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
One aspect of midi time stretch not mentioned is recording without tempo, then adjusting to fit a tempo. I don’t work this way but have traded posts with people who do when talking about Photon. One can turn off the metronome and play away free form, or playing to a backing track of unknown tempo. Then work out the tempo, splitting and adjusting the track as you go until things fit.
Additionally, the time stretch isn’t just for clips. It’s also for any selection within clips. So, lets say your “tempoless” recording drifted around a bit and you wanted to fix that up. You can select the drifting part and size it to fit.
This also could help with getting midi to sync better with live recorded audio tracks. I used to have to dub in drum or other parts to live recordings a lot. The tempo was all over the place. Something like that is a lot easier if you can morph things around until they sound good.
There are lots of creative possibilities as well. Think like some of the aspects of Fugue machine, where you can experiment with duplicating lines and playing them against each other at different speeds.
What do you mean by sequence AUM?
Xequence is a straightforward linear MIDI sequencer/composition tool. It isn't a DAW. It has an elegant timeline and built-in software keyboard and drum pads for sending MIDI. Allows you to set measures to repeat.
There are a bunch of video tutorials for it that you can watch to get a feel for it.
It is a much simpler best than Beakmaker 3 and doesn't host anything on its own. You use it to record MIDI and send it to synths wherever they may be. Quite a few folks use it to sequence Gadget if they like Gadget's instruments but not the sequencer's limitations.
Being able to extend and shorten clips from the left and right ends is a timesaver for something that happens to me all the time. I record something and find that the beginning of the phrase is really somewhere else. It’s always a chore extending the clip, copying the front part, pasting it at the end, then moving everything to the beginning. Now I an simply duplicate the clip join the two, then shorten from the left. And since it’s essentially non-destructive, it’s even more convenient.
@SevenSystems : you might consider creating a wiki entry for Xequence
and maybe put links to the YouTube Xequence tutorials.
That page will be a good place for people to put tips and tricks and links that people will be able to find in the future.
Re: state saving for AUM.
I still think there might be one AUM state save related AB release that hasn’t made it through the Apple approval process? Disregard if I’m wrong .
Re: state saving in general
During the Xequence 2 beta, when there were still intermittent problems saving state, I found that saving from the AudioBus menu rather than from the sidebar was more reliable. I would always look for the “Saved state for Xequence” message at the bottom. If I didn’t see it, I would be sure to keep saving until I did.
@wim can Photon resize midi as well?
No.
I think he simply means sequencing apps inside of AUM.
Ta
Hey @Tones4Christ, it seems like you got all the setup with AB and AUM worked out. Did you still need me to try anything out for you? Sorry, trying to catch up with all the posts that came in while all these pesky little people in my life insist I put down the iPad and attend to non-essentials like eating and actually paying attention to them.. 😂
@SevenSystems ran into a similar issue with state saving. Weird thing was that when I would load the preset I would launch xequence and see my arrangement briefly before it took me to the project management screen and then it would be gone. I thought maybe a stale refresh but it consistently happened. Even created a new project and saved it directly in xequence to make sure when I loaded the AB preset I wasn’t just seeing what was last loaded briefly. It still showed me the original arrangement that I had tried to save in AB. Of course, when I went to record it somehow stopped behaving this way. xequence now loads the keyboard for some reason first. I doubt any of this is helpful but it felt like xequence might be dumping the arrangement.
OK here's an example....
Leave X2 at the default tempo of 120 BPM.
Tap on the three little dots at the top left of the window. Click on MIDI/Recording. Make sure the Metronome is set to "Always during count in" and Always during Recording". Then exit.
Tap the "120" (tempo) button on the top and select the metronome icon and the button that says 1/2 (half tempo). Then Exit.
Now bring up the keyboard. Hit record and play 8 bars of this to the metronome beat (which is half time).
