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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Fieldscaper/Soundscaper. How to make pretty sounds??

I enjoy these two apps but for the lif of me cannot seem to get any nice fluffy ambience even when using pleasant relaxing source material, its all turned into creepy head trip nightmare fuel ( oh sweet Jesus what it did to sounds of my baby giggling)

Anyhoo, have any of youse guys had success churning out some more positive viberoonies with either of these apps? What is your secret??

Comments

  • I've not much experience with Fieldscaper yet, but with Soundscaper, the solution is to REALLY get to know the app very well. Now, I don't profess to know everything that the circuit bending features can do, but I do know how the LFOs can drive the other parameters well enough.

    Anyways, that's the major thing about Soundscaper. It IS akin to owning a sample looper which you can circuit bend, and so it does tend to produce harsher timbres. If you go overboard with it, it WILL start to produce harsher timbres. Besides using "prettier" source material, subtlety will give you the best results in Soundscaper. Just experiment a little bit more with these ideas. I know this may not be as in-depth of an answer as I'd like to give, but try this out for now. I'm going to try some stuff out and see what else I can tell you. Cheers mate. :)

  • @jwmmakerofmusic said:
    I've not much experience with Fieldscaper yet, but with Soundscaper, the solution is to REALLY get to know the app very well. Now, I don't profess to know everything that the circuit bending features can do, but I do know how the LFOs can drive the other parameters well enough.

    Anyways, that's the major thing about Soundscaper. It IS akin to owning a sample looper which you can circuit bend, and so it does tend to produce harsher timbres. If you go overboard with it, it WILL start to produce harsher timbres. Besides using "prettier" source material, subtlety will give you the best results in Soundscaper. Just experiment a little bit more with these ideas. I know this may not be as in-depth of an answer as I'd like to give, but try this out for now. I'm going to try some stuff out and see what else I can tell you. Cheers mate. :)

    Thank you! I will try easing off on all parameters

  • Personally I think that both Soundscaper and Fieldscaper can create really great atmospheric sounds, but if you want the results to be pretty or musical you have to layer other stuff on top and use the scapes as a background.

    For example create an atmosphere in Fieldscaper and layer some pads from a synth on top, add a beat from Soft Drummer, and you should be able to achieve something both pretty and musical. The key being that the scapes are just adding flavour rather than being the main dish.

  • @Gaia.Tree Okay, so I just thought of it. Are there any tracks you are being inspired by/that closely represent what you're looking for?

  • @richardyot said:
    Personally I think that both Soundscaper and Fieldscaper can create really great atmospheric sounds, but if you want the results to be pretty or musical you have to layer other stuff on top and use the scapes as a background.

    For example create an atmosphere in Fieldscaper and layer some pads from a synth on top, add a beat from Soft Drummer, and you should be able to achieve something both pretty and musical. The key being that the scapes are just adding flavour rather than being the main dish.

    @jwmmakerofmusic said:
    @Gaia.Tree Okay, so I just thought of it. Are there any tracks you are being inspired by/that closely represent what you're looking for?

    Great info @richardyot , i will do some layering here.

    @jwmmakerofmusic i am going for my own slant on stuff like this

  • That Tim Hecker track is just stunning!

    I haven't used either app yet, but most of the sounds in that track sound like they're based on piano samples. Have you tried plugging in instrument samples? I would try a sample with some long sustained notes, without fast rhythms or complex harmonies.

    And yeah, putting the sound of a baby's laughter into any sampler always results in hilariously creepy results. Not that there's anything wrong with that :)

  • Ive been doing mostly field recordings at this point, but when im off the road and can set up my laptop , i will grab some good piano sounds from logic and try er out. Thanks for the suggestion

  • That's funny :) I recorded our cat's meow, then fed that as a sample in Dhalang MG, with lots of weird tweeks and mixing effects... then it started sounding like a baby giggling.

  • @Gaia.Tree Tim Hecker, gotcha. Downloaded the Ravedeath album and gonna give it a listen to see if Soundscaper is capable of producing the sounds you seek, or if other apps would suit better. (I still need to play about with Fieldscaper, lol.)

  • @Gaia.Tree

    So, I listened to Fog I-III a few times. In Soundscaper, the first trick is picking out good sample sources. Piano improve is a must. Another I think was a woodwinds section, although I may be wrong. In Fog II, there's an organ sound. Since this soundscape manages to be orchestral in nature, I would stick to using orchestral sounds (except for brass which will ruin the feel of a lush, beautiful piece of ambient).

    Now, for whatever reason, Soundscaper will only loop the first two or so minutes of a long piece of audio, which is a limitation (but then again, working within limitations has never stopped me from achieving greatness, and limitations seem to coax creativity in using both sides of the brain, both in critical thinking and in creativity).

    For a lush soundscape, do use the "less is more" and "keep it simple stupid" approaches in tandem. The digital manipulations of Soundscaper CAN elicit beautiful, softer glitchy sounds, but only if you treat it gently. Another trick is to use a DAW (preferably Auria and the expensive-but-delicious Fabfilter plugins) to chop up your sounds, apply filter effects (Pro-Q 2 is FLAWLESS at this), etc.

    And, for that analogue tape feel, do use the MasterRecord on the master track via Audiobus. It's not a perfect emulation, but it does give that nice tape effect with wow and flutter, saturation, degradation, the effects of each which can be subtle to obvious. Or conversely, record your final Auria mix to magnetic tape if you got such a machine and reels to spare, and record that output back into the iPad if you got a mixer hooked up via the camera connection kit. The latter choice WILL give you the tape effect but is a bitch to do. The former is the quick and easier solution.

  • edited January 2017

    I just invested in Cubasis 2, and the rest of my cash is going to the stuff that makes the money eg the hardware loopers, but big time thanks for the tips! auria is definitely on my list of apps to score this year.

    I will be futzing with Sound and Fieldscaper alot. I was going to return them but instead decided to keep them because they are now my only freaky sounding apps (I returned Moebius and Dedalus) and I believe I can gvet some heavenly soundscapes if I am patient.

  • Igor is so responsive he might even make a video focusing on this if you ask him

  • @Gaia.Tree I just thought up something else for you my friend. :) It doesn't matter what apps you use or don't use. One of the best ways to learn your intended genre is to try to recreate the track you like as closely as possible. You may not be using the same methods to gain the sound you desire as the musicians you admire, but you'll gain your OWN skillsets using the apps you have. This imitation track would not be intended for sale but rather for practice only, a musical study as it were. :)

    Then once you learn those skills, you may apply them to your own original track to wow us with.

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