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
Short answer: ThumbJam
Long answer: On iOS i feel the most powerful is StepPolyArp but i think it miss an important thing for me. Offsetting notes from the grid. Like unqantized arp events.
Often i just like easy and fast to use arps like the one in ThumbJam. Simple options like the drop makes a huge different, especially if using several arps with slightly different settings. I love using arps everywhere.
Then there is Quantum and Xynthesizer. I liked the arp in Nave as well. Rozetta is great too. So many different arps for different situations.
Best is to combine them all.
My favorite would be if GarageBand would get Logic´s arp with midi out for all apps. It is just the best for live playing for me in terms of easy to use and features combo.
Oh but Drambo now has a nice arp too, especially since it is so fast and easy to modulate speed.
But my favorite arp right now is really the simple one in ThumbJam and also DrumJam makes a wonderful arp with the bedlam feature. Sonosaurus would be my best bet to create a really powerful and for live input optimzed arp.
Most of the other more feature packed iOS arps (and sequencers) are to much of a programming thing rather than just plug n´play with just a few knobs and sliders.
Whatever, a good randomization/humanization option is maybe the most important thing for me in any arp.
I don’t get it to work. I probably have to trial and error a lot more with Drambo before I know that software well.
Thanks anyway.
By the way, what iOS arp would you recommend which also supports chord invasions?
The creator of StepPolyArp has a pad controller called ChordPolyPad. It pairs extremely well with SPA, with thousands of chords and inversions, multi midi out, and each pad doubling as an XY cc generator.
Here's a short demo I did.
Not sure if it is what i want. I do not want pads to trigger chords. I mean i want to play my own chords into an arp. This arp should have not only an octave option but like the arp in Logic a switch to "inversions" (best also to have settings for amount and range of variants), so it will create inversions of any chord you might play on the fly. Could i do it with a combo of SPA and CPP?
Ah, I see what you mean now. I don't think CPP would work for you in that case.
Perhaps a script that converts the chords you play into an inverted state (2nd, 3rd inversion etc) could work though. Then that could be directed at the arp of your choice. Maybe it could be done in mozaic.
I don't know any arps with that function baked in though, unfortunately.
O.k. thank´s for your help. Much appreciated. Funny i use the Logic arp for years and never had a deeper look until i stumbled over a tutorial where someone switched from "octave" to "inversions". Sometimes funny to have tools and overseen such options for years, lol. So sometimes it is better to study the manual of course
As example also i love it to set an LFO to change from octave to inversion. Especially if you use several arps with different speeds and slightly different settings you get some really nice "performance" while you can improvise your chords. Here as little example f.e. just one held 4 note chord of 3 different arp settings and at the end just all 3 triggered together. Of course you can do from here a lot more complex things. I just like to have more live control input without having to program too much.
This way i got some interesting dreamy poly arps which plays nice together but i can change it very fast an don the fly while i´m playing. A bit of fake but this way i did some whole tracks with just arps running without you might hear it that much (not in this example here maybe).
That's an impressive resume right there: SPA and CPP. Take a bow....
Yes and shout out to @Spidericemidas for some (all!) of his presets, was noodling sonorously/productively with one (Dexterous Ghost) in Bleass (in Cubasis) this very morning....
It's an incredibly deep app with some very subtle and very powerful features. However, it's possible to use it just like the simple arps that get tacked onto synths. Indeed, when you first open the app it will work like a simple arp. In this case, taking your sustained notes and turning them into an upward progression of 16th notes:
To start with, just focus on the top arpeggiator control bar. These are the functions that you will see in simple arps:
Play around with these settings to get familiar with what they do before moving to the Events Grid.
With a "normal" arpeggiator the output is strictly based upon controls similar to what's in the arpeggiator control bar above.
E.g. in the control bar above you have stream of 1/4 notes with 64% gate, no swing and playing in an ascending fashion.
With SPA you can define specific rhythms and pitches for your arpeggio. You do this in the events grid:
Each event in that grid defines a step's position in time, its length and what pitch, from the notes you're feeding it, will be played and whether that gets transposed or sent to a different MIDI channel
E.g. here are the same settings as above. Feeding it a C Major chord you're getting steps of C-E-G-C-E-G-C-etc. through the 32 steps and then wrapping back to the beginning:
To make things a bit easier to explore with you might want to make the sequence shorter, say 8 steps. Do this by selecting the link icon in the bottom right and then dragging any of there arrows to the left to the 9th step (so you have 8 active steps:
If you don't select the link icon, you can move each lane's arrow separately to create polymeric patterns, but start simple!
For each step you can define which of the incoming notes are played. By default there's the > which plays the current, referenced note then advances to the next pitch referencer, but there are other options, including playing the previously referenced note or specific notes from the incoming pool.
You can also divided notes with or without acceleration for ratcheting effects and set the probability that this step will play.
