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.
Comments
Another argument for custom / diatonic scales is that if you have favorite scales, it makes it easier to start playing around with ideas. Similarly, pentatonic scales are great for improvisation and playing leads.
For something like Velocity Keyboard, this would be perfect because limited notes on screen means that more octaves are visible and individual keys can be larger for easier playability.
The flexibility of touchscreens that we don't need to be bound to chromatic keyboard layout designed hundreds of years ago. In terms of pedal switches like harps or concert kanteles have, a shortcut to quickly switch scales easily might be an option. For example, having neighbor scales available from circle of fifths for major/minor scales.
Yes the other feature I would like to see is custom string tunings. For example the Chinese Da Ruan I play is tuned: D A D A. Whereas the Zhong Ruan is G D G D
It would be great if there were tunings for all kinds of instruments that are out there; eg sitar, cittern
It would mean we could play around with these sounds the way they are supposed to be played.
So what, get this or not?
Another argument : I have big and fat fingers but love to play on several octaves (see picture). If I had only the notes that are on scale, it will help me a lot to avoid wrong notes and will increase the numbers of displayed octaves
get it. it‘s an awesome piece of software.
Setting the midi format to MPE-3 also stops the stuck notes problem in volt.
@cuscolima @ricksteruk @nondes @oddSTAR @McD
Ok I think you have convinced us. We have started working on a scale mode where the out of scale notes will not be visible or playable.
Hooray! Thanks @Blue_Mangoo!
That’s fantastic news thanks 🙏
If it were me I would have both a “hide notes out of scale” option as well as a “leave out of scale notes on screen but made unplayable”
Thanks @Blue_Mangoo it will be a great feature !
It is becoming clear that a velocity sensitive MIDI controller isn’t useful without velocity sensitive patches on your synths. To address that issue, today we started a project to make short tutorials for all iOS synths, showing how to convert the existing patches to make them respond nicely to velocity and aftertouch controls.
The first three videos are below.
Aftertouch in Volt & Velocity KB:
Velocity in Volt & velocity KB:
Aftertouch in Animoog & Velocity KB:
Great thanks
. It would be ideal if in future updates velocity keyboard could have presets that are tuned and ready to go with the default settings on apps like Animoog etc
We will consider that. In most cases there are so many different setups that can work with each synth that it’s not possible to save presets for all of them. But perhaps if we considered them as templates; starting points that are good working starting points, that would work well.
That's wonderful, thank you! As I mentioned earlier, if there's an easy way to just allow us to select individual notes to appear by name (e.g. C, Eb, F, G, A) instead of selecting a scale, I and the other uneducated-about-scales musicians will be forever grateful!
That's a good point. Maybe make an editing mode to enable/disable notes from the chromatic scale. I just learned about the Hungarian Minor and was going to see which apps I own implement it. I know AudioKit has added code to use the altered tunings that a few apps support. These tunings make some amazing world sounding music for newbies and make authentic world music possible for many ethnic composers/artists.
I don't use a scale feature much because it's too limiting from a musical standpoint, but I'd use it more if the user could choose the notes they want, however many.
@McD @oddSTAR @lovadamusic
I see your point. We don’t plan to add a scale editor in the next update but I’ll work on a design for a future version.
@Blue_Mangoo just wanted to say this is a fantastic tool for me as someone looking to create multi-velocity, real, drum kit performances! Velocity options for the iPad are fairly limited.
I don’t know if it has been mentioned already but:
Designable size and positioning of pads (as in Orphion) would be fantastic.
Saving and sharing configurations.
Love it, looking forward to its evolution.
Thank you for the suggestion. We are thinking about how to design this properly.
+1
TC-Data has a brilliant note filter option for it’s note modules. Simple and effective. I still like the idea of scale presets as well (like ThumbJam) with the option to enable/disable playing notes outside of the selected scale.
I just looked at Orphion. I downloaded it when it first came out but haven't paid it much attention since then. I can see that it is a really powerful idea. It doesn't seem to fit in with the design ethic of Velocity Keyboard though. I think we should make a separate app to explore the idea of how to design something like that; then perhaps merge key features back into Velocity Keyboard later on.
How do you adjust the size of the pads in Orphion? (I got the IAP to create my own pad layouts but can't find the size control.)
Hi, @Blue_Mangoo I see your point, maybe a separate app.
In Orphion when you enter the edit mode (blueprint looking screen) you activate the edit features of each pad by touch selecting them. Oddly, resizing is done OUT of the selection status of the pad using two-finger pinch. The size seems to jump to a larger circumference and occasionally they can disappear especially if near the edges. (It has some quirks)
The biggest and maybe only drawbacks with Orphion is its limited velocity levels and seemingly less detailed finger surface detection. The worst problem for me being the too few velocity levels.
Again, I am so glad you explored this methodology. I use VK with AudioLayer to recreate live drumming. It’s the best mode going without hardware.
ABOUT GYRO/MOTION DETECTION: Motion detection for high speed repeats tends to fail and is hard to be consistent with. The physical movement of the device in a rapid repeat tends to negate the ability for the sensor to detect each strike. It also needs user control of the response curve. DrumPerfectPro has a good implementation but I still never use it because it is inconsistent compared to hardware or VK.
(I really hope Apple doesn’t buy this, kill it, and stick it in GarageBand like it did Alchemy, lol.)
FYI Tried this format with Roli Noise app but it’s still producing stuck notes. However, it only occurs when switching octaves in Velocity Keyboard.
If it’s getting stuck when switching octaves, that’s a second bug that needs to be fixed separately.
Thanks in advance
Yes, if you play notes at different velocities at nearly the same time, velocity keyboard will have difficulty responding correctly to the change in pressure level.
You can improve this by experimenting with placing different kinds of padding under the iPad. One or two layers of the material they use for making yoga mats is very good for this. It should be soft enough to depress a little when you push on it but not so soft that the iPad is bouncing around on top.
No, it appears to be happening in all MIDI modes, not just MPE-3.
Yes, running v1.0.3.
This is happening inside of AUM. And to clarify, it’s happening after a note is released then tapping the octave transpose. The transposed octave will produce held notes. Let me know if any additional info would be of help.
Ok, Thank you. I will try to reproduce the error myself and ask back here if I can’t see it.
Hi @brice ,
I ran velocity keyboard on iPad in AUM, controlling Roli noise. I was not able to see the stuck noise issue. It could be that the pre-release version of velocity keyboard 1.1.0 that I am running does not have this problem. Or it could be that I am not doing exactly what you were doing when you saw the error.
Please wait for the version 1.1.0 update to go live on the App Store and if you are still having this problem after the update, please contact us and we will look more closely at the issue.
We expect the update to go live within the next 24 hours.
The one inside Autotune mobile is pretty neat....
You can select a root note and scale type from the drop downs.....you can then turn on or off any individual notes you wish on the keyboard below.
That is a very nice design. I think we will try it. Thanks for the idea!