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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.
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Xequence 2 PolyHymnia ~ generative midi song writing?
I am interested in finding tools for generative song writing
I am considering purchasing xequence for polyhymnia~ but before I did I wanted to understand the workflow a little better
Can Xequence/PolyHymnia generate entire parts of a song in relationship to each other, ie set the key and generate a chord progression, based on the chord progression generate a baseline + melody? Or is it more like a tool for filling clips with random notes in a scale according to a random rhythm independent of what else is going on in the other parts of the song?
I have been experimenting with this app Chords Gen which generate chord progressions+ melodies and basslines however the app is a bit of a toy and I am hoping to find something with more parameters/expressive potential
Can anyone speak to any other apps that are good for this purpose? I experimented with AmadeusCode a bit but similarly could use something with more dynamic parameters
Comments
@annahahn PolyHymnia is not aware of chord progressions or other parts of a song, it's more for generating ideas for melodies or drum patterns from scratch. For that though, it can be a lot of fun and definitely has a lot of parameters to play with. It also is tightly integrated into Xequence's workflow.
You might want to have a look at the manual too:
http://www.seven.systems/xequence2/en/manual/#section-7
Odesi can preview progressions and rhythms and then export midi
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/odesi-chords-create-rhythms-basslines-chord-progressions/id1056176667
Cality might be close to the mark for you @annahahn. You can feed it one source (can be anything like a drum part, bass line, melody... doesn’t matter as pitch isn’t important, only rhythm), and then mess with settings that output notes that fit within a scale or chords. You can dial in “accidental” notes, control the likelihood of chords (overlapping notes), the overall density of the note output, the frequency of non-chord or scale notes, etc.
The nice thing about it is there’s always some level of relation to the source that you feed it, helping cohesion with the whole.
You can direct a LFO from something like midiLFOs or Rozeta LFO to the chord knob to get your chord progressions. A regular LFO with none or some degree of modulation from another LFO can give you more predictable chords, or a sample and hold (random) LFO can give you completely random chord selection, but always in key.
PolyHymnia is great, but I’m not sure it’s a great fit based on your post. Xequence 2 is totally worth having as well. But, I think Cality could work out well for what you want.
(P.S. I think I may have a script or something around that lets you “play” the chord knob from a keyboard for more control over the chords - but it doesn’t sound like that’s what you’re after anyway.)
You might want to have a look at Polyphase and Aphelian. Both are great for melody creation.
Any Xequence users know if there’s a way to slightly randomise velocity/timing/note length of an existing part using Polyhymnia?
Essentially humanise a part without having to adjust each of those things individually.
I’ve had a play with the settings but it keeps creating new notes which I don’t want. Thanks!
I’m pretty sure Polyhymnia is for generating new random notes rather than tweaking notes already on the piano roll.
Yeah, seems to be the case.
Wonder if there’s a script solution although have no idea how mosaic by bram works or even if you can point it at Xequence.
Feel like this would be a handy feature.
It's the opposite. You point Xequence at Mozaic. Or more clearly, you send Xequence 2 output through mozaic to whatever instrument you're playing. There are some Mozaic humanization scripts available so no coding needed.
Drambo has some good humanization modules too, and there are a few dedicated iOS apps as well. Same idea with all, you place them between Xequence 2 and the instrument.
If you're interested and want to provide some more details of how your Xequence setup is routed now, I can try to flesh out some details.
Hi @wim . Thanks so much for your response. sounds interesting.
My set up is basically just Xequence and AUM (I have Audiobus running as well but just as an almost empty project so I get use of the side bar).
All instruments/effects are in AUM and Xequence is doing the midi and that’s it.
I don’t currently have mosaic so don’t know where it would sit in the chain.
Ideally I wouldn’t want the randomisation of note length/velocity/timing to be “live” if that makes sense? It would be something that could be saved back into the part in Xequence and then the script disabled. Hope that makes sense!
With AUM the routing is easy. Instead of routing the X2 input to a synth, route it to Mozaic, then route the Mozaic output to the synth.
Saving back into the part in X2 isn't going to work. The best you could do would be to route the Mozaic output back out to another track in X2 and record what you get. Timing would be off by a bit due to the round trip so you'd need to adjust the X2 clip a little. You'd also need to be careful about the routing so as to not create a loop.
I can't think of any way to do exactly what you want to do. That would need to be some function built directly into X2, and that isn't there.
Thanks @wim
Thanks for all the info. As you say, not a perfect solution but a great place to start. Will be experimenting with your suggested workflow. Thanks again!
@SevenSystems , could this function be in a future update/iap? Understand it may not be viable of course
Ranbo is one of the Mozaic scripts that can do randomization/humanization.
MutatoR is another that I’ve not tried, but I’m sure is outstanding. There’s a video you can check out for that one.
Drambo has a humanization module too. I believe it would work on Midi data passing through if set up properly.
There are other options as well.
Good luck. 👍
[edit] yep, tested with Drambo and it works great, if you have Drambo and not Mozaic, this is a good option.
Have so far avoided going down the drambo rabbit hole. Only working on phone so UI and learning curve are concerns. I’ll see how I go with Xequence first. Thanks for all your help 👍🏻🙏🏻
@Zerozerozero thanks for your input -- yes, applying generated values to existing notes vs. generating new ones has been requested a lot and it has been on the agenda for a long time.
Unfortunately Xequence development has been limited to fixes (if any) and simple updates for new iOS versions in the past year or so, but the plan still is to resume feature development soon.
That's all I can say for now 🥳
Ah, no worries, didn’t realise it had already been requested. Hope all is good and thanks again for an amazing app. ✌🏻🙏🏻
Can't say I blame you.
Learning curve to do what you asked about is about 2.5 minutes in case you change your mind.
Hmm, seems I can’t operate mozaic and patch storage (patches not downloading or not appearing in mozaic when they do) so may have to take the drambo plunge.
@wim
Can you use the humaniser with other synths in AUM or only sounds being generated with drambo? Thanks