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.
Comments
Cool. I'll check out the 10mins thing.
Incidentally, if I've understood correctly the 8-hour timeout will be lifted in the 2020 Pro version. Not sure whether that means they're ditching the higher sub tiers altogether.
Is there a way to select the started root key? Or is it just random?
It's random if you're using one of the auto-creation methods; if you're creating it manually from a blank document, it defaults to C. But once it's created you can conveniently change the key in the general piece options under the mortar-board icon (second from right in the Mix view); scroll down to Mix Root, which is the first item in the Mix section. This global setting can then be locally overriden at Cell and Voice levels.
It's maybe worth adding for those coming to the 2019 version that the top-down workflow now looks like this:
What's great about this new workflow is that you can now very rapidly create and audition a series of constrainedly randomised mixes without having manually to create and save a new file each time as in previous versions. The instant albums introduced in the 2018 versions were a step towards this, but the Scheme–Flow model has almost completely superseded this for most purposes. (Albums are still great for creating a set of variations on an existing piece, though. You need first to go into the cell editor and export an individual cell as a template – actually a Noatikl file – and then it'll show up at the top of your Templates list in the Randomisation tab.)
Yeah I had a look, the sound engine does sound better improved, but the interface is harder to read on ipad 12.9 with smaller text (still ok just a bit more fiddly).
I wish they employed a good UI designer, they'd sell loads more I think if they got someone in to design it. The engine is really deep but the app is not the best use of it.
The player apps Wotja Box 19 and Wotja Go 19 have now been discounted to $3.99 each, and then will be discontinued after 31 December and not replaced. Wotja Go is pointless unless you have a burning need to stream to TV, as it's otherwise just a more limited version of Wotja Box; but at half the (already halved) price of the full version, Wotja Box could be quite an attractive option if you just want the top-down generative features and have no particular interest in going under the hood and editing the files and templates. Crucially, it does still let you define and save template sets (Schemes), and save pieces created on the fly in the Flow radio mode, as well as doing the instant-album thing. And if you do want to edit pieces afterwards, you can export them to the free Wotja, whose feature set does allow some editing – and then re-export them to Wotja Box as a way to get around the free version's 10-minute timeout. This last is probably too much faffing to be worth the $4 it saves, but it's worth mentioning because it's the cheapest way there's ever been or is likely to be to access (most of) the full Wotja feature set.
For anyone looking to pick up discounted wotja 19, the developer told me to wait for wotja 20 which will have a launch offer of $10 , only $2 more.
Now in the app store and it is indeed only $9.99 (with no play time limit); it doesn't say whether the price will later rise, but presumably it will as it's now cheaper than the sub version. No new sound modules in this version (which means that new presets in the free version should be back-compatible with the 2019 version), but a lot of excellent new designer patches and templates showing off the sound engine. Last year's new sounds focussed on strings and leads; this year it's all about the drones, an area where the presets had long been rather weak and overreliant on wavetable samples. I've struggled with building rich, complex drones in the synth engine – more about my limitations than its – so it's great to have a gallery of examples. And Open In now works again.
Bottom line: really strong version, puts drone textures back at the centre where they should be, many more built-in Schemes (especially in the drone department), and great value at the new price – but if you download the new free/sub version you can probably now get all the new sounds working in the 2019 Pro version, which is still great and has most of the same actual functionality.
Edit: Just found one potential showstopper: if you generate a randomised mix from a template that has a fixed melody in it, the pitches of the melody are now scrambled. This is apparently because they've got twitchy about copyright. I was puzzled why a Scheme I did last night in v19 produced unrecognisably different results this morning after the update: I'd transcribed the music boxes from a set of porcelain dolls for some creepy-doll madness, and v20 purposely garbles all the tunes, even though I don't see Brahms suing over his lullaby. This could have implications if you use drum patterns in randomisation templates. I hope they'll reconsider; it only impacts the geekier kind of user who hand-codes pattern strings, but it does break a lot of my templates for anything but handmade individual mixes.
Edit to edit: Apparently this is going to be fixed in an update; current behaviour is the default but will be togglable off. Phew.
This morning's update has fixed the melody-scrambling issue – or rather introduced a toggle setting that allows you to disable it. It's still on by default, but now in the General tab under the Settings gearwheel, you can uncheck Templates: Auto-Change Patterns (fifth item down).
I grabbed this since it's $10 purchase and not a sub now. One down side, maybe, is that the purchase version doesn't have "albums", which you can get in the sub-based version at only $0.99/mo. I'm new to Wotja and I don't really know what the difference between albums and flows are, but there are currently only two albums anyway.
Albums added in an update right after I purchased!
It does have albums ... added in latest update
Nice!
This is a useful question anyway: basically, Flows are radio and Albums are albums (i.e. collections of complete tracks). Flows use selections of templates (randomisation Schemes, which are editable) to create an endless stream of new tracks on the fly, which you can save as individual editable pieces (Mixes) and also (pointlessly) as single-track albums. Albums, or more strictly Boxes (user-editable collections) can be auto-generated in a similar way using the current Flow Scheme, or assembled manually (useful for organising your creations, as a kind of living folder); in the latter case you first create a Playlist (which is what it sounds like) and then save it as a Box (which includes the complete Mixes, rather than just a list of aliases, so you can then safely delete the originals). User-created Boxes stay in the main User view; the Albums tab is just for the two non-editable ones that come with the app, and for which the term "Album" is reserved as a special kind of Box.
