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.
Comments
I can't agree that AB is VITAL. It's certainly nice to have and a big plus point for any app that has it but you can easily import audio into Audioshare and incorporate it into your AB workflow that way.
I think the people who find AB so important tend to hang out here and that the majority of people who make music on their iPads have no idea it even exists.
Any chance for an iPhone version?
Would have to rework the interface. I like the idea of multiple devices on screen though, so maybe two in portrait mode? With tabs to switch to the other two?
Ditto
Air1 latest ios
Yes! Here is another vote for slower bpms, please! It can't be too slow.
Pretty much same here. I recorded about 3 minutes of noodling and just before the end it stopped briefly and then restarted. It's pretty random.
Definitely does not save the state it was in when I close and re-open.
Air 1 latest iOS
You are definitely on to something with this app, the emphasis on live performance is fun and and the sound quality is very good. I would say that Link is as equally important now as IAA and Audiobus so I hope that it's way up the list. With Link it's immediately useful as you could jam along with other sources which makes up for some of the restrictions.
Any chance of the widgets being released as Lemur patches?
apparently one> @animal said:
apparently a requirement of link is bpms of 1-999 so if they implement link we'll be sorted!
Why can't I swap out existing devices ? I want to use two 'Skram' and two 909's And why the hell cant I save patterns in the devices or the complete song. That is ridiculous .
I've also had the random drop out of audio from devices, seems to be about a beat , or maybe half a beat then starts again, without losing time. Air2 128Gb iOS 9.2.1
Skram looks like a good learning tool, even for children. But also a good app for serious producers and DJ's when sync is implemented. Well done, good concept.
As I'm more into the 'weird' stuff, I found that there's also a bit of polyrhythmic options there. Not really polyrhythmic like with the Patterning app, but still, there seem to be some interesting ways to 'abuse' Skram.
Just had one short first session this afternoon in very bright sunlight, so I couldn't judge Skram well enough. But the concept looks good.
I don't know nuffink about the making of these things, but a pale version of the UI would be lovely...
Thanks for the report.
What do you mean exactly when you say it's "not working intermittently"?
Because that function hasn't been implemented.. yet. Check out the "eject" button in the outer-most corner of every Device/Widget..
And saving snapshots of the session is also definitely in the works!
My Skram take:
The app is a LOT of fun and is quickly rewarding.
The UI has some brilliant features and feels great. You want to jam with parameters, mute drums on the fly etc but .. no 'Bus or IAA yet. It's been said before and I'll add: ability to iOS record / integrate Skram is crucial.
I was planning on email-exporting WAVs only to find that export is .m4a format (unless I'm missing a Setting option).
I'm hoping that BR-909 is an indication of what's to come with future drum devices: the minimal-yet-effective modulation parameters are a win and the Widget's velocity sliding is as well. Love this kit and looking forward to new sounds.
The synths are great fun and offer quite a lot of flexibility again despite being as minimal as they are. I love the sequencer/arps and got a real high flexing the adjustable loop lengths.
All in all a fantastic new app released with bold limitations (Output, Saving). Skram is fun enough to use that it kinda makes my head spin to imagine the possible evolution of the app: (if I'm fantasizing): Link, More Patterns, a Song mode, Project management, new Devices and Widgets, Widgets that allow triplets etc, Samples, Swing/Shuffle and so on.
Fantasy aside it'd be great to start with Output as even the lack of Saving has a certain ephemera romance but not being able to Capture the lightning-in-a-Skram-bottle is a real shame.
Can't wait to see what comes next.
I mean it stops playing sounds. It happens from time to time at random, sometimes it will start playing again sometimes I have to quit to make it restart.
^@liine_nick, thanks for the info
Glad you’re liking the app.
No project save yet. But we know this is a key feature and it’s on its way soon!
Thanks so much for the early support. You just played a key part in Skram’s future!
Thanks, it’s genuinely appreciated and I really hope you enjoy the future developments.
Obviously we were expecting a bit of a grilling about no AB on launch when talking on the Audiobus forum! However, we’re getting some really helpful feedback from you guys, as this community contains some of most enthusiastic iOS Music peeps, so it’s an absolute pleasure to have ALL of you in on the discussion and helping us define the future of our app
This is definitely a very real possibility of this! We have actually thought out how this would work on iPhone and we think we have a good solution. It’s just a question of which next developments to prioritise first.
Thanks for the kind words and for the feedback on Link.
Giving away some of the Widgets as Lemur templates would be a super interesting idea! We’ll definitely bear that in mind.
Ha - well our team contains a few music nerds and we LOVE that polyrhythm stuff. Glad you picked up on that
Thanks @Phil999 !
Yup, you’re correct in spotting that. We’ll allow wav recording in future
We have some interesting ideas for parameter modulation for future…
It’s super fun having odd lengths in the rhythm selector, right?!
