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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Senode aleatoric "live jam" (w/ Zeeon, FieldScaper, Borderlands Granular, Dedalus delay, etc.)

...and by "live jam" I mean I set up the network and pressed play. :smirk:

A bit of a change of pace from the more performance based pieces.
I wanted to create something in the vein Eno's Music for Airports but with a denser, harder tonality and timbral quality; sort of Blade Runner-esque... so... Music for Spaceports?

What I love about the Eno's ambient work is that it's not just monophonic drones or atonal noise. There's melody and harmony and an evolution, but no "progression" per se. The beginnings and endings of songs are arbitrary, in truth the pieces are endless, eternal.
He did it by phasing musical phrases so they never quite line up. My approach here has more regularized timing, but the semi-randomization in the network allows a constantly changing harmonization that seems like its going somewhere but doesn't. Almost like a Shepard tone.

This is probably the simplest Senode network I've built, and I'm sure it's not for everyone, but I find it oddly compelling.

Senode network driving a couple instances of Zeeon synth.
Hosted in Audiobus2 and AUM, with Borderlands Granular and processing by FieldScaper in looper mode, Dedalus delay, EOS 2, and Stereo Designer.

Visuals from TouchDesigner with realtime elements being triggered by Bluetooth MIDI from the Senode network.


Also, I was hoping to drum up renewed interest in Senode as I wanted to make sure development continued on this wonderful app. Maybe not direct influence, maybe the zeitgeist, but happy to know things are stirring again...

Comments

  • Very interested in Senode. Thanks. $10 seems a bit high but interesting. I'll check out the video demo's to see if it's a must have. This piece probably doesn't showcase what might make it worth $10. I like the look of the GUI but I'm sitting on my IO$ budget... Labor Day should offer some compelling discounts, right?

  • Huge Sound @aplourde ! Nicely done!
    Great on good headphones... πŸŽΆπŸ‘πŸ˜Ž

  • Thanks for this, I never heard of Senode.

  • Senode is similar to Rozeta Cells. Not exactly the same, but you can get similar results.
    If you like Cells, then Senode is a step up in complexity.

  • Nice track. Sounds great cranked up loud. B)

  • Nice. My kinda jam.

  • Great. Love it!

  • This is so much more inspiring than the typical 'thumpy thumpy disco beat' stuff. It would be nice to see your routing so we can try to copy.

  • Thanks everyone! I appreciate the kind words.

    @McDtracy said:
    Very interested in Senode. Thanks. $10 seems a bit high but interesting. I'll check out the video demo's to see if it's a must have. This piece probably doesn't showcase what might make it worth $10. I like the look of the GUI but I'm sitting on my IO$ budget... Labor Day should offer some compelling discounts, right?

    Senode is unique (in the iOS world). It allows controlled randomization. A big issue I have with most apps that have randomization is that they are too random. Sure they will limit to a particular scale, but that is typically too much of a spread. Since you build the graph in Senode, you decide when things are linear or when they branch.

    Yes, this is a very simple graph, and doesn't show the full power (and certainly not what's coming down the pike...), but it shows some of the basic context that makes Senode so cool.

    You can see that I have basic progressions for the pad and branch off of that; yes it's random, but in a controlled manner.

    The lower hexagon is the lower, slower pad sound. It has a basic shape of rising a fifth, down a third, up a fifth, down a forth, up a fifth and back to the beginning. The crossways pathways change that order, but keep the general contour of up a lot, down a little, up a lot, etc.

    The upper pad graph has a simple ascending progression (dropping on the last note). With this graph the path is always linear, but at any point the token can branch either to the next note or a blank node. The underlying progression continues, but instead of being overly repetitive it is filled with spaces.
    One slight change is the blank node above the F#2. This has a shorter duration and has the possibility to route down to the F#2. When this happens, the phase of the progression shifts relative to the lower, "hexagon" notes.

    The high descending melody is very straightforward. It just goes through a bunch of long, blank nodes to space out the frequency of the melody and right before playing, the token can branch off and add more silence. This also takes advantage of the probability of the edges; it's slightly less than half as likely to add more silence than to play the melody; I don't want the melody to always play, but I don't want too much silence.

    The bass also takes advantage of edge probability. It's most likely to cycle back to itself and play more silence, somewhat likely to just play the D#1, and only slightly likely to play the descending bass riff.

  • @MarkH said:
    This is so much more inspiring than the typical 'thumpy thumpy disco beat' stuff. It would be nice to see your routing so we can try to copy.

    You can see the Senode graph in the video and a description above.

    Behind the scenes things are pretty basic:
    I have two instances of Zeeon. The 3 pad graphs are all playing the same pad sound. This signal is sent to EOS reverb as well as Fieldscaper that is somewhat chaotically scanning through a pitched up, constantly recording buffer.

    The "bass" sound is routed through a Daedalus patch that has lots of LFOs to ensure that the gritty, granular delays don't constantly happen. This then goes through Stereo Designer for some slight widening.

    Throw in a simple Borderlands setup with field recordings and you're done.

    For visuals, the descending melody and the D#1 of the bass sound send MIDI through Bluetooth to TouchDesigner to trigger the hexagon and expanding circles (there are some other circles that randomly get triggered, I didn't want it too literal)


    Next recordings will be more 'thumpy thumpy disco beat' stuff... You have been warned ;)

  • @aplourde said:

    Next recordings will be more 'thumpy thumpy disco beat' stuff... You have been warned ;)

    :o

    (P.S. That wasn't a dig at anything you may have posted before, it was just a general observation on the zeitgeist.)

  • @MarkH said:

    @aplourde said:

    Next recordings will be more 'thumpy thumpy disco beat' stuff... You have been warned ;)

    :o

    (P.S. That wasn't a dig at anything you may have posted before, it was just a general observation on the zeitgeist.)

    Ha! Yes, I took it as a compliment not a dig!

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