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. How much would it costs the bundle?
The bundle should be around $12 USD. That's more than 50% off for Chord!, or 30% off for SongKit.
Liking SongKit so far but one minor issue is text entry. I tend to write lyrics quickly to get them out there and find I can hit wrong keys on the keyboard. Is there any way the standard ‘word suggestion’ bar could be implemented or some spell check/ auto-correction option? (which would be an option as I know some folks don’t like them)
Also, if I make a mistake in a word and use the ‘back’ key to go back to correct it it defaults to a capital letter so you get a word like ‘heLlo’ !
As I say I love the app and I’ve been after something like it for a while so thanks.
Thanks for the feedback!
The main issue is that chords inside words are breaking the spellchecker because stops as soon as it encounters a non-letter character. Thus, it starts to work on partial words and everything is wrong.
The second issue with spellchecking is the vertical space it takes by default.
But I'll experiment with adding my own spell checking. It can't have personalized suggestions like the standard keyboard gets, but I don't think it matters for song lyrics. And I'll gain more control over what's happening and how it looks. I'll experiment.
The second issue is a bug! Thanks for reporting it! It will be fixed in the next update.
Thanks for the info.
I wait for the bundle to be up and I'll jump in:-)
Thanks for the reply. Great app even so, thanks.
Coolio
I was hoping to see some midi. But didnt see in the description....
There is no midi in the app right now. It may come in a future update, when I'll implement backing tracks.
Cool. Thanks. Still looks pretty awesome.
Noticed the update which has sorted the text entry ‘back space’ issue out. Thanks
Any progress with the bundle? When will it be available?
I don't know. It is still "Waiting for review" since Wednesday night, which means it hasn't started to be processed yet. Unfortunately, I can't do anything more. It is merely a formality, but it's all in Apple's hands. If I have no info tomorrow, I'll contact support (5 days for review was considered normal a few years ago). I'm also submitting an update for Chord! where I'm telling the reviewer that there is also a bundle to check. I guess bundles have a lower priority than apps during this iOS 14 release cycle. It bothers me as much as you, as it impedes me to communicate with Chord! users about SongKit.
It will be published automatically as soon as it is approved by Apple. I should receive a notification and I'll post here.
Any plans to add a midi export for the song file so I can export a song as a midi file?
I wish I'll add backing track generation, à la iRealB/BandInABox. This is one of my ultimate objectives for the app. But I'll need to add timing info to annotations first. This is something I'm working on right now, but midi export is still far away. I can't give any ETA because I'm working on the mac version too, so please consider that the app has no midi support yet. I've already arranged things internally to accept this, but I don't know how long will it take.
Oh cool, glad to hear it’s in the works! It looks like an incredibly useful tool so I’ll grab it here tonight cos I can still find plenty of use for it until it gets midi export
I am still figuring things out, but simply as a way to capture and store tabs and chord sheets from the hundred or so different websites out there with ads and pop ups and different formats and having them all in one place in a uniform style is worth the money! Thanks for making this.
Waiting for the bundle. Will I lose work done with the beta?
Still waiting for Apple to review it. I've sent a message to support about the issue earlier today. I hopefully have some update about the situation tomorrow. There is nothing special about it and it should be approved without any issue. It is simply in the queue to be processed by Apple…
In any case, you wont lose any of your work!
Thanks, I knew it was in Apple's hands but wasn't sure whether to keep using the beta. Thank you.
A quick update on the bundle for those who are waiting for it.
This is not to stir up drama. Just to let you know that even if I'm not posting about it, I'm working actively to get this bundle out.
I'll post as soon as it is published.
Thank you for your understanding!
Bundles can sometimes take weeks to be approved.
The bundle with SongKit+Chord! is now available!
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app-bundle/id1533191888?mt=8
Awesome.
Is the key linked to the chords in the song? I must have started the song in the wrong key. So for example, if I want the song in Dmaj I have to set it to Cmaj.
TL,DR: Yes, you can change the key as you want, with or without affecting chords.
In SongKit, chords are stored independently of the key, as numbered chords. They are resolved as notes when you effectively specify a key, like you would do if you remember your song as numbered chords.
It means that you have two way of changing the key:
With the current version of the app, these conversions are independent of the major/minor quality of the key. This will be improved in some next update and you will be able to meaningfully transpose the song from Cmaj to Cmin for example, and G will become Gm. But I need to check corner-cases, especially with custom chords. Such conversions may generate possibly triple flat notes and I need to verify that it doesn't break things elsewhere.
Ok, I think that explains why the key is Cmaj but the chords are from Dmaj.
If I understand correctly your case, I would set the key to be Dmaj again (so chords are well "aligned"), and then transpose and set the key in Cmaj. The chords will be chords from Cmaj and the key will be Cmaj.
If you only transpose after setting it to Dmaj, the key will reset to Dmaj the next time you open the song. You have to say that you want this key to become the default key of the song. There is a button dedicated to this purpose at the bottom of the transposition screen.
Great, got it now. Thanks.
@SongKit A tab editing bug. Tapping to extend the length of the tab strip quits the app. iPad 7, iOS 13.7.
And is there a symbol to add end of bar where ever you like?
Is there a way to intern a space or move an entire selected tab area?
Also, 2 big creativity killers for me. 1 even with an apple pen it is so hard to place a curser in between chords to space them apart. 2 even when I finally get the cursor in the right spot, double tapping to put space between chords creates a full stop which I then have to go back and remove. The app seems to bypass spellchecker which is great but I don't get why it doesn't ignore other keyboard shortcuts.
@Ailerom Thanks for the feedback!
I've seen the tab crash in the logs, and I've already fixed it for the next update.
Right now, tab editing is very basic and I'm planning to add a better tab editor in a future update, once the Mac version is ready.
In the meantime, you can't really create shorter tabs since they are rescaled to the same width during display. Full-fledged tabs won't have this limitation though.
To edit, I've tried to make a standard textView from iOS work for months to no avail, and I decided to implement my own UITextInput implementation. It means that the text view from SongKit should behave like a regular text view, but there are some, unfortunately, bugs on Apple's side that prevent a really smooth integration, and I need to fix/bypass them case by case.
There are glitches sometimes with the pencil but they have changed the behavior countless times during beta. Can you send me by mail a video depicting the issue so I can see how you're using it and work on some fix?
By the way, you can also swipe left or right anywhere in the text view to move the cursor one step to the left or right. It may help to position it between chords. I'll try to add a little more room between chord insertion points to ease the process too.
About shortcuts, here again, I can't benefit from the built-in shortcuts from a standard text view and I needed to reimplement them one by one. Can you tell me which shortcuts/actions are missing so I can add them back?
There is no spellchecker because the system one completely breaks with chords inside words. I've already planned to add a custom spell checker in a future update.
I'm sorry for the inconvenience. This is a v1.0 and I'll work on addressing all the issues you have raised.