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
@Bluepunk hey man thanks, its interesting how you understand what i did, i had a buddy dismiss it by saying na man your out of time.... but i tend to do that with vocals and guitar. a lag and catch up and backwards feel to it. thats why the name came to me too its just another angle i can twist and confuse people with. hey thanks for your review . makes it worth it for me right there. even though you were kinda confused you were on the same page with me in a way, laaaag then catchup pass it then slow down! thank you
Apologies for spoiling any enjoyment you may have had from watching the match....although I'm finding it difficult to place Liverpool & enjoyment into the same sentence!
Just glad I never mentioned the score now. Pretty sure that the result will be dropped sarcastically into most conversations I have today. Can I go home please teacher?
UNLESS you're a Villareal fan......ah, well, off to watch the game. Can always fast forward I guess
I was last night!
Saved me two hours mate. How inestimable a gift is that? You gave another man time. And, in the old chaos-theory of it all, I sat down and wrote some lyrics (well, two verses and a chorus anyway) and then picked out a melody line on Neo-Soul (which I love, but partially because of the title, not having a fully-formed soul myself etc) and if there is to be a song from here this month (there must, there must, I have signed in blood), then this will likely be it. And anyway, I'm almost done with the football. The Foxes have ensured that every other 'mid-table' team will fire their manager even earlier next season for not doing what has surely been proven as possible, Mister Ranieri is due his Knighthood, and we're all just waiting for England to look more like Villa than Leicester come the summer.
Keen to have a go at this at some point, so I thought I should take the time to comment on others first.
I don't have the musicianship or ability on the mixing/ production side to comment on those things , so a lot of my comments will basically come down to whether I enjoyed it or not.
@trackedout love it, so laid back it makes JJ Cale seem hyper. I like stuff that seems to teeter on the edge and then suddenly it's bang on timing wise, catchy melody too.
@achromus Really enjoyed it, constantly evolving, instrumental pieces rarely hold my attention but this did.
@theconnactic First of all, fantastic guitar playing. I've been at it on and off for thirty odd years and you inspire me to go practice for another thirty
nice tune.
@infinity stairs Great Buzzcocks vibe, the vocals especially remind me of Pete Shelley.
Thank you so much for the words, @kin! All the best.
I just said thank you last time, @Bluepunk, because I was on a hectic work day. Now I can answer you properly.
The drums are sampled. In fact, I used some EXS I added to Auria, or more probably a combination of them. I'm very glad you liked the result, even to the point of thinking it was a real drummer, because usually it's programming the drums that take my time the most when I'm producing. I try to think as a real drummer - which is not always easy, because my proficiency with drums is rudimentar at best. But I love drums, and all percussion instruments in general, and listen a lot of great stuff - including Buddy Rich, btw.
Again, thank you so much for the thoughtful review. I wish my own reviews were on par.
All the best,
Dimitri.
P.S.: oh, and still about the drums, a tip - perhaps useful, perhaps not: I always convert each drum track to audio. Always! I never work on them in MIDI, and never without separating each instrument to its own stereo track, where I can balance them to my liking.
I must caution you to remember that I write a lot of fiction:
@JohnnyGoodyear There's always an excited anticipation of "What's Mr Goodyear going to give us this month as I press play. From Country to poetry to dance to punk. What all of them do....is make me think. You have opened up a new world of styles, words, sentences, phrases that tease my soul into a positive/negative, emotional mashup.
That creepy, childs broken toy like bed of sound, particularly evident in your intro, sounds like Dylan got too stoned & forgot to carry out his daily maintenance schedule on the Magic Roundabout! Marvellous! You've injected more air & space into this one. The pauses are perfect to allow the listener just enough time to appreciate what you've said/sung & then sometimes translate it into their own life. Because of the power in those words/music, I find it fascinating that you can do that!
My personal highlights among the highlights are the way you deliver the "none of this is surprising" line. Oh & the "and occasional adultery," The way you say the "and" makes it an inevitable part of it all. You're probably right
The outro music made me all melancholic & sort of childlike sad. Brilliant, cos like I said before....it's an emotional journey listening to your songs.
Thank you Dimitri. Your tips work! The bass compression tips have made a huge difference.
Right, I'm a complete dumb arse with this. Can I ask why do you convert MIDI to audio? What are the benefits & particularly in my case....is it easy? I know this is probably basic stuff to most but I'm not understanding it & I want/need to.
Thanks sir & kudos for the drum work.
@Bluepunk to convert the MIDI to audio you need to bounce MIDI the track to audio - this works either in Cubasis or Auria. In Auria it's in Process --> Bounce Track in Place.
Thanks Richard. But why do we do this? Does Audio use less power or is it for a more technical reason. I find it easier to edit MIDI notes.
I do this because working with audio is less taxing to the CPU. But don't get me wrong: I make the drums arrangement in MIDI, @Bluepunk: it's only when I'm mixing that I separate each drum instrument to its own audio track and apply a lot of processing to get that punch you noticed, and balance the volumes and stereo position of each drum instrument until I get that "real drums" feel. Sometimes I'll send some or all instruments to a Subgroup to apply compression, or to a bus and then to a new track so I can eq out everything under 400 Hz to create a "fake" overhead track and add it to my drum tracks etc.
Thanks for explaining Dimitri. So basically it's to maximise the power available & not because the MIDI track is less editable or for a "detrimental to the sound" reason. Thanks for the eq info on the overheads as well. It makes sense. I need to learn the basics......again.
