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.
Blocs Wave
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Funnily enough I’ve been using this over the last few days - great for assigning a tempo and key to a bunch of samples.
Good app to have in the toolbox.
I do.
I like it and the simplicity is a key factor to making it work on iPhone. There aren’t too many features to get in the way.
My main criticism is that it won’t sync with Bw on iPad and it’s a pain to reimport the loops twice.
It’s obviously only as good as your loops. I spent some time loading it up with my own loops and then found it really good for jamming out song/arrangement ideas and I often get cross-pollinisation from loops never intended to go together. I don’t use the Bw content very much but it’s nuce to have some different drum and percussion loops to get things grooving.
I also use it with launchpad too having all the loops in one screen on the iPhone is nice.
I also use it to export stems and in this guise it works really well as a quick and dirty time and pitch stretcher; I can get a load of loops all set to the right tempo for use in other apps.
When I want more power, sometimes I’ll export the session and import the loops into GarageBand live loops and this then allows me to record the arrangement into the time line and then open it really easily in Logic on my Mac.
Bw is far more immediate than live loops in GB and gets me going more quickly.
It’ can be a lot of fun too. I use it a lot now that I have lots of my own loops in there.
I use it much more on iPhone than iPad
For the way I use it I don’t need or want any extra features.
It is free but the EQ, slicer and I’m pretty sure sample import are all IAPs. I would not use it to structure a whole song. Like @MonzoPro said as a tool and sample fodder itself, it’s indispensable. Some of the sound packs are a little ho-hum/run of the mill for what I’m looking for (don’t get me wrong they all sound great, just not always a style I’m digging) but there’s definitely some really unique stuff in there just aching to be cut up and exported somewhere else
Also @EyeOhEss it’s one of the few apps I prefer on a phone, it works great. Suits the smaller screen imo, though it works just fine on the iPad too!
Yeah I think I paid for the pro pack to get the audio import and slicer. I didn’t get eq as part of whatever iap I bought.
They have a sale on at the moment for pro features and eq. I haven’t bothered with eq it’s not something I can see myself needing for the way I use Bw.
Just double checked. Pro features are on sale for £4.99 and include audio import, slicer and EQ.
I don’t have eq but have slicer and audio import so must have bought them separately at some stage.
Audio import is essential. Bw is nothing if you can’t import your own loops IMVHO.
I end up buying a bunch of their sounds when they having a sale. My secret hope is that they will use the money to develop it further. There are plenty of threads here in which direction that could be
@klownshed yup same, only slicer and sample import which are both a must, sample import over slicer probably even
Blocs Wave is one of my fav apps on iOS despite @AmpifyxNovation refusal to update it with common sense features like iCloud sync between devices.
That’s the only feature I personally would like. I like the fact that it’s so simple and has no extraneous stuff. I have plenty of other apps on iOS and the Mac for when I need more and the immediacy of BW is, for me, its greatest strength. As it’s so good as exporting stems I don’t feel limited by it.
Works well with Launchpad. Create song parts in Blocs, and then export to Launchpad. You can then jam out a song Ableton style.
But yes, good even on its own for importing and playing clips.
I used to use it a lot and never imported my own sounds to it. Its a looper recorder you know
Launchpad is their solution for playing back loops
What i love on the amplify apps though is the fact that all packs are available in both apps. So you by a pack in launchpad it’s available on BW too. This is nice.
Works best recording loops into it from other apps/synths then using the scenes to jam them out into a song structure, by the way there’s a 6 scene limit, 8 tracks each. Good for the built in drums too, everything can be sliced up. The looper is not like the one in endless, you just select the length via that bar interface. There are no fx except the iap eq. I wouldn’t see a use with it and Koala, personally. With Koala you’ve already got your samples sliced/sequenced via recording so it would seem extraneous to export that stuff to blocs wave, unless you require further slicing . I’d be more inclined to slice stuff in Blocs Wave and send it the other direction to Koala
For me it’s exactly the opposite. Id make loops in koala to use in BW. Anything goes.
I find it quicker to get loops into BW than launchpad. It’s an easy export into launchpad once it’s all loaded in — and back if necessary for changes. Ampify made that workflow pretty easy and it works for me.
I don’t really want to mix other people’s loops, the fun for me is making my own stuff. I’m obviously not in the majority or there wouldn’t be a gazzilon sound packs for sale.
But that’s just how I use it. It’s cool when people use tools in different ways. Sometimes you see somebody else doing something and think to yourself “I wish I’d thought of that!”
Other times you wonder what the hell they're thinking. But it’s all cool. 😎
@MonzoPro or anyone else BW can assign a key and tempo to loops but what if the sound source after keying / re-keying is too high in pitch? There is no octave up/down tool in BW. Anyone tried external solutions that don’t change the tempo for the loop.
😅 I’m sure as I type this it’s been answered a million times before...
It maintains the pitch, unless you change that as well as the tempo. So you mark the sample tempo, key, beats etc. when importing, and it references these when you make changes.
It’s very clever, it’s own time stretching thing.
You can set a different key for the loop and then it will transpose by a different amount when you change the project key.
Or set the loop’s genre to drums and it won’t shift pitch.
Does blocs wave or any of @AmpifyxNovation apps sync to anything other than audiobus.
I have tried Aum, Ape, GB, Cubasis and none sync.
Sure, try Ableton LINK.
Yes I know/have, but blocs doesn’t receive start/stop messages from anything because it has the old link code.
I never cared about LINK start/stop because it doesn't work instantly anyway like with MIDI clock.
Open Audiobus 3, add BlocsWave. You now have Link play/stop (with individual button), this works for lots of apps.
Does blocs wave or any of @AmpifyxNovation apps sync to anything other than “audiobus”
Link sync works just fine, if you want play/stop you need Audiobus.
Making music on iOS without the essential trinity of Audiobus, AudioShare, AUM would be of a bit of a grim nightmare.
Is there a way to create SoundPacks of your own or otherwise group your own samples so that they show up as discrete sets of loops rather than all jumbled together in the user section?
I am creating libraries of loops with different feels for projects I am working on. I’d love to be able to have the loops of similar style grouped together and be able to hide/show those sets for discovery just as I could with bought packs.