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
How can you know? Usually the details of productions are not published. Anyway, here are some artists who admitted it. https://www.hypebot.com/hypebot/2018/08/7-performers-who-wrote-masterpieces-with-garageband.html
Again, how can you know that? I‘ve never read on an album ‚Not produced outdoors‘.
Honestly, then I don’t think you should use an iPad for making music. Better use a laptop as it made for your preferred way of working. Many people here on the forum buy more apps than they need to support the developers. But yeah, it’s better to focus and dive deep into a few apps that you really like. Recently I started to uninstall apps that I don’t use. Next step would be to delete all the presets of the remaining synths.
The forum is not just a kind of helpdesk for my problems. For me it is mostly about giving help and sharing, exchanging opinions. Being in touch with the developers and discuss their apps, giving feedback.
Certainly DAWs are great but they all have their limits and all impose a certain workflow on their users. It prefer to work with a set of focused tools that I can combine instead of a single solution that tries to cover my whole workflow. No craftsman would prefer a Swiss army knife over his selection of knives, scissors and screwdrivers.
The shortcomings of the iOS DAWs forces many users to better build their own setup with AUM for every project from ground up. For me this became a part of the creative process. The limitation on the iPad also influenced my way of making music. On the iPad I do more recording instead of programming.
☝️
this hand is a symphony
I think maybe I’ve been misunderstood or I haven’t been clear (probably the latter).
You could write orchestral scores on paper, which people have done for hundreds of years. You’ve been able to do it on a computer for many years and you can do it on an iPad now as well. That’s great!
But you simply cannot output the end to end production quality_of the song itself on an iPad. Go listen to JunkieXL’s channel and hear what he’s _creating musically with his rig.
I love the link above on the staff pad piece Pangea done above. It shows the power of “writing” music on an iPad. And, for an iPad, it sounds really good as well! But you just don’t get all the articulations that make those strings truly sound realistic. This is not the fault of the writer, which is amazing work, but the tool on the iPad to produced the best result for his piece. If he ported that piece over to a desktop with higher quality samples it would sound even MOAR amazing!
Here’s an example. It’s one of my favorite demo’s of a product. It’s for the Native Instruments Symphony Series.
(Finding link...standby)
Edit:
https://www.native-instruments.com/en/products/komplete/cinematic/symphony-series-collection/
Listen to the 12 of 13 demo song The View From Here by Nathan Furst.
The articulations are much more realistic than what is possible to produce with the limited RAM of an iPad. Could Nathan Furst have written the above on Staff Pad? Absolutely! But the output of his creation could not be done on said iPad like it could be done on a desktop. It’s a 34G sample library...Just for the strings! And this is just a demo to show off the orchestral libraries. Combine this with the ability to, at the same time, run many channels of amazing softsynths, effects and audio tracks from external gear, etc. You just can’t squeeze all of that from an iPad.
The title of this thread is “5 Reasons Why iOS Music is The Future”. It is A future. And it’s a great future for this specific platform. What people CAN and DO squeeze out of an iPad or iPhone is really amazing and it’s only going to get better and better. And for certain genres of music, it’s perfectly acceptable and you wouldn’t know the difference between a desktop and an iPad.
But certainly not all genres, at least not for the type of music I mostly listen to and aspire to create.
And I’m not meaning to downplay the importance of iOS music making. I think creating music and the sound design aspects are so fun and high quality. I’ve heard it on the forum and am also pleased with the results I am getting in my own work. But I just can’t assemble ALL of what I desire to create and generate on an iPad, which includes all the sound libraries, tracks and plugins in a fully blown DAW that has a lot more editing capabilities.
But you could record a real orchestra on to iPad... it’s specifically a particular level of fakery which isn’t available. Maybe some will decide to work on iPad and drive orchestral libraries on a slave desktop as “sound module”?
@drez There are certainly different levels of realism you can get, depending on how far you are willing to go. That hierarchy changes over time, e.g, now it might be GM MIDI, soundfonts, soundfonts with articulations, StaffPad, desktop libraries, actual orchestra. At each level of the hierarchy there are people who would not accept anything less.
For me, the StaffPad solution offers a nice compromise between sound quality and usability. On the sound quality front then I think an Average Joe (my target audience!) would not bat an eyelid if this was played out on their classical radio station:
However, try to pass that off in a classical music scholars forum and they would bite your head off!
I also like that the software abstracts away the low level programming of articulations (type of legato etc) so what you see in that video, other than volume automation, is what you get.
Based on the prices of those samples I am in some ways happy that my ear for orchestral sounds is closer to an Average Joe, otherwise this hobby would get even more expensive
Some more soundtrack mockups using only an iPad + StaffPad:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCd8lkODZwUkHchk03wayWwQ/videos
Worthy of note is that these did not have any post-processing done to them.