Many thanks for your time. I appreciate it.
In fact, there are many approaches for faking an OH mic - mine is based on the fact that treble instruments are closer to the mic, so they should sound louder. I use a fairly soft slope, despite cutting from a fairly high frequency. Looking forward to the day there will be an EZ-like drum app for iOS, with built in OH and room faders and leak simulation, so I don't have to fake anything. Thank you for raising the subject, @Bluepunk.
Hey, @JohnnyGoodyear: nice pad sound and good lyrics. Loved the transition to the piano and woodwinds ending: so smooth! Congrats!
Is there any real/strategic reason beyond CPU issues to do this?
Brilliance! Nice work! I love how you sampled dialogue from BBC's Planet Earth!
Just kidding! I love you @JohnnyGoodyear and @SirDavidAttenborough!!!
As Eno famously said about the Velvet's first album "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band." I think we can add one more
I didn't like this at the start, but midway through I'd changed my mind and by the end I was persuaded. This development mirrors my feelings about the vocal which seemed weak at the outset but relaxed (very much) into itself by the end. If you weren't a little on-the-nod when you recorded this you have the impression down perfectly. The horn/orchestral/whatever inserts were interesting and took me towards early Beach Boys/mid-Beatles.
Overall, like a lot of SOTMC, I don't feel this is the final version of this song and I'd really like to have the master tape taken off your hands by Tom Wilson to see what he would do with it....but Tom's long dead, so you're going to have make your own way. We all do in the end I guess.
@JohnnyGoodyear thank you very much sir. dead on there. im glad i managed to win your interest. means alot.. your more than welcome to mix it yourself if youd like. id love to see some one elses direction to it
i also bounce my midi to a track. cpu is greatly reduced and buffer size will only go up to 512 . the way i do it is i solo midi creat stereo track and record master on my stereo track... delete midi after and up the buffer size for my aux effects... i do this after im done editing in midi ofcourse
Thank you. This is the question that I wanted to ask. Where it takes you only a dozen wee words, I'm getting into the 2000 page long, novel territory!
I rest my case Your Honour......The power of words.
Appears, by the kind responses that Audio tracks use less CPU, which means more effects will be allowed to gate crash the mix party. In my terms, it should allow an extra 5 distortion boxes to join the 10 already fighting for space to breathe.
Yes that's basically right. With MIDI you can't set the latency higher than 512, whereas if you bounce all the MIDI to audio you can set the latency all the way to 4096, meaning you can use a lot more plugins in your mix without needing to freeze tracks.
I generally set my latency to 128 at the start of the project and keep it there as I record all the parts. Then once the recording is all done I bounce all the MIDI to audio and set the latency to 4096 for mixing.
Some people might prefer the flexibility of freezing the MIDI tracks rather than bouncing them, because it means that you can unfreeze and edit the MIDI later if you want (frozen MIDI tracks become audio so you can still set the latency to 4096). Personally I can't stand having frozen tracks in my project though, because it means I can't easily change the arrangement of the song - and I'm far more likely to want to re-arrange the song than to revisit a performance or MIDI track.
I haven't commented on SOTMC tracks since I've been on the forum until now. I first wanted to just get used to the iOS platforms workflow, assemble some apps, then learn them. For a good while I have really enjoyed the AB board, just learning a lot & experimenting, reading others threads and getting to know people here.
After listening to this track by Sir Goodyear, I had to give a few words. Like his other tracks I've heard, extremely original and full of wit and intelligence. The theme of marriage and relationships struck the chord deep in me, as it were. Maybe being married to my wife for 17 years and together for 20 caused this brilliant track to at times sound like the play by play call during me & the wife at dinner...
Johnny always posts well written and humorous stuff on the forum, the guy is a Renaissance man in that regard. He is a writer (as he states in the post of the song), a musician, a great producer...dude probably sculpts marble for relaxation.
Point is this track is just excellent, my favorite of the stuff of his I've heard so far. Atmospheric, cerebral, spooky and even kind of charming...the clarinets at the end to me signaling an almost sighing resignation of the married life...quite effective and like I said almost endearing in a way.
I don't know if JG is married, not my business, but as a guy who is genuinely happy in marriage yet extremely realistic and pragmatic about its function in life, this track captured both musically (with the wandering, hazy soundscape) and of course lyrically, the good and bad of it brilliantly.
Great work brother...
Thank you. The haze is gradually beginning to clear from my brain on this one. To think I've been cheating myself out of 3968 latencies is a travesty!
I wish there was an iOS music night school so the teacher could look over my shoulder & gently say "press that button for this & if you set this to that, you can do..this) type of thing. Thanks again, it's helped like all the other posts have.
In Auria it makes a pretty big difference. If you're getting CPU spikes etc setting a higher latency will really help.
Lol, Johnny.
@trackedout, really like that. The mix is great, nice layers of stuff going in there. Song is great. Bit of punk, bit 60s Rock. Love the discordance in the background, just enough to give it a feel without getting obnoxious. Nothing bad to say, at all.
@achromus, that's a beautiful thing. Love your stuff, and I'm not a synth guy, really. Great mix, fantastic build. I could put on an album of your stuff in the morning, and it would make my mood.
@theconnactic, great tune yet again. The various breaks were excellent, especially like the one at about the two minute mark, just a completely departure from what went on before, but it worked perfectly.
You always have this infectious beat going on in your tunes. Would love to hear something a bit more somber, or slower, or in an off then signature.
Just 'cause.