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.
How to upload midi files
Hello, i'm new here! I'm not too techie, so please any explanation you give me needs to be step by step, and with the simple terms for which I thank in advance.
I write my own songs, and make the accompaniments in music notation in ScoreCreator and/or iWriteMusic for iPad. I can export what I write as a midi file from both apps. Is there a way to upload the accompaniments to Audiobus in order to tweak them and/or combine them? The accompaniments don't have to be viewed in music notation, if that's a consideration.
Thanks again.
Rosateresa
Comments
Once you have exported the two MIDI files, you can open them in an app like Audio Evolution Mobile and combine, rearrange or edit them.
You can use the "Open in..." function in iOS, for example from within ScoreCreator and iWriteMusic. Once imported in Audio Evolution, you can move and split your clips, and for editing you would use the piano roll view. See the screenshots of the app in AppStore.
A conversation will be the best approach. We can provide information and you can test what we write against your situation.
There are several types of music applications:
Notation Software (Scorecreator). I can think of 2 that also turn those notes into sounds:
These apps have a built-in sound engine and can also output a MIDI realtime stream or save those MIDI events to a file.
MIDI Players: These applications are created to open and
convert MIDI files into sound or send the events to sound
making applications. 3 examples are:
Sound Synthesizers - there are dozens of these. As I
mentioned a few of the apps listed above have a sound
engine in the application. But the users of this Forum
have dozens of these and like to program them to
make Techno/Electronica music that sounds like
Kraftwerk or Daft Punk. Most of these synths (and a
few can also make Piano, Strings, Guitar, etc) sounds
that simulate a room full of live musicians.
recording studios in an App. Most can import your MIDI
files and allow you to edit/combine the MIDI you have
created using Notation software. Most of us just skip
the Notation software and start right here creating our
music. A MIDi Keyboard will be in the app and a physical controller can be connected and you may play your
music directly into the MIDI recorder and play it right
back like a MIDI Tape recorder. There are many examples
and a good one for your needs would be:
Audio Evolution Mobile Studio $7 It has excellent
MIDI features and 100,000+ users on Android. But it's the
new application in this category on IOS so it's priced to
play catchup with Cubasis $50, Auria Pro $50, Korg
Gadget $30 and a dozen more.
leader in this category. We use it to connect Apps
together like a recording engineer or a guitar player
would do with audio modules. We plug one into the
next and route the sound to our DAW's or out to
headphones. Many of these types of Apps provide
similar features for routing MIDI events in realtime.
Please ask any questions you'd like to help you solve your problem writing music and hearing the music converted to real or synthesized sounds.
I tend to edit MIDI in Xequence.
AudioBus itself does not allow for this.
So, what is your final goal?
Using the modified MIDI to created Audio from it?
For this, you would need one of the Apps @McDtracy mentioned.
Audio Evolution has a free sound engine on board, including a factory General Midi sound set that can be expanded by more sound fonts if you prefer. And it can record audio.
I would agree that this is the a "one stop" App with all the right features barring Music Notation.
Thank you guys for your advice and explanations. I read it all carefully, and learned a lot in a short period.
I looked at Audio Evolution in the App Store. It's fairly priced at $6.99 with a long list of additional purchases. Do you know if buying the $6.99 package will allow to make accompaniments for recording and singing? An acquaintance of mine offered to record my voice in his studio so I'm preparing the tracks. I also want to self-record in my soon to be State-of-the-rigging-art recording cabin that I'm making in my bathroom.
My experience recording is with a laptop, but it died several months ago. I'm an older woman who learned to make lyrical music by writing it down. I taught myself to use the laptop, with assistance of two forums. I'm transferring my learned skills to a 4th Generation iPad my sister gave me. It looks like I'll have a new laptop soon, but just in case things don't work out quickly I want to learn the iPad. I love making music!
Oops! I forgot to mention that ultimately I need to have midi and at least one audio track to record my voice. Actually, I prefer two audio tracks, to use the second one to correct mistakes made in the first one. Then I mix.
Yes. Assuming you can get the microphone as an input to the AEMS. There are external Lightning Interfaces like the iRig from IK Multimedia. A step up is a USB Audio Interface which requires the $40 Apple Camera Adapter kit that has the additional Power input port. There's also an interface from iConnect that people like. You may find a Microphone that support being connected directly to an iPad from IK Multimedia or others.
