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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Katabasis: One AtmoSound session, Four AUM loops of it

edited April 2020 in Creations

Comments

  • edited April 2020

    So I’ve streamlined my workflow, realised that the faff of recording everything into Cubasis from AUM was rarely worth the tedious set up.

    Now I work solely in AUM, mix everything down inside it to a single master bus channel, record that in app, and upload that file directly from AudioShare to Soundcloud. Very efficient.

    This piece began as a one minute noodle on AtmoSound, which is a lovely touch based thing, but with zero connectivity. So I screen recorded the ‘performance’, dumped the vid into the free and very useful AudioStretch Lite, slowed and pitch shifted it there, and exported it from there as a wav into AudioShare. From there, four copies into AUM, each channel treated to a different mix of FX, (primarily TB Reelbus and Glitchcore.) The ‘waterdrop’ percussion came courtesy of Filterstep and Perforator on one of the four channels, and the mix eq and levels were automagically mixed by various MIDILFOs running on the channels and apps. The mix was pulled together by FAC Alteza, uploaded to AudioShare, et voila...

    I claim it as generative since each identical channel of audio was offset by a number of beats against the others, and the eq and FX levels modified by semi-random LFO sweeps, such that the mix could play as long as you liked and never precisely repeat itself.

    As ever, any and all comments appreciated:

  • Simply awesome.

    Very inspirational.

    Thank you for sharing.

  • Great piece. Subtle and floating yet at the same time with a definite sense of progression. Deeply enjoyed it! Congrats!

    Also streamlining workflow is indeed of a great benefit, as well as actually finishing tracks and uploading them before too much personal judgement comes in, haha. I used to very few tracks per year because inspiration drops quickly when the workflow is tedious. Keep on the good work.

  • @Gravitas, @Aletheia : thanks both for the listens and kind words. :)

  • Very nice! Thx for the description, excellent ideas! I agree having to use aum in conjunction with any type of daw is a total PIA no fun. Hoping for an internal midi sequencer automator looper etc.
    You may want to experiment with Enso. You can get similar effects on audio when you slow down its play speed.

  • @hibjshop : hey, thanks for the listen! Yup, I’ve got Enso, I do like it a lot, but I find it a bit, um, crashy, especially if you are mad/ambitious enough to load up more than one instance of it. I got burned a couple of times working on things I really liked for too long without re-recording/saving, and that means I don’t use it as much as I otherwise undoubtedly would these days. AUM itself by contrast is rock solid, and I trust it to keep my work intact, although the File Players, unsurprisingly, are not a patch on what a dedicated app like Enso can do to an audio loop.

  • Really nice piece, I liked the subtle surges and undulations.

    @Svetlovska said:
    I claim it as generative since each identical channel of audio was offset by a number of beats against the others, and the eq and FX levels modified by semi-random LFO sweeps, such that the mix could play as long as you liked and never precisely repeat itself.

    I love building little musical machines that you can wind up and let run on their own! It's a very different way of composing; thinking about structures rather than the immediate results....

    @Svetlovska said:
    I’ve got Enso, I do like it a lot, but I find it a bit, um, crashy, especially if you are mad/ambitious enough to load up more than one instance of it.

    I think Enso is stable if you're limiting to one instance. The pitch effects @hibjshop mentioned are a lot of fun. I've built a couple of "contraptions" that remotely control Enso to create, semi-chaotic looping / pitch / reversing that were a lot of fun to play with.

    If you don't have it, I would certainly recommend FieldScaper for realtime delay/loop-pitch-recontextualization as well.

  • @aplourde : your ‘contraptions’ sound interesting. Are these software things? (I was thinking of seeing what I could do with MIDILFOs in Enso, clearly I need to dig it out again). I have FieldScaper, and I love what it does sonically, but I do really need to get my head round it. I’m still at the monkey and a typewriter stage with it, which unfortunately, shallow being that I am, means I more often than not go for simple to understand apps when I’m stitching something together. ‘With great power comes an incomprehensible GUI’, or something... :)

  • Yes I like!!!! Also have been burned by the multiple Enso crash. Now if I loop something in it get to what I like and save the buffer and then open up AUM file player which is yet to crash on me yet.

  • Really nice piece and thanks for the explanations.

    For FieldScaper check out @MarkH ’s videos:

  • @Svetlovska said:
    @aplourde : your ‘contraptions’ sound interesting. Are these software things?

    Ha, yes. While I love what people like Wouter van Veldhoven build out of hardware (or just complex modular patches), I don't have the time or patience for that!

    I just make aleatoric or semi generative stuff out of software. Also my proclivity is towards more "traditional" melody / harmony w/ rhythms, so I use Senode for a lot of this stuff.

    (I was thinking of seeing what I could do with MIDILFOs in Enso, clearly I need to dig it out again).

    Tip: Enso needs to be controlled directly by MIDI mapping in the AU, not through AU parameter automation. There are controls in the AU parameters, but that's best for setting values rather than trying to activate something like the Trigger.

    Not sure how MIDILFOs works, but if it's like Rozeta LFO or apeMatrix SendMIDI, when sending a square wave LFO, it sends a constant stream of values at the max and min values - this will make Enso freak out. So it's better to use something that sends a single value, like a note, however, Enso's built-in MIDI mapping only works with CCs, so if you want to use note triggers you have to convert them to CCs with something like mfxConvert.

    I used this approach with a random trigger in Rozeta Cells to make Enso overdub and reverse randomly here (and with Dub in Place off the pitching effect was cumulative)

    I have FieldScaper, and I love what it does sonically, but I do really need to get my head round it. I’m still at the monkey and a typewriter stage with it, which unfortunately, shallow being that I am, means I more often than not go for simple to understand apps when I’m stitching something together. ‘With great power comes an incomprehensible GUI’, or something... :)

    Don't feel bad about not understanding FieldScaper! Igor is idiosyncratic and his UIs are rather confusing. Here's a quick description of what's going on, but @MarkH 's videos are fantastic resources!

  • @aplourde your technique with midi note controlIng enso is deep and killer.
    Midilfo is a superb app that may get you there without having to convert cc’s to note, all pending what your after.

  • @hibjshop said:
    @aplourde your technique with midi note controlIng enso is deep and killer.
    Midilfo is a superb app that may get you there without having to convert cc’s to note, all pending what your after.

    Thanks, it's a lot of fun!

    Can MIDILFO just output a single CC value when it goes high or low with a square wave? If it outputs multiple messages, Enso will try to react to every one. That's what Rozeta LFO and the SendMIDI extension in apeMatrix do (which makes sense if you're controlling something that's continuously variable, especially if the MIDI LFO get's modified.

    Regardless, setting up notes for triggers is probably easier (there are tons of note sequencing options in iOS) and it's very easy to convert with something simple like mfxConvert.

    I definitely recommend trying it out, regardless of whether you're after rhythmic or textural / drone stuff.

  • edited April 2020

    @aplourde: yes, MIDIFlo:can definitely do that, I’ll give it a go, and see what develops. Interesting experiment. And Senode - I haven’t got that. I’ll check your link.
    @Philandering_Bastard : thanks for the tip. I’ll check the vids out.

Sign In or Register to comment.