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.
Elastic Drums vs Seekbeats vs Attack Drums vs Stroke Machine
I have yet to get a drum synth. Seekbeats is the cheapest and may be enough for me, but I'd like to hear a comparison anyway...
Cheers!
Comments
If there is no rush I'd wait until DM-2 is out before parting with cash.
Cheers. I like DM-1 so DM-2 could be a good option too.
Elastic Drums and iElectribe might be two other options to consider.
The 'clean design' if this yet unreleased DM-2 is so tempting I might end up deleting some other apps.
Stroke Machine and Attack are cool but the plethora of options and a fiddly UI steal away the focus from making drum-sounds. I'm not 'friends' with the UI of Elastic Drums and SeekBeats either...
iElectribe (iPad version) is still one of my favourite synth-drum apps.
iSpark has the modular analogue & physical modelling engine of desktop Spark2 , currently uneditable , a coming update is promised to bring an editable GUI . This will make this a beast of a drum synth in addition to one of the best specced sample based drum machines it already is so I would add this to your list & maybe worth waiting for.
Also DM1 devs are releasing a drum synthesis version , DM2 ? in a couple of weeks.
Stroke Machine seems long abandoned , & I recently learnt the programmer behind Attack has left Waldorf so the promised missing features may take longer or never appear.
imo Seekbeats and Elastic Drums compliment each other, you can't go wrong owning both.
I remember back in the ’80s there were quite a few classic drum machines. In the ’90s I bought some of those. Many of us did the same. However, I remember reading something that jarred me a little, that was that many of the acts that were in the charts at the time, in interviews etc, revealed that they were not fanatic about collecting drum machines in the search for that elusive sound. They were searching for that elusive sound, like we all are, but they more often than not did it via sampling. The thing that made the sound was less important than the sound, and once the sound was gotten, it could live in and be spat out from a military-duty anonymous steel box that nobody particularly had any love for.
Today, on the iPads, I wonder whether there’ll be a similar divergence. There are lots of drum machines, and lots of ways of getting drum type sounds. One way is to find sample sets, another is to make sample sets yourself, another way is to buy drum machine apps that have sample sets you or others like. Another way is to synthesise drum sounds on a non-drum machine actual synthesiser. Another way is to find a drum machine that you or others like that has its own synthesis capabilities.
However, the latter is interesting. Does one buy it for its drum pattern / song sequencing capabilities, or the sound synthesis capabilities? Isn’t your normal sequencer as good at the sequencing (perhaps it isn’t as good in terms of humanisation and suchlike?). Does it always follow that a good drum sequencer is also a good drum synthesiser? Do many people take a drum machine and use the synth capability to create drum sounds, one at a time, then sample them and leave the drum machine alone from then on?
What’s the common way these days?
+1 Both offer a lot for the price and are sonically different enough to justify owning the pair of them.
iElectribe is a great recreation of the hardware, but I find its synthesis options a little limited for the price.
iSpark....not a fan at all. The factory kits are all pretty awful, so I decided to create my own kits by importing samples...and that's where it really falls apart (kits not saving or saving with samples missing, text legends vanishing from the GUI). As Arturia are notoriously bad at fixing their software, I'd avoid it for now.
I'm intrigued by DM2 - which seems quite heavily "inspired" by Elastic Drums. I do hope they've sorted out the terrible sync problems that plague DM1, though.
Interesting points. I have used synths to do drum sounds — for example iMS20 is set up pretty good for that. I've never been enough of a drum fanatic to go the sampling route and tend to stick to pre-made kits for the most part ... mostly using 'real' drum sample programs like Superior or more recently Perfect on the iPad.
A drum synth sounds like a good way to get some more modern sounding drums without having to sweat over the creation of each part...
I do have an Yamaha RX7 which I need to put to work someday too.
I'm always on the look out for two perfect drum machines: One to pretend to be a 'real' drum kit, jazz brushes here, rock kit bashing away there, OR I want something that is absolutely understood to be something mechanical which produces sounds by no means man-made unless said man was beating on something in a crucifixion factory or twisting electrons into a shape of his own choosing.
Disheartening.
Good engine and sequencer but embarrassing modulation process and midi setting with Attack.
Elastic Drums - inventive. currently supported. Excellent developer who listens to customers. Decent UI and ease of use.
Seekbeats - inventive. Currently supported. Not seemingly as developed as ED. UI could do with some updating towards ease of use.
Attack Drums - support seems lacking and future updates unclear.
Stroke Machine - has known bugs that have not been addressed in over a year. Future support unknown.
DM2 coming.
Possible expansion of iSpark coming.
Don't forget some synths make great drum sounds that can be then put into other drum apps - if you don't modify the synth settings on the fly, this is a very good option. May take longer, but can be a more considered approach. You can put multiple synth samples in some drum apps too.
If I was only to get one, it would be Elastic Drums.
Patterning isn't a drum synth.
Surely just a sample plus some synthesis? Not really a drum synth. Still a really great drum app to be sure
As I accumulate drum boxes on iOS and PC I've pondered likewise. Without really arriving at a conclusion.
