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.
Game of Life: Multi-Xynthesizr live performance (w/ Quanta, iSEM, Zeeon, Blackhole, Dubstation, etc)
I was saddened to hear of John Horton Conway’s passing from COVID 19. Conway was a brilliant mathematician whose penchant for fun and wonder led him down paths of rigorous studies and clever and curious recreational mathematics.
While his research led him to profound work like surreal numbers (the set of reals, infinites and infinitesimals), he’s probably best know (much to his apparent chagrin) for his work on cellular automata, specifically the rule set known as Conway’s Game of Life.
I recall reading about this in a collection of Martin Gardner’s Mathematical Games columns from Scientific American and being fascinated how complexity and diversity could emerge from such simple rules. It led to an early interest in math and science that continues to this day. And I know I’m not alone:
“Conway’s LIFE changed mine. I think Conway himself thought it rather trivial, but for a non-mathematician like me, it was a shock to the intuition, a shattering revelation — to watch glorious complexity emerging from staid simplicity.” - Brian Eno
LIFE has been used in numerous music applications; one of my favorites being Xynthesizr - because it’s a wonderful sequencer in its own right and has things like custom-definable scales, custom “morph” regions and separate MIDI routing to allow cellular automata and randomization to work in a more musical context.
This is a simple piece I quickly put together with three instances of Xynthesizr on three devices. On the iPhone and in the custom bound area of the larger iPad I have regions that morph based on the rules of Conway’s Game of Life and I populated them with “gliders”; constructs in LIFE that will continuously traverse the infinite plane…. (#XKCD did a lovely tribute to Conway showing a human figure transforming into a glider and sailing off into the heavens: https://xkcd.com/2293/)
Playing Xynthesizr’s internal sounds with different octaves triggering some additional sources (Audio Damage Quanta for pads, Arturia iSEM for bass reinforcement, BeepStreet Zeeon for sonar blips). With Eventide Blackhole reverb, Audio Damage Dubstation and EOS2, Granular and Numerical Audio RE-1. Hosted in AUM.
Comments
I love Xynthesizr, and this is a great piece of music. But I see no cables: how did you make this happen!?
Beautiful.
Yes , please. Explain your workflow.
Yes, beautiful. I like Xynthesizr.
WOW!
IT'S MAGIC!
...also known as Ableton Link.
Everything is hosted in AUM and it records stems on each of the three devices. If you press Record on all devices within the Sync Quantum (in this case a measure), all stems will start at the same point and be in sync. If you don't, anything late will be exactly 1 measure late, so it will still be easy to line up (at least in theory, I seem to have found a bug in timing when running at 44.1kHz; still investigating that...)
While I do a "live performance" I allow myself the luxury of recording stems and mixing offline. I set some rules: no editing, no automation and only static EQ and static levels. While I can get 95% of the way there on the iPad, the final tweaks to get everything sitting together nicely are really hard to do with something that isn't already recorded.
I've also been recording the MIDI into Photon (and seem to have discovered a major timing bug if you change sample rate...). Perhaps at some point I might go back and turn some of these into fully structured and more sophisticated compositions, but for now I'm having fun with my pseudo performances!
It's a wonderful app. While I've been using subtle randomization forever, I never really used the cellular automata before; it just always sounded too random and artificial. But I started playing around with custom scales and I realized that was the key to getting the CA stuff to work: only have a few notes available for the CA to play....
BTW, if you like this I did another piece with Xynthesizr HERE.
Thanks!
A selection of Life-like rules - I used these to make custom presets in the random area of Xynthsizer.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life-like_cellular_automaton
Thanks for the explanation, @aplourde
I’ve never investigated custom scales although the key and transposition section is unique IMO. Always learning something new.
I’ve seen the other video too. Great!
I haven’t really explored custom life-rules, have you found any that produced interesting results?
@aplourde I stumbled across your channel on YouTube awhile back and have been an avid listener. You are severely talented and a wonderful videographer. Such pleasant experiences for me every time I get an alert you have something new, and I frequently go back for a listen just to see and hear how you make it happen.
What a nice tribute to a man that clearly touched your music.
🙏
@aplourde Very enjoyable both sonically and visually. I need to explore this app more.
To be honest saved them all but haven’t used them much yet.
Custom scales are a lot of fun. The "problem" with using cellular automata for generating notes is that their rules are all based on the conditions of their neighbors, so you tend to end up with dense clusters of cells. If you're using common scales, this will result in dense note clusters, basically like mashing your fist down on a keyboard - typically not the most musical effect.
You can help this by making your sound source simple. If you're just generating sine waves, the notes you play are, essentially the harmonics of the combined sound. Xynthesizr's synthesizer lends itself to simpler, clear tones, so this works well, but the result is probably still a bit too experimental for most.
However, with custom scales you can ensure that those dense clusters of notes are only notes that you want.
Since I had three devices and two hands, the iPhone was set up to just run on its own. I set up three gliders since they are the smallest, self-contained forms that move in a predictable manner and put them on a custom scale that only has the root, forth and fifth. Also, I restricted their range to three octaves so they wouldn't go too high or too low (when they get to a boundary they wrap around). Regardless of how I was transposing the iPads, the iPhone was always going to sound pretty good.
