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 Store

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

How Do You Create?

I'm sure this has been discussed before, but always relevant, I think. It has taken me since last April to understand with some comprehension how I particularly make music with iOS. If you had told me then how my workflow would manifest, or that I would even have a workflow, I would have been incredulous. I am curious as to other methods, especially unusual ones.

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  • Pop/EDM - Auxy and Beathawk are how I sketch out ideas, either loops, or full ideas. Then, depending on the length, I port whatever over to either Auria Pro if the tracks are full length, or Nanostudio 2 (for loop playback via Slate). Then Auria Pro to master the track to -14LuFS.

    Ambient - I used to use Gadget for Ambient before Nanostudio 2. Once NS2 came along, I deleted the Korg infrastructure off the old 2018 iPad. That Obsidian synth is ripper. Then along came Gadget 2, which I downloaded to my iPad Pro 11". The note entry grid of which is pants due to the eyestrain it causes me. So, sticking to NS2 for now. I use Auria Pro to glue the piece together with a touch of micro warmer, mild glue compression, and mild limiting, but nothing hard like with Pop/EDM as I like to preserve far more dynamics.

  • That's a very open ended question....

    Initially I create by jamming, either on the guitar, the keys, or with an iPad app. I might mess around with the virtual bass in GarageBand for example, or a synth in NS2 or Gadget.

    Once I have something musical I like I will try and build it up from there, and eventually the stems will end up in Auria where I will do the final mix and maybe add some vocals.

    But that jamming stage is always where the most fun is to be found: one minute you have nothing, and the next something emerges. It's very magical and mysterious IMO.

  • @jwmmakerofmusic, thanks... two questions, please 1/how do you get to the musical material you use? And 2/would you say your process is similar to many or just a few. Is there anything you feel makes it unique to you?

    @richardyot, thanks for informing. I agree totally about the mystery of where music comes from. Something from nothing always has fascinated, but, of course, there is more to it than that. Can you elaborate a bit how it happens and how it is integrated into your own workflow... how the material gestats while you are in the process, for example.

    I only disagree in that the arranging for me is more fun than the playing. I am present, but not really there when I play. There is a kind of tension. I don't really hear what I am doing. But when I am searching for a collection of instruments, arranging the ins and outs of each track, listening how to make the sound better with my limited knowledge there is a total fun focus for hours at a time. It is more like a kid playing with a building kit... Erector Set for me, a child of the steel age. It is more nuanced and feeling driven, of course, but basically it is a big puzzle. Usually the initial piano track is "eh" for me. But when I manipulate it it starts to appear out of the raw stone (thank you, Michelangelo).

  • @LinearLineman said:
    @jwmmakerofmusic, thanks... two questions, please 1/how do you get to the musical material you use? And 2/would you say your process is similar to many or just a few. Is there anything you feel makes it unique to you?

    @richardyot, thanks for informing. I agree totally about the mystery of where music comes from. Something from nothing always has fascinated, but, of course, there is more to it than that. Can you elaborate a bit how it happens and how it is integrated into your own workflow... how the material gestats while you are in the process, for example.

    I only disagree in that the arranging for me is more fun than the playing. I am present, but not really there when I play. There is a kind of tension. I don't really hear what I am doing. But when I am searching for a collection of instruments, arranging the ins and outs of each track, listening how to make the sound better with my limited knowledge there is a total fun focus for hours at a time. It is more like a kid playing with a building kit... Erector Set for me, a child of the steel age. It is more nuanced and feeling driven, of course, but basically it is a big puzzle. Usually the initial piano track is "eh" for me. But when I manipulate it it starts to appear out of the raw stone (thank you, Michelangelo).

    I think this describes my approach:

    Aleatoric music (also aleatory music or chance music; from the Latin word alea, meaning "dice") is music in which some element of the composition is left to chance, and/or some primary element of a composed work's realization is left to the determination of its performer(s).

