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

Tutorials for the People

uglykidmoeuglykidmoe
edited December 2013 in App Tips and Tricks

I've noticed there are a lot of people here who are wonderful musicians, but aren't necessarily up-to-snuff on synthesis and sound design. All well and good, but I'm realizing that some or many of you may not be getting all you really could from these wonderful iOS tools at your disposal. So I figured I would start a poll to see which app seems to be confounding the most users. I'll eventually make a series out of each app, showing off their strong points and what unique things can be done with each, likely broken up over many videos.

If a synth app (or any other kind of app) that you'd like to get some tips with doesn't appear here, leave it in a comment!

Tutorials?
  1. Which app would you most like to see an in-depth tutorial about?55 votes
    1. Thor for iOS
      43.64%
    2. iMS-20
      18.18%
    3. iPolysix
        5.45%
    4. Cassini Synth
      16.36%
    5. None of the above
      16.36%
«13

Comments

  • thindsthinds

    iMS-20 was the first synth I bought and it still does my head in. Modular stuff mystifies me.

  • SimonSimon
    edited March 2014

    .

  • thindsthinds

    Yes please, MIDI is equally baffling sometimes

  • fjcblancofjcblanco

    Hi.
    George A. Sanger have some videos about iMS20, and don't forget the "Everyone Can Play Music" series.
    I like too the KORG iPolysix Tutorial Missions by Mee Zanook.
    But welcome everything. I'm the first to need learning.
    And for reading: http://www.musicradar.com/computermusic/free-beginner-pdfs-246054

  • HalftoneHalftone

    I vote for Cassini - to me, most of the presets (and few i've tried to cook up on my own) sound very similar and one-dimensional. I'm pretty sure it's capable of producing some nice tones ... this would be great if you could provide a tutorial!

    Thor comes with so many presets bundled and the interface is good enough that you can play around and tweak sounds and figure things out easily enough on your own.

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe
    Thor comes with so many presets bundled and the interface is good enough that you can play around and tweak sounds and figure things out easily enough on your own.

    I agree whole-heartedly, however Thor is one of my favorite synths because of the fact that in spite of it's relative simplicity, it is just so powerful (especially with the modulation matrix) and a lot of my friends who aren't synthesis end up over-looking some of it's most powerful possibilities.

    George A. Sanger have some videos about iMS20, and don't forget the "Everyone Can Play Music" series. I like too the KORG iPolysix Tutorial Missions by Mee Zanook.

    These are certainly some great tuts. I've been watching a lot of them recently just to try and avoid being too repetitive, and to hijack ideas where appropriate :-). But I feel there is still a bit of a void and I have some techniques that would be of value to people.

    something on MIDI syncing apps together might be worthwhile. It seems like a very complicated and "hit and miss" area, but even a video going through the basics would be good.

    I would love to do some basic MIDI sync vids. It is a bit difficult with the convoluted implementation in iOS, but at the same time, MIDI was once way more complicated to grasp and manage especially when you're communicating much more than just sync, CC and note on/off. Be glad you rarely need to learn sys ex, RPN/NRPN, LSB messages etc, anymore... unless of course you want to use them :)

    I'm gonna keep this open for a bit longer but it looks like iMS-20 will be the front-runner.

  • WillWill

    Cassini is deep and I'd love to see someone go on about it. Also, nice to see you back around these parts @uglykidmoe.

  • WillWill
    edited December 2013

    Dbl post because "String could not be parsed as XML" error/modal popped up. Hit 'save comment' once, the error popped up, closed it out via its X/close button and two posts appeared afterward.

    cc @sebastian

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe

    Thanks @syrupcore It's good to be back :D

    Yes, Cassini is going to be a marathon tutorial. The arpeggiator alone could have a youtube channel dedicated to it. err...maybe that's a bit much, but as you said, it's deep.

    To voters who chose iMS-20:

    Is it the semi-modular patching panel that is giving you the most difficulty? I assume this mostly because it's the one element in iMS-20 that is truly unique from most other synths out there...

    Which reminds me... maybe Modular would be another great tut... but it doesn't seem to get much mention in here so it probably wouldn't be useful to most folks.

  • YanYan

    One app I have really enjoyed since day 1 is WaveMapper - the sounds are rich and complex, and the random function creates great variations. But I would like to understand what happens behind the scenes, and to create my own wave tables. I think that requires WaveGenerator. Perhaps not many people are that interested in wave table apps like this and Nave, but a tutorial showing the power of wave table synthesis and how to create them might help those who are wary of these apps. It would certainly help me to gain a better return for the time invested in the apps. I haven't bought WaveGenerator - very expensive - but if I could see the real value of the coupling of WM with WG I could be persuaded.