One thing that continues to hit me - pun intended - is that at the end of the signal chain it's all digital data whether it started as a sample I've acquired or made myself (and maybe shaped, via filter, envelope or the mangling available in Xfer's Nerve) or a real time generator like a favorite drum synth. Meaning that once I'm done playing around in a DAW the hit that ultimately emerges and moves the air comes from 44000+ bits of digital data. Which means, among other things, that what it sounds like at the very end is what counts. And I've noticed all the different ways I got there can sound right or wrong regardless of how I got there, sampled, synthed, or sampling my own synth.
A lot of times what sounds right is a sound someone else made (of course). Score one for samples.
For me what usually sounds right is a drum/perc sound that moves over time, via live play or midi sequencing, movement filter- and envelope- wise, but what I really want is deeper wave, timbre, and harmonic movement via synthesis. There is sample manipulation available in some drum boxes (Nerve) and DAWs (Bitwig) but this is not as common in iOS. Score one for drum synth.
Other considerations involve workflow speed and ease, but I'm so into drum sound that I fall on the happy tweaker side of that equation. So score wise it is even money for me, sampled v synthed, with a slight nod toward the newer version of sampled that includes real-time sample synthesis...
Got to say though, that Patterning lets you put a lot of movement into its sounds, so its really great anyways
Patterning and Elastic Drums also complement each other really well Linked.
.....................................
Funny because it looked like elastic drums was heavily influenced by DM1
I keep trying but rarely have an easy time with elastic. it's usually unintuitive time consuming work to get something i want out of it.
Hey, what about Impaktor??
I haven't found a drum synthesis app I love yet. Haven't tried iSpark but it looks like it has the kind of UI I'd get along with better. Might get it one day.
It seems no many people love it, but BleepBox! is in the box.
As drum machine addicted, I'll probably buy DM2 at the release date. No crazy about what I have seen, but still I like it.
I like Robotic Drums. I usually pair it with another app (Elastic Drums, Diode, Seekbeats, MoDrum, Drumjam) to good effect.
TL;DR: All drum synthesis apps thwack differently so get em all.
SeekBeats is the ultimate for hands-on envelope shaping (full touchscreen drawing / adding / subtracting points) and the Randomize function = endless exploration. As with all existing iOS drum synths there's a character (and limitation) to the palette of SeekBeats which is why there's absolutely no reason not to also own the majestic Elastic Drums (which is getting updated at a frequency one might dream an app could) and the other main players.
If one was looking to not only use an app for it's synthesis and sequencing etc capabilities but rather generate sounds to build a personal library then the floodgates really open and every drum synth app becomes a potential easter egg for that Perfect (thwick/thwack/thud/boom/tizz/etc) Hit.
Excellent post ^ ^
I just loaded up elastic to try the record via hidden pads mode and boy that does not work well. It's all over the place. maybe i'm doing something wrong, but this app and I have not been able to get along as well as just about all my other drum apps.
Anyone able to enter patterns successfully using the pads?
I'm looking forward to the new DM-2 to that should be here in a couple of days to see if it 'clicks' with me.
Never been a huge fan of DM-1 though....
My master, I know you don't like 1 Million Dollar, I am sure 2 Million Dollar is better for serving. Therefore, we try hard with our new company venture name and some delights to exploit and cash in on ASAP to serve you.
Oh btw, if you have any problem with new 2 Million Dollar midi services, we will serve you by next 5 generations of our new services.
There is already a DM-4 kit in DM-1, so you know how the future sounds
Yup and yup. Funny how different they sound. Stroke Machine, iElectribe and Attack are all cool and I doubt you'd be sad to own any of them but Seekbeats and ED are quick and to the point (and resource light, considering) yet very versatile in very different ways.
Patterning MIDI Out -> Seekbeats is a sweet combo. Elastic Drums' sequencer allows for enough built in interestingness (plus LINK support) that I usually use it without Patterning.
No. Yes.
Hmmm. Really like this discussion. This is my bump alternative.....
For me, percussion is a secondary thought. I realise that a good tune needs a percussion section that can hold its own but usually I jst go 4 floor with very little deviation. The only time I can be bothered to make percussion track is when Im on the bus/tube with my phone and earbuds. Universal is important for me. ED and Seekbeats are and I love them for this. In the future when I finish something Id like to map a control to some drum parameters to add variation to the groove but until then a sample will do.
Great discussion, very inspiring
Interesting point. Ultimately as long as it makes sound, it is real, no matter how unromantic the process of generating the sound. I remember a friend got a sun faded, real TR-808 at one point, because the sound was REAL coming out of it, but quickly got over it, because almost every sampling drum machine has the samples, and he was ready to admit they sounded exactly the same.
Drum synthesis can be pretty frustrating, trying to get sounds that are as enticing or dimensional as samples (even samples of something that was originally synthesized, by someone really good at it, like old drum machine designers). Like iMS-20, it is an amazing idea on paper, but the drum sounds are hard to get sounding impressive as classic drum machine sounds, even with a whole MS-20 for each part of the kit.
The one place drum synthesis shines though, is in automation, because it proves to the listener the drum sound is malleable, and if each hit is a little different, it reads as something different than a static sample being played over and over again. I like Elastic Drums for that reason, and on a different tip, had a lot of fun sampling percussion sounds made with an analog synth into Werkbench, because each beat could be a slightly different sample.
DM-2 was worth the (short) wait. Relatively easy to use and quick sound design. Sounds good too.