    I use a lot of generators to create rhythms & phrases, mash em up against each other, make some more rinse repeat. I’m looking forward to Veeks piano roll AU so I can see and quickly edit things more cerebrally. I have a hard time relating midi notes on a timeline and their respective sounds in a DAW. You’d think that years of reading sheet music would’ve helped. I suppose my approach isn’t much different than putting down a drum track and jamming on a guitar.

    Another way is to be inspired by a soundscape or drone layer. The finding parts that might fit and keep stacking parts on top. Usually I end up deleting the drone as I’ve “filled up” the tonal space with other parts. Finding the balance between an orchestrated sound and noise usually ends up taking me the longest. Haven’t quite figured out how to really do chord progressions after I’ve created a little set of jamlets.

    Some steps I usually take

    • Drone or noise source
    • Generated notes on synth giving some space between generated notes to find a phrase.
    • Altering the gate to give some length variation
    • Simple sparse notes run though arps for harmonizing
    • Piping generated phrase through midi tools to add/remove notes change pitch and to create chords
    • add fx and change patches to narrow or widen sounds to create a balance

    Usually it’s just two generators played against each other at any one time, not including the baseline.

  • Aleatoric music... very interesting word, @audiblevideo. Good description as well. Chance takes its role in my workflow as well with, like you, use of ARPs, but thru a midi track. Also drum sounds played by midi track. I determine that I like or dislike the result thru trial and error. I resonate a lot more now with “filling up the tonal space” as you write. Something I really didn’t grasp in the beginning leading to the “mush” effect. Thanks for sharing!

  • I guess if I could answer this clearer, I would be a better musician and producer.

    The issue I face is live vs studio and finding the perfect marriage of the 2.

    Live performance attributes and attitude or energy with quality of the product done with a hybrid set up.

    The balance is key.

    Just like mixing I guess..........

  • At first this may seem uncreative but here goes: I try to copy what I love-!
    Along the way, a path of its own clears and I have something unique and original...

  • @LinearLineman

    Aleatoric music... very interesting word, @audiblevideo. Good description as well. Chance takes its role in my workflow as well with, like you, use of ARPs, but thru a midi track. Also drum sounds played by midi track. I determine that I like or dislike the result thru trial and error. I resonate a lot more now with “filling up the tonal space” as you write. Something I really didn’t grasp in the beginning leading to the “mush” effect. Thanks for sharing!

    Probably the most successful result of my process

  • Very cool @audiblevideo! The textbook definition of incremental development. And you keep the colors of the sonic palette very discrete. Envy! Thanks for sharing!
    @MonzoPro, listened to Intermediate forms cause it followed audiblevideo. Masterful! Total envy!

  • @LinearLineman said:
    Very cool @audiblevideo! The textbook definition of incremental development. And you keep the colors of the sonic palette very discrete. Envy! Thanks for sharing!
    @MonzoPro, listened to Intermediate forms cause it followed audiblevideo. Masterful! Total envy!

    @MonzoPro song is pretty damn cool, as always.

  • @LinearLineman said:
    Very cool @audiblevideo! The textbook definition of incremental development. And you keep the colors of the sonic palette very discrete. Envy! Thanks for sharing!
    @MonzoPro, listened to Intermediate forms cause it followed audiblevideo. Masterful! Total envy!

    @audiblevideo said:

    @LinearLineman said:
    Very cool @audiblevideo! The textbook definition of incremental development. And you keep the colors of the sonic palette very discrete. Envy! Thanks for sharing!
    @MonzoPro, listened to Intermediate forms cause it followed audiblevideo. Masterful! Total envy!

    @MonzoPro song is pretty damn cool, as always.

    Thanks both :)

    Workflow wise, my most successful stuff seems to originate from live iPad jams, mixed together and finished off on the desktop. When I try and create something structured on the iPad - in NS2 or Gadget for example, or even on the desktop, it comes out very stilted in comparison.

    I think the iPad allows me to capture a bit of spontaneity, including mistakes, which just sounds more interesting to my ears. I’ve got hundreds of half finished tracks now - started as structured songs which I just find dull. But get a few AU’s clattering away in AUM and I’m off...

