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.
You say Covid, I say Corvid...
... Let’s call the whole thing off. 
GlitchCore here used to chop up some loops I made earlier, as part of a semi-automated AUM mix run by Arthur Kerns’ wonderful MIDILFOs (which are also dynamically pitch shifting the playback rates of the AUM file players hosting the samples.)
Randomness rules!
Comments
I thought of Ted Hughes “Crow blacker than ever”
@ajmiller : Indeed: “ Crow Grinned Crying: "This is my Creation," Flying the black flag of himself.”
Amazing. Love your stuff.
@qryss : thank you!
Remarkable coincidence. I’ve just this month been rereading “Crow.” Something in the air obviously. My tortured artist son bolted into my study the other night, shirtless and hyperventilating. “I cannot comprehend death,” he said. (He has anxiety.)
I had just been reading Hughes and pulled up “Examination at the Womb Door” on my phone. He seemed satisfied.
Deep! Love the brief melodic turn near the end. Could this have been done using rozeta lfo or does midilfos bring things to the table that it doesn't?
And yes, nice piece @Svetlovska!
This will be perfect in about three to four weeks when I’ll be walking the streets of London aloooone 👻
@ExAsperis99 @Gavinski @Philandering_Bastard : thanks all for the listens.
@Gavinski - I love the @brambos suite, use some aspect of it almost every day, but MIDILFOs https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/midilfos-midi-modulator/id998273841 takes modulation to the next level.
For a start each instance has 4 separate switchable LFOs available, with Sin, Square, Saw, Ramp, Triangle and S&H waveforms to choose from, these in turn can be used to modulate each other or external apps/hardware, and the ‘Rate’ can be switched to ‘Slow’ which allows for positively glacial slow transitions of, say, a filter sweep over a long ambient loop, ideal for the slow moody stuff I do. (I am one of those who wishes you could take the bpm of @j_liljedahl’s otherwise genius AUM down to single digits! ).
MIDILFOS synergises brilliantly with AUM so for example on Crow Ritual I was using one LFO with a sample and hold pattern to unpredictably set, reset and trigger the single ‘caw’ one shot Sample ‘Enable‘ button contained within a File Player channel, and another LFO from the same instance to sweep the AUM playback rate slider on that channel, to randomly repitch the one shot each time it triggered. (I embrace randomness and generative techniques, not being an actual, you know, musician
)
Another LFO, again from the single instance, was sweeping the AUM volume of a looping File Player sample of a whole murder of crows, pitched down, on another channel.
I keep on finding new uses for it, and for the similarly useful MIDIgates https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/midigates-midi-probability/id1226296557 from the same author. The two work great in conjunction with something like Autony or Riffer to split out and break up a single generative sequence across different channels/instruments. Combined with AUMs ability to create defined pitched ranges for each channel, on specific MIDI channels, and you have the ability to develop complex self generating pieces with bass, lead and pad parts all from relatively basic building blocks.
Oh wow, this sounds very interesting, I'll definitely look into these, thanks a lot for the super detailed reply, appreciated!
@Svetlovska the midi gate thing with sequences pushed to different instruments sounds very cool, do you maybe have an example AUM session / soundcloud upload that shows what that can end up sounding like?
@Svetlovska Thank you for the detailed explanation.
@Svetlovska I really enjoyed that, thank you, excellent work.
@distraub : thanks!
@Gavinski : you asked for more detail on how the automatic filtering/splitting/transposing might work in a piece, so I knocked out a pretty rubbish video, my first ever in fact, showing the start of a thing.
The resulting, ahem, ‘music’ is in no sense a finished piece, or even that interesting to listen to, (in fact, I think it is quite painful to listen to, as it stands) but I’ve tried at least to show how to wire everything up inside AUM to make such a thing work, so it might have some educational, if not aesthetic value. (Discovering in the process that I can’t multitask making a piece of music and recording a useful video at the same time, hence forgetting to add the iVCS3 back into the mix! My respect for @thesoundtestroom has gone up markedly
)
Normally something like this wouldn’t see the light of day, or even Soundcloud, at least not until I’d spent a lot more hours noodling around with FX, synths, and settings, running everything through @brambos Scaler to make sure it at least stays in tune, sorting out my levels, that kind of thing. But it is what it is. Ah well. If you are a masochist, check it out here:
👏 Deep, dark, darkening
Well, this is very kind of you indeed! I actually just spent the last hour having a lovely jam using midi lfos, and you are right, I love how slow this can go, it is really what I have been looking for. It’s also just such a well thought-out app with a great and intuitive interface, so I might well be tempted to get the midi gate one too. Thanks again for taking the time for this.
