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.
Please review my setup
I want to say thank you to all the folks here. I have not posted much but I learned a lot here already. I was hoping you all could look at my draft live setup and let me know if
- I am missing anything
- There is a better option for what we want to do
I am super new to (attempted) iPad music, like 2 weeks. But I've been doing digital recording for 20 years, analog since I was a teen. My current band has been guitar, bass, drums, all of us sharing synth duties. So I've been a regular midi user for a long time. But unfortunately our drummer is moving.
We decided we're going to try sampled/electronic drums, at least for live. And if we're going to do that, might as well use the laptop/iPad for synths too right? The two remaining of us actually can play acoustic drums too, as far as album recording goes. BUT despite playing in more rock groups forever, we both really like a lot of sampled sequenced music, so thought this would be fun to try.
I give that background so you have an idea of what I know and may not know.
Here is what we need to do:
- Small portable setup - I have guitar, pedal board, and amp as well (may switch to guitar amp sim and powered monitor for all this tho)
- Ability to launch horizontal or vertical 'scenes' with a foot pedal - since we play guitar or bass.
- Trigger individual track patterns in or out, doesn't need to be midi pedal but would be nice.
- Play along with drum machines or synths
- Record, like a looper, live, overdubbing over existing metronome-ish part, e.g. shaker, hats. Midi is priority, audio would be nice.
- Import our samples from desktop
- Save songs with all parameters intact - o m g. This was not on our original needs list, can't believe this is a concern.
- Tempo change by scene
- Odd time signatures
- Stability! This is for live usage, I have a nice home studio with all the stuff and things.
Here is what I've got working or contemplated now:
- McMillen USB midi controller, k-board
- To be determined, USB midi foot pedal, maybe the McMillen one
- USB powered hub
- Camera kit
- iPad
- Modstep - Main midi workstation. Has different time sigs (effectively with different steps), lets me trigger scenes with ccs or notes, wish I could do 'next scene.' Can't find anything that does all this. Once I learned what all the icons are, it is pretty easy to overdub midi, build a song live, AU synths work fine as is.
- Bismark 16i - for multi-layered samples. Also is easier for me to sample my own stuff on the desktop and make it into a soundfont, than individually importing samples in Modstep.
- AudioBus - AB is better saving the midi setups for midi out to hardware synths. I can re-enable them in Modstep, but that is annoying. Also seems to be more stable with IAA plugins. I am frankly about to drop any IAA plugins, all the crashes I've had have been able to be narrowed down to
- AudioShare for importing from Dropbox
- ->Scarlett 2i2 for balanced outs
With those needs, anything you'd do differently?
Thanks.
Multicellular iPad noob.
PS
I also looked at Beatmaker3, can't stand the interface.
Cubasis & Auria - can't tell if there is scene launching or pattern launching via midi
LoopyHD - no song parts afaik
Group the Loop - No tempo change
Infinite Looper - No tempo change, yet
Korg Gadget & Beathawk - Got frustrated when I couldn't answer half my above needs questions in a half hour per.
Comments
Think your current set up sounds like about as close as you're going to get for your requirements.
Appreciate your taking a look at it!
I hate to say it, but the more tasks you rely on the iPad for live playing the worse off you are. It can be amazing, but have backup plans. Every time I’ve played a gig with it I’ve had to reboot. Fortunately, it usually happened in a way that wasn’t noticeable, but the iPad was only used as a keyboard sound source and the rest of the band carried on until I quickly fixed it. You are probably better off with a laptop for all you want to do. I think you can get close with iOS but prepare yourself for frustration.
Sounds wise. So, given our above needs, would you instead just use the iPad for the drums/percussion? We have other hardware synths, which I've been able to control with Modstep, but if that failed, could also simply unplug and play.
Either way, we plan to test a lot first. Have a couple backup plans. One, Boss RC3 can be straight backing track player. Or just switching to playing more chill versions on guitars w/out and backup. We actually sometimes do acoustic gigs, so that's not a big deal.
Even if we go with a laptop, I'll already have a lot of midi sequenced that has been easy to export/import. Most of what has been previously played live by our outgoing person. And I've been able to do it while I'm on the subway. So all the investment is useful regardless.
It should definitely work to handle your drums. Out of the 120 some apps I have, only 5 are drum apps. So, maybe someone else will know a Drum app that fits your needs. Finding one that will change the tempo by just triggering a new pattern might be difficult. I usually stay in one tempo. Odd time signatures aren’t as much of a problem. I used to be a drummer for 15 years and I often will not buy apps that cannot do various time signatures. I’ve heard Auria Pro can set up tempo/time signature changes anywhere in the timeline. I don’t have Auria but I think it may still be on sale. Don’t know about scene launching in it, I’d guess it doesn’t.
Finding the sampler in Modstep works for many things, electro drums fine. When I need velocity layers, I've made some SF2s on the desktop and run them in Bismark 16i. And Modstep allows changes of tempo per scene, so that's all good.
I mean having to make Soundfonts takes a bit of time. I found some I sampled/assembled on an older hard drive....from 2001.
I have many more SFZ. Just found some converters yesterday.
Loopy with a foot controller running in audiobus with some effects on different tracks is a super powerful setup, auto loading and state saving are amazing but not all apps support these. AC Sabre as a gesture controller could add another dimension to performance and is very expressive once calibration is done. I would add Ableton to your iOS setup, link is widely adopted and Ableton project export is good way to build a sketchbook..
I've only played live with an iOS device a few times. There are some battle tested folks here that could give you better advice but since you're new to it all, two bits: Turn off bluetooth, turn on airplane mode and then hard reboot. Leave it in airplane mode until after the gig. Helps with resources, blocks updates, notifications, etc.
Great advice. It is also a good idea to have a hardware sequencer running alongside that will keep playing when iOS packs up. I bought Novation Circuit for that. One hands fiddles with macros while the other one reboots everything.
Great. These are some of the concrete things I had not thought of. I am comfortable with the risk, have already been playing with a fully midi controlled guitar pedalboard and have learned some great similar tips the hard way (like that my expression pedal has a tiny calibration knob...causing wild delay feedback one show ha)...
Ya. All this gadgetry makes me nd my bandmates sound like 2x 3x the people, which is so fun, but worst case scenario, we have our plain old guitars and vocals.
Cool. I used to have a Source Audio Hothand, similar tho simpler idea for guitar pedals. Couldnt get the hang of that though. Turns out I have a lot of subconscious hand movements when Im playing.
If anyone happens upon this thread, looking for something similar. Some updates.
-Had to get over the Beatmaker interface. Bismark 16i is squishing transients and glitched out on numbers of velocity layers that gave Beatmaker no problem. Perhaps the polyphony, which I don't know how to limit in Bismark?
-The Keith McMillen Softstep 2 works plug n play with iPad and Modstep to change scenes. I changed the ccs as to be easier to remember / but yes worked right off. The McMillen app couldn't be easier, simply click pedal, choose type of message sent, type in cc# x 10, hit save.
-I should have know to look for this (my guitar pedal board is complicated enough to require a spreadsheet) but I exceeded the total current on the cheap usb hub I got and it wasn't charging the iPad. FYI Vantec 4 Port USB 3.0 Aluminum Smart Charging Hub (UGT-AH400U3-3C) works to connect and power (at this point, the two McMillen controllers, the Focusrite 2i2, and optionally 2 synths (Minitaur and Monologue) to the iPad.