  • My stuff comes in two ways - one is to noodle around on an app or my hardware keyboard until something I like emerges and then develop from there. The other is that an idea will just occur to me - a title, a few words for a lyric, a melody, a chord sequence, it can be anything really - capture that (I’ve been known to get up in the middle of the night just to scribble something down) and then work it out into a more fully fledged piece. I think the second method has produced my best tracks, but you need to rely on inspiration happening, so the other is my fallback.

  • Melody
    I tend to start with a melodic phrase. Maybe lyrics. Lyrics don’t usually get finished until most of the music in in place but are often 50% done first.

    This part usually comes very spontaneously. Maybe even a whole melody. As a multiinstrumentalist, maybe I’m singing, playing it on guitar, synth, accordion, doesn’t matter. I have tried to explore starting with a beat or riff and there is just no good likelihood I’ll finish.

    Chord structure
    Write down the melody one way or the other. Pre midi on phones, I hand wrote on traditional staves. See if there is a simple progression that fits. See what alternatives there might be.

    Beat
    I tend to try to get a simple outline first thinking in terms of low percussion, medium, and high. That might well be kick, snare, hat, but I tend to think this way even if we’re talking acoustic guitar or upright bass.

    Turn chord structure into riffs
    I.e bridge between rhythm and notes

    Arrange and record
    everything, if recorded at all at this point, is a scratch track or just some midi and an approximate preset.

  • Well, since this seems to be winding up I will share my unexpectedly unique approach.

    1/ for the last few months I sit down for an hour once a week and improvise five or six tracks into Cubasis.
    Recently I started using MIDI Tools key zone to split my hands into two separate tracks. Bass and mid/treble. This has made a huge difference in orchestrating as opposed to the difficult situation of all the data inseparately on one track (at least without heavy duty piano roll diving). Some tracks are bpm synced and some not.

    2/ each night after that I try to complete one of the tracks and post before dawn ( I am retired, after all).

    3/ I spend about an hour choosing a palette of instruments. Around ten tracks, usually.

    4/I play all the instruments together, unless I have a specific idea, and attempt to engage my intuition as to an arrangement. Then I drop all the levels except piano and bass (lately I have been substituting classical guitar from BeatHawk for the piano). I add one instrument at a time along with FX inserts.

    5/ if drums are indicated I set up thru Martinez' drum apps at this time. Recently I have been overlapping dupes of the same drum track. The track I will post tonite has four instances of the same Soft Drummer recording with track material overlapping three times on each track at different points. I mix the four track volumes separately. With some trial and error, this creates very useable complex drum patterns, I find.

    6/ when I have a rough arrangement, I start to refine each instrument volume, pan and effects settings till I am satisfied it is close enough to real music.

    7/ I add send effects. Generally just reverb and compression.

    8/ first mixdown to check thru different monitoring options.

    9/ readjust EQs if necessary.

    10/ final mix, upload to SoundCloud and post on the forum. I am managing about five pieces a week this way, but I do spend a lot of time at it. Ask my mostly forbearing wife!

    When I realize I could put out a less than perfect album every two weeks with this workflow I am astonished. First, that I can somehow mangle every improvised track into something more, and second, that iOS makes it so easy to accomplish such a thing. Of course, my degraded criteria would probably not be acceptable to most musicians here, but hey, I'm seventy and running out of time. Like yesterday!

  • edited March 2019

    @LinearLineman said:
    @jwmmakerofmusic, thanks... two questions, please 1/how do you get to the musical material you use? And 2/would you say your process is similar to many or just a few. Is there anything you feel makes it unique to you?

    Depends. For pop/EDM, I use various drum kits (namely Sounds of KSHMR Volumes 1-3 from Splice). I get a lot of my natural instrument sounds from Beathawk. I use Nanostudio for my main DAW to compile and mix sounds and for usage of the Obsidian synth, from which I usually program all sounds from scratch. The natural sound loops are triggered in Slate until the Audio Tracks IAP is released.

    For ambient, I usually use one of the Slate drum kits if I need drums at all. Otherwise, it's all Obsidian.