  • CSwinnCSwinn

    TC-11 might be a good one. Never looked for other tutorials, but it confuses the hell out of me.

  • WillWill

    For what it's worth, Tim at discchord has a 5+ good ms-20 tutorials up on YouTube already.

  • TCMTCM

    I agree with Cassini. It seems like it's got a lot there, but I just find myself using other synths instead because they are more intuitive and it's easier to create all sorts of diverse sounds. I would love to be able to get more use out of it.

  • IanIan
    edited December 2013

    @syrupcore said:

    For what it's worth, Tim at discchord has a 5+ good ms-20 tutorials up on YouTube already.

    if you go on his site http://discchord.com/ go to tutorials, page 26 I think all of his iMS-20 tutorials (10 or 12?) start there. But I don't recall any of the modular stuff, so that would be cool

  • JMSextonJMSexton
    edited December 2013

    Discchord "Everyone Can Play Music" YouTube Series (14 iMS videos in here)

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe

    Hey Guys - I agree Tim's tutorials are invaluable. But when watching them (and re-watching many of them last night) I still feel that there is a number of things that are assumed on the part of the viewer, and just a handful of missed opportunities to make things a bit more clear to the complete noob.

    In an effort not to repeat Tim's tuts nor to draw any deserved attention away from them, I'm going to keep my videos centered completely around the patch panel and modular capabilities of the synth. I will NOT be covering the mixer or the song sequencer, I will NOT be covering the basics of synthesis, and I will NOT be outlining how to build particular sounds from scratch. (there are PLENTY of other tuts out there which explain all these things in detail.)

    Hopefully, once you've watched my tutorial, you'll understand the entire layout of the patching panel, why some patches don't seem to change anything at all, and why others seem to destroy your sound completely. You'll understand the entire signal flow from the keyboard to the signal out, and how to use the signal processor for a variety of uses.

    I guess I'll be tackling Cassini afterwards :)

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe

    Thor took quite a leap in the past day... Just bumping this to give a few more folks a chance to vote. Ms-20 patch panel will be the first series I do. It will be comprehensive, so forgive me if I disappear for a few days (or weeks) while I write, record, edit, trash, get drunk in a fit of depression, and do it all over again ;)

    Thor might jump in front of Cassini, unless some of you fight for it soon.

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe
    edited December 2013

    Got my mirroring app and screencast setup... now I just have to plan this all out so that it makes sense...

    I'm thinking the first video will simply discuss the signal flow, explain in general the schematic diagram, and show a few brief examples of simple patches to help explain some of the fundamentals about using the patch panel. I'm trying to keep each video under 10 minutes for the sake of people's time, but if the subject feels like it deserves more, then more it will get.

  • IanIan

    10 mins seems about right anyway: if it's 20 -30 then likely it could be split further or we'll get info overload. Bear in mind we're almost all 50+ and um..., I forget....

  • SimonSimon
    edited March 2014

    .

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe
    edited December 2013

    Thanks @Simon, I wasn't even aware of that method! Do you know of an "official" or exact time limit in which this method no longer works?

  • SimonSimon
    edited March 2014

    .

  • SimonSimon
    edited March 2014

    .

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe

    Thanks Simon for the info! I'll be sure to keep them under 15 minutes anyhoo. Anything more might be too much, as Ian said

  • YanYan

    To download youtube vids I have used the free app YTD Downloader for a long time.

    http://www.ytddownloader.com/

    It works perfectly. All you do is copy the URL, point at the download page, and (if you want) convert to another format after the DL.

    I haven't found any time constraints on length of vid.

  • [Deleted User][Deleted User]
    edited December 2013

    That last bullet point on the linked page is interesting...

  • YanYan

    Well spotted Paul, I've only been using the PC version.

  • YanYan

    Unfortunately you can't D/L from YouTube in the app version. In the PC version you can.

  • Michael_R_GrantMichael_R_Grant
    edited December 2013

    'Tutorials for the people!' * Ignores the people * ;)

    There are so many iMS-20 tutorials already out there, but none that I can recall for Thor or Cassini and they're far higher in your own poll in terms of votes. I think you're missing an opportunity here by going with third place first!

  • uglykidmoeuglykidmoe

    true now, but if I had stopped the poll when I originally intended (2 nights ago) iMS-20 would have been the victor.

    Thor will be next, then cassini.

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