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.
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That is simply not the case here, any notes i record that are overlapped, play back overlapped, non share a note on event, i am not sure what you want, if a note overlaps others, then of course it will be on top of others, maybe i am misunderstanding this esoteric usage you have, but recording and then playing back multiple notes works fine here.
Thanks for the tip about the trash can. I don't know how I missed it.
Regarding the instruments, I started Mersenne and Phasemaker outside of Xequence, setting each app to its own MIDI channel for receiving. I then went back to Xequence, setting the default instrument to Phasemaker, and adding the 2nd instrument and setting its MIDI output channel to Mersenne's (Ch. 2).
I then tapped Play on the PolyHymnia project. Only Phasemaker is audible. Was going to delete the Phasemaker instrument and see if Mersenne could be triggered by PolyHymnia but was stuck because I'd missed the trash can.
I also a new project, set 2 instruments to the same synth app, but got stuck - just could not figure out how to sequence notes using the keyboard. I want to believe I can use this app - I really do, but last night's struggles were not encouraging.
@GovernorSilver it is currently not directly possible to route a single track to multiple instruments, only the other way around (multiple tracks to the same instrument). A workaround would be to duplicate the track and its parts, and then point that second track at the other instrument.
Also, the MIDI channel you set for an instrument only matters if you use multiple sounds from a single app. Otherwise, you can leave it at 1 and just set the destination app from the "Select MIDI Destination" dropdown.
@cian: I've just submitted a small bugfix update and I've slightly increased the contrast for the keyboard key labels, and slightly increased the brightness of the "Blue" color, which was probably the worst offender. Making the text white is not straightforward unfortunately. But this should help a bit.
And don't even mention old eyes -- I have -8 diopters and no spacial (or spatial? 3D) vision so I'm pretty much a deep sea fish when it comes to vision quality!
As SevenSystems already wrote, you need at least one track for each instrument.
This is not different to all other Apps I know of - Cubasis, modstep, Auria Pro, midiSTEPs, whatever else, IIRC.
You may get around this with the use of AUM, so that you send a track to AUM and AUM sends it parallel to multiple Apps. But I did not test this.
Another way would be, that Xequence supports Virtual MIDI and just outputs to its own port and multiple Apps can use that, I think.
@tja yes it should be no problem routing a single Xequence track to multiple instruments in AUM at once -- just set them all to the same channel, and then create a single Xequence instrument and point that to AUM and that channel.
Thanks. In the PolyHymnia Demos project, I assigned Instrument 1 to Phasemaker. Seems like all tracks in that demo project defaulted to Instrument 1. I then added Instrument 2, pointing to Mersenne. I changed one track to point to Mersenne. When tapped Play audio came only from Phasemaker.
I then created my test project, with two tracks, each with its own instrument. However, I got stuck as I couldn't figure out how to enter notes from the keyboard. Maybe I forgot hit Record? I was a bit flustered at that point from my various failures to get results from PolyHymnia.
@GovernorSilver yes, you can only record taps from the Keyboard screen while recording. If you want to enter notes manually, you can create an empty part by tapping "+" -> "Empty Part" in the arranger, then opening that part, then activating Draw mode (pen icon in the lower left corner), and then just drawing in the notes.
You seem to stuck deeply.
My recommendation:
Thanks @SevenSystems and @tja Looks like I need to take that masterclass, then give the intriguing new PolyHymnia another shot.
This may have already been answered but I'm having a tough time seeing if that's true: Is it possible to use Xequence to control Gadget when Gadget is hosted in AUM? I can easily get AUv3's playing in AUM via Xequence, and I can easily get Gadget playing via Xequence, but how does one have Gadget in AUM and played by Xequence?
I tried assigning the 2 instruments (for example) in Gadget to channels 10 and 11, and, in AUM, set AUM Destination for Gadget in the MIDI routing, but I can't get Xequence to trigger the instruments in Gadget this way. I've gotta be missing something..... Anyone?
Thanks!
PS - Why Gadget you may ask? I'm trying to figure out how to export each track if I use Xequence since I mix on a PC (Gadget makes this easy but I'm finding myself limited by the available instruments sometimes even though I own most of the IAPs). I know that you can record "per track" in AUM, though it's a lot more steps than the almost effortless export in Gadget.
You don't need to do any midi routing in AUM if you're just recording the audio, and anyway Gadget doesn't have multiple audio outs, so what you want isn't possible in one take. What you'll need to do is record the output of each of the instruments one at a time, muting the others in Xequence as you go. Since all parties involved have Link, you should have no problem lining up their start points on the PC later. Don't see a way around it, if I'm understanding you correctly.
@vitocorleone123 yes the MIDI part is easy -- if you load Gadget into AUM as IAA, Gadget will still be listed in Xequence ("Select MIDI Destination"), so you can point your Xequence instruments directly at it (not at AUM).
Concerning the recording of individual stems in that setup, unfortunately that's not possible in one step as @aaronpc stated.
Ah. Got it. I know Xequence isn't a host (some day is my hope!), so it's a matter of working around that. I knew there'd be no "convenient" way. I was hoping Gadget could be in AUM, but maybe I can figure out a way to get the MIDI from Xequence into Gadget or otherwise record it (worse case is using studiomux and recording the output on the PC itself rather than on the iPhone and then transferring it).
@vitocorleone123 Xequence becoming a host some day is not even that strange of a hope at all
Regarding importing the MIDI into Gadget: I haven't ever checked if Gadget has MIDI file import, but if it does, you would probably be able to export the MIDI from Xequence and then import it in Gadget...
But .. you can have Gadget in AUM. That's what they've been trying to say.
Great! But that gets back to my original post where I said I couldn't figure out the routing for Xequence -> AUM -> Gadget.
Don't you mean Xequence(MIDI) -> Gadget(Audio) -> AUM(Recording)? I think you just need to crack some manuals.
No, it just wasn't clear. That helps. But on the surface it appears to contradict what wim said. However, I now have another solution to try (yours). Thanks!
@vitocorleone123 as far as MIDI goes, you can just always route MIDI directly to Gadget, even when hosted in AUM.
And you can also route midi to AUM which will be routed to Gadget, but that don’t make any sense except if you need to use midi apps eventually through AB3. Easier to route midi directly to Gadget, which will be loaded as IAA in AUM for proper recording/processing together with other apps which Xequence will be able to midi control too if needed, and don’t forget to use Link and toggle AUM play button for proper sync, even for AU fxs like delays, etc.
iOS music is brain gymnastic, just open your apps shakra
Which host is easiest to use on iPhone for Xequence? AUM?
For anybody contemplating importing a midi file to Gadget, it's really not worth the effort.
It will remove existing gadgets from your project and replace with instances of Marseille Piano for every track of the midi file.
And those midi tracks will all be hacked into 1 bar pieces.
Pretty much the worst implementation of midi file import in all of iOS appland.
@gkillmaster yes, I would say so. On iPhone, it is pretty much the only option.
thanks!!
Ok, xequence heads, why can’t i produce sound this way? (When I swap in iGrand piano to the instrument, it works fine):
Is it because Mersenne is set to Midi channel Omni instead of Channel 1?
@johnfromberkeley Have you checked the midi input port in mersenne to see if it is set correctly? You didn’t include that bit in the screenshots.
And herein lies the problem I don’t quite understand, cc: @SevenSystems :
I think it is a problem with mersenne in that it doesn’t list its own virtual midi input port for you to select. There are some apps that handle their own midi ports in a similar, extremely limited way. I usually get AUM involved at this point, since most of the time it can see these invisible ports and you can route to them in the midi matrix.