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.
my experiences from 3 years of creating "non-typical" music with iPad
Hi, this will consist of general musings in regards to experimenting with music-making on iPad. I apologise for a potential lack of precision.
I've been using my iPad for about 3-4 years now for creating materials for songs and sound design. i've ran workshops on iOS music, followed up eagerly on latest developments and apps, and I feel I have an OK handle on the whole thing.
I'm on my second decade of professional audio work on DAWs such as Pro Tools and Ableton Live, and because those tools exist, I don’t want to imitate such workflow on an iPad. Instead, I’ve been drawn to apps and methods that help me try new ways of making sounds: Patterning, Samplr, Dhalang , Quantum, Apesoft apps, Sector etc. I prefer to use randomizing functions, granular tools, and cyclical and untypical structures instead of a rigid 4/4 sequence. For example, Quantum has many features for fun manipulation where you end up wondering what on earth is even happening. Usually I do things that rely on a pulse, but with layers of rhythms, melodies and textures that don’t quite correspond to a set grid, or the features of a given musical genre. For this, I’ve found the iPad to be invaluable.
It must be said that almost anything can be composed in any environment. I could do most of my weird polyrhythms and unsynced layers and the granular craze on Ableton, for example. But I’ve found that it’s all about how things feel to you, and whether they inspire you or not. I’m not looking for the perfect solution, because I don’t think such a thing exists; I’m merely trying out various approaches and challenge myself to not get stuck with a sound or a method.
My main problem with the tablet-based approach is how all of it is highly unreliable when you compare it to desktop work. To give you an example, I run my sessions on AUM, and too often, synths don’t load up the way they were when I saved them, and I’ve given up on trying to understand why this is, or which app is the best workhorse in the Apple kingdom. I’m careful to save everything as meticulously as possible and work slowly in order to understand what I’m doing each step of the way. Often, it seems like there’s always an issue I’m fixing. This is not the case when I work at my desktop. Things work, and I don’t search the web for anything (note: this is not a call to start a forum war over desktop vs mobile, simply stating my experiences).
I stopped reading iOS forums at some point, because I didn’t want to know about the latest thing. Too much information distracts me. As said, for me, none of this is about finding the holy grail of apps, but making sounds. This is why I haven’t really cared if an app crashes or is unreliable as long as I get to create some fun sounds.
Sadly, I find the iPadOS, and iOS before it, a little too sketchy for more meaningful, long-term work, ie. tweaking something for weeks or months. Instead, I tend to record everything out immediately after I’ve come up with a thing I like. For me, the actual composition takes place elsewhere; iPad is for generating material.
I also use my iPad for controlling Ableton and improvising live with others. The latter usually means just building it all up as i go, since I’ve noticed that creating a stable setup isn’t that much more inspiring than just stacking stuff up on the fly.
Here lies another little epiphany I had: although it’s great there are these fantastic tools such as Mozaic, I’m unsure whether they’ll help me make music, or just delay the creation because I’m knee-deep into learning yet another new app. As my friend once said, either spend your time building a digital instrument or playing one -you rarely manage to do both. My capability of perceiving systems is very limited: in theory, I like the idea of tens of LFOs controlling the parameters of my synths and effects while I twist the knobs of a MIDI controller, but in practice, it usually ends up being either too complicated to control, turning it simply into a confusing, generative sound source (this I can achieve much quicker in other ways). Creating sound and music is fundamentally a simple, intuitive process to me, one which doesn’t improve with an army of blinking lights and the ability to tweak each little thing ad infinitum.
With all this being said, I am curious to hear about the experiences of those of you who try to achieve something similar to myself. I think I've written something similar here before with scant response, so it might be that this is of no concern to anyone else... /walloftext
Comments
I get nervous about the longevity of apps on iOS and being able to open projects down the road. Ironically, I’ve never done it, but it’s always a factor in my mind. I can take a Reason project I finished over a decade ago and it’ll mostly open fine - I can’t say the same for iOS (obviously a decade is a bit long in iOS parlance/timelines, but I don’t even know if a project from four or five years ago would 100% open fine).
Does it matter? I don’t know..
