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.
iMaschine?
Anyone using it?
V.1 was one of my first apps, years ago, but I never got into it. Still giving it no love on V.2, which seems a shame as it looks like a great app. I never see any talk about it though, so maybe it's a turd? Or, maybe everyone is indifferent?
Anyone using it?
Comments
iMaschine was a big part of my latest single, t3kn0 muziQ. Also, SynthMaster and GeoShred (and others), but iMaschine was the app that got it all rolling.
The 4 pattern limit makes it a bit confusing to arrange with, at least for my style of music. I keep it on my phone for occasional moments of inspiration. The app is a solid 6/10 in 2017. BM3 surpassed Maschine 2 for what it ought to have been, but BM3 is very much still an unfinished and flawed app. Maschine is more stable and polished but lacking in features.
I have made hundreds of demos with iMaschine. It's an amazing scratch pad but it is frustrating that it doesn't work with any other apps. I gave it up in favor of using other apps that would cohabitate better.
It's unfortunate because I got some really great grooves in that app. Now I never touch it.
It has decent sound libraries for ok price, drum samples is what i bought it for. But the lack of midi in/out and other stuff that seems like intentional crippling of the app, so that NI can sell more hardware. Regardless if true or not, the app itself is not worth using over some others. You can for example sequence drums and some bassline with it, but it cant go very far. It doesent integrate with synths in any way and only uses its sound libraries for sound, which is something im not into and which simply cant deliver what i want.
Beatmaker 3 is a lot better, even beathawk is a lot better. Hell if impc pro wouldnt be so unreliable, i would use it over imaschine(which tells a lot about the app).
I love the sounds, but not a fan of the UI, despite using Maschine daily on the PC. Would be great to hook this up to Odessa.
I used to use it to make loops for other apps, but now I just export the kits I want to use into BM3.
How You do it? Record by audioshare, or by export tool?
Maschine for iPhone is great too!
Get the kit you want
Then go to the Menu page and click on export for Machine
Name the export so that you know what it will come up with in BM3
Remember that it will export the other loaded kits too, so you may have to find the correct file folder. Once you get it to ‘Open In’ BM3, a dialog will come up in BM3 and tell you that it’s there
You can sound off each sample by touching the wave pic before the sample name. Find the ones you want and drag and drop them onto the pad of your choice
Keep iMachine handy for making sure it’s the right samples from the right kit you are using or if you want to copy their pad positions
Once done, don’t forget to save the kit as I often do! Lol
...
WOW, thanks, I was thinking If I need their ultimate collection. Now I know
Great walkthrough, thanks @Fruitbat1919
Just to add, don’t forget to add any choke groups you want for that kit be@Fruitbat1919
Remember you can make your own kits in iMachine from its mass of samples and then send them@Fruitbat1919
Also remember there are some keyboard sounds too!
Wow, I don’t have bm3 yet (Black Friday perhaps?) but this is very cool!
@Fruitbat1919 I did this last week and I'm still putting kits together in BM3 from imaschine 2 but definitely worth it! I still have love for imaschine but BM3 is my baby now
@Fruitbat1919 Very generous. And very clear which is appreciated by us slow boys at the back. Bravo.
Also check the tuning of the samples. Some of the kits have tuned samples that you'll need to replicate. I converted all the iMaschine 2 kits; it took a long time, but was worth it to me. If you are going to do multiple kits, don't forget you can export four kits at a time too.
BM3, iMaschine, Gadget, Beathawk... They all have their pros and cons. BM3 has the strongest workflow features, but is the weakest when it comes to content. To me, the strength of iMaschine is the SOUNDS. When they went from v1 to v2 they included all the expansions -- quite a vast and inspiring palette of sounds organized by themes or genres. (Not sure if this is still offered for new users today.) Beyond that, NI regularly stokes it with new expansions (driven by the continuous development of the Maschine hardware/desktop platform, which I also have), which is a great way to keep up with fresh new sounds and trends.
Since the iPad for me is mainly a sound module/inspiration pad, once I get a basic idea , I quickly export to the desktop, which IMO is still the best way to engineer, arrange, and finish, a project. Thus, the limitations of the sequencing engine are less of a concern for me.
Looking back at the app lists on my SoundCloud page, it appears that iMaschine played an essential role in 5 out of my last 6 projects (6th one was done mostly in Beathawk).
I have all 4 of these apps, and wouldn't want to be without any of them (still haven't found time to seriously dig into BM3), but iMaschine has definitely been a major sound tool for me so far.
I loved on iMaschine HARD for a long time. Hell - the album I did a couple years back was made mostly from iMaschine demos blown out into full tunes. I've got about 15 songs from iMaschine 2 that are going to be the next album if I can ever get around to finishing them.
The pisser for me was the extreme difficulty in extracting the MIDI performances from iMaschine. At the time (2-3 years ago) I had to export them to Maschine files, open them on the desktop and then export them track-by-track as MIDI files. Then I had to import them back into whatever the host was (Auria Pro was my first attempt) and recreate the arrangement there. And unfortunately Auria Pro wasn't as good a MIDI host as I would've liked.
So now I want to import those MIDI files into Xequencer but they've yet to implement the MIDI file import.
Anyhoo..... yeah, love the idea of iMaschine but just wish I could either sync it with other apps or export raw MIDI data.
Thanks for the replies. I will proceed to mess around with it in a limited/sound-source/demoing capacity.
Imaschine is good for soundbanks at a pretty great price...other than that it’s having kool aid but no sugar...
Kinda like beathawk...only beathawk is better in my book than imaschine as far as sound quality... neither one can come close to the power of bm3...
Toast.
BM3 certainly has a higher top speed, but Beathawk gets from nought to sixty a lot quicker...depends what your journey calls for.
Eye keep all of them, find the change up in workflows stimulates different outcomes
Such as?
So finally fiddling with the excellent @Fruitbat1919 tutorial above and thereafter playing around a little in the app itself. Is there no way to hook up external keys to this thing? I find it a bit of a struggle to get things right (too used to having a piano roll to fix things in), but might find it easier if I could play stuff in, rather than battering with the fat fingers on the glass....
nope, no core midi, if it had that and more tracks like 8, or even 16 It would be a contender imo, especially since you can open its projects in the desktop version. I mainly just use the expansion packs for it in BM3.
Thanks for the confirmation, was hoping that it was just my stupidity getting in the way. Still, it IS a hell of a sound/sample module for BM3 etc.
Ah, iMaschine. I loved on you so much for so long. I'm still angry that they refuse to add the most basic of features.
@johnfromberkeley I didn't catch your previous question when you posted it. My current workflow that has replaced my iMaschine beat-making is using AUM , Rozeta and anything else AU. Infinitely more options should I decide to take a beat and blow it out to a full tune. Rozeta changed everything for me.
Doh...can't believe I'm so late to the game on knowing this. Reinstalled iMaschine and have exported a few kits...nice
Thanks great tutorials!
Can the samples from iMachine for iPhone be easily exported for use elsewhere ?