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.
Silk Road / Challenging Cubasis3
This was a big project. 25 tracks and ten minutes long. Divided in two parts, the first half uses all plugins. The second all Cubasis instruments save the lead NOISE line and MidEast Drummer audio track.
It took several days, which is intense for me. I first constructed the ostinato line using Thumbjam cello. At midpoint I did a trial mixdown. Total disaster. No way I could get it to work. Seeking the answer I tried freezing tracks and noticed TJ cello would not freeze down correctly. I substituted a PureSynthPlatinum cello and it worked perfectly. And I discovered, with some EQing, that the PSP cello was as good as the vaunted Thumbjam. This proved beyond doubt for me that if CB3 malfunctions, it is most likely a problem with a plugin.
I finished the second half without much difficulty. However, CB3 crashed, froze repeatedly and required regular reloading. More so than CB2. However, in conversations with @LFS, he indicated the next update (in the works) could address that issue. These glitches were tedious, but I would not return to CB2 at this point. The overall CB3 experience is a great improvement. Much smoother operation overall (freezes, mixdowns, GUI, MIDI editor, Mastering Strip, etc). When you add that there will be no future updates to CB2, there really is no reason to not upgrade at this point if you are a user
For someone like me, who wants the old analog feel of recording, I cannot envision a better tool for music production than Cubasis3. When I think I bought this for $34 on sale, it is nothing short of miraculous.
I hope you like this track. It will make the effort all the more worthwhile. Thanks for listening!
Comments
Love it @LinearLineman! Love the Mid East theme with the drums on the 2nd half. Reminded me of a car chase scene from a spy movie... filmed in Dubai?
@Intrepolicious, thanks for listening. Glad you liked it. Now you see why I recommended Lumbeats apps to you.
holy cow, you like C3 now?
Cubasis 3 for $34 is "nothing short of miraculous".
Arthur C Clarke comes to mind.
I did see some damn good magic in Las Vegas for around $34... Lance Burton.
But Cirque de Soleil is a better show overall... Mystere is my fav'. Cool live band and
on stage Taiko drummers. Great sound track.
This piece sounds like some Cirque de Soleil music. I know you had to sweat blood on this one
to get it right. Miraculé.
I just bought Soft Drummer and have been enjoying the brush sounds. I’m not crazy about the interface of any of these apps though.. like “iBassist” I’ve had for a while. Ended up deleting it. I did not like it one bit.
Yeah. The User Interface code is NOT Luis Martinez' strong suit. But he can imitate all these drummers to a "T". Very musical approximations of living drummers and I'm picky about this particular area. I have them all. iBassist adds the rest of the rhythm section to the mix and allows laying out tunes in progressions. Very nice of you crave that "Band in a Box" automated arranger based on chord changes. The chordal accompaniment is kind of weak but putting that part through Perforator (clavs) or Filterstep (wah pedal) can fix it in some genres. I recommend you give it another shot if you like song forms to play over or write tunes based on chord charts. If not then OK... the GUI sucks. But they are all based on the same ideas so
learn a couple and you're good on all.
Luis is a genius at making code sound musically accurate. It would fool many. Session Band uses actual recordings and can scratch the same itch and sound even more like hired session players. Every app they make gets better and better. The 2 most recent are amazingly good but I like smooth funk. That's my jam.
@LinearLineman VERY NICE! Thanks for outlining your process and detours taken along the way. I’d like to see what you come up with using ZenBeats and it’s new ZC1 plugin.
Me too but he's a CB3 user and it took him many hours to get to this point. I doubt he's ready to
switch DAW's on IOS when he just got a PC and a Mac. He needs to pick a DAW for the Mac next.
ZenBeats has a Mac product and a PC product so... hmmm... they even have a license to cover all three
for one price, I think. But I think he's disposed to try Reaper. He'll comment for sure.
@noob, indeed, I do like CB3. And I think it will get better. Obviously, I don’t use many advanced features so I can’t comment on them. I had an ongoing issue with CB2 that would not allow audio and midi to sync correctly in mixdown. The disappearance of that issue in CB3 was, in itself, reason for total embrace.
Thank you for listening, @ipadbeatmaking. I’m a fan of your easy going presentation. @McD is correct, anything but an analog style GUI does not work for me. It needs to remind me of older and more cozy times.
and buffer to 11ms
remember that ppl if u get crashes in CB3