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.
Mubert - Generative music streaming service / other generative music players
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/mubert/id1154429580
While browsing the Japanese App Store, I saw a feature about this neat app (it was App of the Day in Japan) called Mubert. It's something I always wanted, a generative music streaming service I can just let run in the background when I do not want to listen to anything specific. It offers different genres and "situational" sets most of them are free. There are a couple of premium channels you can subscribe to for 99 cents per month. I am happy with the free ones though. It's probably an interesting option for businesses and café's as well.
You can listen to some small sample channels on the website or to a wider selection of genres on https://play.mubert.com/.
A couple of months ago another promising app which I beta tested released, called Endel, but that one is more like a generative sound sphere player, creating moods just to blend over noises of the everyday life. Mubert on the other hand is fed with looots of Sample out of which it creates every changing music. The more samples it's fed, the more varied the music will get. Hopefully this one stays alive long enough so it can grow.
Bloom 10 Worlds if pretty cool for background studying music, too!
Do you know any other generative music players?
Comments
Two really nice finds. Thanks for posting these.
Mubert is pretty neat. I am liking what I hear.
The other one, Endel, is out of my price range, unfortunately.
Thanks for sharing the info.
I really like the Moodscaper app line for generative stuff. Wotja is also really great.
Both are geared toward Ambient.
I also like the app myNoise. It uses a mix of environmental and musical material, and has tons of themes to chooses from.
This app Mubert seems to generate actual tracks on the genre based channels. It sounds like I have SomaFM playing (a normal thing for me).
I can’t think of any apps that do full generative tracks that aren’t very abstract and ambient in nature.
Mubert is actually generative? Or, it’s merely generating a seamless stream of borrowed samples from a given genre?
I thought it was combining the various samples to generate the audio, which I would say is generative.
If it is just playing whole snippets of pre-combined samples, I probably wouldn’t consider that generative. That is more like an auto-DJ app.
Downloaded... I can’t tell, but it says it’s using combined samples. No matter... I think I like it for what it is.
What I am really wondering, though, is...
Is this stuff copyrighted at all? Or is it an endless stream of sampler fodder?
Was wondering the same thing... mostly just because it’s curious at what point it’s no longer considered the original author’s art... or, if Mubert as the owner of the algorithm now owns it?
As opposed to what? RoboMuzak for dance floors?
Relax, the app is free.
You don’t have to subscribe to any of those 3 channels.
You get a lot for free.
I tried the web thing first too. I should qualify how I'd likely use this. I mostly don't listen to music with lyrics or human voices, because I find it distracting. There's some music I love that's sung... but for the most part... for pleasure listening I prefer either abstractly produced electronic music of the Hecker, Basinski, OPN, Hopkins, Colleen, etc. variety.
The abstract stuff is great if I'm working on graphic or video type stuff. However, if I'm trying to write something... like a novel/novella/screenplay... I can't listen to that stuff either. My mind locks into the abstract composition and also distracts. Often, classical music works best for me.
I can see this kind of constant electronic "musak" that I hear in the Mubert streams, that's somewhat pleasant, but completely non-distracting... to be a perfect background listening for writing in particular.
There's enough offered in this app for free that I don't think I'd need to pay the subscription... but if I indeed did listen to it regularly and it helped my productivity... I'd have no problem paying the marginal .99/mo cost.
I feel like I’ve been on hold for the last 10 minutes.
I keep expecting someone to answer my call.
Neat for what it is though.
It sure as hell is better than what my neighbors listen to!
I've been throwing the free trial of Endel on at different times of day, and they haven't made an algorithmic generator, more of just a straight album. The 'Sleep' function features 3 distinct pieces of about 10 minutes each and that's it (as far as I can tell after multiple uses, and at 100 mb app size, I don't imagine there's much more content stored in there, if any) As someone who loves white noise/ambience/nature sounds almost as much as listening to pop music, I feel like they're selling a subscription to what's basically an album, and that rubs me the wrong way. I'm not gonna subscribe to the latest Carly Rae Jepsen album no matter how much I love it.
I do appreciate the post though, OP. I like checking out this stuff.