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
dRambo....
😇
Somebody had to say it....
To be fair, most of the iOS apps if not all are inspirational in one way or the other.
I really like the iOS platform.
Alchemy (the old app from Camel Audio)
ThumbJam
Animoog
NanoStudio 1
Beatmaker 2
Sunrizer
Yes, all older apps, some are not working anymore or there are newer versions which does not have the same wow effect or i even prefer the older versions.
After that there came a lot interesting apps i had fun with but nothing really which felt like the good old days.
Its just more from the same these days and i wait for some new innovative things and/or finally REAL multi-touch apps.
Forgot Rozeta in my list. So out of the 4 I named so far two are by @brambos
aum , mirack , spacecraft , factory , poly2 , spa , LK , ripplemaker , senode , touchscaper , rozeta , alteza , blackhole , are the apps that most inspire me and that i can’t go without.
I'm a hybrid user (MacOS / iOS) so I can replicate most of my iOS apps on the Mac, however I really love Patterning and Xynthesizr for untraditional sequencing and or generative music. BM3 has some very unique features for sequencing samples and general drumming that I cannot get anywhere else... yet.
I would keep my iPad just for those apps TBH.
Updated list - over last 18-24 months - there were many over the years including Gadget, AB3, and even Figure, but more recently these are my top ones
AUM
Mozaic
Rozeta
Tonality- I create so many chord progressions with the AU Pads
Autony
Piano Motifs
Fortamento
My list would be too long to mention here. I appreciate the difficulty of developing apps, updating, and supporting them. The economics of music creation apps isn’t the most economically rewarding use of the developer’s time and energy either.
AudioBus, Loopy, apeMatrix, AUM, NaviChord, FieldScaper, Rozeta
Patterning 2 has recently been inspiring me. I always slacked off on drums, just putting down one 4 bar loop for the whole song, but Patterning 2 has changed that. I love the record mode, the way the pads are laid out and light up, etc and how you can create multiple patterns that you can immediately switch to on the right side. It’s all so smooth and immediate. Haven’t even used the programming wheel, but i suspect I will for difficult to play fills and what not. And the fact that endless drum kits are a click away. So I went from having drums being one of my biggest musical hangups to feeling like I can make any beat I want with Patterning 2.
AUM Sunvox Brambos Beepstreet 4pockets Toneboosters Fabfilters Cubasis2 of fk forgot MDE Stereo
Bebot.. I mean, come on.. a friendly, singing animated robot.. GOLD!
Drums: EG Pulse has been a game changer when it comes to creating beats. The roll function specifically has really helped.
Synth: Lagrange, BLEASS Alpha, and Bass 808 have become staples to my arsenal, each inspiring new creative directions.
Effects: FAC Phazer and TB ReelBus have both inspired some of my more out-there sound Design moments.
Honorable Mention: Mononoke, while not currently having a place in my everyday production process, really captured my attention and sparked new life into my drive to create music.
Zeeon was the first app that really tipped me over, I still get a bit tingly when loading it up for a project or something, just from the memory of it.
For free garageband is just too hard to beat, having this 25 years ago would have made a huge difference in my musical life.
ThumbJam because it just nails a few things like AP synthesis style instruments, voice to midi, and overall it’s just such a long standing powerful expressive instrument!
Drambo... what is there to say, it’s really good to me
Gadget for making stems to use in other sequencers, so you don’t have to use gadgets sequencer.
I love aparillo...did I mention I love aparillo?
Spacecraft is lovely...you can get lost in that for hours and then days
Tardigrain is just so dark, beautifully and wonderfully edgy and dark
Koala...fun fun fun....resample....fun fun fun....resample more
if nanostudio had audio tracks I think it would be in my inspire picks, but it doesn’t, so it’s dusty...and the wait is incredibly long, too long, long long ago probably in some galaxy far away.
ThumbJam
Samplr
Borderlands
AUM
Audioshare
Touchscaper is far and away my favorite right now. But there are so many others that play a supporting role for me.
I like to contribute to positive threads. This one is hard because it's almost every app I have, and I have a lot. Whenever I pull up an app I haven't used for awhile (often to answer a question or check something out from the forum) I end up getting lost in some new exploration and wonder why I don't use it more. I'm literally like a kid in a candy shop every day.
Haven't been too busy making music on iOS this year, but Figure always inspired me and was fun for many years.
There are a handful of apps which fundamentally changed the way I do things on iOS and they are:
. Gadget: It's where I got my start. When starting out on the iPad, this app showed me what was possible on the platform
. BeatMaker 3: WOW. Just WOW. I could have a full on MPC on my iPad. This blew my mind. I hope this app can survive all the trauma it has gone thru this past year. Why can't people just get along
. BlocsWave: I love this app to this day. Great as an inspiration starter, and a great source for drums, fx and those little bits of sound you can slice and dice later in the final mix in Drambo.
. GrooveBox: Same as BlocsWave.
. Fugue Machine: This is just magical. I wonder if this could be built in Drambo...hrmm....
. AUM + AudioBus: These two apps let me set things up exactly how I want to. Thanks GUYS!