The two built-in Albums aren't all that; they date back a few years to a player-only component (Tiklbox) in what was then a suite of half-a-dozen separate interoperative apps, now all integrated into the Wotja mega-app. They haven't been updated to take advantage of new sounds and features, and since 2018 it's been possible to generate instant Boxes from your own choice of templates (including your own saved Mixes), which are likely to be more to your taste. The built-in Albums also aren't editable, though they were in a previous version, so they don't help as tutorial documents either - whereas saving a Mix from a template and then looking under the hood can be really instructive in getting relatively painlessly to grips with the generative features in depth.
The omission of Albums from the 2020 Pro version seems to have been an oversight; they were there in the free/sub version, but one of the challenges for the devs is that they simultaneously release two versions on four platforms (and one each on three others) with attempted feature parity across the lot...
Thanks! I appreciate this detailed write up. It's close to what I assumed, but I wasn't sure what, if any, parts were static.
So, if I understand well, now with a one time purchase costing $9.99, you have all, no more to spend?
Am I wrong?
Thanks
Unless you want to use it commercially - eg as background music for commercial premises, soundtrack to public installation, or the like. These are covered by a variety of IAP subs in the free app, which is otherwise feature-identical. Also, the Pro version only gets updates to the end of the calendar year (there were 22 in 2019), though it keeps working thereafter and you can use it alongside other versions.
Good...Very kind for all the info. Thanks a lot
Is the price $9.99 for a limited time?
Yes is the intro price.
I don’t fully understand the EULA regarding use of the app on say an album or track released on a streaming service, or a live performance of said album or track. Seems unusual for software sold to musicians. Legalese isn’t my forte at all however.
And certainly isn't mine! But so far as I can make out there are no restrictions on what you can do with a piece you've recorded. Item 7C in the EULA imposes some restrictions that I don't quite understand on streaming live performances, but whatever the use case is that they're trying to exclude, it clearly doesn't apply to e.g. YouTube livestreams.
Intermorphic have had longer than most devs to think about the music-industry legalities of generative software, going all the way back to Eno's use of their software to make the Generative Music album, and they seem to have got particularly wary of copyright issues – whence this week's curious (and mercifully short-lived) venture with forced melody scrambling on templates with tunes, which seems to have arisen out of nervousness about where liability lies if we produce new works from the software transformation of copyrighted material. The EULA seems completely clear, rational, and backside-covering to me on all of this, but they've evidently had run-ins with the way the biz actually operates copyright law that are none of those three things.
Masanga-
I’ve just come back to Wotja after several years having been a big fan of Koan Pro over 20 years ago!
My biggest hurdle ( for my use case ) is syncing Wotja to another app which generates midi clock.
Wotja has a Midi Clock input, I can choose a clock source ( usually ) but I’m never sure if it actually works! The dev’s choice of “Midi Transport Control” which in the docs means MIDI Machine Control (MMC) seems very odd unless you are working in a theater environment or some thing. There’s no indication of whether the Midi Clock input has enabled start/stop/song position pointer ... my experiments suggest not.
I’ve tried to have Wotja sync to say an iOS drum machine or DAW via basic Virtual MIDI, by adding Wotja to AB3 as IAA ( at least it plays ) and in AUM ( just makes a horrible noise like the sample rates are mismatched... they’re not ).
I’ve seen a suggestion on another forum that adding Wotja to AUM and activating Link in AUM works with other Link enabled apps, but I don’t see how that is possible.
I’d value your thoughts on this aspect of Wotja... although if you use it standalone you might never have a sync need!
Thanks in advance
Yes, I've never actually tried clock syncing myself, though there's a bit about it in the new manual (just out today) which may or may not tell you what you already know; I haven't read far through myself since this latest version of the four beefy volumes dropped.
The much-missed Intermorphic forums used to be fantastic for this kind of thing, not least because it was full of absolute genius Koan Pro veterans who'd been using the various desktop incarnations for decades, as opposed to pathetically belated iOS noodlers like me. But when GDPR came in they couldn't face the legal hassle on top of their frenzied four-platform development schedule and so just shut the whole thing down. They're still really responsive to support requests, though.
Thx!
I love this forum!
I think everyone here has the scoop on this already, but Intermorphic have now put up a helpful video on sorting out IAA glitches (tl;dw version in the comments):
Thanks!
I have a feeling real Abelton Link support is in our future too!
(The unreal version for now is to host it in AUM, which supports Link at host level. But I'm not sure that quite solves clock sync, which I think is the main thing people miss it for.)
All I can say is - wait for Wotja 20.1.0 - out any day now!
Best to all,
Pete - Intermorphic
And it just me, Pete, writing all the code for all platforms
Tim handles absolutely everything else. Keeps us both busy!