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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Drumjam - Midi "Clock in" to manage Loopy's timing

edited December 2012 in Support and Feedback

Hi All,

I'm trying to sync Drumjam's clock to Loopy HD. I'm doing this because I noticed it in the Youtube on the Audiobus site called "Audiobus: Using Loopy HD to loop Jamup wiht Funkbox/Soundprism Pro filtered by Nlog." In this video the user selects the "clock in" button on the midi routing tab under settings. My questions:

  • I followed the same procedure for Drumjam, but there were problems. Drumjam's tempo jumped by 50 bpm, presumably b/c that's what Loopy told it to do. Is it a bad idea to move the tempo slider in Drumjam? Is there a general procedure to follow to make this work well?

  • Also related to Drumjam, whether using clock in or not, I can't grab a clear 4 bars or whatever into a Loopy HD track. The procedure works well in Funkbox; what am I missing?

  • Also related to Drumjam, I had both Sunrizer and Drumjam open in audiobus to send tracks to Loopy HD. I was a bit surprised to find that while playing Sunrizer I was triggering Drumjam's drums. Is this a bug or a feature, and if it's a feature, can I turn it off?

Thanks!

Comments

  • Okay now let me amend that, because I just tried to record Funkbox into Loopy and I'm not getting it right. The orange pre-count light is not moving around the circle, just hovering at around 2pm. Feel free to send me to a manual or whatever; I'd just like to get back to recording...

    Thanks!

  • And to make things more confusing, when I said "Sunriser" above, I meant Soundprism Pro.

    --Adam

  • I find that using DrumJam (or another app) as the MIDI clock master, and Loopy syncing to that works more reliably. It is possible that something in the clock start mechanism of Loopy injects some spurious clock ticks that might be confusing some apps. I'm working with Michael on figuring that out.

    First, make sure that only one app is sending the MIDI clock... the easiest thing is to go to each app and make sure that none of them are actively sending clock to Loopy. Then in Loopy's MIDI settings, choose the app that you want to receive clock from. You can do it the other way as well, the important thing is to make sure that only one app is sending clock.

    In Loopy's Track Management settings you want to turn Synchronize Tracks to ON, and Count-In recording to ON. I prefer to turn Count-Off recording to OFF, so that I can choose how long the loop will be (quantized to nearest bar) in the heat of the moment, and also allows for loops of varying bar lengths.

    Now, in this example where DrumJam is the clock master, you'll want to hit play in DrumJam, and let it run for at least a bar before you hit the record for Loopy. Loopy will wait until a bar boundary before starting the record automatically. Then when you want to finish your loop, hit record again sometime during the final bar you want to record. It will automatically finish at the next bar boundary. Loops made in this way I find are almost always perfect.

    If you are recording built-in loops from DrumJam you'll want to mute them after you finish recording them as a loop into Loopy, the easiest way is to turn the L.Vol down all the way, or mute all the components on the mute/solo page, or use the Fade Out button in DrumJam which will fade the loops but not send a MIDI clock stop message.

    If you want to record a live pad performance instead of loop patterns, you'll want to just mute all the instruments in the current pattern or turn L. Vol all the way down before you hit Play. That way the clock is started properly and your pad playing will be quantized appropriately with the loop boundaries. Or you could connect DrumJam's Instrument Output port in audiobus instead of the main output, by hitting the blue disclosure arrow on the DrumJam entry in the Audiobus Input slot list, and choosing it.

    In just testing this I realized that v1.1.1 of DrumJam is mysteriously missing its Play/Pause audiobus side-panel button, which makes it easier to use when it is the clock master. I'll fix that shortly for the next update, sorry!

  • edited December 2012

    Regarding SoundPrism controlling DrumJam's pads via MIDI, make sure that you uncheck sending MIDI to DrumJam in SoundPrism's Sources and Destinations MIDI prefs. It appears that SoundPrism automatically enables output/input to any app's virtual ports.

    I'm going to hereby suggest to Sebastian that in this new age of Audiobus, he should make it NOT connect to other apps' ports by default!

    I think a good convention for all apps to follow is to never connect to any other (previously unseen) app's virtual input or output ports by default, only connect them when the user has intentionally done so in the past, via stored state.

    Connecting hardware device inputs is totally fine (and preferred) by default, I think.

  • Very informative, thanks a lot!

  • Hi Sonosaurus,

    Thanks so much for explaining this. I've practiced it and can now get a reliable drum loop every time. I really appreciate it! Also, the Soundprism fix was exactly what was needed.

    --Adam

  • edited January 2015

    Had trouble, posted, persisted, persevered. Got it.

  • ++ Explanation. Appreciated.

  • I think it should be up to the musician to decide what they want connected and I think this same line of reasoning extends to hardware too. It's certainly possible to have multiple midi controllers hooked up via a USB hub to an iPad and wanting to use different apps with different hardware. As the capabilities of the iOS devices increases, I think we'll see more of this. Having a default to connect to hardware is fine, but I believe it's equally important to have control over turning it off too. That's where state saving can be so useful in Audiobus if you can setup chains of apps and the midi to control them and then save it.

    Some of the most difficult situations are where apps broadcast their midi on fixed channels with no way of turning it off or changing it or apps that listen to all midi which can lead to trying to figure out work arounds which takes you away from the creative process. Being able to have app specific virtual midi ports where you can specify the channel seems ideal.

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