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
It's still half as much again as an Artiphon, which fits in a cabin bag and can be played in an airline seat. But no disrespect at all to Jamstik – I'm in for this one as well, and I hope it takes off for them.
Yeah, $399 for Artiphon, so a $200 difference.
I'm fairly familiar with the Artiphon. It's built to solve a different set of problems than what I'm looking for.
This is apparently the ALP model that serves as the platform for the new Jamstik. The pickpus sound pretty decent to me. Granted, I'm not the sort of customer who will spend $500+ on a pair of Throbak PAF pickups, and if you can afford those, you'd be too much of a cork-sniffer to even consider an ALP guitar anyway.
I feel your pain. I was a drummer. I lost my career as a working drummer. Replaced by a machine. A machine with impeccable timing and no attitude.
The guitar has lost a little ground but it's still the sexiest instrument on any stage.
If played correctly it can move the focus to your groin. I play sitting down. Still no work.
Thanks for the message on the differences.
Hey all!
Check the comments section in the clip: There will be an app for iOS but with a limited sound engine compared to the desktop version. Let's just hope they make the app AUv3-compatible - please ask for this if you have pre-ordered.
Most guitarist already have their guitar, so what's this got that a Fishman Connect doesn't....for a third of the price ?
Interesting! Do you have a Fishman Triple play Connect ? Can you tell me :
Thanks
I don't own it...but it's on my list. Gotta make lists since I live on another planet and only get home infrequently. But having researched it pretty thoroughly, I'd say yes, maybe on ipad but yes on mac, and I have no idea, but wireless would introduce more latency. If you want wireless, that's the other triple play, or wear an ipad and bluetooth... https://www.vguitarforums.com/smf/index.php?topic=25124.250 ...and there's lots of videos on utoob
Mine arrived this week, and they've just updated the rather clunky Jamstik Portal app with some initial support for it so you can get at the settings, including MPE (!). It's pretty much as you'd expect from a Fishman hex MIDI pickup on an ALP Leaf-200: very playable, good sound, tracks pretty well, though it's a travel guitar in form factor only, because it weighs an absolute ton with the battery (which took several hours to charge fully, so must be pretty beefy). The killer feature is the Bluetooth MIDI; it feels something like magic to be playing a real guitar that isn't plugged into anything and hearing synth sounds come out your speaker. Also works wired with desktop, but that draws too much power for iOS.
Like all MIDI guitars, it's not a frictionless translation of your playing and you do have to moderate your technique in various ways to get acceptable results, but the fact that it feels so nice under the hands is certainly a big plus here. MPE is a different story; my fantasies of just playing it straight into Noise were swiftly disabused, not because of anything in the implementation but because the kinds of expression that guitarists do with strings are quite challenging to map to MIDI. (I'm full of admiration for Artiphon's solution, which uses a combination of fingerboard touch and accelerometer movement to get the MPE dimensions feeling natural and controllable in fine detail.)
The least happy thing about it is the (iOS-only) app, which you only really need for adjusting settings (but do really need for that): it's just the app for their completely different non-pitched digital models with support for the Studio model bolted on and a lot of tutorial stuff and downloadable and purchasable sounds that are really intended for those other models. It's always a pleasure to quit it and get back into AUM. Instead of a standalone desktop app they're going with a Chrome extension, but that isn't out yet.
So far I'm impressed; it's a really nice guitar and I love having 24 frets of Bluetooth MIDI. I don't see it replacing the Artiphon as my everyday go-to controller, and time will tell whether its tracking is sufficiently better than MIDI Guitar 2 to override my personal preference for nylon strings, but it's certainly an impressive piece of kit for the price and as long as you keep your expectations realistic it's unlikely to disappoint.
Sounds interesting, I’ve been resisting far too long for midiguitar to have a sale, might well be going for it this week though, got a booster voucher during the Apple offer especially for it...
@Masanga when did you place your order?
If you want to sell a new product in the world of music gear, you must use the expression « game changer ».
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I was a backer on Indiegogo (originally for the Jamstik 12, which was abandoned in the face of competition from the not-dissimilar Jammy, so that backers were very generously upgraded to this project). It actually arrived in the UK a couple of weeks ago, but UPS were extremely lackadaisical about the customs paperwork and took some chasing to get it out the door. If you're in the same situation and they ask about the wood, do NOT mention the mahogany.
I dont have the fishman, but i used to have a roland midi mic modded guitar. The idea of these is that they have separate pick up for each string, so playing chords is given with any of these midi mic setups similar to these.
