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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Planning to release a few BM3 sample packs for Bass Guitar - Advice on on 'formatting' please!
I also posted this on the BM3 boards - I wouldn't normally post the same thing on two boards with some common users, but as you guys are probably the primary people who will be interested in this, I thought I'd take your advice too:
Hey all, I'm really enjoying working with BeatMaker 3 and it's amazing that a creative community is forming around it in this way. I personally moved into the electronic music performance area from instrumental performance, so I'm really enjoying exploring how to express creativity and expression with this different set of tools. While I've built up quite a bit of experience performing with iOS devices over the last 2 years I've never used such a deep sampler as this, so it's really great to see how other people are exploring it themselves and take inspiration from other people's creativity!
I want to use my bass playing in electronic composition as that's the skill I've really put the time into mastering, but I have a long term forearm injury (from playing too many gigs on upright bass in a row .. ) which is preventing me from playing much. Beyond the gigs I do to earn a living I don't really want to put much more time in, as it'll slow my healing or even make things worse.
I figure that the most time efficient way to do it is to make myself some sample packs of my playing and use those in compositions. In the spirit of community then it seems logical to make it available for everyone else too!
These are the 'themes' I'm thinking of:
Clockwork Bass - Various flavours of rock bass recorded with a 93 Status Graphite fretted electric bass, both DI'd clean and processed in parallel with various vintage and boutique effects that I acquired over a decade or so. Includes various types of fingers playing with lashings of slap, tapping, harmonics and a few other kinds of thumb technique, all on the agressive side of the spectrum.
This first one is already recorded and just needs preparing for release.
I'm planning for the near'ish' future:
The Harmonic Algorithm - I wrote a book last year by this title, which exhaustively extrapolates all possible Harmonic variations for performing on an electric bass using overtone production techniques. Much more on the experimental side. That's all I'm going to say about this one so far. Recorded on an 87 Yamaha TRB fitted with additional piezo transducer.
I'm thinking of doing a fretless bass bank too using my 87 fretless jazz, but that'd come later as fretless is my real specialisation and I can't play my instrument for long enough in one go at the moment to create something that I feel does justice to the craft.
What I'd like to ask is if anyone has any advice on how is best to 'format' the structure of the Clockwork Bass pack in terms of how to deliver the audio files and how to make it easiest for people to load them into BeatMaker 3 (The 'Harmonic Algorithm' pack is something totally different that'll make logical sense when it's all put together). For example is it possible to just make a special 'BM3 pack' that can just be imported, or should I put the files in a certain structure or something?
The primary consideration is that I've recorded everything for the Clockwork Bass pack as full 'tracks' with various sections that repeat logically based on the different subgenres represented, because I felt that this would better capture the dynamics and contour that naturally occur throughout instrumental performances of a rock track. I could just label them up and release, but perhaps it's better if I split them up into different sections and label them in a specific way or something? I've not really used sample packs much so not too sure of the 'standard' procedure that'll fit best with most people's workflow.
Cheers!
Oscar
edit: there's an error in the title but I can't scroll the text bar to edit it from my phone..
Comments
BM3 will allow you to import zip folders so just release it as wavs in folders. You can name the samples in some kind of numerical order for putting them on the pad banks. If they are multisampked instruments that's a little different though. If you use BM3 you just need to save your bank and copy the samples and then zip it and share it.
No idea what that is but I can't wait to find out
Good idea!
It's really a powerful sampler in Bestmaker 3, so it may be really good!
Very easy to do several velocity lsyer of the samples too...
Good luck!
If I understand correctly, you're planning to release a series of audio clips of your playing, rather than a bank of pads playable as an instrument? That's actually a really good approach since BM3 is so good at slicing things up and using them the way you want. It also addresses, like you say, the nuances of live playing in ways that no multilayer sample bank can. If people want to use them as loops, that's easy enough. If they want to chop them up and make banks out of them, that's easy too.
If I've got that right then, my suggestion is to craft a bunch of usable loops. My suggestions are: Take the time to make them so that they loop nicely without any other intervention. Name them so that the name includes both the key and the bpm. These steps will make them usable to anyone in any application, not just BM3. For BM3 users, take the time to slice them up and make sure the slices aren't clicky or anything. Also tag them (have to check if the tags are saved with the samples. Possibly not, if so then don't bother).
Other than slicing and tagging, I don't see any reason why your work should be limited to targeting just BM3 users.
@wim or anyone else - it may or may not seem trivial to make samples, loops and multilayer banks to you, but for the life of me, it's just oh so confusing. And I'd really love to be able to do this sort of thing too. Anybody up for a detailed video tutorial of your process to do these things?
This weekend was my first serious foray into sample slicing. I learned a lot. But it's not an area I'm experienced in practically and I would be likely to get a lot wrong and miss a lot of important stuff. I don't do videos and can't see myself having the time to write a good tutorial. Gonna bow out on this one - maybe just answer specific questions here and there if I see them.
Videos already exist. If you're serious about loop production look no further than Ableton Live.
Or maybe Logic...
Hi @OscarSouth - this post might be of interest to you on this subject: https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/comment/375831/#Comment_375831
Cheers for the advice all! Has been insightful and useful. Have been working on this here and there between other things. Sooner or later I'll focus on it and finish off the first pack.
I actually recorded the natural overtones for the 'Harmonic Algorithm' pack today, as I figured out 'theoretically' a really cool way of configuring them in a performative sense and wanted to try it out. I'll post up an example soon!
Overtones ready to export! I'm excited to hear how this sounds!
Awesome. Looking forward to hearing as well!