. ModStep: Hoping this app gets the love and attention deserves. It was definitely a paradigm shifting sort of app on the iPad for me. It just liberated me to really express myself musically.
. Korg Electribe Wave: Great little groove box which has brought me so much joy.
. SunVox: A curiosity of complexity and fiddling which makes my brain come alive.
. Brambos Kit: Anything from this gent is GOLD.
. Samplr: Sampling as an instrument on a touch screen device. PERFECTION.
. Xynthesizr: A wonderful tool to end up in a new place. I really hope we see this come to auv3.
. LoopyHD: simply the best looper on iOS.
. Continua: thanks to @Spidericemidas this is my favorite synth.
. Quanta: So this is the sound of the universe sparking in to existence.
. Drambo: The Holy Grail of apps. I really don't need anything more!
That's a high level review of the apps which inspire me daily when I settle in to make a track.
In addition to others mentioned here: Woodulator. I don't use it all the time, but sometimes I play piano or guitar through it and I love the way it sort of responds back, encouraging me to find a melody, definitely inspirational.
Drambo
AUM
Replicant 2
Blackhole
Stratosphere Cloud Reverb
👍
Animoog
Audiobus
Borderlands Granular
Wilsonics-->Synth One/Thumbjam
I have many workhorse apps, but for influence on how I make music then it has to be Blocs wave because it showed me that samples can be easy to use, Groovebox and Launchpad because they changed my whole performance method.
I feel like there have been a series of apps which have actually changed my whole perspective - both of mobile music production and of music production in general.
Caustic - was the first app I used to make music properly on a mobile device. It was like Reason on my Samsung Note. Mind-blowing.
Animoog - totally redefined what a synth was/could be & did things that I couldn't possibly achieve with hardware units (removing keys from the display to show only those in the key I wanted was amazing; MPE even more so!)
AUM - changed my whole perspective of how to make music. The environment is completely inspiring and after 20+ years of linear DAWs it totally refreshed my outlook.
Koala - meant that I could make music wherever I was using an old iPhone I grabbed from a friend who no longer used it. Instead of just being restricted to the iPad I could make beats of releasable quality on a £4 app that I could carry with me everywhere.
Samplr/Borderlands/Quanta - I had never experienced granular synthesis before and the whole experience totally altered my outlook on synthesis, adding an additional dimension I had never considered.
Obviously there are so many other fantastic apps, but these ones are the things that come to mind in terms of the things that made the most impact.
As someone who produces EDM (Trance, Dubstep, House, etc), these are the apps I love the most...
Nanostudio 2 - My main bread-and-butter DAW. I produce and mix down everything in it. And when I'm simply mastering a single track, I'm able to do so in the project itself. Most synths on iOS are either user-friendly but lack depth or go very deep but aren't user friendly. For me, Obsidian strikes a happy balance between the two. Obsidian also has great IAP acoustic packs and is where I get most of my acoustic sounds from. Of course, NS2 lacks audiotracks, but that hasn't stopped me from producing songs. I've completed more tracks in one and a half years in NS2 than I had in the many years I've used Gadget (my previous bread-and-butter app). The only thing I'm actually unable to do in Nanostudio 2 is master an entire album.
Cubasis 3 - Where I actually master an entire album.
I can technically record all of my vocals and clean them up in Nanostudio 2 no problem. It's just far easier to do so in Cubasis 3 especially now that track grouping is a thing.
Multitrack Studio (MTS) - It is a big pain in the ass to use if trying to produce a track in it, but it has one feature no other app has - a legit vocal tuner where you can actually control the notes of what is being sung. It's a far cry from Melodyne where you can move chunks of audio around and edit the minutest of details, but it works just fine for my purposes.
Beathawk - Has the best library of sounds on iOS in my opinion. It works great as groovebox, but where it really shines is its use as an AU and the various acoustic instrument packs it contains.
FabFilter plugins - Especially Pro-L2.
ToneBoosters plugins - Especially Barricade, which is like Pro-L2 in many aspects, but cheaper and universal.
MagicDeathEyeStereo - Seriously glues an entire mix together really well. I make sure the gain reduction is between -2dB and -3dB, and hence the "magic" in the name.
BarkFilter - Tripleband preset. I use this on near everything in a mix (except drums), and it brings the mix to life.
WOOTT - Works great on basses and leads.
Of course these are my personal preferences. Cheers.
DrumJam and Animoog are my two favorites. I can get lost jamming on either of those for long periods of time.
Drambo helped me graduate to a new level of love for modular and made me thirsty for more; Something VCV Rack and the like never did for me. It ended up driving me toward Bitwig for its Grid and Msoundfactory — but I keep coming back for more Dram. Nothing quite like its immediate and inspirational playflow.
I could actually survive with just two music apps. Don’t want to, but it’d be possible, so my two faves are:
AUM and Spacecraft.
Loop builder, Samplr, Groovebox, Rhythm Bud, Aum, glitchcore, thumbjam, Saturn 2 Touchscaper. those are a few that kind of made me stop and say... “ wait a second., there’s something special about this one”.