I think the fishman like others send out midi that you do what ever with. The roland system even allowed to send each string in different channels(or for example 3 strings on channel 1 controlling piano and 1 string on channel 10 for drums and 2 strings on channel 2 for synth and also allowed to transpose them separately.
It reauired external box to turn the pick up signal to normal midi and control midi channels transpose etc, and it also had a built in synth.
I paid 250€ for it used i think, guitar was korean epiphone sg from 90s in good condition, better guitar than new china epi sgs. I sold it for 350€ i think.
There is also a diy kit for midi mic installation, so nothing new in this product really. But it does come in handy form and if it tracks good and plays good, it could be a very good deal. But you can get a bit cheaper id you have a guitar you want to mod for midi. Dunno if this tracks better than other older solutions tho.
The OG jamstik burned me so hard. Yet I shall see what's up, looks like much better tracking. The you rock guitar is best for midi guitar tapping for like $99. I know its meant for games but has midi and usb midi and the fretboard is tapping joy. Now picking is another game, one I don't play....
Yes, I really liked the YouRock, though the Artiphon does tapping far better. I share your pain over the original Jamstik, which was frankly a bit of a lemon; the Jamstik+ was a big improvement, but I still never really took to it. This one is an entirely different technology, and the better for it.
I'm interested to see how this battle of the pickups plays out.
The new Boss SY-1000 also leverages a hexaphonic pickup for most of its magic, but even though it can convert to MIDI, what it does best it does without MIDI. Using instead the per-string signal to directly synthesize new sounds.
@Masanga how is it compared to the Jammy
Oh cool, I am exited knowing that you feel me on the tapping. About the boss sy 1000: is that the same tracking as sy-1. But yea woot hoot!
It plays much more like a real guitar, because it is one. The Jammy is more like the older Jamstik models, with detensioned strings you don't tune and sensors in the frets doing the pitch. But it doesn't ever really feel like the real thing, and it's better at strumming than picking. It's a clever piece of engineering and the design is very neat, but the fingerboard surface is just textured plastic and the strings make a slightly offputting scratching sound when you bend them.
On the other hand, the Jammy disassembles ingeniously and compactly, whereas the Jamstik Studio is too heavy to travel with (and the custom soft case it comes with not robust enough for hold luggage anyway; you'd want a hard case). I can see exactly why Jamstik decided to pull the Jamstik 12, which would simply have been a similar product in the Jammy space. As it is we've got two very different products which aren't really competing with one another; I like both companies and hope there's room for both to thrive.
Thanks for the detailed response. I feel I am close to great fingerpicking on the Jammy. I would say I am 80% of the way there being able to play Classical Gas nearly flawlessly without missed notes or double tracking. The only issue is that the frequent release of firmware resets my settings and I have to reorient myself. What really has helped in the past is the customer support - and sending them midi files and video. They are very responsive and helpful.
Gold nugget
Please report back on this, if you get a chance. Thanks!
I tried simultaneously recording two MIDI tracks to compare, one from the audio run through MIDI Guitar 2 and one from the Bluetooth MIDI, but the attempt repeatedly crashed Cubasis (not altogether surprisingly). I'll keep trying, though; I'm curious to see the results myself…
OK, that's fairly definitive. First track is Bluetooth MIDI from the Jamstik Studio, second is the audio through MIDI Guitar 2. Nothing significant between them in latency and both do a creditable job keeping up with fast fingerpicking across multiple strings, but the Bluetooth MIDI is far better at tracking velocity, while MIDI Guitar (a little surprisingly) wins on polyphony in chords.
Subjectively, the first sounds much more like what I actually played, while the MIDI Guitar version gets the notes but loses a lot of expression. More work with sensitivity settings might change the picture, but this was a useful exercise; at some point I'll run them in parallel through a custom MIDI monitor in MidiFire to see what's getting captured in finer detail.
MIDI Guitar gives a lot of bang for the buck. A friend with a TriplePlay gives the edge to the TriplePlay, but he says not by as much as one might imagine. The great thing about things with hexpickups is the option for per-string MIDI channels.
Thanks, @Masanga. I'm not surprised by the results, based on my experience with MG2. I do think that the per string options with hex pickups makes a difference with dialing in the right "feel". That said, MG2 is pretty incredible if you tweak the dynamics settings--I returned to it after reading this string and spent about 15-20 minutes tweaking the settings and by the end, the feel was pretty dang good. And, you can use whatever guitar you like the best at the moment, which is a plus in my book.
I'd personally give the edge to MG2 for tracking if using the right guitar/pickups. High output humbuckers or active pickups and a flat fretboard radius.
Indeed, makes a big difference. I also found that it depends