I also agree that all the shiny sometimes makes writing music more difficult than it needs to be. It’s not a problem for everyone, but it’s pretty easy to get lost in the weeds of all the crazy shit you can do and then you realize “oh god I’ve spent four hours just hooking stuff up to synths in AUM” and really nothing has come of it lol.. sure it was FUN. Was it productive?
Does it matter? I also don’t know
/streamofconsciousnessmusing
I consider participating on forums as part of the job - as well as finding shiny new things to buy, it’s a great place to find out why stuff isn’t working - which in my case is usually down to user error.
Yeah it’s a distraction, but the pay off is I get to learn more about the potentials and limitations of the tools I m using to make music.
This is a great point.
I’m moving pretty much in your direction. Instead of the iPad being both source and destination, it’s a waypoint for me. I find it’s a fantastic place to discover and experiment, but not to complete anything. That said, I’ve finished a lot of songs in GarageBand for iPad, but I’ve finally gotten a little too annoyed by its idiosyncrasies. And overall, reliability is the biggest issue.
These days, I use the iPad for capturing audio from other devices, or for Egoist. I would love to use it for everything, as it’s just so easy, and touch is much nicer than a mouse, but — like you — I end up spending more time setting up than playing.
I also wonder if part of the problem is the too-cheap apps. Imagine your favorite app, and then imagine how much better it would be if the dev could charge €100 instead of €10.
Things that happen when it’s fun...
It ALWAYS reaffirms my love of the whole music making process.
It’s OFTEN educational as I discover new ideas and techniques that I may be able to use in the future.
It’s SOMETIMES productive.
Things that happen when it’s NOT fun...
Nothing good.
But that’s just me.
The way I make things fun for me is to keep control over the big stuff, themes, chords, rhythms, arrangements, etc., but to introduce randomness into the fine detail, velocity and aftertouch parameter changes, latched S&H LFO parameter changes, etc. Basically stuff that will throw up small surprises in timbre and dynamics when playing.
I have not found working on an iPad has limited my music making in any way. Quite the opposite. I have created far more of better quality than I ever did on desktop DAWs since I started using them back in the 80s. I think the iPad lends itself to a fluid and explorative approach, whereas the desktop DAWs suit a ‘workflow’ that can be followed every time.
Different strokes...
This is a very interesting topic because I have the same background, almost decades of desktop work and now the relatively new iPad music world.
) but I don't think that's a bad thing.
I don't know how many times I've switched my main music composition app on the iPad (a total no-go on the desktop
In fact I'm just about to move from Gadget to Nanostudio 2.
The iPad has always been my device to quickly "get things done" for me, in terms of first steps like recording a melody, a chord progression, drums, bass, percussion etc. and even some audio recordings, and the simple, fast, intuitive apps have drawn me into using them regularly.
I've never understood why musicians liked the AUM way so much. I enjoy it myself for experimentation, modular madness and complex setups, something like those many modular plugin hosts on Win or Mac. But I find it to be the most inappropriate setup to compose in a straightforward, musical way, not to mention the many dependencies and instabilities you naturally get when combining lots of instruments, effects and processors.
So @hazardtears, it appears to me that you have chosen exactly those tools that would promise to give you the most headaches right from the start, they sure satisfy the men's desire to find problems they can fix and be proud of fixing, but for actually writing music I cannot imagine a more counter-productive tool chain that somehow forces you to spend some time with the tools themselves instead of just using them.
My take on it: If I want to write music, I'll stick to one app of choice.
And I will happily accept the restrictions of that app and try to make the best out of it.
For me, a "DAW" is like a powerful synth.
You don't create good sounds (or songs, respectively) unless you spend enough time with it.
What @TheOriginalPaulB said, that the IPad lends itself to a fluid and explorative approach’. I have decided making music with apps on iPad is basically, jazz, in the sense that it happens in the moment of creation, and can never be done the same way twice, as I fumble my way through apps I half understand, or have happy accidents using randomisers granulisers and other unpredictable sound sources. The only discipline I have is to have my R8 recorder running constantly in the background, in case of crashes or tweaks too far, and to capture any lightning in a bottle moments which may occur. Beginner mind, always! I tried for years to work on ‘songs’ using timeline DAWs and just produced boring loops. Hey, now I can produce whole, organic, boring soundscapes!
