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
Thanks for the heads up!
This one
http://www.mediafire.com/download/4ly1a2a1f295zz2/HQ_Orchestral_Soundfont_Collection_v3.0.sf
sounds particularly lovely loaded into Bismark.
Thnx for posting the sample pack Poppa! What does one do with all of these short phrases? How does one make a song with these? Or are these meant for adding FX too for sample fodder? Cheers, ED
😃👍
Thanks @MobileMusic, excellent analysis. As a solely midi composer I will pass on this till there is an improvement. Importing the libraries as AUV3 would make it unstoppable.
Anyone know if staffpad IAPs include big band jazz sections or instruments?
@Telstar5 said:
Just orchestral options so far... I saw requests so the sample house will probably step up at some point. But not yet.
UPDATE: There's a rumor on the StaffPad forum that Orchestral Tools "Glory Days - Big Band Horns" is coming based upon someone seeing it in a developer's video. All the
StaffPad libraries need to be ported over to work with the StaffPad sound engine.
I'm getting the hang of it and I must admit that writing slowly but being able to hear it quickly is amazingly fun. It' easy to get into the flow of adding one more thing and then one more thing...
Several Options. You could load one shots into a sampler like koala Or BM3. You could load multi samples into Chameleon. You could load a lot of multi samples in AudioLayer.
Pretty cool. Can only imagine as the sounds get better how great this will be.
It's very eye opening to hear music made with a focus on perfect sample rendering. The only thing close to this was probably the sounds loaded in NS2. AUv3's are great as isolated options but they can't scale like this.
I can see mixing these options to use the best of each for a project.
Anyone that wants to do Cinema style composing should spend the $90 and get to work. The audio and MIDI can be exported from the notations in StaffPad into DAW's to add more AUv3 based sounds and FX.
There's no need to buy the additional sample products to do orchestral work. The add-ons that are
on my short term list include:
Tina Gui Cello $40
Solo Violin $40
Soloist Strings $70
Ambient One - FX treated pianos and a PAD collection of sounds - $20
Felt Piano $40
It some point I might feel the need to invest in another set of orchestral samples for additional articulations or a change in colors based upon hearing other composers at:
https://vi-control.net/community/threads/compositions-on-staffpad.95360/
@McD can “tracks” or instruments be exported individually?
@McD, good work, Ludwig. How does one adjust dynamics? What pencil do you use? Why do you think high quality acoustic s are not available on iOS? These could be, right?
Exporting as MIDI shows up in Cubasis with each instrument on a separate track.
Exporting as audio does a mixdown so to isolate instruments in wave files you'd have to
mute tracks and work through the score. There's an option to "solo" or "mute" tracks so I'll
test audio output to see if it's easy.
It's that easy. I hit Solo on the 1st violin part and exported to audio share and uploaded to SoundCloud:
@McD thanks for all your research on StaffPad. Definitely put me off the fence on this one.
Now please try 2020 The Musical 😅
There's an automation layer for each track and it also interprets the ppp,pp,p,mf,f,ff,fff settings you enter
as text. The automation is exported using CC 11. I use the 1st apple pencil that matches the 2018 9.7" iPad. After watch more videos on note entry I have learned to do it better.
High quality sounds abound on IOS. But scaling for film composing in the DAW's is a nightmare of limitations. It requires the building of custom sound collections that are tuned to be "good enough" to
scale in a DAW. The sounds available for NS2 now on patch storage are a good low cost option. I just never dug into NS2. Collaborating based on a DAW is probably the best idea. You can't just quit that easily if someone is waiting for your turn (assuming you take turns).
@McD Thanks. I have some thinking to do!
I think you came from this world in your past, right?
It's on the iPad and might not even be the first tool we see in this space since the iPads
are eating up the laptop market (at least for Apple users).
NOTE: This app has been on MS Surface for over 4 years already.
You're going to spend $100 to get a pencil too.
OK great ideas Poppa! Will try those out, thanks very much! ~ ED
@McD actually I’ve never really written notation or anything, though I do have StaffPad for Surface. I got it at a time when I had little to no time to do anything musical, so most of what I did was testing here and there. My Surface is ready to bite the dust. It clicks when it starts up and holds charge for about an hour. No cross grade unfortunately.
Tab is the way for me. I have many “compositions” using TabIt - it’s still going on TabIt.net. Windows only. Closest we have here is JamMaestro.
I do have the pencil already...it would be interesting like you say to see more software like this - but so far it seems StaffPad is unique.
Maybe there’s a path from tab to midi to StaffPad notes that would work. Most tab ignore rhythm in my experience except for relative note ordering in a bar.
Actually there is also an ”Export Stems” option to get individual Wav. Just tap the menu dots to the right of the Audio export bar, and you’ll find it...