If you place an event on another row, you are taking the base pitch (as defined by the incoming note and the state for that event, as defined above, and then apply a transposition. However, you can also set an absolute, fixed note and set a different MIDI channel for that lane.
You can also copy the pattern in that lane to paste into another lane, and move it left or right to create staggered patterns.
As mentioned previously, you can set lanes to different lengths to get very complex polymeters, but start with everything running for the same length to understand what's going on.
Here's an example.
You're sending a C Major chord to SPA. It is playing 1/4 notes steps with 64% note gate lengths, no swing in an ascending pattern.
The pattern in 2 measures long (8 steps).
The first event is fixed to the lowest (aka 1st) note you're playing. In this case the C5. If you were playing an F Major triad with no inversion, that would be an F, etc. But it will always be the 1st (lowest) note you're playing.
In this case that step has also been extended to a 1/2 note in length.
The next step plays the current step (still C) and advances the "reference" to the next note (E).
The third step plays the current step (E) and advances the "reference" to the next note (G)
The forth step has the current step of G, but it's also transposing the note up by 2 semitones, so you hear an A (then the reference is advanced to the next step; since you're only holding 3 notes, this wraps around back to C).
Then there's a 16th note rest and the fifth step plays the current step (C), but transposed down 3 semitones, so you hear an A (but an octave lower than the last A), and it advances the reference to the next step (E)
Finally, the last step is hard-wired to play an E4. It doesn't matter what you're sending SPA, this step will always play an E4 (it's also set to different MIDI channel, but you can't see that from the Event Grid).
On the next cycle, the first note is still playing a C for a 1/2 note in length, however the next step is playing the current "reference" step, which is E, so it plays that.
Followed by G, then the forth step is a C, but transposed up 2 semitones to a D.
And so on.
Not as nice as on-the-fly inversions as you have set up your voicing in advance, but you could create patterns with the different inversions and switch between them on the fly (pattern switching can be controlled by MIDI)
SPA is an absolutely fantastic app. Thanks for the mini tutorial. I made a midi loop with only one middle C3 note on cubasis and then with SPA I made it into a musical journey just playing around with events and pitch. Blew my mind how deep can be this app.
By the way, do you know why the events get repeated twice on cubasis when SPA is in sequencer mode? Like for example if a play a Cmaj chord (C-E-G) it plays C-C-E-E-G-G. It doesn't happen if I switch to arpeggiator mode.
Hey, thanks for the tip!
Just caught up on this thread. Good tips @aplourde
How do you sync start / stop SPA to host? I always have issues with this.
^ Man after my own heart. SPA feels like an adventure. I wonderful one. If I want to arpeggiate some notes (usually all I want) I load up Rozetta. If I wanna explore the possibilities of arpeggiation, I load up SPA.
For this kind of arpeggios including inversions I would indeed use ChordPolyPad and, as an example, have different chords in the rows and their inversions and variations in the columns. Up to 8x8 chords on each page is something to work with. In addition to that, the pads can be triggered by midi notes as well but I won't go too crazy now 😅
It's a different concept because it's not played live (well, you've actually played the chords live before when configuring the pads) but it works well and invites to experiment with different chords.
Not sure if you are looking for something less traditional, but in terms of playing in chords and getting them arpeggiated, Ioniarics is definitely interesting. It may be more generative than you are looking for, but it definitely isn't just randomization, well worth checking out, especially now that it can save input notes in a session.
Ioniarics is fun to interact with. Play even just one note on the keyboard and you’ll get an interesting rhythm out of it. Add a second note. Improvise. You never know what will come out. Sweet spots are a challenge to find with this app, but they are very sweet indeed.
This combo of apps !
Heh, yeah, lots of arpeggios there, but mostly programmed, rather than played! I'm switching presets with the keyboard instead of being a musician
Still this is a really simple example of what @Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr mentioned: Running Fugue Machine into an arp. In this case the Red playhead is playing iSEM with its built-in arp (alternating octaves). This gives the bass line some propulsion, but still allowing the harmonic progression to move in a more slow and stately manner.
Anthony Saunders
Midi Echo AU can do “arps”
- filter it through Rozeta scalar
Apeggionome is boss and programmable
Aphelion ❤️
cykle while more of a sequencer it does arps as well as any other sequencer
For fun run 4, bar long measures from Autony into Rozeta Baseline Aphelion and SPA
Supadom.
Need to read manual obviously but how do you get the random knob to show in the transpose and lfo to show in arp. Do you think you can get this type of arp going to external synths?
Thanks.
Not being cheap on arpbud. Maybe just want to work via drambo screen.
@aplourde that was an amazing tutorial. Have had SPA for a couple of months and just couldn't wrap my head around it. Diving in now! Was thinking about pulling the trigger on arpbud2 but wanted to see if I could use what I have now to get the effects I desired. Thanks!
lately ive used TAL Uno midi out for massive lines.. (goes to 128 heh)