That makes total sense. In this respect, I brought up DAWs since I'm never searching for why something isn't working, but then it's an unfair comparison in ways that I'm sure most of you are aware of (size of companies, user base etc). But then, I'm not trying to criticise anyone or anything, but to explain my own process.
When there's an option that's solid, easy to use, and functional, I'll take -and this is my reasoning for not doing any song-length sequencing or weeks-long arrangement work (read: sequencing and layering pre-created materials) on my iPad. But the fun that @TheOriginalPaulB mentioned is something I, too, find with the latter; I almost never sketch or improvise anything nowadays on desktop, only edit, arrange mix, record, and the like. iPad has changed that, maybe irreversibly so.
But in all honesty, the fun part is often unimportant to me when I need to get work done. Although I also feel I'm constantly learning new things, i'd be lying if I wouldn't admit there's tons of repetitive labor included in my audiowork (editing speech tracks etc).
That being said, I do enjoy working with audio tremendously. Nothing beats sitting down in front of your tools, with no distractions, and making things. And iPad apps have given me tons of new ideas, while I can't perhaps complete them in that environment.
Once again, it might be very different if I was doing music that's based on AB structures, chord changes, 4/4 beats and so on. All those are things I appreciate and consume as a listener, but they don't form the basis of what I do.
Thanks, good points, but I was wondering if you missed what I said about the kind of music I make? AUM is perfect for me exactly because it's basically like a modular synth and the apps I mentioned enables me to forgo conventional song structures for something more free-flowing. It might be useful to illustrate what I'm doing -writing about music only takes us so far. Let me see if I can find a moment to post a video
couldn't agree more! I've been considering certain kinds of jazz as an apt analogue, too
Great idea! I'd really like to see that.
And you're right, when doing experimental stuff the only kind of one-app-for-all is a modular system, be it Audulus (if you want a highly flexible but barebones approach) or miRack (if you want to get things done more quickly), while your AUM setup is certainly the fastest environment to achieve something like you described by using ready-made high-level plugins.
I guess I‘m in a similar headspace as the threadstarter. After decades of DAWing around with weird sounds, I started improvising with variable iPad setups in 2012. IAA Apps inside AB for easy switching, Audio units inside AUM for easy midirouting. To me, the whole machine includes a Mac with Logic (for routing/panning) and VDMX (for realtime-visuals), because the whole thing thus comes together nicely. Mostly everything runs smooth, with only seldom hiccups here. My latest discovery are MPE controllers (sensel morph, Roli blocks, Artiphon), which bring a whole new level of improvisability to the table. I prefer to be surprised by actions the machine decides on itself and try to react fast enough.Must haves, imho: Gestrument Pro, iFretless Apps, Sector, Bitwiz, Groovebox, Model D, Turnado, Effektrix, Factory, Cyclop and some more. Guess I‘m a fanboy...
I created several tracks in Gadget (almost fully optioned up with most add-on). Tons of fun, and novel, and sounded pretty good (to me). I even did Gadget + PC Daw for one track, which was hard for me. I helped support the early pioneers, buying a lot of apps and effects I've never really used to make music, only play around with. I've since invested in a lot of software on the PC instead, as it just leads to better results, faster. What hasn't changed, is that I appreciate the MIDI processing aspect of my iPhone, be it using Ribn to control a few CC's on my software or hardware, or the new LFO app I bought, plus several more. I think that's where I'll spend the money and time going forward (that said, I still bought Pure Acid, because Jim is an awesome indie developer). I'll still buy a music creation app now and then, or play around with old ones, because they can be inspiring even if not productive, when it comes to song-making.
Or, realistically, I may not be able to afford to keep up with updates on the PC at some point and turn back to my future-iPhone
I think it's probably different if you're doing this seriously, as you seem to be, so you really need everything to work. For hobbyists like me it's an annoyance when things don't work as they should, but it's not critical.
Personally I started with an MS20, guitar, wah pedal, a WEM Copycat and two casette recorders to bounce tracks back and forth about 400 years ago. Bought a 4 track when they came out, and I could afford one, and slowly built up my desktop/iOS software workflow as the platforms have evolved.