All in one measure, in half notes, play "D3, A3, A#3, A3, D3, A3, A#3 , A3"
Then in the next measures play stuff like this "D3, A3, A#3 , F3, G3, A#3, A3, E3"
Continue until you have 8 bars of stuff.
Now turn off the half time from the tempo button.
Play it... Its twice as fast because it's now playing at the full 120 BPM.
THEN... Select the track you just made by tapping on it. hold down the right arrow at the bottom of the window and tap the little clock symbol between the left and right arrows and remove it, but keep your finger on the right arrow. You are now in time stretch mode.
Slide your finger (the one over the right arrow) to the left, and adjust your 8 bars of stuff to fit 4 bars instead.
Play that.
Then time stretch it again down to 2 bars...
Play that and imagine the possibilities!
If there's a simpler way of doing that, I don't know how yet.
No. Sub Tracks can be used as take lanes, but you’d need to create the sub track first then record a take on it. This will be coming though.
Yes. A looped clip repeats until it encounters another clip in the same lane.
There is also the option to make linke copies, where if you modify one it modifies all.
I do, but it does take some getting used to (for me) in order to get super useful output. I use it when I’ve not got any inspiration at the time, and then more as a starting point than anything else.
Very straightforward. Just add a cc control to the keyboard or drum pad surface, and record as you move the control. Yes, you can copy/paste it along with clips. In fact, it is part of the clip unless you decide to separate it out.
No.
No, but you can easily fake them by making a dummy track and dumping in clips and naming them appropriately.
So you don't really, launch clips but rather loop them ?
Can you set loop points on multiple clips and trigger them with a touch and in sync with the project?
The only loop region you can set is on the timeline for the entire project. But, you can set a clip to loop indefinitely. So, maybe you have a project loop set at 16 bars, but you have a 1 bar clip. If you set it to loop, then it’ll repeat over the entire 16 bars.
When I say “until it hits another clip in the same lane” what I mean is that looped clip will just keep looping as long as there’s blank space at the place in time where the playhead is. But, if you put in another clip, say at bar 9, the looped clip will cease to loop at bar 9.
So, you could in effect do what you’re saying by setting a clip to loop, then putting an empty clip at the end of the range that you wanted it to loop (corresponding to your idea of “region”.
It’s kind of different than the way you’re looking at it but you’d be surprised how effective it is once you use it once you use it. There are ample tools available to turn something you just quickly threw in there as a loop into a longer sequence to refine.
The other option is simply to make enough linked clips to cover the range that you wanted to “loop”.
Sequencing GR-16 from Xequence is one of my favorite things to do! The two-way trip is really cool too. Sketch out something in GR-16. Record the midi out to Xequence, then refine it in Xequence and turn it point it back at GR-16.
@SevenSystems Great job, and congratulations! Just bought it and I’m very impressed! Keep up the great work!
Simpleton question:
If one is a simpleton and already has V1 but has yet to really make much headway would the panel think it best to stick with V1 or instead move straight to V2 because it is simpler in a way that a simpleton might more easily understand?
That would not be a reason to move to V2. The learning curve for both is the same.
I’d like to hear more about that!
But again I ask: If you already have Xequence1, and have paid for all of the IAP, would you buy Xeq2 for $20 ($10 on sale)?
The manual on the other hand is vastly improved and expanded for V2.
Yes. I explained why in an earlier post.
I think the UI workflow has been greatly improved. I haven’t used v1 in ages, and X2 just felt better. Not sure if it’s from more experience on my part with these kind of tools, or just a better UX Design of the app...but I’d vote the latter. It all feels more cohesive and holistic fwiw.
Is it possible to play 'one note chords' in Xequence?
I love KB-1, but X2 looks like it could be a one-stop shop for MIDI on iOS.
Not at this time, but was mentioned earlier as a probable future enhancement.
Xequence does have “MIDI Thru”, so it’s possible to send chords to it and pass those along to an app, while recording the chords. Not the all-in one you want, but def. doable.