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
Curious. I was experiencing this with my Launchpad X and thought it must be specific to that. I found it went away if I was more deliberate with my playing, less delicate dancing with my fingers. It didn’t necessarily mean less notes or increased velocity, but a definite adjustment needed. I guess this ties in to something to do with note off messages and how long the note is held?
@RolandGarros Try holding your notes a fraction and see if that makes a difference? Can’t say for me it particularly diminished the music I was making - I was on an LK roll anyway
Yes, this happens often so overdub is not really possible. Would love to see this fixed.
As you can't have more than 1 clip playing inside one channel, it does not need to be in separate channel, you simply have one clip always playing and just mute / unmute as you wish.
But maybe now I see what you mean: Do you want to switch from one clip to another within a single channel, immediately, just not from the beginning, but as if it was already playing instead of the previous one?
That's definitely interesting idea. I don't even remember something like that from Ableton Live, but that's some years ago I was playing with it so I'd expect they already included such feature. Definitely worth considering, there can be interesting creative results coming out of it.
When you e.g. stop notes, you still can have any release sound "tails" playing on. If you have e.g. a delay effect (not as a send, but directly on the channel), by muting it on audio channel, you'd cut out also the remaining delay sound. By muting it on a MIDI channel, it will continue delaying the last note, which is usually more natural. The same goes for unmuting - if you unmute the audio channel too early, you may still hear the "tails" of previous sounds. On muted MIDI track, there is no sound until the clip start triggering the notes. Usually, MIDI muting is more natural, but it depends on what you want to achieve.
Actually, I was hoping that clips could be set to "multi" and contain notes from multiple midi channels and on playback do no rechannelizing. No splitting into new tracks on import. Photon does this and it is great when you want a multi timbral clip.
This would also permit mpe performances to be recorded.
That does sound good, especially the part about permitting MPE to be recorded (and maybe even edited). It would require the piano roll to deal with multi-channel data that may contain overlapping notes, though. That plus the current track = channel setup sounds like rather big changes. Maybe start easier with import filtering? Although I agree that your suggestion is probably the better option in the long run.
I'd be content if multi channel clips weren't editable as making a multitrack editor would be a major change. And maybe such clips could be converted to multiple new tracks with a menu command?
"channel" could just be added to the automation editor, so you could define a channel for each note?
Sorry if it’s been asked already but is this able to make use of groove files like in ableton?
I have a question that may be stupid, but is this LK App not very similar to Xequence, Xequence Keys and Xequence Pads?
It seems to be a collection of such MIDI instruments.
Or what I am missing?
I'm no expert but I have a basic sense of it's intent.
It's "Matrix" is like BeatHawk for MIDI. You make a stack of 1,2,4,8 bar loops and then a performance turns them on/off to generate a "song". Each stack of loops is assigned to a MIDI channel. A row of loops is a scene.
This seems to be the hardware approach beatboxes use like in Akai products, etc.
But I'm hoping to push it into something more like Xequence running in an AUv3 with longer form MIDI on 8-16 channels. My current focus is on importing MIDI files into pads that I generate using Piano Motifs. Piano Motifs outputs 2 channels of MIDI and both end up in one pad. But both developers are working on a fix for that use use... Piano Motifs will probably allow me to output MIDI stems and LK is going to ask which MIDI channel I want imported to this pad/channel. It's a race to make me happy. Game on.
It's also the same as zenbeats' and garagebands (and probably many oher apps') loop mode.
My idea was to use LK to only play a "trigger note" to start/stop other sequencers. I don't know what piano motifs is exactly but couldn't you use LK to control it?
Did the hardware devices come first and Ableton brought the paradigm to Desktops or is there another DAW that pioneered this approach to a Live DAW?
I'd say Sonic Foundry's Acid (later Sony Acid Pro) got the ball rolling on. It was PC only and until the first version of Live came around several years later, people on the Mac were begging for Acid on the Mac because realtime pitch-shifting/time-stretching of loops wasn't really available -- I think GarageBand's AppleLoops weren't around till a few years after Live hit.