My stuff is definitely not your standard 4x4 malarkey. I use the iPad for creating loops and audio chunks via AUM jams (though the 4Pockets multitracker has got me back into overdubbing on the iPad, but it's buggy as hell) which I then feed into Ableton on my Mac.
The iPad is usually where I do my experimentation and jamming, and I try to keep the spontenaety going when I transfer the files over to the desktop, but output as a more palatable thing via Ableton.
There was a period when I relied solely on Dhalang. It's such an astonishing tool. The physical modeling feature, the clunky but inspiring sampling mode, the piano roll, not to mention the many matrix-like probability tools taking their cue from markov chains. A friend of mine uses it for live improvisation, she uses a MIDI keyboard and does a bit of parameter wiggling by hand, was really impressed by the results.
I've never really got into Patterning fully, there's something about the interface that doesn't quite click with me. It doesn't inspire me to try weird stuff, instead I end up with bad IDM beats more often than not. It's lack that "weirdness" quality in which Quantum and Dhalang both shine.
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I agree with you, it's not critical, even when I do professional work. The only real difference is that I can't rely on building complex sessions and work on them for a prolonged period of time.
But to be honest, I think that's not a bad thing: rather, it keeps the iPad being a source of fun experimentations and lends it a certain lightness. It can be depressing going back to a chunky, gazillion-channel project after a while and start to tweak it. For that I'd prefer an extra monitor, keyboard shorctuts, a mouse, all that.
I finish most of my iPad sessions on one sitting, since it's usually max three sound sources, some Rozeta lfos and the sort. Then I record the tracks individually (or mixed together as a jam session) and off I go.
Isn’t NS2 the antidote to all the “instability “ that’s being spoken about here , what with being able to save all of the auv3 instruments as well as the presets within its internal file system?
I’m gonna get a Deluge soon and just use the iPad for extra goodies.
agreed with lots of what you guys say.
my take on ios music..
i love the synths, the effects, the routing of things in AUM/audiobos ... the midi sequencers,
love being able to touch the screen, interact without a mouse... use a midi controller if i want
there’s a LOT of really cool apps that let you do sweet things both audio and midi
but...
capturing everything into arrangements is huge down fall for ios.
if AUM had a way to record things into ableton style clips, that would be it... the best thing to ever happen! finalize the deal for me immediately..
but it does not.
only stagelight let’s you use clips... but it doesnt support using midi apps such as SPA rozeta... and all the others ...so it ends up not really being useful 💁🏻♂️
solve the problem of capturing sequences in clips all in the same app the allows for all these other things and i’m good...
preferably in aum as that is the perfect place for me
@reasOne You don't really like BM3, do you?
And Modstep can record into Ableton-style clips too.
I was totally locked in Gadget's clip- and scene-based workflow (in Abletalk) but being able to record in loops and use clips on a linear timeline with similar comfort as in a pattern-based arranger, when actually using it in Nanostudio 2, I've found it to be less restrictive than I originally thought.
Really interesting post.
Any music production I've completed in the last few years has been ios only, but there's very little of it, and most of it is all Gadget. NS2 is now my DAW of choice, but I find, for whatever reason, I'm just not making much music on the ipad. (Partly because I now make my living from something other than music, and I'm still getting used to thinking of music as a hobby).
I have found fresh inspiration in hardware - I bought an OP-1, and its limitations and flexibility lead me to get stuff done, and experiment more. I'm thinking about combining it with a deluge down the line...or going the other way and getting a laptop purely for Ableton Live. I think the ipad will always be part of the process, if only for the synths and soundmanglers. And, of course, because Samplr.
Well thought out, nice post 👍🏼
I find using the ipad as a sound source works best for me, for this it cant be beat.
Apesoft, perfect example
Interesting post. I think iOS production is really maturing and gaining respectability more and more. There have been a lot of semi successful producers lately who have produced albums completely on iPad. I work in TV post production for my day job and I know the sound designers that work on our show use a lot of iPad synths for their sound design and that is for professional work for major studios in Hollywood. They still all use Pro Tools to finish everything but they are using synths on iPad to create sounds.
I'm a fan of a lot of more experimental electronic music like Autechre for example and I am excited about a lot of the tools on iPad to create more generate and randomized things like Brambos suite of instruments/effects.
