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
+1
Yes, I experimented that too. Chords being skipped randomly. I restarted my Ipad and it didn t happened again.
Have you been able to find how to delete a chord? ( the clear button erase the whole sequence even when just selecting one chord). In AUM I couldn t find any way to delete a chord.
BTW I also think that it would be good to be able to preview ( prelisten) the chord before loading them in the sequencer.
Cem already ackowleged the skipping notes problem as a bug earlier
Long press chord, "delete" option pops up. At least, it does for me.
Thanks ALB but it doesn't work for me in AUM.
That's strange - it works in AUM for me. Maybe delete and reload?
Are you on the latest version of IOS?
That may be it - I'm on 13.6.1. Was going to update tonight, but maybe I'll hold off.
I'm with the latest update 13.7 and the long press doesn't work in AUM and neither in Cubasis 3
Yeah, as discussed earlier, the long-press is unfortunately bugged on iOS 13, it's working great on iOS 14 beta though.
It's also working very fine without the chord skipping bugs on the iOS 14 as well. I don't know if it's like an iOS bug but I couldn't reproduce the issue. Does it still effective after unloading (the eject button on AUM) and loading the plugin again?
I'll definitely look into it though, no worries!
BTW I like developing and growing my apps with the community, so the new feature updates are already stacking up!
For the delete option, I can totally put a delete button to the chord editor.
Also, I'll add an "undo" button next to the clear button as well, it's going to help people a lot I believe.
For the preview option, we already discussed it before here in the forum. I didn't put the preview option intentionally. The original ChordBud 1 has that option, but it can only preview the triads by design. So, it doesn't make any sense if you can't "preview" all the other chord mods other than the triads. Also, it makes the app act like a chord pad app, which is not, it's a pure sequencer. You can preview the mods and other chords while the sequencer is running, it's way better to hear your changes in a running sequence, trust me!
I don't recommend making long and complex progressions. Use the patterns and chop your progressions into little sequences. It'll help you a lot! Some people may need a little time for getting familiar with the workflow, but it's designed like this for a reason, trust me
Thank you all for the support and suggestions. Please keep them coming, the app is just released and I started to work just yet!
Yea I gotta say I would like to hear the chord first as well.... maybe just a simple SoundFonts to hear the notes.
I’ve been letting host run and adding chords to hear them, which works ok. But to many times I have to delete the whole sequence to get what I want to hear.
Yes a definite undo button.
@cem_olcay - I feel like I sounded quite negative above.
I used this a lot last night and I'm really excited about the potential. I've used your apps enough to know that you will fix stuff, add nice features.
Stepbud and rhythmbud are wonderful apps that I use all the time.
Way to be. Good on ya.
I haven’t had a chord miss since I started Beta. I’m on iOS 13.7 iPad 2018.
I can understand the preview option from both sides, so either way is cool with me.
You can always bust out scale bud or a similar app to preview chords before you drop them in the sequencer.
Yea I use it as a simple chord progression foundation, Say I’ll do 2 patters, like a verse and chorus, then I send that midi all over the place to play arps, and pads, and rhythm bud, etc.. I’ve been using it like that and really enjoying the workflow. So it’s better to think of this as a midi chord foundation or structure for your song that you then build off of with other midi apps, rather then an app that is an “all in one” direct to synth midi chord solution for your tracks. It’s built to be lightweight and simple, then bring in arp bud 2 and rhythm bud and etc... to get more complex midi
What would be really cool would be to be able to change the length of a chord by entering the new length (3 bars, or 1/2 bar, or something), and have it change the positions of all subsequent bars automatically for you.
I find changing the lengths of bars quite painful at the moment. And I'd like to be able to create a very short chord progression (1/2 bar harmonic rhythm), audition it and then once I've got it right quickly set it to the length of my song.
The dev always has the right to decide in which direction to develop his app - but for me the concept that you presented above will not work out.
I am no musician, i‘m more a dabbler. I can play a tiny bit of keyboard, i can‘t read notes, technical know chords, inversions, voicings and progressions and even the ‚math‘ behind them - but i have no internal connection between the name, type, scale or whatever there is and how it will sound. Without preview (where i can tap between two of the chords) the only thing for me to do is randomly choose something of the countless chords, play the whole thing, delete it and try a new choice. And after five to ten tries, i just give up. Its no fun working that way.
Yes, „undo“ will speed up the process and needs less taps, but one still needs to listen to the whole thing which takes way too much time just to try out one of the many chords. I would listen to the sequence from time to time, but don‘t want to wait like 3 to 7 bars just to have another random try.
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Currently i use other chord pad apps, first try to find working combinations, then try out rhythms how to play them and record pieces of what i found into a piano roll AUv3 leaving gaps at the places where i‘m unsure. Next i experiment in finding chords to fill the gaps while the loop is running. Sometimes, the arrangement needs to change, for which i need to edit the piano roll. I then change inversions, voicings etc in the piano roll (maybe to make the progression use a tighter range of notes to make it more pleasant to listen to)
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I had hoped that your Chord Bud AUv3 would help me finding cool chord combinations and spare the work with the piano roll. Your app description states in the first sentence: „you can create chord progressions very quickly“.
But this only seems to works for people that have a musical background, know the various types of chords, progressions and know by heart how stuff will sound when using or combining them etc.
