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
Audio (not midi) looping for me then. It gives that human touch to the overquantised world we're living in
Ok good to know. I’m signing up to their forum and pleading to rectify this problem. Please do the same so we can get an iPad app or at least a working web editor.
@supadom Yes indeed, i mostly record in audio loops, this just makes editing a bit more complicated... Think bm3 is a good environment for this. If only it would have a drum sequencer mode as modstep does, that would make it perfect
I've stopped using midi loops because it is easy enough to get notes ending up in wrong places. Those first notes that get moved to the end and rolls not quantising properly...or simply wanting to be slightly behind the beat or to keep timing variations within the groove. Machines are still behind i think and even sequencers set on higher resolutions don't really understand some of those musical nuances.
Also with latency even at the minimum settings (especially in ios) one cannot be sure that issues are due to just sloppy playing. I also often export freshly recorded loopy loop to Samplr.
Yesterday Circuit gave me pain trying to reproduce a certain swing feel. I kept turning the knob around but I found no way to get there. I guess the machines are only as good as the man operating them.
@rjb they promised an ios editor since the beginning and I also asked them on twitter recently - they said it’s still in the works...
Ah, and of course there is Laplace. I didn’t like it much played on a keyboard but I bet it is ace with a controller like BopPad
Yes and mersenne is a good fit too. Tried both last night and has some really nice tuned percussion things going.
@lukesleepwalker How do you set up your Boppad? I'm seeing it's potential but I'm having difficulty getting it to work well with some of my apps....
Which apps? I've found that starting with notes and turning off CCs is a good starting place. Or the inverse.
Ok - I didn't think of turning OFF the cc's... DUH.
That's been driving me nuts. I couldn't stop all sorts of other things being triggered. The only thing I could get to work well was iSpark, and that's when iSpark decided to cooperate.
Once I do that I'll take another crack at getting the pad to behave with BM3.
Yeah bm3 really doesn't like the mixture of notes and CCs. Start with one and then judiciously add in the other after establishing focus actions, etc
Has any of you guys @dvlmusic @lukesleepwalker tried using AUs (Lorentz, Laplace etc) hosted in AUM? AUM generally gives you access to AUs midi ports and lets you midi learn as well as input the note/cc number.
I don’t know exactly what issues you’re having but if it’s midi learn then number input is a good solution. I remember Quneo drove me up the wall when trying to assign pressure messages as it was listening for everything that was being piped at it.
Yes, AUM is excellent for working out midi stuff with the BP and it's the best host for AU synths with BP. For triggering samples, BM3 is my fave.
@supadom Yes, I have gotten it to control synths but since I have it currently mapped to notes specific to iSpark and I haven't figured out a way to send program change messages from the iPad (yet!) I haven't used it much. At the moment I'm just creating multi-sampled drum kits from some sample packs I have. Hopefully in the next week or so I can dig a bit deeper into programming it.
Here's the reply I got from the folks at Keith McMillen when I asked about IOS support.
Please, everyone who has a BopPad or is planning on buying one, sign up to the forum and ask for support!
Good to know, thanks @RJB
So I just had a stroke of brilliance. I've been struggling with a way to send program change messages to the BopPad, so I was doing some Googling and it hit me:
Midi Studio Pro https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/midi-studio-pro/id590496392?mt=8
I had bought it a while back, but never ended up using it since I don't really use my iPad as a controller. I realized that they have a program change template in there, so I fired it up and it worked without any configuration!
Problem solved - now I can look into different presets for different apps.....
Good to know, another option is Side Car by Secret Base
design. Easy to program and I already owned it so, bonus!
Try the “web midi” browser app (free) with the web editor. It should work! I’m still waiting for my BobPad, so I can’t check it out right now.
That does work, but you can't use the web editor on iOS as none of the browsers support MIDI via web.
Well it has been a month since the last post here. I ordered a BopPad today. I am interested because I find that when I program music, people don't seem to react as enthusiastically to it as I had hoped. Everyone likes it better when you "play" music. I think that there is a suspicion that it "must be the iPad doing it," in the same way that some people don't understand that someone has to play the records people produce -- that DJing when done right is part of a dance culture that provides deep therapy and emotional breakthroughs -- and it may take months to get a track arranged and mixed right (or that hitting on a killer groove is a rare moment in years of work that cannot be just made up on the spot live).
The second big reason I am drawn to the BopPad (who named this thing, your mom?) is that I find myself (even when drawing out break beats) kind of stuck in a gridlock rhythm. I know one can add swing, and even putting random notes in a piano roll will generate combinations that could take years to discover naturally. But I know sometimes once I have kicks and snares down I have some extra accents in my head that don't always translate into the DAW so quick.
I might try to do some work in Audulus 3 to create some kind of performance arrangement Module/Ensemble. Perhaps @alecsbuga of Samplist or @brambos of the maker series could step in and adapt one of their creations to flex the muscle of this device. Maybe we should lobby Keith M. Inst. to send them each a BopPad to play with and spark their creative interest.
Finally, in the interim, what are people's thoughts since exploring this device over the last few weeks? Any magic setups?
For percussion sampletank pro ‘s sounds seem the best, for an easy mappable drum synth, definitely Stroke Machine
I'm using the BopPad primarily with samples dropped into BM3 and this works with no fuss. It's also fun to load up Beathawk as an AU in AUM and play with percussive samples (keeping the pitch bend on the BP to add some weirdness and Impaktorish vibe).
What's BM3 like for plugging a real bass or guitar in?
You mean for sampling?
I haven't figured out a good way to configure the BopPad with BM3... But then again I can't find a good way to do ANYTHING in BM3 as is confuses the hell outta me. I use the BopPad primarily with iSpark of I want to play "real" drums. Beathawk if I want my classic drum machines.
Have you set Focus Actions for each quadrant? That's how I set it up. Quadrant 1 to pad 1, Quadrant 2 to pad 2, etc. For fun, I'll assign the touch modline to a macro to automate stuff.
I'll have to mess with that - I can't seem to set an individual pad to play a One-Shot sample. The continuous controller thing (pressure on the BopPad continues to play note) is screwy with BM3 and I don't know how to turn it off.
Yeah - I'll have to read up on Focus Actions to understand what they do and how to work them....
OH! I'm glad you mentioned this as it was a headache for me. The solution is to go into the BopPad editor software and turn off all CC's being sent--just send the note on data per quadrant. Then go to Focus Actions and BM3 will associate the note on with a pad (save the template). After you've got the pads set, you can go back and turn the CC data back on and then associate that with a macro (if you want).
I used it with BM3 too, I really like the workflow. One problem however is recording double taps. Bm doesn’t record a hit before the previous one is released. You can hear it, but it is just not recorded. This is a pain with a percussion oriented drumpad as the boppad is. You can record into modstep however...
Hmmmm - I thought I'd done that but I'll have to check again.
I long for the days when they make the BopPad web editor into an app... or allow web MIDI with iOS browsers. Having to take this to the PC is annoying...