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
Some generative apps
Wotja and Polyphase can be similar but Polyphase is FAR less opaque.
Oldie but goody is NodeBeat! Still great.
Xynthesizr has all the bells and whistles, especially for manipulation and permutation of your generated sequence.
Xequencer has polyhymnia for generative scores
Cality & Autony are super especially when driven through other midi manipulators like Scalar and Art Kerns midiGate. Try sending Autony into Aphelian. I like to set Autony to a 1/2 or 1/4 note division over 4 to 8 beats in Aphelian which takes the “progression” and mashes it up adding variation in timing and note length.
StepPolyArp generative programmable arp or sequencer it’s a big tool.
Poly2 one mine and several others favorite for flexibility and compactness. NOW on iPhone!
Riffer is super as long as you record a pattern into Photon or Atom because it loses sync. They’ve really given it a lot of work and added new features making it pretty comprehensive.
Coming out of left field as a generative tool would be GlitchCore mash up melodies and beats create new variations on the fly
Aphelian is STILL one of my favorites!!!
Don’t forget Mozaic has plenty of generative scripts.
I put this clip together quickly to try and illustrate what I was saying earlier. No fancy voiceover or anything though, just a quickie hammered out on my iPad.
Cool. Thanks for posting that demo.
Can you make polyphonic patches in Drambo or is it just mono?
You can make instruments with up to 8 voices per track.
@audiblevideo @unicity very helpful posts, hats off to you both
Perfect. Thanks for recording this.
unfortunately not by fingers
I tried to make some fancy chords, and It's just not easy
Here's another little video using the same techniques as @unicity. Using a few notes and a lot of Cycle Conditions to allow those notes to unfold at different times and octaves in this relatively simple composition. Also added some drums and background fx via 2 additional instances of Drambo running in parallel with a slew of effects.
note: the synth I am playing is Continua from Audio Damage which is being sequenced by Drambo.
Thanks for starting this thread @Gravitas Lot's of great info and inspiration in here:
Also, don't forget all the cool stuff on PatchStorage for Drambo. Good to see iOS represented here with miRack, Mozaic, NS2, Drambo and others.
https://patchstorage.com/platform/drambo/
Best news of the day....from the Drambo forum:
If Fugue Machine had midi control it would be perfect.
But if you want one standalone generator that’s musical and not just mimicking a monkey banging on a piano, Polyphase all the way. It’s what FM could be. You’ll need to spend some time with Polyphase to get the most out of it. Like most of his stuff, there’s some real deep possibilities below the dark surface.
That’s awesome man! I’ve heard released tracks that weren’t this good. Run it through something like GrandFinale and release it!
So, I'm by no means an expert in Shockwave's somewhat vexing sequencing, and I've probably just kind of scratched the surface of its capabilities (in terms of generative uses). So maybe all this will be obvious or already familiar to you.
But, the main way I've been using the dual sequencers for ambient/generative purposes is to use the S&H setting on the "Shift Src" dial, where the first 8-step sequencers generates the notes play through the oscillators ("Note Src" dial), and the second 8-step generates the shifts. Under the Utility section of the app is the Sample & Hold portion; I set the Trig source to Prob, and the Sample source to SQ2 to get the aforementioned note shift coming from the second 8-step sequencer. Then you can dial in the probability for the S&H using the knob in the Utility section.
Usually I've set an 8-step sequence that's pleasing in the first sequencer, and will vary the last step throughout a track (starting with a two-step sequence and increasing the length, for instance). Then I semi-randomly let the notes for the second sequencer, which are used in the aforementioned note shifting. But these I'll set with a longer division than that for the first sequencer, usually at least two. Note that sequencer divisions can be varied by LFO or other sources in the Route section, so more randomness/generative fun can be had by making the second sequencer's step divisions change (and thus changing how the main sequencers notes are shifted).
When I'm making patches like this I usually feel like I've only kind of got a handle on things, but I'm always using the quantizer, so even unexpected results and mistakes can stay in a pre-set scale (lots to choose from, or set a custom one).
There are also two envelopes, and I use the second one that's not controlling the played notes to influence things like modulation index and octave ranges for one or both oscillators. The envelopes can also be triggered by probability; I set up the probability amount in the same way discussed above, and then set the source to SQ2 to get the oscillator to hop up octaves randomly for about one note at a time.
Anyway, lot of rambling - hope it's helpful!
So because of you @Gravitas and @unicity I can't stop myself. Used some of the techniques that were listed out in this thread and tried to make something a little more structured but evolving at the same time...not sure how successful it is, but hey, we're all learning here right?
@echoopera
That last one you just posted blew my mind.
I need to get more into the step sequencer mindset.
I think, maybe, I need to just experiment more instead of trying to figure out how to do something too predetermined.
Anyway, thank you for the inspiration.
🤙🏻
Some sounds of your creation reminded me of a song of LFO. I think you gonna like this...
Thank you for that. Get thee to Drambo'ing!
Oooh...yes....love me some LFO...thanks for the trip down memory lane...:)
I think you will find that it was @Gavinski
who started this thread not myself.
Nice thread though, some good ideas.
oh...hahah...sorry sir
I'll go back into my Drambo cave now 
@Scarred_Archimedes great tips, will definitely be checking out this work flow in shockwave later, will be a good chance to check out the new beta just came out for that which adds the AU parameters like mod index that were missing previously.
@echoopera glad you have been enjoying the thread, and thanks again for taking the time to do these vids, you'll make a drambonista of me yet
@Philandering_Bastard - we are working hard on it, but it's a real pain since it is a bug in Apples iOS that we can't fix... We have told them about it, and the bizarre thing is that it doesn't affect all devices - some with iPad OS 13 works just fine! But apart from trying to get Apple to actually fix it we are also working on changing the sounds that are affected - but that's a trade-off since it might result in the sounds themselves becoming different, so peoples presets might sound different afterwards. We are really frustrated, but doing what we can.
Here is a nice description of mbira technique that could equally apply to how we think about using sequencers in pleasing ways:
Really appreciate it 👍
@Gavinski isn't it what Autony tries to achieve? Although its problem is that there is no change in note length.
In that regard, I think Polyphase is good.
@Monome Yes, I personally didn’t feel very happy with the results I was getting from Autony. Much prefer Ioniarics from the same dev. I’m having a crack at Polyphase as we speak, seems promising indeed!
I think you can get change in note length in Autony, no? Remember to turn up the unreliable knob:)
It's pretty nice to run Autony single-notes to some of the chord-generating scripts in Mozaic (Chordulator and that newer one, can't remember the name), with an lfo modulating the chord spread (in time).
Yes please!
For all those people who can make these cool videos. Due to the super low contrast it’s so hard to actually see where the finger touches the display. I would be glad if perhaps one could use a mouse during a jam so I can see more the process behind it and how it’s done 🙈 would be cool. Thanks in advanced
Nice.
This is an inspiring dialog. Plenty of good ideas in the air.
I have to pick Polyphase again. It’s been a while.
You can change note lengths but either you automate it or you do it yourself. It is not part of the “unreliability “
But if you play with note length and transport you actually can have a really nice time.
I do like Autony for the most part. I’ve used it a lot while tweaking away any synth. But I wouldn’t call the results a track or even a jam. Just fiddling around.
And yes, @bleep it can give good results with the chord scripts. Is it Chrordial you’re thinking of?
Having a lot of fun letting Polyphase do its thing with Mersenne while Moebius lab hosts a bunch of external AU, feedback levels cranked pretty high. Definitely Polyphase is a lovely and musical-sounding tune generator.