The thing about the custom scales is that you set the interval between notes, everything specified is considered to be in the same "octave" grouping. Octave is in parentheses because you don't have to make even groupings that repeat in normal ways.
This is especially fun when you consider that you can route different "octaves" to different MIDI channels....
For example here's a scale that's just ascending fifths:
Because there's only one step, every note is considered to be in a different octave and therefore, each note could be routed to a different MIDI channel.
Here's the same thing, ascending fifths, but there are four steps per octave:
It's the same notes, but in groups of four that will each go to the same MIDI channel.
Unfortunately, there's no provision for microtonality and 12TET doesn't lend itself to even distributions of notes, but it's important to remember that Xynthesizr has a fantastic transposing system (that you can play or control through MIDI). If you route the MIDI output through custom scale quantizers you could get some very sophisticated results....
@hypnopad Thank you! Yes, Xynthesizr is a fantastic and surprisingly deep app. Well worth spending some time with.
@drez Thank you for the kind words, it's greatly appreciated! I've been trying to be more focused and productive and have, mostly, kept to my resolution to put out one full track on YouTube per month (a bit behind, but I have several things lined up!) and one short idea snippet on Instagram per week. Deadlines can be a really good thing
Have you read Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind of Science?' Not sure if it's the definitive reference on cellular automata but it is pretty darned deep. I can't claim to have 'read' it, though I did buy it on initial publication and got a little way in before drowning!
I had a brief dialogue with Yuri after I got Xynthesizr, suggesting he adds a randomization feature to the LIFE patterns on loading a patch. Otherwise they're always the same because the algorithms are deterministic. I was a bit disappointed with the LIFE mode in the end as the grid is really too small. (You need 36 wide for the simplest known glider gun, for example). Still, it's kind of cool and you can stir things up by poking with your fingers
@aplourde thanks. Very enlightening. Xynthesizr is an instrument in itself and definitely shines in the hands of an expert.
I guess I’ll have to dig in the custom scales feature.
And yes, if only more sequencers out there implemented the same transposition feature it would be great.
I have not. Thanks for the prod - it's actually available for free now here - with a great 15-year retrospective post.
I can only imagine what a racket Gosper's Gun would make! I guess the thing is that with the changes happening after each run through the steps, complex structures and high step counts means evolution would take a very long time....
I'm just getting started with the Life simulation, realizing that I could pair it with custom scales opened up a whole new world.
Here's a nice little patch with a Copperhead and 3 Lightweight Spaceships. The LWSS move at C2, the Copperhead at C10, so they phase against each other...
Sorry to go off topic but how did you share that .xynthsong file? I can’t seem to figure out where they are located in iOS.
It should download to files.app. Unzip the file and open in Xynthesizer. Worked for me.
I have no problem loading this track. My question is, how do I export my own? Sorry for the confusion!
In the song list and click on ‘Select’. An ‘Export’ button will appear which leads you to the usual action menu:
Thank you very much. I like to fiddle around on the iPhone and then maybe flesh stuff out further w my iPad and this is going to speed up my workflow tremendously!
I’m really hoping I can get a definitive answer on this, but I can not find a way to scroll or zoom, o show more colors/octaves. Can you do that? Is there any way to see more of the sequencer grid or is setting a small or custom scale the only way? I really wish you could adjust the sequencer grid to show more or less colors/octaves on the screen. To be able to scroll up and down some to the whole color/octave, or just zoom out and shrink the grid size a little would be amazing.
I spent awhile looking for an answer, and I don’t think you can scroll, which is very unfortunate. It would be so cool to be able to move the grid around a little to see more of the sequencer grid on screen. There are a ton of colors to send midi out and take advantage of... Also what if you could have 2 of the same octave, but with different colors, say a lighter version of the color used for the first set of that octave, you could use the same octaves on different idi channels. I love the midi multi out and sending on a few channels, but it be great to be able to take advantage of more colors/midi outs, by adding a scroll, or zoom out feature. I can only see 3 full octaves/colors and 1 line of a 4th color/octave on my screen I’d love to zoom in/out or scroll so I can see maybe 5 or 6 full colors/octaves and then send midi out on 5-6 separate channels.
At the end of the user guide it says this...
Q: Why are there 22 (26, 27) note groups in MIDI Output Channel Mapping?
A: The large number of these note groups stems from the fact that it is possible to create a 'scale' consisting of just one note (and a lesser than octave repeat interval), thus making each grid row a separate group. Usually you will not use more than 5 or 6 of them.
If you haven't found an answer for your question in this manual, please send a message to [email protected]
I might reach out to him and ask for that in an update... If anyone can help or has any answers that would be much appreciated... Cheers!
@Poppadocrock funny enough, after I made my vid I thought I should have added this as one of the criticisms of the app. You should email the dev to request more flexibility in this area
Thing is, I think Yuri is highly unlikely to change this as he wouldn't want to squash the interface. Only thing you can do is change the octave settings in the sequencer section, but the range will stay the same and how many octaves it will stretch is defined by the size of intervals in the scale, as you rightly note.