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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Modstep & Seekbeats Setup

ConureConure
edited January 2019 in General App Discussion

Hi guys.
I’m trying to have SeekBeats have its midi and audio controlled by Modstep, but I’m very lost.

All I’d like to do is draw-in midi notes in Modstep that would trigger my individual parts of my kit in Seekbeats - kick, snare etc..

I can’t get my head around the midi routing part.

Would someone be so kind as to shed some light for me, please.

Many thanks.
Stephen

Comments

  • aplourdeaplourde

    I just tried hosting SeekBeats in modstep and couldn’t get any sound. However, when I hosted it in Audiobus or AUM, it was working fine being triggered from modstep.

    modstep is a fantastic MIDI sequencer, but its audio abilities leave a lot to be desired. Buggy behavior, plus missing features (panning, bussing, etc) are why most people will tell you to run modstep as a MIDI sequencer only and host your synths and effects elsewhere.

    HOWEVER, in this case, I think the issue is SeekBeats. I tried hosting Patterning 2 in modstep and it worked fine. That said, I would still recommend hosting sound generators elsewhere for the better features.

    BTW, if you contact the SeekBeats dev, please ask about updating the Audiobus SDK; he’s still running a buggy version that doesn’t show other apps in the AudioBus sidebar and hasn’t fixed that for about a year now....

  • wimwim
    edited January 2019

    Here is how to make it work hosted in Modstep (re-posted from another thread). It is indeed best to host SeekBeats and other apps outside Modstep, but since I went to the trouble to write this out and test it, here it is.

    Setup for SeekBeats hosted in Modstep (assuming you want to send the notes from Modstep, and not play back patterns from within Seekbeats. The process is different if you want patterns from within Seekbeats to play back.)

    1. Add a track in Modstep, and drag SeekBeats from the app browser into the chain for the track.
    2. Press IO, then set midi output to Modstep, midi channel 1
    3. Set The scale for the track to “None” in Modstep.
    4. In SeekBeats, be sure that background audio is enabled.
    5. In SeekBeats, set the midi input for notes to Modstep, channel 1, note C2.
    6. In SeekBeats, set midi for patterns to channel 16, note C3 (or other unused channel. This is to prevent triggering pattern changes in SeekBeats.)
    7. In SeekBeats, clear all notes from the current pattern, so that it is empty.
    8. In ModStep, notes C2 - G2 will now trigger sounds in SeekBeats.
  • aplourdeaplourde

    @wim said:
    3. In SeekBeats, be sure that background audio is enabled.

    Ah, that’s the trick! Audiobus and AUM automatically launch IAA apps in background enabled mode. Eh, another reason to not host in modstep.

  • reasOnereasOne

    You don't like the seekbeats sequencer??

  • wimwim

    The SeekBeats sequencer is fine IMO, but when composing I find it easer to do the sequencing all in one place. In particular, with ModStep there are all the clip and scene launching capabilities, not to mention cc automation.

  • aplourdeaplourde

    @wim said:
    The SeekBeats sequencer is fine IMO, but when composing I find it easer to do the sequencing all in one place. In particular, with ModStep there are all the clip and scene launching capabilities, not to mention cc automation.

    ... if only SeekBeats responded to CCs! I think it's a fantastic sounding drum synth, but I'm frustrated by feature omissions.

    @reasOne said:
    You don't like the seekbeats sequencer??

    You can only modulate "velocity". Granted you can assign most parameters to be modulated by velocity, but then everything is changing at the same time. Contrast with Elastic Drums / Patterning / etc. where you can modulate each parameter individually.

    No way for different instruments to have different track lengths for polyrhythmic / polymetric patterns.

    Only 8 pattern slots.

    No representation of the pattern data in the pattern slots and no indication which slots even have data!

    Copy / Paste of pattern data can't happen on the fly. You copy a pattern, then go to a blank pattern (assuming you know which pattern is which ; ) and therefore everything stops playing, then paste into the blank pattern.

    That said, I do think the beat roll feature is great and more flexible than simple ratcheting.

    And all of the above would be overlooked for me if one feature was implemented: The randomize is great, but not reproducible. If you could set up two parameter snapshots and then crossfade between then, I would be incredibly happy.

    That and fixing the Audiobus panel bug....

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