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.
Poll as regards ease of use [Modstep/BM3]
I have fiddled with both, nibbled would be better said, just a little, enough to think, hmmm, could be lovely, but I think the time has come to try once again and dedicate some proper learning.
- In your opinion, starting from square one with both, which is easier to make progress with..35 votes
- Modstep20.00%
- BM380.00%
Comments
BM3 is the greatest iOS app I have ever used. I gave Modstep a shot several times and while I got value out of it BM3 simply takes my all time favourite way to make music (sampling / audio collage chopping in a PC daw) and brings it to a whole new couch friendly tablet place, with pads to tap to boot. In many ways it is starting to rival the PC daw workflow for me. Certainly calls me to it a lot more now. Just recently BM3 has really started to become transparent for me with the focus being on the composition and ham* steering. This is a place modstep never got for me in the same amount of time.
*happy accident machine
I wish you would do a video @AudioGus on how you get the most out of BM3
You talk my language:
happy accident machine
audio collage chopping
+1
BM3 is taking me a while to find my way around at the moment. Silly little things like file formats and how to control the play head on a sample while editing it and stuff like that. I was getting the hang of time stretching a sample tonight to fit the track bpm so that was fun. The BM3 forum always has quick answers though.
BM3
Undo
Panning
I have said.
BM3 no doubt. And I say this even though I use Modstep daily.
Don’t get me wrong, Modstep is a beast and super capable but BM3 iOS the mother of all DAWs IOS right now IMHO. Cubasis and Auria are must haves as well!
You are a generous man.
I love BM3. It will be a game changer on iOS once a few kinks are ironed out but for fast midi sketching, Modstep is still ahead in my opinion
BM3 BM3 BM3 when we wanna compose we all BMThreeeeeeee
Both are wicked good, but Modstep needs to be approached with pretty clear vision for the ‘final destination’ already in mind in order to get the best out of it. BM3 is much more easygoing in this regard, and gets my vote for that reason.
The problem I have with both these apps, and similar ones, is the complicated and sometimes confusing workflows. It’s fine if you’re using them regularly, but if you have a butterfly attention span like mine, and are flitting from app to app and platform to platform, then revisits are on the terrifying side.
I really got into BM3 when it came out, but then left it a few weeks. When I went back in I’d forgotten where everything was and had to relearn it, by which time my song idea had been forgotten, and Mrs Monzo was telling me my tea was ready.
More a reflection of my own stupidity, but I haven’t used BM3 for a while now because I’ve totally forgotten how to use it. In my defence I’ve been relearning Maschine, and getting to grips with Reaktor, but I do wish apps would agree on some kind of standard workflow.
I’ve done the same with BM3, it’s a foreign land every time I return.
But I’m also glad there is no agreed standard workflow. Knowing people involved in software it would end up the worst of everything..
Modstep took me a while but one learned now I can return to it without being unfriendly and relearning is rather quick. With BM3, still I haven’t managed to integrate it in my brain ( ok, my second child came right after it was released so had few quality focus time...). But honestly I think I will manage to make it mine.
File formats, playhead control, instruments as a single pad: I haven't had a Really satisfying BM3 session yet. It's like the early days for Modstep, but with Modstep I was oddly driven to unlock it. I felt really creative using it, whereas at the moment BM3 kind of leaves me cold? Sounds crazy to put into words. The workflow of @AudioGus does sound great, and I'd love to see it too.
We are most certainly different men, but in ways cut from the same cloth. All of this is in my own writing except for the bit about the MIssus and the tea. Lucky bugger.
There was a bit of a learning hump for me with BM3, particularly with navigating the app in early versions. In the beginning there were times when I would just hit a button and be like... now why am i here? Where do I want to go? ...and just sort of stall. There were bugs that sullied the first impression for sure in this regard too. But now it is all super logical and once you logicaly anticipate the connections, which is now possible, it is so smooth and elegant. Select a pad inside a clip in the song editor and when you hop to pads, boom you are on the right pad. Select a clip and when you turn on the mixer, bammo, you are on the right track.
Things like the playhead, not being able to just slide it somewhere and play when I want where I want was frustrating at first, but over time i just got used to setting sections of loops and working within them. It feels a lot like Circuit in this way. It is actually awesome to just sit, listen, play along, and not be playhead scrubbing, heh.
Now with unlimited banks BM3 really shines. Being able to quickly copy pads within a bank or from one bank to another, or save a bank and load it in a new one, make tweaks/variants etc takes the pressure off of trying to modulated everything to conserve banks, which used to be limited to eight, but is now unlimited. Spend those banks now! Spend those pads! Copy / tweak samples like crazy and watch your cpu barely go up.
Anyway, had BM3 not recieved several amazing updates and I was stuck with the first version, or even if the last update had not cone out, I would hardly be raving about it or really using it much. It has come a long way in so short a time.
This is now 80% of where I will spend my music making time.
I’m still a fan, and at some point I’ll dive back in. My brain’s a bit tired from learning loads of other stuff at the moment, so I’m sticking to what I know and being a bit more productive as a result.
Lucky if you like fun-free vegetarian dishes that are usually a very slight variation on the thing you had the night before...
Umm, never bought Modstep. I did belatedly buy BM3, and I think the sampler bit of it is really good, but I don't really fancy using it as a DAW. I just create some weird sounds/sequences in there, and get the hell out. I import the resulting audio into Auria for arranging/inserting into a track.
Hear hear. With all those shiny apps it became difficult to stick to some and master them.
Imagine a little kid going into an instrument shop. Wanting to learn all of them and never got to master any.