Solve that and you can add you voice to a track (or 2).
AEMS comes with a standard free set of instruments. To get a really nice Piano I'd download one of the files from SoundFonts4U at:
https://sites.google.com/site/soundfonts4u/
You might download to a desktop/laptop computer and move the file over into the AEMS /soundfonts folder using the App's
"Web Server" functionality which let's you connect using a browser set to http://192.168.0.50:5000
BUT ONLY IF YOU DON"T LIKE THE DEFAULT PIANO. of course, you can buy a great Piano called Ravenscroft 275 for $36 but I digress.
For $7 AEMS will work after you decide how you want the microphone to be connected. Maybe someone here will have suggestions to get a good mic for a nominal fee. It you have hardware already please advise us on this point.
As I mentioned this will be a conversation as we progress towards the goal.
I Listened to the advice I got here and I downloaded Audio Evolution. However, when I uploaded my accompaniment from iWriteMusic to Audio Evolution although the midi files look as they should, many squiggly things in four tracks, I couldn't hear a thing. I'm sure I uploaded to midi tracks, and the volume was up on the iPad. I tried different files, but not a peep. I wrote to the people of Audio Evolution that requested I send them the file. That was several hours ago, not a peep from them either.
I also wrote to the people of iWriteMusic, although that was a little white ago, so I don't expect a reply till tomorrow.
I'm writing to you guys here hoping that you know something that could help. I'm expected to have the files ready soon. Ahggg!
As always, thanks for your help.
Rosateresa
Based on what you wrote it sounds like the MIDI data loaded into tracks but no sounds are assigned to play back the music. The MIDI files I have imported had instruments defined so I was instantly assigned strings, bass, trumpet, etc.
In your accompaniment how many tracks are defined and do you know what instrument should be assigned for each track: piano, bass, drums, etc?
You may have to assign the instruments for each track from the General MIDI Sound engine in AEMS. Otherwise, AEMS may be sending MIDI events out but not be configured to make the sounds play internally. When you create another track it will offer:
MIDI Instruments
MIDI
Audio
It sounds like the application creating your MIDI doesn't assign instruments in the form AEMS wants so you're getting "MIDI" tracks and not "MIDI Instrument" tracks with sound engine assigned instruments.
It might also be the method you used to import the midi file that caused this results. Not sure. Can you attach one of these MIDI files to a comment using the "ATTACH FILE" option? I'll see what I get and if I can determine a way to make it work.
You can copy each midi track to newly created instrument tracks.
Create a new track in your project containing the imported midi tracks. Select MIDI Instrument when prompted and choose one of the instruments you wish to use.
Pinch shrink the track view area so that the entire length of your imported midi tracks are visible, then use the range tool to swipe select the midi track that you wish to play the chosen instrument. If you swipe backwards from the end to the beginning it’s easier to get everything selected. Use Copy, then tap on the new track you created. Tap Stop to make sure the song position is at zero, then Paste to insert the MIDI data into the new track. You should now be able to play the song and hear that track played on your chosen instrument.
Repeat the whole process for the other imported tracks.
If there’s a quicker way to copy one track to another or to assign an instrument to a midi track, I haven’t found it, but this does work.
DW solved it! I was selecting the wrong type of instruments. I was supposed to select virtual instruments, I chose the other one. I actually thought that I had chosen differently, but obviously not. I tried with two files and it worked. Success!
Thank goodness!
Rt.
Bingo. I was just going to write this advice. "Virtual Instruments" are "MIDI Instrument" tracks. It's NOT obvious at the time of the import but that's what happened. You would import for MIDI if AMES was sending the MIDI note to a connect Keyboard like a Casio or Korg Arranger for example.
Try not to get too excited. There will be more to learn about what you don't know yet
Computers are wonderful tools designed to make us feel too human. And human feelings are all over the map.
This was the workaround solution. Put all the MIDI tracks notes into the clipboard and paste them into a MIDI Instrument track and you'll get sounds. Are you using the default General MIDI instruments? Buying better instrument Apps and converting them to audio can make recordings as good as any studio session might produce. But there are a lot of bugs doing this and you might get stuck trying to find more workaround... still. The joy of this forum is finding someone that already solved your problem. We are faster than tech support in most cases.
FYI: I learned a lot answering this one. Solving problems is how we master the tools.
Conversion from MIDI track to MIDI instrument track imminent...