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.
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Meanwhile, people are still making cool music with Cubasis. Little do they know that in reality that’s apparently impossible.
Interesting post here on timing and daws and hardware: https://www.gearslutz.com/board/electronic-music-instruments-and-electronic-music-production/530312-gt-hardware-sequencers-vs-daw-timing-differences.html And I post it not because it mentions the Yamaha QY700 and how superb it is at rock-solid timing, nor because quite coincidentally I have a Yamaha QY700 (of rock-solid timing fame) up in the attic all boxed up ready to sell, if only someone would buy it, but rather, because it mentions the Yamaha QY700 and I’m trying to sell mine in East London. Cheap, to an Audiobus forum member, probably.
No need to be sarcastic, specially because no one said that. Of course, for many people, anything that could handle well a four on the floor beat will be more than enough, and good music doesn’t need to be intrincate or complex. On the other hand, there are many people as well who need higher midi resolutions, and is absolutely fair to inform where it’s available and where is not, and Cubasis, for instance, doesn’t provide higher resolutions. Cheers!
@Moderndaycompiler yeah I had taken a look at that post, and it's of course correct... I make mostly EDM so I'm pretty much the opposite -- I depend on rock solid TIMING, NOT on high RESOLUTION. That brings us to:
@u0421793: We need to differentiate between timing ACCURACY and RESOLUTION. The thread so far has been about resolution (how exactly can I "want" a note to be output), which is measured PPQN. Timing ACCURACY is how close the real timing actually goes to plan. In that regard, ANY sequencer and ANY synth on iOS should have ABSOUTELY PERFECT timing IF they used the available APIs correctly. Unfortunately, not all of them do.
(the correct way for a MIDI SENDER (like Xequence) is to not do any timing by itself, but just tell the operating system all the MIDI events and when exactly they should be output, and then iOS will, at a very low level, handle this timing with absolute accuracy -- IF the MIDI RECEIVER does this correctly as well, i.e., it "asks" iOS for ALL MIDI events BEFORE they happen, and then generates the audio IN ADVANCE in the buffer). Many apps have problems with both of these concepts.
(That is why whenever you get inaccurate timing with notes sent from Xequence, it MUST by definition be the receiver's fault
)
EDIT: to the best of my knowledge
The song Schism by Tool alters meter 47 times. Stravinsky's ''Three Pieces for Solo Clarinet'' changes meter almost every bar.
presumably they didn't quantize their playing.
Is it laziness among app developers,?
or laziness of user not learning how to play.
i wear a bib when i'm playing, no quantize, nice and sloppy
quantization works well with heavy modulation tho
This composition has tempo changes - the M01D app supports individual tempo settings per measure. That is probably because it is based on the Korg M1, which was created for songwriters/composers who work on music more complex than 4/4 dance beats that never change
.
Props to SevenSystems for even thinking about implementing it in his app.
Why do only a few sequencers in IOS support tempo changes? I think is is because developers design their apps based on what they think the users want. If no users ask for it, it's not going to be in the app. If more users ask for it, then maybe it will be in there.
@GovernorSilver yeah that piece is interesting. I should widen my 4/4 130 BPM (nowadays... in 1999 it was still 140
) horizon.
BTW, M01D also has a global tempo setting - if you don't set a tempo for a measure, it defaults to the global.
DJ Spooky was one of the very few, if not the only beat-oriented artist/DJ that dared to change tempos in his set when I saw him play live.
No time signature and tempo changes, no Bohemian Rhapsody... to name just one.
> @SevenSystems said:
Probably the same chord throughout too.
Looking up Ok Computer out of curiosity:
Track 2.
(0:00): 4/4
(2:09): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
(2:19): 4/4
(2:31): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
(2:42): 4/4
(2:54): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
(3:04): 4/4
(3:16): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
(3:27): 4/4
(5:47): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
(5:58): 4/4
(6:09): 3x 7/8, 1x 8/8
Track 3.
6/8 time
Track 4.
Tempo changes
Track 5.
Changes from 5/8 to to 4/4 after the intro.
Track 12.
9/8 (0:19): 1x 12/8
lol same goes for impc pro
ps. it also has tempo changes and time signature changes but you didn't hear that from me.
DJ Spooky was excellent live. I saw him play in London many years ago with the ‘mutantumpet’ guy, Ben Neill. Memorable night.
Xequence supports any type of odd signatures (made a song in 23/8 the other day). You can't change them during songs though. But there might be a workaround by simply creating different songs with all your time signatures and then combine them when exporting your midi into a DAW.
Or you can do some math for time signature: 6/8x12/7x7/3=504/168
LOL that looks actually fun. Let's see if Xequence has a signature limit or not XD
@mschenkel.it haha, I was about to suggest that but then people would be even more scared of me
@Norbert: there isn't a built-in limit IIRC... it's just simple math so the app really doesn't care at all what you put there, as long as it isn't zero or negative (and I think I've prevented that
)
The calculation is wrong by the way. You want to find the smallest common measure so it should be 6/8 + 12/7 + 7/3 = 403/84
Ooopsie
But 84 is no multiple of 8
It doesn't have to be a multiple of 8 though. It's a multiple of 4. You just have to halve the tempo
I said 6/8 not 3/4
So then 806/168
I was about to say - why not make the entire song one bar?
We also have a great free calculator app!
(before anyone accuses me of bad taste: it's a JOKE
)
does it do Hex? (thx for the X update!)
@Shaken&;Stirred nah... but putting it on the todo list
Turn quantize off........
There was a recent discussion in which it was claimed that even if you turn quantize off on Cubasis, its 48 PPQN resolution will defeat any attempts to record swinging musical phrases. So I tried recording this sequence with all MIDI tracks, played in realtime. Tempo was set to 110 bpm, which might not be fast enough to expose swing problems associated with the 48 PPQN resolution, even w/ quantize turned off.
I guess an ideal linear sequencer would just capture all the incoming MIDI note and velocity data (at least ), regardless of whether it's generated by, say, Rozeta/Gestrument/Poly, played by another sequencer, or manually played on a controller; and preserve the note timing if, say, the human player manually speeds up/slows down his/her playing on the controller.
So if the recording/receiving MIDI sequencer has rock-solid timing and fine enough resolution to record incoming MIDI data with reasonably accurate timing, I could live without variations of tempo or explicit time signature support in the receiving sequencer, because I'd be doing my polyrhythms and such from Poly/Rozeta (has stuff like Euclidean rhythm sequencing); as well as tempo changes. The receiving MIDI sequencer though would have to be really bug-free when it comes to edits to MIDI data, copy-paste, etc. Cubasis2, unfortunately, has some MIDI copy-paste bugs.
Xequence sounds like a great candidate for that recording/receiving MIDI sequencer role - the one to use for putting together a composition out of the jams/ideas/whatnot captured from messing w/ MIDI transmitting apps, as well as importing MIDI that may have been initially created on other sequencers.
I realize there are some who want one do-it-all MIDI sequencer instead of dealing with multiple sequencers in separate roles - best of luck to them.
Other than NS2, are there any iPad Midi sequencer with a tempo track and a time signature track? Or allows clips to have their own time sig?
I don't have Xequence 2 or Modstep. Mostly use Midi AU generators in AUM, and BM3 (which does support uneven patterns for polymetric rhythms). Interested in polyrhytmic patterns though.
Auria Pro has both.