    For found sound, I use freesound.org for various recordings. Here's an example of me blending Sounds of KSHMR Vol 3 drums with farts in order to take the piss out of what the kids nowadays call Bass House. Found Sound meets EDM. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvsnrnvvaxkttud/Farthouse.m4a?dl=0 😂 (Why yes, I do have an immature sense of humour thank you.)

  • I’d have to say that the two things that spark my creation process are 1) any original musical musings that I now have the wherewithal to act upon, and 2) ideas for parody songs based on current events & the like. I’m not at this all the time, but if the muse is there I might very well act upon it.

  • edited March 2019

    The process is as varied as the tools. Music creation comes differently depending on the medium for me.

    Playing an instrument will provide certain results - I write singer-songwriter/folk/country/pop on acoustic guitars, on electric guitars I write rock tunes and play blues licks, on synth it's all 80's synthpop or synthfunk, piano ends up being more singer-songwriter stuff...

    My programmed output (as you all know) leans very heavily towards 80's funk and pop.

    As a bass player, I'll play anything. As a "session" player or "mercenary" or "guy for hire" or whatever you want to call it, I've played everything under the sun so my output reflects that.

    All this was intended to illustrate that there is no "standard" workflow for me any more. You all see how I build up grooves in my videos - this is the quickest way for me to generate a loop but it's not the only way.

    Often times when I feel "stuck" (which is often), I'll deliberately change my workflow to instigate different results. Rather than write a chord progression I like, I might sit down and write.....

    LYRICS!

    [gasp!]

    ...which then will inevitably lead to a melody which will then dictate the chords. Or, if I'm building up a groove - rather than always start with drums, I'll start with melody. Or if I find I've been reaching for a specific sequencer lately to start jams (Autony comes to mind) - maybe I use a different app. Or try something counter-intuitive with the app I always use.

    I'm CONSTANTLY on the search to not repeat myself, which is why I take so damn long to write anything worthwhile. I just want to keep pushing myself and not settling on the rinse-repeat musical mindset.

    Ok - lots of brain vomit right there. I'm done for now - see the Pandora's Box you opened, @LinearLineman ?

  • edited March 2019

    As @richardyot says, it's a very open question. But I do have a few guiding principles:

    • I try to separate sound design sessions from composition sessions.
    • With regards to the above, if I find myself digressing from one discipline to the other I always attempt to follow that flight of fancy (unless it's interfering with a deadline).
    • I'll happily pull all-nighters if the urge takes, but I always break away at least once every couple of hours, happy in the knowledge that on my return I'll hopefully be able to grok whether that last 'creative' session was nothing more than polishing the proverbial turd!
  • I do it in Gadget.

    Over the past year I’ve tried doing this “AU3” approach that people here talk about, where you run several apps at once. Each and every time I’ve tried this, the next time, there’s most of it missing or didn’t open or start up when the first one I opened did. I invariably spent the whole of the rest of the tube journey wondering what all those missing pieces were. It’s a thoroughly unworkable situation, so I don’t do it that way. The other problem with that is that I’d start something on the iPhone, then go to the iPad, and there it wasn’t – no trace of what I’d done, even in the same synths, sequencer, all the other glue apps you have to have, most of which hadn’t bothered starting up at the same time. It’s as though the iPad and iPhone are disconnected.

    Gadget works, I just use that. I start something on the iPhone, save it, close it, go to the iPad and there it is – all of it, all the synths, all the parts, the whole lot.

    I would like to get away from Gadget though, I’ve no real intention of spending any further money on it, and will not upgrade my macOS Gadget (or, in fact, ever use it again now that it won’t read the iPad and iPhone work). I don’t want to move to a workflow where I’m not actually doing any work, but wasting whole tube journeys tracking down missing pieces all over the place. Ultimately I’ll probably stop doing music on the go if the systems trend toward atrophy like this.

  • 8 words: Superloops in AUM with subtractive arrangement in Auria.