Absolutely all of these things are on our minds too. It’s more of a when rather than an if!
Thanks for the feedback
Can’t wait to deliver more!
Little chilled jam on Skram.
Definitely potential, and I love this way of working, but need session saving as a minimum. Not even the one your working on??...come on..
It plays in the background though, so you can open another synth and play over.
@KlaatuNinja Nicely done. Good lesson in minimalism/patience. Inspiring. As mentioned before, I love your set-up/camera angle....
I think anyone (developer-wise) who's put the work in to get this far knows that we must have the meat and potatoes of save and export (and AB/IAA/Link/whatever). I think we have to accept we are, in some ways, the first public round of seed money. The positive is that I will feel disappointed if they drop the ball moving forward from here because the template is in place....
@KlaatuNinja Loving the SPace within your track: unrushed goodness.
@liinegareth I couldn't ask for more comprehensive Developer/User interaction than yours so a huge Thanks and it's deeply gratifying to hear that some of the wishlistings in this thread may see the light of iOS day in Skram updates. I'm already hooked.
One thing I'd like to see is the 'x' button for delete pattern either moved away from the others to the top right or changed to a double tap/hold or confirm required action.
Oh and I am also getting the reoccurring audio drop outs as well
Should have mentioned i'm on an ipad mini 2 with ios 9.2.1
Hi Nick, I have the same prob with audio dropout. I already mentioned this in another message. I sent support mail a wavefile with Skram dropping out a bit.
Great jam and demonstration of the app's possibilities. At the moment, Skram seems like a great sketch pad - kimd of like an evolutionary descendent of Rhythm Studio. Of course, greater BPM range and iOS connectivity could take it beyond sketch pad and into a serious production flow. Definitely will need to see uncompressed audio output for that.
Found this video today, hopefully some will find this useful in assessing an app that certainly has a lot of potential:
Roger roger. The original design actually had a larger, explicit confirmation action required. But as with many (MANY) other features, that didn't quite make it into the initial release.. (otherwise march would've become april, would've become 2017, etc... ). But again, as always, really great to hear these comments. It really validates our ideas/plans, and there's really no substitute for finding out what you guys want to see improved/added!
thank you liinegareth, I appreciate your letting us know what you can, and as far as ideas go for skram all I can say is that in my opinion there can never be too many sample slicers and manglers around and in iOS there isn't enough.
I believe sample slicing, editing, and fx are as important to electronic music as filters in synth apps. One idea in particular that I think would be nice is combining the x/y notation triggering of the ikaossilator app with the sampling ability of something like the humble tune app elsa.. would love to take a snippet out of a tune from my iTunes library like maybe a cycle of sam cooks voice, load it up, shape it and then play it with an x/y pad through a myriad of scales, keys, chords etc.. and record this all in Skram.... ok thats it for me
This. There's such a large and musically diverse community that's sprung up around here that we occasionally get stuck in 'all iOS music makers are like us' mode since this community is built around an app whose primary focus is moving audio between apps.
He's right Mister Gareth, but then so are you; this is a good start and for many of us IAA and Audiobus are critical
Having a jam with this last night, a couple of things I thought would be nice to have:
Being able change number of steps is great on the lower left widget, if you could individually select which steps are "live" at the bottom, this would be even better. Eg run your finger over the lower part to create active steps, turn steps on or off individually (more than just extending the number of active steps as it is now) etc Good for live variation. Maybe a similar way to isolate number of steps on the top two widgets would be cool too (without deleting notes)
As well as ability to store more patterns on the left. A third pattern play screen on all the widgets would be a nice feature. Being able to select from many different patterns quickly, playing different patterns on each of the modules against each other. Works well for the current two patterns, but would be great to have a screen dedicated to this with more patterns.
I thought this too. Having rests would make it a bit less samey and introduce more interesting rhythms between the gadgets.
Yep, would love to expose more flexibility to the rhythm generator of each Widget. Earlier designs would allow the user to get down to the nitty-gritty of the rhythm (same way you can freely choose your pitches in the arpeggiator), but in the end, for the (very important) sake of simplicity and immediacy, we chose to go with a healthy selection of curated rhythms. Along with the polyrhythmic aspects, I was hoping we struck the right balance of simplicity and musicality. Custom rhythmic patterns is definitely somthing I'd love to see, but it's lower priority than new devices, new widgets, connectivity (audiobus, link, etc) and soooo many other things.
Ja! Well, for the drum machine especially that would make more sense. (in my above paragraph I was talking more about the melodic widgets). All this sort of stuff will kind of come together when we attack the whole saving/restoring paradigm (that will have implications whether it's saving the whole setup, or saving the state of one device/widget).
Hmm.. that's a cool idea actually... A way to expand/enlarge the Rhythm Selector and then do things like muting steps or editing the pattern.. Food for thought.