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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Non-Step Sequencer with MIDI Out?

Erm...
This should be obvious but, for some reason, it’s not so clear to me. Which apps allow for a full MIDI sequencer with MIDI output? For an AU synth, it’s quite easy as you can record it in GarageBand and get the full piano roll, which sends data to the synth. But say you want to record something in a non-AU synth, like Thor? Getting the audio from that synth is easy enough. But what if you want to record a MIDI sequence and send it to Thor?
Pseudo-DAWs like Gadget only record things with their internal instruments. Just bought FL Studio Mobile in the hope that it’d allow this but it’s just like Gadget in this respect. Auria Pro probably does it. Missed the sale and it probably wouldn’t work correctly on my iPad 4.
Don’t need anything very elaborate. Just a way to record a MIDI track and output it to a Core MIDI synth (or, of course, do all of this within the AB3 MIDI section).

There are multiple step sequencers out there, but this is about “free play”, typically without quantization.

Comments

  • edited June 2017

    Modstep and genome(if i remember right) allows you record sequences without quantization. Modstep should be better if you want to record long stuff. Or did i misunderstand what you were looking for?

  • wimwim
    edited June 2017

    Infinite looper, Cubasis, Auria Pro, Modstep, BeatHawk, KRFT ... to name a few. All can record Midi, all can turn off quantize all can output to other apps.

  • tjatja
    edited June 2017

    You will need some sort of a step sequencer, which is where your MIDI will be saved in and sent to your synth . So, without such an editor it will be hard ;-)

    I don't know FL Studio Mobile, but most DAWs like Cubasis can do this, or as written above Apps like Genome MIDI Sequencer, modstep, Infinite Looper, etc.

    Maybe have a look into https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/19401/comparing-piano-roll-step-editors

  • @ToMess said:
    Modstep and genome(if i remember right) allows you record sequences without quantization. Modstep should be better if you want to record long stuff. Or did i misunderstand what you were looking for?

    Ah, so Modstep isn’t just a step sequencer! Good to know.

  • @wim said:
    Infinite looper, Cubasis, Auria Pro, Modstep, BeatHawk, KRFT ... to name a few. All can record Midi, all can turn off quantize all can output to other apps.

    Guess FL Studio Mobile is the odd one out, then. Well, with Gadget and GarageBand.
    Will try it in KRFT. Still trying to wrap my head around that one.

  • @tja said:
    You will need some sort of a step sequencer, which is where your MIDI will be saved in and sent to your synth . So, without such an editor it will be hard ;-)

    Well... My idea isn’t necessarily to edit MIDI on iOS. Just to keep a raw MIDI trace of my playing a controller plugged into Thor and potentially playing it back to the same app. Something like what GarageBand does with AU instruments or Gadget does with its own instruments. Step sequencing doesn’t really help when you’re playing freely with continuous control.

    Could be useful, yes. But not precisely the same requirements.
    It does sound like modstep would be my best bet. Might buy it after trying raw MIDI recording with MIDI out to Thor, in KRFT.

  • Then you want to record your playing and play it back.
    That's possible with any MIDI recording App like Cubasis or Auria Pro. n-Track 8 or Audio Evolution should also work.

  • @Enkerli said:

    @wim said:
    Infinite looper, Cubasis, Auria Pro, Modstep, BeatHawk, KRFT ... to name a few. All can record Midi, all can turn off quantize all can output to other apps.

    Guess FL Studio Mobile is the odd one out, then. Well, with Gadget and GarageBand.
    Will try it in KRFT. Still trying to wrap my head around that one.

    Hm... In KRFT, how do we get MIDI in? Is it supported?

    May have found my solution in BM2. Not ideal and, for some reason, it’s dropping some notes. But it does the job and it was already in my App Store account.

    Maybe my use case wasn’t clear. So, for documentation purposes (as these threads tend to come up again in searches)...

    Got a wind controller to drive Thor (notes plus breath control). Want to record my playing for future reference and playback while still hearing the sounds from Thor. (The same applies to other apps like Magellan, iFretless Brass, etc.)
    Using an AU, it’s simple enough to record things in GarageBand and get the full, raw MIDI recording with “automation” (all the CC values from breath control) for an arbitrary length of time, regardless of time signature or key. Just record a session and play it back at will.
    The same works well in Gadget for 16 bars with its own instruments, many of which tend to work well with my wind controller.
    But Gadget, GarageBand, and FL Studio Mobile don’t do MIDI out to other apps, it sounds like.

    KRFT now does, and it’d be possible to record stuff (up to 32 bars) on its keyboard interface. But that’s not the idea, here. (The limitation in terms of bars isn’t too much of an issue. Could use a very slow tempo, which would give me a bit of time to record stuff. But it’s not ideal either.)

    Chances are that most other (pseudo-)DAWs do it. They’re overkill, in many ways. And my experience with FL Studio Mobile makes me wearier (caveat emptor).
    Sounds like BeatHawk only does step sequencing, not raw MIDI recording (and it’s focused on building patterns). Maybe it’d work, but it’s far from ideal.

    So, modstep might indeed have been my best bet. Quite sad that it’s iPad-only, as that really decreases the app’s value, for me.

    Again, my scenario isn’t about building compositions by editing and layering loops. It’s about recording my noodling sessions to keep a trace of some fun stuff for future reference. It’s easy to record the audio, but keeping the MIDI means that it’s easier to keep track of the notes played.

    On a desktop OS, this is the kind of thing which is typically possible to do with simple utilities. Been using Ableton Live Lite because it’s on my machines, but it can be done in a variety of ways. Granted, many of those ways involve plugins but, at least on macOS, it’s easy to route MIDI to other apps. Notation/composition/engraving apps could also work, with the added benefit that you could get some form of transcription.

    At any rate, will use BM2 for now and it’ll teach me not to buy an app before thoroughly reviewing its features. Fairly frequently, the features which sound too obvious to check are the ones which make a difference. Given the Gadget case, it should have been clear to me that not all pseudo-DAWs support MIDI out.

    Still wish there an easier and cleaner way to do this.

  • @tja said:
    Then you want to record your playing and play it back.
    That's possible with any MIDI recording App like Cubasis or Auria Pro. n-Track 8 or Audio Evolution should also work.

    Ha! It does sound like Audio Evolution works, if it’s launched after Thor. Thanks for the suggestion! It has the same issue as BM2 with dropped notes and such, but it works overall, even without unlocking the Pro features.
    And it’s a bit less convoluted than most (pseudo-)DAWs.

  • I do the same as you, but I record in Cubasis so far.

    My "instruments": SoundPrism, Auxy, ThumbJam, GeoShred, NaviChord and ChordPolyPad.

    I did not check with automation or "breathing" as you wrote, but I seem to have read that Auria Pro is more advanced in this regard ...

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