doing this for a while there has to be some sounds for you to edit out and then drop into Bilbao and Abu Dhabi (make sure you explore all the automation sequences of both these apps). Mix in some vocal samples from somewhere like that free Prelinger site:- Gadget will keep it all in perfect time for you. By now you should have something you like- you deserve a cup of tea. Whilst you are having your well earned break- sit back and let Sector randomly re-arrange your favourite parts for you for further variations.
Take your favourite parts from all of the above and drop them into Launchpad (which will also guarantee perfect timing) to mix and match your clips. When finished release it to the world in order to share the joy that electronic music can bring for everyone.
You should now shortly be hearing from David Guetta to ask you how on earth you made such a complex and inspiring track.............. don't forget to mention my name

mschenkel.it

@robosardine said:

[cut]

Word.

IMO the point in iOS music is to play music rather than programming it; on mobile we can get loads of instruments which are much more performance oriented. Instead of buying amazing sounding synth get some generative stuff(Quincy, *tikl, nodebeat, etc), some physical performance oriented apps(tc11 and anything else you can control by some extent with accelerometers and stuff), some stay-in-tune midi controllers(sound prism, chordion, navichord), some get-out-of-the-schemes controllers(Beatsurfing[btw any news for that?]), if you can, connect multiple devices and so on.
Some tools can be a nightmare to use on a desktop while extremely fun on mobile and viceversa, be careful to not transpose desktop daw workflow into mobile and, again, viceversa.[ATM I'm copying down a orchestral arrangement into Notion and it was a long time since I had so much fun in "making" music, just wondering what will I be able to do with those 20+ midi tracks with who-knows-what midi CC to mess around. Rather mechanical job but also laying down a 4 to floor beat has become pretty mechanical].

animal

I thought I'd share my setup, since it's pretty large and heavily relies on Audiobus:

lane 1: Noatikl - nofx - Mimix (but Midi going to all other lanes)

lane 2: Cyclop - nofx - Mimix

lane 3: iFretless Bass/Brass - Turnado - Mimix

lane 4: Sector - Effectrix - Mimix

-All of this is running reliably for more than a year now (with little hickups, from time to time..), with some variation of Apps for experimenting. Veeery happy to have Audiobus, still, and can't see working without it.
I like the fact of playing differently on ios, than the usual workflow on my Mac..., of course then combining it together, in the end. I see my instrument as the whole of ios-devices and Mac... .
Cheers, t

saxophonick

Thx guys, all nice pointers. Robosardine : lol. I didn't get Gadget, but I started with iPolysix which has similarities, though much more limited.

Enough info to turn the workflow upside down and re-boot from a fresher point of view.

Much appreciated!

senhorlampada

@saxophonick , not sure this will be useful...
Like lots of us, I get stuck in my 8-bar (or 16, 32, whatever) loop. I end up with loads of stems that gets dumped for nothing...

Although I'm late (at leats 4-5 tracks late) for FAWM (February Album Writing Month), I plan on delivering at least 7-8 tracks with an "Unfinished Business" vibe. I'll take all these dumped stems and loops, put them on Sector, Egoist, Yellofier... or stretch them out a bunch and then turn them into finished stuff by using the old stuff as bed for new things.

And i'll probably end up finishing some painting and drawings I have to pair as album covers

JohnnyGoodyear

When stuck I used to take my field recorder down to the local bus station and capture whatever was happening there: A ) There was always good or heartbreaking stuff going on. B ) The relative gratitude when I got back to my own warm hutch helped disperse any ongoing entropy I may have been suffering from.

Might be time to do that again.