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.
iPad - two apps at same time to Midi keyboard using keyboard split
Hello,
I am using two apps on my iPad. These are: Hammond B-3X and Ravenscroft 275 piano. I use a Novation Impulse 61 Midi keyboard. I would like to be able to play both apps at the same time on the keyboard, using a split. This is so for example I could play organ chords with my left hand and piano tinkling with my right. This is for playing live, not for recording. I know how to split the keyboard on the Impulse. However, I would really appreciate some advice on if and how it is possible to play both these apps at the same time.
Many thanks,
Adam
Comments
If you use an app like AUM to host them, you can go into the channel settings for each app and restrict the note range, and/or the midi channel, plus transpose each one separately. You can see the settings I'm talking about here at about 15 min into the video.
Hi, that's very helpful thanks! I will watch the video and look into that app.
Adam
ApeMatrix does it also.
LayR synth has split and positional crossfade of sounds...but just for internal use....
But yes AUM has basic simple key splits..but a bit fiddly...
Thanks all, I appreciate your suggestions
MIDIFire can route MIDI to different apps, and split/transpose keyboard notes. You can sdjust velocity, etc. as well.
Keystage. Will also do some automation for you.
https://apps.apple.com/kg/app/keystage/id1406132634
Thanks all, I've been playing around with it today and looking at various forums, and I've realised that it is in fact possible to do it directly using different Midi channels straight into the keyboard, by using the inbuilt keyboard splitting and octave shifting that the Impulse has. As long as both apps are running and background audio is on. D'oh! However, I will look into what advantages there are to using an app like AUM and the others mentioned. Cheers again
Edit: I thought this solved it, but now it seems I can't get both apps to stay open so it isn't working anymore. I will check out the other apps mentioned.
You might just be having a memory problem. Try force-quitting other apps and restarting the iPad (power-off, not just sleep).
Thanks, I've tried that and can get it work again, but I would worry about using it like that at a live gig. Therefore I'm thinking about buying one of the apps mentioned (AUM, ApeMatrix, LayR synth, MidiFire, and Keystage). From a glance they all seem pretty similar and clearly have many advanced functions beyond the specific ones that I need (in my original post) - if you have any thoughts on which one would be most suitable that would be much appreciated. Cheers!
Shameless plug: the Key Zone plugin in MIDI Tools was built specifically for this purpose: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/midi-tools/id1446209019
Apologies for the slight derail...does it work with an iPhone? I currently don’t have my phone to verify.
No, sorry, didn't get a chance to update it yet. iPad only for now.
Thanks, I'll check it out 🙂 Hopefully this thread will help other people who are as bamboozled by the various options as I am. All these apps get great reviews by people who clearly know what they are looking at, so it's tricky to decide which one to go with!
Midiflow will accomplish this on iPhone, but I've found the interface kinda 'meh'. But this is personal preference.
No worries. Great job on Atom 2. That was a serious upgrade. Already had MIDITools but nowadays I’m finding myself producing more on mobile.
Thanks for the tip @AlmostAnonymous
With apple making HUGE friggin' phones, you would assume they would start allowing the "iPhone 12s pro max plus whatever" to run iPad versions.
The day they allow this, I'll buy a $1500 huge ass phone. But until then, i'll just put a phone app on a 350$ iPad mini.
(The phone is the least important part of an iPhone to me. I used a whole 22 minutes last month. .....And no apple...I'm not paying you 1500 for a device to basically send text messages)
Seconded.
There are quite a few apps that can do it, AUM, Midiflow etc. but Keystage is great for live musicians. Allows you to set up complex splits and multiple instruments, also have different sections for each song with different configs. It's my go-to now for this kind of job.
Thanks, this has been a very helpful thread.
Best wishes