Wow. That's around the time I stopped following Music Making on a PC. When Sony bought
Acid.
I later got a Mac and bought Reason but never really dug into it. It was already into a hardware device simulation that I just didn't get and still need to catch up on. I was and
still am stuck in the Multi-track Tape system with out-board FX. I bought a couple of the
Korg Digital Recording systems and made some projects there using keyboards, guitars, and mics.
Hmmm... I can play pitch bend through the armed track and it works. I can record the pitch bend into the clip and it shows up in the automation. But the clip doesn't play the pitch bend when I play the clip... that's weird...?!
Magix Music Maker was pre Acid. VSTs weren't a thing initially, but eventually they were supported but if you actually used them you were on dangerous ground! When I got Acid with my first serious soundcard (aka one that wasn't a SoundBlaster Live) I ditched Magix swiftly!
Cool. It looks like Magix also wrote acid. Did Music Maker have the same sort of loop-based workflow with pitch and time stretching?
Yes, very similar. I'm not sure what the connection between the three companies is but Acid and Sound Forge have all been under the umbrella of Sony, Sonic Foundry and Magix at some point.
Hi guys, sorry for a very basic, maybe even stupid question, but how do you initialize the project in LK? I don't see an option to start a new project anywhere, only save button in the top right corner...and while I'm at it: how's sync and clock with external gear/software working for you? I've tried to use LK with VCV rack on my Mac using both wireless/wired connection, ubridge server, network midi, IDAM midi host, whatever, it's always all over the place, notes are dropped, clock is drifting...unusable really. Not interested in using it with Ableton, but as a midi sequencer/controller mostly...
P.S. Oh, and what's the deal with transport when using it inside hosts like AUM and ApeMatrix? I can still start and stop it separately, and this is really confusing, THREE sets of transport controls, all operating independently, it's quite a mess
Well, Ableton 11 (Beta) turned the piano roll into a ‘midi tool’.. and, probability is not just an enhancements, but a performance feature that can dynamically change a clip/project..
I think LK’s piano roll should be a separate module from the launcher.. with both getting their own TLC.... working with each other...
There is not new project button. We need to add some templates to the patch manager. Sorry!
Our next release 1.9.0 it is completetly focused on timming issues. All test cases scenarios are welcome. If you would like to provide us feedback, let me know by private message and I will add you to TestFlight.
This question has been raised already. We allow LK to work without being tied to it's AUv3. This can be good and a bad thing depending on the user. Some users have already suggested a button which would lock it to the host. We might implement that feature. Right now, if you want to sync them together you just need to pause and set the host transport controls to the beggining and play again.
Let me know if you would like to test the forthcomming version and provide feedback for your use cases. Thank you!
I think it would be even more cumbersome to switch between modules just to edit notes. What is TLC?
Tender Loving Care (TLC)... You do have a point...How about a floating Paino Roll. My 2 cents... Thanks for the response..
Or thin layer chromatography, depending on the field you work in
Yes shift+press on a clip could open another AU window with the piano roll, that would be cool... is it even possible for an AU plugin to have multiple windows?
Another thing that would be super cool: if you could switch between the classical piano roll view and a view for drum/percussion clips with icons instead of the keyboard.
It would be possible to have multiple floating windows for each clip. Those windows, would be inside the the LK AUv3 though. Would that be better? I'm not sure yet. Specially on phone.
Maybe on phones/ipad minis shift+click could just open the piano roll in "fullscreen" mode
That's basically what the draggable split viewport does. What's the gain? 5 mm of extra height?
I'm trying to figure out the cons and pros for approaching this with another angle than the draggable slit viewport.
ok I've only just discovered you don't have to drag it but can also just tap on the bar to open it fullscreen... forget what I said before
After discovering that the piano roll, automation, etc. can be maximized using a tap, I have never dragged once inside LK. I think this works well!
note that you have to NOT top on the scroll widget but anywhere else for the tap to be seen. It took me an embarrassing number of attempts to realize that.