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.
Poll: how many tracks have you completed on iOS?
I must admit, I’ve been curious about this for a while!
Be good to know not only how many tracks but also how long you have been doing this on iOS for - that would give average output rate which would be interesting
- How many tracks have you completed on iOS, ever?56 votes
- 0-1044.64%
- 11-5026.79%
- 50-1007.14%
- 100-50014.29%
- 500+7.14%
- How long have you been making music on iOS?56 votes
- <6 months12.50%
- 6-12 months7.14%
- 1-2 years12.50%
- 2-5 years39.29%
- 5+ years28.57%
Comments
Probably nearly 100. iOS has been an incredibly productive platform for me, though I’m one of those people happy to put out loose, sketchy jam type stuff
Desktop stuff takes me ages, as there are too many options and the potential for tweaking
iOS has become my main musical platform, even with a bunch of cool hardware purchases and a full Ableton 10 licence. The portability, ease of use and innovation has kept it on top. Admittedly i mix everything in Ableton at the end but the creative process, my live set up and most of my experimenting is centred around iOS.
I can't deny its been frustrating at times but being on the frontier of this technology keeps me invested even when my ambitions are snipped by technical limits and buggy instability. But it gets more and more stable all the time so I'm sticking around the iOS realm for the foreseeable.
I find the iPad to be a very productive environment, handy to just pick up and capture an idea or a moment without any setup, and with enough depth to then develop that into a full track. I have more or less given up using desktop stuff.
The iOS experience opened a new and explosive creative chapter for me. The most creative period in the last twenty five years ( I am 70). Two four movement Synthonies and over a dozen pieces in five months. Not much but learning in the first two, so really, the creating was over three months. Thank you Audiobus.us forum. I probably wouldn't have happened without the fun, knowledge and comraderie I find here.
An average output rate would assume a linear input effort. This isn’t true in many people’s cases. I’d say it’d be better to adopt the more modern “punctuated equilibrium” model.
Caveat 30 second loops uploaded to Soundcloud do NOT count!
Voted with 1 track and 1-2 years.
With help from this forum I finally found the right combo of apps and mixing tips to make something. Composition was never too much challenge for me, it was time to do this as a hobby and time to learn how to mix and use FX!
Probably 5-6 complete tracks, but for me iOS apps are more about starting ideas I can expand on in the studio later. So on that front I’ve probably completed 20-30 tracks that initially started as iOS sketches.
I also look at ios apps this way.
I was only initially approaching iOS for drum, synth bass, and other synths and a finished song, in an album/sharing online sense, will also have guitars and vocals. I'm mainly a singer and guitar player. Other background being our drummer moved a few months ago...we had been drums, guitars, vocals, synths for bass before.
And we are trying first to develop a new live set. All of us were synth fiends, but they weren't our primary instruments, though I've played keys in a prior band.
So trying out a duo approach with iPad always doing drums and basses. Other guy will play the primary guitar parts, and I'll sing and alternate between a second guitar and playing the iPad-midi controller keys/pads.
So not many finished. We did record a few of the songs we had been playing before the drummer left and I added some iOS synths and percussion. http://forum.audiob.us/discussion/28279/foglings-covers-ep-with-my-first-ios-creations
But for our purposes, we now have a dozen of the live drum, bass, synth arrangements fleshed out. We've been practicing them. So I guess you could say those are finished in the sense we could play them live in a finished state now.
I imagine if we take any new songs from iPad to album version, I might add some different synths, electric bass guitar on some, and use some additional drums/percussion. But at least lots of the midi will already be done.
And been at it about 4 months. Though, again, some of that time, focused more on the other EP above, and also another album that predates all of this.
And there was a learning curve. Mostly learning how few iOS app have freakin tempo changes within songs. And stress testing for stability. Eventually found a good stable set up with Modstep+AudioLayer+various AU synths. And once I had ironed out which tools to use, I've been knocking the live tracks out like once a week.
On now to new songs. We didn't try to adapt ALL our old set to this platform. A few we felt just didn't work as other than live drum rock.
I’ve never completed one track in the over three years on iOS. I’ve started hundreds of tracks. I’ve started seven tracks in this last week alone and continued with another five.
I wonder how many tracks the average band finishes to demo standard within a week? I sometimes don’t think I will ever finish a song working alone. By the time I’m too old to hear or know what I’m doing, I will probably have enough material to make one really long song lol
Can you define what is completing a song ? I have done more than 180 songs entirely made on ios in the last 3 years...but I am not sure any can be called “completed”...Is it a question of personal satisfaction, number of listening, structure, recognition by other musicians??
This quote has popped up a few times here...
"Art is never finished, only abandoned." - Leonardo da Vinci
It is done when I say it is done.
Or lose interest and move on.
A song is complete when there’s no going back, no retracting, no amending – it has been published.
For me, that means given an ISRC code, registered with PPL and PRS, entered into the Tornado database, entered into Musicbrainz, given a front cover with final artwork (same thing applies to what is final, there), and made available to the public – in good time for the already-decided release date.
Absolutely agree - it’s getting better on both those fronts all the time. I’m convinced it’s only a matter of time before iOS platform is as powerful and stable environment as PC DAWs.
Awesome - sounds like you found your sweet spot. Let the productivity roll!
Totally, given the context those would surely count as finished
Dude, you’re not alone! But so long as you are enjoying it (and you must be!) then what does it matter?
Interpret it however you wish
I guess for me it would be when I’ve stopped working on what I would consider a finished product (as opposed to abandoned). Even if you make a few more tweaks over time, which I appreciate can be never ending. 
I think if you made it based on track publication most forum members would technically never have completed anything
It's worth mentioning that you created these works while on vacation and while buying and learning the Apps involved in a place where Internet download speeds and data limits forced you to monitor purchasing carefully to avoid extra fees.
(Sure I can say that using shorter sentences).
You made your tracks:
To me this makes the results even more impressive.
OK. Zero for me and probably most of us. Sounds suspiciously like "work" and not "play".
A song is complete for me when I ( and everyone else) have forgotten about it.
It is, but… think of the celebrations when it’s done!
Great booze up!
After thinking about I went with 100-500 tracks over the 7 years I've been doing this. According to my phone playlist of my music I have 437 tracks - but some (a lot) are just test recordings, and a lot aren't released anywhere. So more than I thought :-)
That's it.
Being an artist means knowing when to leave it alone.