Thanks. I didn't notice the ellipsis. It also exports MP3 and AAC formats in addition to a mixdown and stem Wave files.
I tried to move MIDI in from Cubasis to save time but I think confusion over how to note human playing would not be a great time saver. Cleaning up something with complex 64th notes is a royal pain.
Quantizing in Cubasis has to help.
@mcd found this sample library comparison with StaffPad...
Yes. I found that too. Did one of the orchestras jump out at you as being the winner? The SpitFire
doesn't include a harp as I can see way composers collect these products like we collect $5 IOS apps.
Many of them also get work writing music for films and TV because they save the show all the money they used to spend on studio time and real musicians and the music can probably be generated in days and not weeks.
I'm looking into the forum where these folks hang out and it's another world. A lot like the classical piano
forum and very set in it's world.
I spent my reaming budget getting the "Soft Drummer" IAP's for $10. They complete @LuisMartinez vision of the world of classic jazz drummer's and extend it into the world of jazz-inspired funk too.
My Lumbeats collection is complete.
I'm thinking of laying down some slow jazz drums and layering Nelson Riddle strings over the top and
finding a good cabaret singer to do a vocal. There are 15 in my area to choose from. Those Linda Ronstadt albums were great. Harry Nilsson made one too with classic tunes like "As Time Goes By".
@McD : “Big bad horns”? You’re sh-tin’ ’ me!! Thanks!!!!!!
I tried the default StaffPad Brass, Sax, Upright Bass and Drums for some basic Big Band riffs and this is what you get for the $90 investment.
@Clueless :Thanks for that info.. So you are saying that the input is limited only to what you can write in?
Pencil notation and MIDI file import. It's a tool for composers to produce a score.
There's a free Reader app where the musician's can pull up their part via wireless.
What makes it note-worthy for me is the quality of the sound libraries that don't have
another iPad "playback" engine other than StaffPad. The fact that this exists means we could
see more sample loading "players" on the iPad over time like Kontakt's player for example.
One that accepts live MIDI would sell pretty well. I suspect StaffPad is doing very well for
folks writing (or wanting to write for) film music jobs. Or people writing for bands and orchestras.
You can print the parts as well as pass out iPad Pros I guess.
I took this YouTube Video and ran it with the "Tube AU" app and recorded the audio
in AUM. Then I passed the audio into Cubasis and cut it into the 5 orchestras demo'ed:
1) Sibelius with NotePerformer (wonderful bass - probably recorded on a Mac)
2) StaffPad (default instruments in the app)
3) Berlin (#3 maybe a larger recording hall - strings bury the woodwinds)
4) CineSamples (#1 good bass strings - my favorite overall but not by enough to justify the $'s)
5) SpitFire (#2)
Then I split then up and put them on 5 tracks and lined them up so I could label them and make quick changes to compare and I must say that the default StaffPad Orchestra holds up well against the $100-200 orchestras (they split strings and winds into 2 purchases in most cases).
I think my add-on money will go to solo instruments as I feel the need but I can add also add solos in Cubasis with my AUv3 apps so I should hold out for something compelling to inspire me to use StaffPad.
Here are the current IAP's available:
$99.99 (USD)
CineBrass
CinePerc
CineStrings
CineWinds
Voxos Choir
Spitfire Symphonic Strings
Spitfire Symphonic Woodwinds
Spitfire Symphonic Brass
Spitfire Symphonic Percussion
Spitfire Chamber Strings
Berlin Strings
Berlin Brass
Berlin Woodwinds
Berlin Percussion
Berlin Strings First Chairs
$69.99 (USD)
CineHarps
CineStrings Solo
CinePiano
Berlin Harps
Berlin Pianos
Audioollie Scoring Synths
$54.99 (USD)
StaffPad Antique Keys
$39.99 (USD)
Tina Guo Cello
Taylor Davis Violin
$29.99 (USD)
Spitfire Felt Piano
Spitfire Union Chapel Organ
Spitfire Steel Drums
$19.99 (USD)
StaffPad Essentials Drummers
StaffPad ambience ONE
StaffPad Retro Keyboards
$9.99 (USD)
StaffPad Guitars Vol 1
$6.99 (USD)
StaffPad Accordion
FREE
StaffPad Toy Glockenspiel
Like mentioned before it is indeed just write or midi import.
I think real time audio input would not be possible because you would need tons of RAM and CPU and this would be impossible on iOS or even desktops. This is really made mainly for writing and importing.
The sample libraries are especially ported for this engine and can sound even better than the much larger Kontakt counterparts. Of course it is more limited in terms of articulations, mics and some other things. But many composers seems to like it.
I personally prefer playing in all in real-time and do not do many midi editing so it is not the right tool for me in general but it is really the best for these sounds on iOS.
Of course it is also not cheap and if G.A.S. kicks in you are lost