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.
Salt For Gandhi / Soft Drummer & Rock Drummer March to the Sea
Two drum tracks superimposed from the gifts of Luis Marinez. GeoShred Guitar Choir makes a really nice Indian sounding instrument. IFretless Bass, some Micrologue piano and sine bass.
I hope @MobileMusic will have a listen to this one.
Comments
I prefer my Gandhi without salt. Have you heard of cultural appropriation? It's the new thing we do and didn't know was wrong. We just thought it was 'flattery' (the sincerest form of theft). I haven't listened to this one yet but the spice joke was making me itch to write.
Cool! Did you use any hardware instruments or just the iPad to record all this? Was it all contained in Cubasis?
@MobileMusic, all the tracks are derived from the MidEast drum midi except the lead line which I pounded out on my Kawai. Not sure what you mean, but I used Cubasis to record and used the micrologue piano.
Btw, I got SwarPlug and it works, but tho the sounds are good (I have only downloaded the bansari pack so far) there is not much legato and expressiveness when played on a hardware keyboard. Is the sitar similar in actuality, cause it sounds great on the demo?
@McD, if you had listened to the track you would have seen my protestation of Indian love. If I had to limit my styles to what is culturally appropriate I would be stuck with a lot of stuff that sounds like a cross among Hava Nagilah, Bei Meir Bist Du Schoen, and Hatikvah... a bit limiting wouldn’t you agree?
SwarPlug has a lot of good and a lot of garbage sounds in it. I would say it's about 50/50. The dev put the IAPs on sale last year at the request of this board, so I snagged the whole enchilada. You have to be choosy about which instruments you use. The tamboura and percussion instruments sound better to me than the others.
Yeah, I was asking if everything was hosted in Cubasis.
SwarPlug is sample-based. I don't need all its 79 instruments as some are really retro but purchased the entire library when went on sale for about $40 last year (you may contact the dev for a coupon). I like the Santoor, SwarMandal, Tampuras, Sitar, Veena, Morsing, Bansuris, Tambourines, Dapli, Duff, Shenai, Sarod, Manjeera, Ghunghroo, etc. You should be able to sample the individual IAP sounds before deciding to buy. You can paste loops into Cubasis and edit the MIDI notes as you wish or directly record MIDI.
I found a couple of sounds louder than their adjacent notes (I need to report this to the dev). Their desktop version has Legato, etc which the devs promised to bring them to iOS version last year and I'm still waiting. I'll remind them. It should become acceptable when they add these expressive playing features.
@MobileMusic, Just bought the sitar and Israj . Listening to the clips, especially the israj and ravahattna, really take me back to the fantastic experiences of watching Satagit Ray’s Incredible masterpiece films like “World old Apu”. God, the soundtracks were the perfect accompaniment to those tales of sparseness and richness contrasted and combined. I wish more people today could experience them. Such a different, daunting and beautiful recreation of life minus the trappings (though not the traps) of life and materialism. The Music Room was another favorite.
Still, one really needs an MPE keyboard to make these sounds work, no? How do they make those terrific previews, or are they the real thing? @McD... do you have that K15(?) keyboard by Kari Aras? What do you each recommend?
The Kai Arias KB-1 is a great tool for MPE playing but you should consider getting a hardware Roli KB with your physical touch and mental map of the piano. It will take effort to master the new landscape but it might bring out another side of your music character. A "slow you down" (in a good way) type of "constraint". The 2 octave version goes for around $200 I think.
1+ for Roli
Also, Roli offers a free AU with IAPs but some of them don't work in AU due to iPad's limitations and can be used only in the free standalone version.
GeoShred is a beast.
GeoSynthesizer is not bad.
Animoog.
iFretless Bass.
@mcd, the two oct roli goes for $400 in Istanbul. A bit steep for now.
I have all three @MobileMusic! I never gave it a thought being so addicted to a keyboard. I have only made one piece, below, using the iFretless keyboard... it was an unexpected delight, actually. Do you know if the demos are made with the samples? That would give me more confidence to buy a few more instruments.
"Truth-in-Advertising" laws should make devs use what comes with their app in their demos. They cannot use something in the demos and sell something else in the app. So, I'm sure they used the same samples for their demos. If in doubt, you could contact the dev for clarification.
https://www.google.com/search?q=truth+in+advertising
Hope you looked at Animoog, too.
Music lovers in India use mainly GeoShred, GeoSynth, Animoog, iFretless, SwarPlug apps and Violin, Flute (Bansuri), Saxophone, Guitar, Sitar, Veena hardware instruments for expressive playing
Got a confirmation from SwarSystems - they are going to port their desktop SwarPlug v4 to iOS this year with Legato, etc. and it would be a free upgrade to existing users.
More info on SwarPlug v4:
It has 79 instruments along with the latest features such as new effects, MPE support, key mappings customisation, portamento, legato, scales customisation with semitone tuning, time-stretching and much more..
In latest ML pack 4 you will get 2 different Sitars and a Surbahar, perfectly resampled in 48kHz, 24bits, multiple mics (direct mono and stereo) and multiple samples per stroke.
Thanks @mobilemusic!