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
@lovadamusic : GB is an awesome deep app and free but not for everyone and isn't meant to be.
I am totally puzzled by people feeling that there is some sort of failure here.
It isn't intended to be Logic or ProTools or to cover all the bases.
That being said, it covers an awful lot of bases.
Agreed. It's a fortunate state of affairs due to Apple's big business. Many take the app for granted. GarageBand offers an amazing array of features for free, and Logic is a beast for a fraction of the cost of its worth. I don't need GB, but I find myself playing with it in a variety of ways on my iPad all the time. It's a useful instrument and a handy mobile studio to prep ideas for Logic. I don't know much about the desktop version of GB, but it appears to be pretty substantial.
Hi seven systems,
Is it possible to use xequence2 to capture midi from garage band?
If so, how do you go about?
Thx Rob
Unfortunately GarageBand doesn't output MIDI, so there's nothing that Xequence can capture.
Yes, but there is a way...
Use RouteMIDI or MIDI tools (iPad only) to get MIDI out of Garageband (only works as the file is playing).
Downside is you have to watch out for "Optimizing performance " which cancels that.
@wim @McD -Could we potentially make a Streambyter or Mozaic script that can store MIDI information as a file?
I keep trying to be faster than @wim at answering Xequence support queries, but so far utterly fail
You can't get MIDI out of GarageBand directly in any form or shape (neither in realtime nor as a file), BUT some people have had success with a plugin called RouteMIDI, which supposedly sends MIDI data from the track it's loaded on out via Virtual MIDI, which Xequence then WOULD be able to capture:
https://apps.apple.com/au/app/routemidi/id1347099452
I can't give any guarantees as I haven't tested it myself.
Anyone else tried?
Yeh ... I was too lazy to look up the posts that say how, and too lazy to explain, when it has so many limitations anyway.
No. Mozaic has no access to write to files.
One could capture a midi stream into variables in a script, then if you saved that script, the midi would be in those variables. But you couldn't make use of that for anything other than attempting to play it back in the script.
Photon AU can capture midi and save it to files. So can Xequence 2 and other apps.
Okay, hypothetically speaking (because I'm still a novice at MIDI programming). If those variables are captured, can it be rendered as a .midi file? If so, then the user just needs to import the MIDI to their MIDI player device of choice (Gadget 2, Xequence, or even Garageband for example).
Since Xequence can play MIDI (and even Gadget 2), the user just needs to use these apps (or RouteMIDI/Midi tools) to play it in a different IAA or AUv3.
Gimme your mobile phone number. I'll text you whenever I'm thinking of butting in.
Ahh well, see, you went the extra mile. You win!
They'd be stored as binary data somewhere within the script. It's remotely possible that you could reverse engineer the storage if it's not encrypted, or possibly get the developer to help you understand the storage. But I'm fairly certain the effort to accomplish that would be more than the effort to write a midi recorder of your own. It would be a crummy workflow anyway. Load up Mozaic, load the script, capture midi, save the script, load that into a converter, run the converter, save the file, load it into another app. Even if you can automate some of it, it wouldn't be worth it, I would think.
(Also, recorded midi wouldn't be a simple stream. At a minimum, it would be collections of several arrays. One set for MIDI event data, and one for timestamps for those events. Each array can only store 1000 pieces of information, so you'd have dozens of "pairs" of arrays to re-assemble into the information needed to create a midi file.)
... Dead end, IMO.
@SevenSystems I have RouteMIDI and it does work...sometimes. Optimizing performance is Apple’s way of freezing tracks but it also disables the plugin from outputting MIDI when you have too many plugins or audio files loaded. I usually resolve this by disabling all my plugins, making a section in front of my song (usually 1 bar), selecting all, then moving ALL the information to the first bar. Garageband then plays the song as a full MIDI. The annoying part is replacing all the instruments with RouteMIDi but I’m doing a deep dive on that.
I still think this would be a fantastic feature to have in Xequence 2. Being able to make a similar AUv3 plugin integrated into Xequence that automatically records captured MIDI data into a MIDI file.
