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.
LayR Demo: Modulation overload
In this recording I went deep into LayR's modulated world for an experiment to see how far it could be "pushed." Verdict: very far!
—
A forewarning…This is not "music." It's semi-controlled, multi-tracked chaos. But it had to be done. I am learning that this synth can become a lot more than the presets demonstrate—should you want it to of course. In this "track" I have recorded 4 passes into AUM straight from the main out of LayR with the only channel effect being a limiter (NoLimits) to save my ears. Most all of the modulation changes, noise animations, sweeps and fades were done in real time using the LFO shape and speed parameters set to modulate the filters, panning, mixer, OSC morphing, amp mod and phase to varying degrees. The "drums" at the "end" were also created in LayR and sequenced with the arp. The glitchy delays were achieved by going to town on the master fx delay parameters while I was recording.
This might not be the best example of how far LayR can be taken. BUT, I am fully convinced of its power as a serious sound design tool after using it these past couple of days.
Comments
Wicked sonic mayhem right there!
Wow. That's some great synthing right there. My compliments to the chef. One question: how the hell do you program that? Do you just engage the keyboard hold and have at it? Do you take breaks to rest your ears? Is the key left on while you make dinner and then come back to tweak more lfos? Genuinely curious. These drones always boggle my mind.
Nice noodling, it's on my "get very soon" list in permanent marker.
That answer varies somewhere between "I have no idea" and very specific equations. It's usually a lot of accidents, most of them happy. But also somewhat knowing which parameters to focus on. For these evolving creepster style patches the recipe is usually some painfully slow LFOs paired with some psychotically fast LFOs with a variety of waveform shapes deployed to all available outlets. Usually the fast goes to the parameters that will make the most amount of ruckus, and the slow goes to the backbone of the patch, something that only slightly varies over time, or at least goes from subtle to extreme at a very slow pace. After a heaping pile of noise makers are setup then it's just a matter of hitting record, engaging keyboard hold most of the time, playing a chord and then turning the knobs that do the most damage when needed, or setting them up to respond to the modwheel, etc. And yes, I do take breaks. A lot of them. And my neighbors hate me beyond belief.
Thanks!
@brice Most of my interrogation dreams sound like this.
I won't ask a thing @JohnnyGoodyear
Now this is more interesting. First bit of music I've heard that gives me some hope that LayR may find its way into my life. Got any more? Anyone? Would love to hear something also with a wider frequency range. See how deep and high this thing can go.
Excellent stuff @brice and it sounds a lot more like music than when I quite purposefully tried to use up 256 layers.
Cool work.
Me too, this has got my attention. @brice - what device are you using? If I could do something like this with it on my Air 2 it might find a way into my toolbox...
awesome, send me some presets, get your name in the app
haha! That is actually quite hard work!
Air 2 is what I use on stage, in the studio etc, no problem @128 voices
While my music is more ambient, I love this glitchy stuff myself, and I'm realising that we really do need more presets that can demonstrate this, so please, if you make some great sounds, send to me and I'll put them in the app
If I can recreate that soundscape on my Air2 I'd be tempted.
You definitely need demos of it pushed to its full potential - big evolving sounds and clever arps - that would push a few of us who already have hundreds of synths off the fence.
I use a 12" Pro currently, but I just tested all of the patches I used in this recording on my old iPad Air and the highest I saw the CPU meter hit in LayR was 63%. Which I'll admit is high, but that is quite an old device and it didn't hiccup, stutter or crash. I'd say you're good to go!
That would be awesome! I've got a handful I could send you right now, and another handful on the way. Where should I send them?
zip them up and mail them to: support at livingmemorysoftware dot com with PRESETS in the title
( I'm sure you know why I mangled that address here)
Also write a little note letting me know the name you'd like to be known by in the preset notes.
BTW: A bug in v1.0.2 means that notes & tags attached to presets are not being written out to the files, this will be fixed soon. So if you have any particular tags that you've attached to the presets in the file views, list them in a way that I can copy when I integrate them.
Just re-listened to the recording I posted above and hadn't realized how much damage was done by Soundcloud's compression. Kind of shocking how much was shaved off of the original
If anyone is interested in hearing a more accurate representation of LayR's sound engine, you can download the uncompressed WAV files here:
Part 1
Part 2
the mail address is also on our site in the layr page
http://www.livingmemorysoftware.com/layr.html
Sounds great! I'll tidy up the names and notes and send them your way soon.
Ah thanks for the confirmation, sounds like a go-er then. Would love to hear more tracks like the one you posted earlier - loved that!
Thanks Monzo. I'm certain there will be more to come!
If you'd like, here are all of the LayR patches I used in that track. Have fun!
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/g6ltwr82f5z2xbm/AAC5EOeGo1DI3Ja_bpdMmnfXa?dl=0
GET TO IT! I love this thing, but half of the love is feeling certain about the wide range of what some of you (us) people are going to make and share with it...
Definitely more tempted after hearing that so thanks for posting, when I'd thought I'd made my mind up... I think that I've not really found anything inspiring in hearing the current presets to sway me so far.
Same here. Not swayed by any of the preset generated demos at all. The arp functionality looks very interesting though, but no midi out of that yet. Might wait for the next update and see if midi out get implemented and maybe some more presets that I dig a little more.
I think that's the thing a lot of other developers and companies will have various sound designers and testers making patches for the initial release but for a first time synth developer (I think it's his first one) it's probably not easy to get loads of great patches out early to advertise it.
Any place I could find those presets please?