  • Probably easiest to explain with a video:

  • edited March 2019

    By avoiding cliche's, styles.
    By avoiding using the same source sounds as most (eg Gadget)

    By never ever using quantize & avoiding working with any grid
    (90% of the time I perform a timing part - tamborine - or shaker, or play a kick)

    For me it is all about imagination, capturing performances, and thinking outside of the square.
    I have this little motto: I ask myself - what would most people do with this certain idea? (as it is unfolding)
    Then I run 180deg the other way.

    Like above @Jocphone - totally agree
    Tom Waits, an original artist that NEVER dates, never will you hear a cliche :)

  • @jwmmakerofmusic said:

    @LinearLineman said:
    @jwmmakerofmusic, thanks... two questions, please 1/how do you get to the musical material you use? And 2/would you say your process is similar to many or just a few. Is there anything you feel makes it unique to you?

    ...

    For found sound, I use freesound.org for various recordings. Here's an example of me blending Sounds of KSHMR Vol 3 drums with farts in order to take the piss out of what the kids nowadays call Bass House. Found Sound meets EDM. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvsnrnvvaxkttud/Farthouse.m4a?dl=0 😂 (Why yes, I do have an immature sense of humour thank you.)

    39 seconds of cheeky hilarity 😂

  • I’m going to try an experiment at some point of reading some of my poetry into the mic, in several takes, and run the results thru TE Tuner and see what melodies I make in the process of speaking.

    Anyone else going to forward their next experiment?

  • @audiblevideo said:

    @jwmmakerofmusic said:

    @LinearLineman said:
    @jwmmakerofmusic, thanks... two questions, please 1/how do you get to the musical material you use? And 2/would you say your process is similar to many or just a few. Is there anything you feel makes it unique to you?

    ...

    For found sound, I use freesound.org for various recordings. Here's an example of me blending Sounds of KSHMR Vol 3 drums with farts in order to take the piss out of what the kids nowadays call Bass House. Found Sound meets EDM. https://www.dropbox.com/s/zvsnrnvvaxkttud/Farthouse.m4a?dl=0 😂 (Why yes, I do have an immature sense of humour thank you.)

    39 seconds of cheeky hilarity 😂

    I see what you did there. 😂 Lol.

  • This is the kind of stuff that usually gets me going... had this old guitar pedal and just stepped into a strange preset that had only the reverb section active.
    Liked the tone, recorded it in AUM, about 400 MB.
    Reviewed and found this snippet

    The playing is spontanous, not musically elaborated, a Telecaster through a Boss ME-5.
    It's the raw take, just normalized. There are more than enough snippets to dig from this record.
    Maybe I develope this one further, or arrange a few others, or trash the whole thing :D

  • edited March 2019

    @Telefunky said:
    This is the kind of stuff that usually gets me going... had this old guitar pedal and just stepped into a strange preset that had only the reverb section active.
    Liked the tone, recorded it in AUM, about 400 MB.
    Reviewed and found this snippet

    The playing is spontanous, not musically elaborated, a Telecaster through a Boss ME-5.
    It's the raw take, just normalized. There are more than enough snippets to dig from this record.
    Maybe I develop this one further, or arrange a few others, or trash the whole thing :D

    Sounds and phrasing in the beginning remind me of Jeff Buckley

  • In the past I've limited myself to taking doodles from ios and mangling and polishing on a computer, I've begun experimenting going the other way. I've taken bits of songs in progress begun in Ableton and brought them into mangling tools like samplr, launchpad and borderlands. Working well so far.

  • @johnfromberkeley said:
    8 words: Superloops in AUM with subtractive arrangement in Auria.

    Could you elaborate on this, please?
    Superloops? Subtractive arrangement?

  • @Telefunky said:
    This is the kind of stuff that usually gets me going... had this old guitar pedal and just stepped into a strange preset that had only the reverb section active.
    Liked the tone, recorded it in AUM, about 400 MB.
    Reviewed and found this snippet

    The playing is spontanous, not musically elaborated, a Telecaster through a Boss ME-5.
    It's the raw take, just normalized. There are more than enough snippets to dig from this record.
    Maybe I develope this one further, or arrange a few others, or trash the whole thing :D

    Like!

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