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.
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song sketching, noodling with chords, learning basic music theory, which app to choose?
Hi, i was recently looking around the app store for Piano Learning apps 'cos i want to improve my understanding of chords, progressions and music theory in general to help me improve sketching out ideas.
Then i started to come across a whole bunch of apps, such as Navichord, Chordflow, StepPolyArp, ChordPolyPad, Klimper, Chordbot, Odesi, Suggester plus a whole lot more.
From what i can work out, these apps will let you choose a scale then provide chord suggestions and create progressions (i hope i've understood the terms correctly), most will also let you export a midi file (useful for me, i use BM3 and Cubasis) to work with ios synths, and one or two, such as ChordFlow, will allow multiple tracks to be created. All these apps suggest they are great for noodling and creating ideas for songs.
I downloaded Navichord Lite and played around with this for a day, feels like it could be very useful to me (wish i could change the instrument output on the lite version though), also looked at various youtube vids and searched through this forum. Most of the apps mentioned have lots of positive comments. Anyway, i'm at that point where information overload has taken over and made it impossible to choose and i was hoping to get some thoughts from those more informed and educated than myself.
I would like something that...
- is intuitive, easy to use, stable.
- has midi file output.
- if possible, has different instruments.
i'm not sure if multiple tracks is an essential feature for me. I guess i would just like to lay down a drum track and play along with a synth, adding and changing chords as i work through 8 or 16 bars, until i come up with something i like. Do any apps work as AU/IAA plugin, anything play well with AUM or AB3?
Also, i was wondering if apps like Xequence and Quantum (yep, they are midi sequencers) would offer a similar feature set, plus other useful features for 'noodling and generating ideas' or are these apps moving away from learning and understanding basic level music theory.
Anyway, cheers for reading.
Comments
My favorite chord noodling app is the Soundprism apps, they don’t export midi, but they can send live midi to other synths and such. They also have a decent selection of sounds. Highly playable and fun to use. Simple. You can try Soundprism for free
Have you considered GarageBand? The Smart Keyboards will let you compose using chords in the correct key, and while it doesn't have direct MIDI export yet, you can use the RouteMIDI app to get MIDI out of it.
GB has a really comprehensive toolset for songwriting, including the amazing Drummers. Your songs will get much further along than if you just used a Chord type app IMO.
ChordPolyPad is great if you want to dive into more exotic chords a la Jazzy stuff, Jacob Collier and the like. Instead of scrolling through long lists, you can assemble each chord note by note and save them to pads. Complete freedom.
The charm of ChordPolyPad is that you can play multiple pads simultaneously, experimenting with chords rooting from different scales but forming new exciting ones when sounding together.
This is probably not exactly what you're looking for, but who knows, someone might care
Apart from that, when I have to get down an idea as quickly as possible, Gadget is my go-to.
Although I do dig other options the OP mentioned... I would go this route.
Now that I use routeMidi AU in GarageBand, even better
They just make theory more accessible and easier to apply. Knowing the theory is only half of it. Acquiring the skill to implement it on an instrument is another long process. These apps let you get right down to experimenting and applying your knowledge without the previously required muscle memory.
Or something like that.
I found the app Suggester to be the one that kind of led me to a few a-ha moments in terms of understanding chords. NaviChord is also pretty good.
I now use ChordPolyPad in "slide-over" mode on top of Suggester. Use suggester to find chords, and ChordPolyPad to "record" those chords into a pad. Mainly because ChordPolyPad's chord discovery/library is not as good as Suggester in terms of, well, suggestions.
haha, i hadn't thought about Soundprism for a long time, i have the basic version so i will check this out. thanks for the suggestion.
@richardyot @senhorlampada - thanks for the suggestion. I have been revisiting the GB app on iOS lately and you are right, it is good for songwriting / sketching ideas. Am i mistaken but didn't GB have a 'Learn to play....' feature? Maybe this is the desktop version!
Anyway, it is a good app, the drummer is a really nice feature, but I'm missing the music theory aspect that i am trying to improve on. I'll keep playing with it though as I think there's more to come from apple on this.
as per @MonkeyDrummer suggestion I've downloaded the free version of Suggester, and you are right, it does give me a quick view of the chords with in the scale, the chords suggestions and the ability to export the midi file is really useful, i can visualise the notes being played on the Bm3 piano roll in this way. I can also experiment and see where i've made an error and learning to understand my mistakes is just as helpful to me.
@Dawdles i'm not exactly looking for shortcuts but away to understand what I actually am doing. I can put a simple melody together and make some variations on that, but I'm trying to understand more about what I am doing. The journey started by wanting a 'Piano Learning app' but most seem to teach you how to play one song really well but don't seem to give you the knowledge why it sounds like it does. The apps like Navichord and Suggester popped up and I descended into a whole new world. I would still like to play the piano, so if you do know of a good app, I'm all ears (and fingers and thumbs)!
Cheers peeps.
You might want to check out Hook Theory, available as both an app or an iBook:
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/hooktheory-i/id862112892?mt=8
BTW, have my eyes on this for a long time.
Just didn't buy it because it's really expensive here considering the brazilian economy
Is it worth it?
I thought so
I find Pro Chords quite interesting in cases I get stuck with boring chord progressions,
It will analyze your chord progression so far and suggest a variety of different follow-up chords that are rated by likeliness to match with what you have.
It's very easy to use even without much background in music theory and it has an internal sound engine in case you want to start with a chord prog quickly from scratch.
I found Chord Maps 2 very helpful, inspiring and pretty educational for an iOS app too.
@rs2000 @Spidericemidas thanks for your suggestions. ChordMaps2 looks to have a lot of depth but the interface is overwhelming to me. Pro Chords is a little easier on the brain, I may check that out.
I did download Suggester yesterday so i'm playing around with the free mode for a while.
I hadn't heard of these two apps before. Thanks for the suggestions.
Agreed. Chord Maps 2 is all jammed onto one screen and a bit eye-boggling. But it has some pretty nice features. You can send out the bass notes, chords and melody parts on separate midi channels to other synths. And of course the beauty is that everything will be in the right key. As you change chords, everything else will change accordingly which makes noodling a melody over the top a breeze. I think Doug from the Soundtestroom did a pretty informative vid how to use these features.
Also, there are multiple maps to use. Some are simpler than others.
Talkin’ Chord Maps 2 here.
Doug's Chord Maps2 video:
Hmm, I can't find any info on Chord Maps 2 supporting harmonies built on scales other than the major scale. For example, I worked out a harmony for one of the Messaien Modes, which might have been easier with an app like this one, if it'd let the user select a scale other than major scale.
Chord Maps 2 is based on diatonic harmony, so pretty much M/m with I think one blues map thrown in there. Maybe check out Scale Bud. I believe you can start with exotic scales and it builds a harmonic chord button layout based on your scale choice. Not sure, so check it out. But I believe you can start from scales or chords in that apps.