Just because JunkieXL can't do it doesn't mean it's not possible. There is plenty of orchestral sounds on the iPad, have a look at iSymphonic.
There are hundreds if not thousands of placements being done on iPad, there are several grammy award winning artists that have made tracks and entire albums out of the iPad and they've been doing it since 2016 maybe have a look at https://medium.com/micro-chop/the-gorillaz-made-an-entire-album-with-an-ipad-46cfbd78ee01
I agree with all the positive aspects people have listed. I very much like the platform and it’s a compelling device. Still not ready for primetime in several different areas though. Will it get there? Maybe. It’s mostly up to Apple at this point IMO.
I have looked at it and some others. And I do write the style of music I like to write that combines electronic and symphonic into more of a soundtrack type vibe. You can listen to some of my iOS stuff here for reference:
http://soundcloud.com/dreznicek
And if you can’t hear the difference between soundtrack music produced on iOS and what’s available on a desktop, then I guess this is where we just disagree and that’s ok 👍🏻 .
And @MadGav you could definitely record an orchestra to an iPad. But editing all of it on iOS with the ease of dumping it into something like cubase is not possible. The tedium of the IOS DAW’s is just too great. It takes way to much time and effort to move around and edit even 80 tracks. Everything is cumbersome because it’s not made for doing it. It’s made for using your fingers, and for some tasks that is great and works splendidly, but for some things it is not.
Let’s go to the other side though. What people are accomplishing with AUM and generative music that can be sequenced and controlled on an iPad is phenomenal. I’ve said it elsewhere in threads that folks that have a grasp on it here are doing mind blowing performances. And true you could even sequence your desktop as “an engine” from AUM running atom2 or fugue or StepPolyArp or insert whatever else here. Yea you can. And that is “a way” to do it. But not necessarily THE way, or the ONLY way.
I guess for a summary of my viewpoint: iOS is a tool like anything else, and it takes a toolbox to build a house. Some houses are more elaborate than others and absolutely require specific tools to build the exact house you want. I think using the right tool for the job gives the best result. iOS, live instruments, desktop, vocalists, samples, etc. They are all the future, not just iOS. One shouldn’t limit the possibility of what can be done based on the limits of what you have in your hands to do the job, but accept the limits and do your best and push within them.
This is why I enjoy NS2 so much. I know it’s limits and I’m ok with it. When I complete a song I enjoy saying “I did this just with this one tool”. That’s satisfying to me! It doesn’t have to be a film score, it’s great in its own way. But I don’t think it’s the best result I could have if I worked with more tools at my disposal, but that’s not always the end goal. But for many...it is.
I think specialized dedicated mobile music hardware will be more prominent and useful.
I 💯 agree with you. Absolutely phenomenal use of the iPad’s way of inputting the artists vision for the piece. THAT is how you use the iPad as a tool.
BUT... if you wanted it to sound even better than the very nice sample library they have for an iPad...move the resultant MIDI to a desktop and use better sample libraries that would give it a better end result than is possible on just the iPad. I promise you, your layman ears will hear the difference and you would appreciate it.
But for sure staff pad is just a wonderful tool for getting the idea down and hearing a sketch of it and getting a really great idea of what your piece will sound like in a not too shabby sounding result!
Editing a large number of tracks on an iPad may not be practical... but Decca tree, job done. Maybe submix by sections if wanting more control? To some extent more mics is make work...
I was thinking earlier that an iPad would be fine and dandy for recording a small jazz group, say. Kind of the near-irrelevant tail on musicians, instruments, room, mics, mic amps on some order of importance.
AI made us all obsolete.
Hah truth.
AI gets all the bitches.
That sounds impressive but until you connect that idea with actual sound it's not really a song to anyone but you. Not that there is an issue with that. All I'm saying is if that was the only place your written material existed and you called yourself a musician it would be stretch for anyone to believe it. Any performance would be a little awkward. I have written ideas on an ipad but it's not how I personally connect with music. Naturally if I were brain dead my song creation would be limited so as far as I am concerned saying "the brain is where I've written my songs"mis like saying the hand are where I've worn my gloves. To connect my musical ideas to the outside word (i.e. outside my head) I predominantly use a guitar or voice. Maybe it's narrow minded but i find it really hard to comprehend a world where the only music creation takes place on a computing platform.
Great, the important thing is to find the best way of making music for you personally. It won't be that way for everyone though and that's why to the best of my understanding iPad music creation cannot be THE future of music production.
Working with an iPad is a good way to use/tweak a synth. I prefer a mouse because it is more accurate for me personally. It's a bit (maybe not to everyone) like the difference between painting on a canvas that best suits the subject as opposed to trying to fit it onto a fixed screen size.
