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
Updated... Digging in...😎
Thank You..
Is there a way to make the grid more visible? I can’t see separation between notes.
Seems ‘long press’ on menu brings up some settings..
Thx man I’ve tried. It is better now but look at this....
Where is the grid separation? Horizontal and vertical. Come on somebody tell Paul😂😂
Yep... hope he gets to it soon...
The Randomizer looks promising..
I was hoping to avoid this purchase due to the overlap with Atom and Atom 2 but I think I might have to grab it.
@RajahP it has a randomization features? In what aspects? Notes, velocity, timing, etc? I don’t have it yet.
In the video @white just posted the 4 pockets developer, Paul the Musicman mentions some exciting updates, and bug fixes coming soon in his responses to several different comments.
Yes, also for Atom 2 user it is very tempting
Great
Not bad...
Is this the appropriate place to make requests for Helium?
There's no certainty that the developer, @4Pockets, actively follows the forum. He does make comments sometimes and feedback does seem to make it's way into his apps, but that could come by different ways.
The official way is to email support @ 4pockets.com. Sometimes he responds, sometimes not, but I've always found that he does check that address.
He's also present on various social media, but not being a social media guy, I can't offer you pointers there. YouTube comments on his videos might be a good place to start though.
I have found him to be very responsive to comments on his Youtube videos
The whole piano roll situation is crazy atm. Each update I read about I change my mind and think yep I'm gonna use that one now. Then next day another update comes and I'm thinking yep now I'm going to use this one.
Good luck everyone. I'm so done buying 4Pockets apps. There are all kinds of great ideas in this thread, but good luck getting any attention! You get a couple of weeks of updates and then boom Paul is onto the next opportunity. None of these apps are perfect when they launch, as we all know and can benefit from some tweaking as suggested in this thread.
Example: Lyricist, NuRack, Strummer all had some awesome suggestions made to the dev via this forum, his forum or YouTube but most were not implemented and they've gone dark. E.g. Strummer is unusable to most guitarists because the fretboard is upside down.
If Atom 2 doesn't fit your exact needs you at least know you have a super engaged developer who either has his reasons for not implementing your idea or will get to it, and communicates as such.
Just a fyi, I was in touch with Paul the developer recently about Strummer and he definitely is open to updating Strummer with user suggested features or improvements . I have a few ideas that I will be suggesting to him.
Whoa.. That is looking really interesting to me. Last thing, how many modes are there? Do you see where it says Random Mode - Mono Arp, what type of options are in that menu...?
I’m not sure if it was because of me by I was asking for custom chords and he was wondering if it was needed, and I made a strong argument for it, and it showed up a week or so later.. so he is definitely open to ideas, especially if it makes sense, or fixes an issue.
Yes I do believe YouTube is the best way to reach out to Paul the music man, other then the email address listed above.
Seems to be covered in the video... at 4:06
Finally got around to reporting the issues I have experienced. I also suggested that I would like to have the ability to convert the patterns to clips and then (re)use something akin to the MultiTrack Recorder interface to position MIDI clips from a pool onto the timeline like you would in a DAW such as NS2. You could then reuse these snippets on the timeline and only need to edit one to have the others updated.
Edit: Paul got back almost immediately and said he would look into the issues raised, very impressed!
Pretty slick.. you can record CCs.. So I guess I don’t need to worry about archiving my MidiStep presets anymore.. Can record them into Helium and save...
Can only imagine Probability in the Controller lane now..
I feel like an update to digikeys could have been a good idea as well instead of making a new app but i guess this one looks better at least and lets youMake a note longer than 16 steps
So, Song Mode is coming to Helium?
Thanks @RajahP
Looks like they fixed all three of my reported issues. Time to have a play.
They also implemented this function from what I can see, I can only think that they must have already been working on it to have it finished this quickly. If that is the case then this may bring some of the NS2 clip arrangement advantages to AUM, letting you trigger Atom 2 patterns using reusable clips.
Quick test shows that Helium seems to suffer the same problem as some of the DAWs I have tested where you can’t use notes to change patterns. Velocity changes do however work. Velocity is a little fiddly to change but better than some of the DAWs I’ve tried.
Anyway, with the new Song mode you can now trigger Atom 2 patterns using predefined clips of MIDI on a timeline. Here is an example two pattern Atom clip:
This is triggered by the following Helium setup:
First I configured the C0 notes with different velocities to trigger the two different patterns in Atom.
Then I created a snapshot of these notes so that they would be available in Helium song mode.
I then opened up the controller mode and long pressed on “Velocity Selected Controller” and chose song mode.
I could then select the loop that I just defined and paint it onto the timeline.
Note that by default the clip loops forever and you probably do not want this so change the loop type to “Play” on the left hand menu.
Just sent this to 4pockets email and figured I would post it here to provide people the opportunity to troll , comment , or offer help or suggestions...
@4Pockets
Hi Paul ,
Thanks for your unceasing work and production of great ios music apps...
I am wondering which route to take though... I have strummer and digistix and also purchased midimixer last week . However , now comes helium and I am left confused about stuff . I understand the basic idea that midimixer is just an automation recording tool for the aum channels , and that helium allows for more compositional elements in a formal timeline , and now has an experimental song mode ... but what are the functional distinctions in a pragmatic song creation workflow to be considered here ? is there a great way to use these together ? and finally , how would your multitrack recorder plugin fit into all of this ?
I just don't really know how to use all of these together in the best way... I follow the audiob.us forum somewhat and cannot locate there , or on youtube , example videos of people using these plug-ins together in AUM or explaining a decent workflow or order of operations ?
Perhaps the lesser experienced members of the community could really benefit from some tutorial videos adressing workflow ideas , distinguishing features , that use these three tools (Multitrack Recorder , Midimixer , Helium) , and perhaps others of yours , in tandem ... without being presumptuous , maybe this would be something @gavinski would be interested in explicating upon in one of his great videos ?
I am sure you have a grand vision in mind here for how all of these apps used together might create a total song creation system inside of AUM , and I think some comments or videos addressing this might be really helpful , especially for those of us on the forums that are more amateur than others ...
Thanks so much for your time !