Yeah, that’s what I was worried about. Adds too many layers. I wish I knew MIDI programming a lot more than I currently do. I just got JUCE and C++ to work on Windows, but had a few other things sneaking up the past week.
Xequence 2 can record MIDI and export MIDI files already. No plugin needed.
Not that feature. I mean the RouteMIDI feature. Here’s a video demoing the app.
(i know a lot of people here are not a fan of this channel, but it’s the only example I have)
I’m saying instead of going into Sunrizr, let it be automatically routed to a “temporary MIDI file” in Xequence 2 that can then be opened by the user. I believe it can be synced to ONLY record when the user presses “play”.
I can deep dive and possibly make a shortcut to rewrite a Garageband project to ONLY use “Xequence MIDI” as an AUv3 for all MIDI instruments. I’m currently analyzing Garageband files to find similar patterns.
GarageBand -> RouteMIDI -> Xequence 2. Record, export. Done.
But here’s the thing. You’re adding another step that can simply be
GarageBand ->Xequence 2 (MIDI Input channel1)
I really hate when you're trying to play your guitar and theres no way to have the audio out and the linear sequencer on thw same view. The app shows the guitar input window, yes or yes... no option. You want to see your lineal arrangement? Well then you cannot listen your guitar playing at the same time.
Who was the genius behind this?🤨
Just only for this I can't stand garageband.
Then it is the poor mixer area. I mean... there is no good mixer at all. Just some left to right little faders that doesnt feel like a proper mixer.
But of course it has some good stuff in it, like the drummer.
I have heard some really incredible things done in GarageBand, but it’s just never clicked for me.
I still go and revisit it periodically.
Maybe one day...
There are things that bug me about GarageBand, but I get that it’s not targeted at hardcore audio nerds. Still, it’s probably the single best app for doing a quick demo of a song. The sampled instruments, AI drummers, synths, and amp modeling, though basic and limited make it a very capable app for someone that doesn’t want the distraction of dealing with multiple apps. Sometimes limitations are good.
It’s pretty great, and has a lot of good sounds and stuff, but the more you learn the more you start to hit limitations in certain Areas.
I used to like garage band, but every time I got comfortable with it, a major “update” would arrive to remove my favorite features and also change the interface.
Same, animations you have to wait to go on is the stupidest thing UI speaking. Who gives a sh$& about them, this isn't a powerpoint, it's a tool morons!
I really like Garageband.
I wrote a lot of tracks on my first iPad in Garageband.
It's great to get a song happening.
It's limitations are obvious.
Lack of proper stem exporting,
no multi midi recording to mention
a couple of things.
For what it is, it's great.
I like the straight forwardness of it.
No frills, bish, bash, bosh.
There is a way. You do need a 2 channel (or more) interface and enable both inputs for recording.
Honestly, never been a fan. I don’t like the interface at all. It’s great that it’s free, but there’s many other better options IMO. Great for those a limited budget I guess, but if your budget was that limited you probably wouldn’t be buying an ipad start with.
Maybe buying that iPad is the cause of the limited budget.
I'm happy to report that Beatmaker 3 does it.
Version 3.0.13 has introduced master and slave clock sync and it works better than with Ableton Live, no joke.
Slave sync with either clips or the linear timeline. Voilà.
MIDI comes into Mozaic and then MIDI leaves Mozaic/StreamByter. The only side effect is the text
in the Logging window.
Now... you could take incoming MIDI and keep storing it into variables/arrays for playback later but
that's really just MIDI IN and MIDI OUT with a buffering feature.
It starts and stops, and gets tempo. But it doesn't follow Song Position Pointer. If you skip to different parts of the timeline in X2, BM3 doesn't skip to that position. That's what is needed for audio track synchronization to a timeline.
That's a BM2 feature that didn't make it into BM3.
Thanks @McD. @Wim was being a bit grumpy about the process earlier, but did raise some valid points. I did find a weird but awesome workaround for this that didn't involve Xequence 2 or RouteMIDI. Once I can understand and dissect it, I'll make a video on it.
I still hope that @SevenSystems makes the previous reality because it is something really cool. But for now, this workaround will have to do.