@Svetlovska and by the way, is there any reason you prefer midisteps to any of the plethora of other midi sequencers out there?
@Gavinski : I use lots of different sequencers, depending on what I am trying to achieve. I do have MidiSTEPs, didn’t use it here, I’ll often run an auto generator like Riffer or Autony, or set something up in Aphelian, then use Photon to record a fixed 8 or 16 or 32 bar loop of it when I want to nail something down. I don’t use BramBos Cells enough, that’s a cool one for building something incrementally, and lately I’ve been exploring 4Pockets DigiKeys, but since I’m usually trying to create a soundscape rather than a conventional song, I find that making things too sequencer driven drives me to making a more conventional song - it often sounds more like music, but a mediocre EDM thing rather than a uniquely off the wall noise. I like noise. It’s why I prefer AUM to Cubasis, for example - I think the tools tend to define what you achieve, and if you use the conventional DAW metaphor to create in, you end up with something which sounds, well, conventional.
That’s really fascinating, @Svetlovska - thanks for sharing. My eyes are opened!
I think there are parts of that that Kate Bush would really relate to.
Thanks @Svetlovska, I thought I remembered you had mentioned midisteps somewhere in the thread, seems not. Did u notice this free/donation Hainbach loop pack by the way? https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/isolation-loops-soundpack&ved=2ahUKEwit9Kv6icboAhWQvJ4KHb1bDFcQFjAAegQIAhAB&usg=AOvVaw0um6Hlh7lptDTenNjJqAgV
Probably up your alley
@qryss: thanks for the listen, and the comment. I love Kate Bush‘S work, so consider myself very flattered!
@gavinski: indeed I did notice the free sound pack. Hainbach’s reddit is hosting pieces created using them, at https://www.reddit.com/r/Hainbach/. A playlist is being assembled and may become available as a digital album through Hainbach’s own label. Here’s the one I did:
I’ve posted about this here before, but as @Gavinski notes, anyone new to the thread can indeed get the full free sound pack from Hainbach here: https://hainbach.bandcamp.com/album/isolation-loops-soundpack
By the way @Svetlovska, I still didn't quite get from your last video what exactly midi gate was doing. My impression on your earlier post was that you were using one sequence on one midi gate to send different info to different synths? Or is it sending the same info to each synth?
@Gavinski : MIDIGATEs can be used to filter a stream by probability of any notes getting through, or you can use it to select the probability of which specific notes to let through, or the probability of which steps in a sequence. This can be used very flexibly to introduce human movement to the often too machine like and relentless flow of a midi generator.
I usually use it on the output of the main source of MIDI, whether that be a generator like Riffer or Autony, or a prerecorded loop from Photon or Atom. So the main ‘theme’ from, say, Autony will be driving a lead synth melody, and I will use MIDIGATEs to thin that stream out to a pad or effect sound for stings, counterpoints, whatever. Used in conjunction with MF Transposer (which you can hook up without needing Audiobus by going to AUMs MIDI matrix and doing it there, this works for any app which outputs Core MIDI , as it creates ‘virtual MIDI’ ports there) you can then create a bass line, maybe with another instance of MIDIgates stripping out unnecessary notes/beats. I do this all interactively, letting the sequences run and tweaking on the fly till I get something I like.
Another thing worth trying is hooking up a single sound source to two or three triggering sources, maybe a MIDIgated Autony, and an Aphelian.
I might then record a complex FX/processor heavy sequence as audio using AUM, take it back in as a processor friendly perfect loop using AUMs sync Quantum ability, then gate the audio using Perforator... (that’s what I did on the Hainbach piece, Isol-8) - really, the possibilities are endless. I use AUM and everything that runs in it as a kind of virtual modular.
Thanks for the details, OK, so u r mostly using several instances, not a single instance, of midi gates to do variations on the source midi to send out to various instruments, right. Think I've got that. Your Heinbach piece sounds good by the way, cheers.
@Gavinski : Thanks. Yep, loads of instances of everything, many many things...
. The key is that they are all running off Just one sequence, and, if necessary, all running through one or more instances of BramBos Scaler, to keep everything in tune, time, and musically sensible. I rarely use drum loops as such, but Fractal Beats is great for random doomy booms and clanks, and the odd deep thud can help anchor the madness.
The scaler idea sounds very good, I have that app but have actually never used it, will be tinkering later, thank you haha
【de le te d】
【de le te d】