People like me that want to try out stuff (and have no clue what choosing a specific chord will mean seen from the music theory side) always need to run the full sequence, just to try out another chord - which is a cumbersome way to discover progressions and also starts to frustrate me quickly.
IMHO it doesn’t matter if the preview would only send out the notes for the base type of a chord and not its inversions, extensions or voicings, since these variants will allways sound quite similar to the base triad. I have no imagination at all how the different chords will sound, i only hear if it doesn’t fit so i need to try them in combination. Inversions and voicings could be changed later, for this its clear that the sequence needs to run to hear and feel if the current selection of inversions etc fit.
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As already mentioned in my introductory sentence, a dev can decide in which direction to develop his app. Perhaps this app just isn‘t meant for ‚novice‘ users or ‚dabblers‘ like me. It’s my fault that i’m so ‚musicaly challenged‘, not the apps fault
As suggested, preview of chords would help people of our kind.
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Sorry having bothered you again with a topic that in your opinion was made clear from the begin of the development - i only read the app description and didn‘t even wait for a video showcasing the app. If you decide to stay true to your original development decision perhaps add a „intentionally no chord preview“ statement to the description, so this request won‘t show up over and over
@_ki I know you would like to hear the chords before put them on the timeline. But again, you really don’t need the preview. You need the whole thing. In a four-chord-progression, you wouldn’t tell if the 3rd chord fits in the progression just by previewing it. It may sounds fine coming from the 2nd chord but it should be play well with the 4th as well, otherwise your progression wouldn’t work - which is the ChordBud’s promise to people doing it right and FAST.
I think you didn’t understand some workflow tricks that would help you working faster. For example, you don’t need to delete a chord and put something new there. There’s a chord input setting that would set the input behavior when a chord is selected. Set it to “update”. When you select a new chord from the grid, it will replace/update the selected chord. That would help you a lot when you tinkering the progressions. If you want to layout your chords quickly, you can leave that setting to “add mode”. It’s not so clear but I’m thinking about making a video about the settings.
Also, you can change the selected chord’s key, mode, inversion and octave in place and experiment with them while you creating your progression. You’ll learn a lot about chords and progressions, trust me, every time you’ll get faster because you’re going to understand how they are working!
Try the different progressions. In the settings menu, you can select a chord progression like I-IV-II-V and a lot more. You can experiment with a few of them and hear how they are creating different progressions. Again, you can’t do that with a “preview chord” function, you need the whole thing
Trust me, I’m not a master piano player or musician either. The whole point I created the Bud apps is giving people the tools that would help them on the music theory side of things. Even if they are absolute beginners or professionals.
I hope this post would help you a little bit, if not or you have any other questions/suggestions I’d love to hear them!
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@cem_olcay thank you for this app first and foremost! You've done a stellar job with your suite of bud plugins. I don't have it this desktop plugin, but I call your apps the Scaler 2 of iOS. 😊
Regarding Chordbud2 it works really well creating progressions and getting some ideas generated. With any new release there are a few things that could tighten up the workflow a bit. I'd like to echo an earlier post regarding deleting chords. Would it be possible to add a mode that moves the other chords left after one is deleted so it's not always necessary to move the other chords over? Also, I hadn't known about the 'Add' 'Update' options until your previous post. Would it be possible to add an "Insert" option that places a chord in between two others at the cursor? These two things, I believe would tighten up the workflow and make creating the progressions much quicker.
Seeing the work you've done with these 2 apps I'm definitely considering RhythmBud. Cheers! Keep up the great work.
@Lil_Stu07 thanks, that's great to hear!
I like the "insert" mode idea very much, sure I'll add it! 👍
BTW v1.1 is already in the store!
Cheers! 🥂
This is a really well designed and powerfull app that can easily be an essential tool for music creation.
I know it s already been discussed but for me the lack of chords preview is a real drawback. In use I really miss it. Even if Cem says we don t need it I can only see disadvantage of not having it. It's like being in a restaurant and having to taste randomly dishes before choosing one. The chord preview functionality is what make Suggester, Tonality or Chord Padx so intuitive for creating chord progressions. ( I know they re all different tools though).
I have to agree about wanting chord preview. Yes, hearing the chords in context is important, but playing through a sequence real-time is time consuming. I prefer to be able to tap through a sequence rapidly, or maybe just tap through two or three chords in the middle, making adjustments as I go, without having to endlessly loop through the progression over and over.
I think it dilutes the focus. When I’m trying to fix one small transition, I lose the train of thought if I have to deal with the whole all the time. Who writes a melody by playing the whole thing over and over, changing one note at a time?
Nope, I’m sorry, I just cannot see it from Cem’s point of view, though I’ve tried hard to do so.
Still, love the app, and will continue to use it though!
I'm used to Scaler - but am keen to use this on IOS - but would also need to audition chords for fast workflow
Life is short
Thanks haha. I will definitely be doing a video on this. I wanted to wait til those few major bugs it came out with were squashed. I love Cem's apps, particularly Arpbud. But I will definitely need more time to get round to doing a video on using them all together. Good idea though for sure 👍
It sometimes doesn’t play all chords when running. ..ipad pro 12.9 here
That's been reported and I think Cem fixed it already no?