Not produced outdoors. I think we need to clarify what we all mean by produced. Based on my use of the word, I don't need to read it to know that hasn't happened. And I know the music I listen to wasn't produced (again based on my understanding of the word) on an iPad. The link only had 2 artists I have heard of and there was no mention there of anything more than the use of some GB loops. Not production of the track on an iPad.
I use an iPad for the musical purposes that suit me and on occasion the convenience of mobility. I love it for what I can do remotely. I have even recorded most of the content of a song remotely but my god it was painful. When convenient it was all re-recorded in Cubase. I captured the idea though and that was the main thing. Before iPad the best I could do remotely (which I also use the ipad for, and with much greater options) was a tape machine and notebook.
I don't think of the forum as a help desk. My intention there was not to provide a complete summary of all the functionality ABF represents. Just a quick comment on some specific aspects without trying to diminish the others.
"almost entirely created with an iPad"
"All tracks written and performed by Gorillaz using the iPad and additional instruments: Korg Vocoder, Ukelele, Microkorg, Omnichord, Moog Voyager, Melodica, Guitar, Piano, Korg Monotron. Except track 13 written and performed by Gorillaz and Bobby Womack.
iPad Applications Used: Speak It! Text to Speech / SoundyThingie / Mugician / Solo Synthesiser, Sylo Synthesiser Pro / FunkBox Drum Machine / gliss / AmpliTube for iPad / XENON Groove Synthesizer / KORG iELECTRIBE / bs-16i / Mellotronics M3000 for iPad / Cleartune - Chromatic Tuner / iORGEL HD / olsynth / StudioMini XL Recording Studio / Bassline / Harmonizer / Dub Siren Pro / Moog Filtatron
Produced by Gorillaz and Stephen Sedgwick.
Recorded by Stephen Sedgwick and Gorillaz, except track 11 with additional recording by Mike Smith.
Mixed by Stephen Sedgwick at Studio 13.
Mastered by Geoff Pesche at Abbey Road Studios."
There are multiple statements above that show this album was written and recorded in large part on an iPad. I wondered what sort of vocal booth they had on tour. Also there is a pretty significant amount of information above to show that to say the album was produced on an iPad may be the sort of statement that could only be believed by someone who really really wants to believe it or has a limited understanding what what that statement really implies. Perhaps it was more a statement aimed at selling iPads and creating a bit of a buzz around the album. The only place where I can find that sort of mindless whip it out statement is on news sites. Gorillas produced their new album on the iPad, now here's Kimberley with the weather. Like that brother sister group that produced their last album at home. Or when Sting produced an album in his living room.
Marge: You're only hearing what you want to hear.
Homer: Why thank you, I would like another beer.
I sense we will be having more than a few “I’ve decided to leave iOS music...” posts in the coming weeks...
Hope it’s the future but I think people have different experiences with it.
Lots of things seem to be fragmented about this platform including user experience.
Someone with a specific type of iPad/iOS version using certain apps may find it’s an incredible, flawless system..?
Unfortunately for my use case the stability and bugs are getting worse since I started using iOS.
Seems to depend a lot on what your setup/workflow is.
That said, on a good day it’s amazing what you can do on a phone but I’d say distant future for me.
Some days it is just that. Other days it sounds like the symphony tuning up before the show. Can’t blame the interface for that though.
Getting back to the thread topic, after watching the video, I agree with your reasons.
Seems like the disagreement is on orchestral mockup realism. Given Staffpad's already fantastic renderings, I think it's only a matter of time for that style to be able to be produced on a mobile deice like it is done now on a desktop.
You guys need to search out some more of the StaffPad stuff.
Unfortunately Ole Joergensen closed his YouTube account...
When they ask what instrument I play
iPad / iPhone
Hah love it!
I think there is a lot to be said for the cheap prices of apps and the good feeling that comes from knowing you are paying for your stuff, and largely to indie devs, instead of using pirated software like so many on desktop do
I am not trying to attack you with my comment but if the music does not move you to listen more than once it's the song writer fault and not the recording platform.
I am sure Prince (insert your musical genius) could have came up with a amazing album on a iPad.
In the 3 short years I have been part of this scene soon much as improved in the iOS music making world.
I think we are on the verge of a major processing increase on these device. Thus will change the game once again when it happens. I will make the unthinkable possible on iOS.
Not that long ago laptop were not considered stable/powerfull enough for serious music production. That was reserved for desktop.
I look forward to iOS music future and I am happy to be part of it.
With the coming generation of chips from Apple and TSMC every Apple device is suddenly going to look like they run on magic.