I have an ancient pro photography background where mastering the use of the expensive ancient photography tools was 1/2 of the skill set required to be a pro photographer. Film an processing film was expensive, and it was a profession where technical skill was just as important as having a good eye. I made a prediction in 1992 to a certain world famous photographer I was working with at the time, that Digital Photography would one day surpass film, and would kill the industry as we knew it then.... And that was exactly what happened.
I'll make a similar prediction about iOS music. Desktop computer DAWs are equivalent to the expensive camera gear of the past, and all the desktop plug-in's are like expensive film and processing.
The availability of an amazingly diverse collection of extremely affordable iOS music production Apps are to music creation... IMO... "Similar" to how cheap Digital cameras and Digital cameras in every phone, have obliterated that ancient pro photography industry that once was.
But there is a critical difference.... The possibilities for creating artistic forms of expression using vocals and sounds are far more numerous, than the number of way art can be expressed in a still image. This is a concept that can easily understood by looking at the number of different sounding languages in the would, yet it only takes one photograph to express the same idea to a speaker of any.
A Rolling Stone magazine photographer once said to me... "Every picture has already been taken, all a photographer can do is take the picture again with different subjects, in different places, at a different time, and make the photograph their own".
At first I said "Nah", but later I came to see the truth in it.
But music is very different. As developers invent new ways to create and express sounds, the possibilities of creative potential grow exponentially.
I see affordable mobil music production as the creation platform most likely to give rise to new forms of musical expression.
It's about statistical probability.... Powerful music tools in the hands of many create a statistically higher probability for musical innovation, than only a relative handful of more powerful desktop music tools in the hands of a few.
It will be the way new and different kinds of specialized Apps will have an ability interact in "modular" ways with one another, that will raise the power of the exponent that governs the likelihood of invention of new musical expression.
Wow, as much as I enjoyed @hazardtears original post (thoughtful, provacative, etc) the follow ups have been equally enjoyable. The last one by @horsetrainer gets special mention with the excellent photography parallel. Thought provoking indeed.
Stimulating analogy, @horsetrainer -I double as a visual artist, and your arguments made me think whether the difference between an image and sound hold true in my experience. Sounds take place in a space; like weather, you can't experience a sound without being inside it. In both cases, you experience the world, or more precisely the situation you're in, through them. I remember Tim Ingold brought this up in a seminal -it is to me- essay titled "Against Soundscape". Whereas with pictures, you're looking at something without being in it. We could spend rest of our lives arguing whether this is philosophically sound, but I wager you know what I mean
Problem is, I consider every aesthetic experience as a holistic one. Appreciating music falls flat when you're hungry, and being with your loved ones in the concert makes every band sound better. Whatever it is we're experiencing, it seems impossible to extract the thing itself (sound, image) from the situation it is and we are in. The meaning of a given sound or image is dependent on you & your relation to other things in that moment. So while I can appreciate how, as you said, the possibilities of sound remain more numerous than those reserved for a still image, nothing happens in a vacuum and thus this difference might not mean that much in the end.
Since this is how I think about aesthetic experiences, my attitude towards making sounds and pictures is lax. I care much more about the context and the event in which my work will take place than about the individual audiovisual bits themselves. I think iOS really hammered that home for me, ie. do stuff, make it work, and stop treating the sounds as if they exist in some sterile laboratory. The messiness of iPad based audio work is exactly what makes it so life-like.
This is already way beyond hyperbole, so why not top it off with an obnoxious claim, so here goes: I don't think one can appreciate iPadOS if they're too hang up on optimization. That's a hill I'm willing to die on
Giving up on perfection is the kindest thing you can do to yourself, in music and life. Treat the crash as a gift.
Interesting point about the sterile laboratory, doing everything within an iPad or computer can result in an overly clean sound - even when artificially treated with atmospheric fx.
I try and get some air into my music, by playing guitar through an amp, and recording it with a mic. I’ve also got 40 years worth of tapes and recordings of various musical endeavours played live and recorded on crummy equipment, and I’ll slip bits of these into the mix if I can.
Some of my favourite bits in my own music have been accidents, errors, even. Perfection is not aesthetically pleasing.