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.
Piano Motifs - beautiful melody generator: some ideas for using midi output. CODE WINNERS ANNOUNCED!
Anyone following this forum has seen how much people have raved about Piano Motifs, and also how great the dev has been at responding to people’s suggestions here.
Today’s tutorial looks at Piano Motifs, but also at quite a few different apps, and most importantly of all, we have 4 FREE CODES available for Piano Motifs. The details of how to win the free codes are in the youtube comments section.
Topics covered:
- Using Piano Motifs to generate midi files which we can then use to trigger sounds in the synths of our choice, and apply various midi fx to. We look at the various advantages of using midi vs audio output.
- Using Photon AU to play and manipulate these midi files in AUM, using transposition and speed changes, for example.
- Using midiGATEs to bring in various degrees of controlled randomness and provide variation. We can use this to bring in melodic breakdowns, for example. This kind of thing shows the huge advantages of using midi output over audio.
- Using Midi Echoes to produce pitched delay effects that sound incredibly clean compared to audio delay.
- Using Rozeta Scaler to keep everything quantized to a scale - without this, applying transpositions to make our tracks more interesting would also make them horribly atonal. This is our secret sauce.
- How to use Tonality mid-session to quickly find out what key an audio or midi track is in.
Comments
Great @Gavinski. Love this app and really great dev too.
Yeah man, he’s a brilliant dev for sure, an absolute star.
Really nice ideas; tnx for the video. A few thoughts:
—Midi echo is new to me. It’s like a shift register. Good tool for making canons. Sending LFOs to the parameters should be interesting.
—Is there an easy way to split the melody and accompaniment from the original midi file? That would be a good option.
—Are there midi processors that will give inverted and retrograde versions of the input?
—The idea of performing on midi gate reminds me of this eurorack sequencer. Just zero out the chromatic notes, map the diatonic notes to your controller sliders. So cool! Can you use the note and seq tabs both at the same time?
—The Tonality trick seems limiting to me. Use your ear and choose whatever sounds good. Two Scaler instances set to different scales can sound really good together.
@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr
Lots of good points here.
As I mentioned in the vid, when you import it into Photon, it asks which part you want to import, so I guess other midi players must also see it as separate but haven't tried. Inverted, retrograde etc sounds excellent. There must be something for Mozaic doing this, I'd guess? If not, I'm sure one of the 'zaic heads could get on it.
Note and seq can't be used at the same time, but you could run two instances.
About Tonality, sure, use your ears, and you are right about how you could use different scales. But still a useful tool for some, and Tonality has a lot of other good features, but that might be something for another vid, this one already hit 40 mins lol
That was an awesome video man. Totally soothing music too.
Awesome Video!!!! Thanks!!
Thanks guys!
Good point. Run two instances of midi echo in series, mapped to a physical controller, and you could replicate much of what the Omsonic sequencer accomplishes. I think manipulation of gate length probability per note would still be lacking though?
Just remembered that Tony has his own sequencer app. That probably does the Omsonic thing on its own.
Great stuff @Gavinski !
But Bummer - piano motifs is iOS 13...
Fantastic demo @Gavinski ! So much valuable information on creative ways to work with the output of Piano Motifs.
Great video!
@Wrlds2ndBstGeoshredr nice video by the way, is the sequencer you mentioned an ios app? If so what's it called?!
@auxmux thank you!
@azul3D_Apps thanks for popping in, and thanks again for being an awesome developer who has been so super responsive to all our suggestions here.
@id_23 you never know, maybe @azul3D_Apps is open to doing an ios 12 version, though I think I remember this has been asked before and he doesn't have time for it. Surely the sensible thing to do would be for you to update to iOS 13 and let this man focus on making the best version for that that he can. 😜
Quantum, by the same dev who made midi echo. It contains many amazing midi fx.
Ah sure, Tony = Anthony, right. I thought u were talking about the euro rack guy having an app. Yeah, Quantum is tempting for sure. It does stuff that other midi sequencers don't?
awesome video. thank you!!
@shinyisshiny my pleasure, glad you enjoyed.
MIDI out or (ideally) AUv3 please 🙏 would really improve the flow!
Yeah, live sending of midi would be great
Anybody knows if these two aspects are considered or maybe even already planned by the dev?
The only thing missing is MIDI out and Ableton Link.
AUv3 with midi out would certainly be the dream
@Artefact2001 @Bon_Tempi @AlleycatLA @david_2017
AUv3 is something that I will be looking into the future for Piano Motifs. Bear in mind that this is my first incursion into music apps, so this might be a long term project (I don’t want to create false expectations). Meanwhile I am continuing to update Piano Motifs often, with enhancements and new features, some of which have been suggested in this forum. Thanks for all your feedback.
Thanks for the response! MIDI out might be a much easier to achieve solution in the meantime. Routing the MIDI to a synth or directly recording to a DAW would be super cool 👍
+1
Love the app... it’s a real idea machine!
@azul3D_Apps thanks for being so involved on the forum, and for all of your hard work on the app!
The random number generator has spoken! Code winners: Royor3, C L, Fam. Priem and odd STAR. Congrats! Email me or DM me here to get your codes
And thanks again to Fernando for being kind enough to give away so many codes. @azul3D_Apps
@azul3D_Apps @Gavinski Thank you for the free code for Piano Motifs.. I’ll be experimenting with the midi parts that this magically pulls out of nowhere.. should be fun!
Version 1.10 of Piano Motifs is now available for download at the App Store.
This version has the following new features and enhancements:
• A Swing Rhythm option for melody.
• Chord progressions with modal mixture (Andalusian, Picardy Third, Major Flats).
• A MIDI Loop Ready mode.
• Export MIDI and skip available at any time when a motif is being played. This is now the default.
• New arpeggio accompaniments (varying 3rd tone with suspended tone - 2nd or 4th).
• Settings popover window is now scrollable, better suited for smaller displays and landscape mode.
• Fixed issue with truncated audio file after a previous skip.
• Fixed note length issues in waltz and waltz polka accompaniments.
You can listen to samples of what Piano Motifs can generate at: https://SoundCloud.com/Azul-3d
Enjoy!
@azul3D_Apps Holy moly! Congratulations on this latest release. Baby is growing up just fine