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.

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Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

A discussion on workflow

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Comments

  • 🤔

    You’re telling me that it’s not everybody who puts on socks on while lying down?

  • OK, this darn thread is now giving me the needle…

  • @gusgranite said:
    OK, this darn thread is now giving me the needle…

    Ouch!

  • @NeuM said:

    @gusgranite said:
    OK, this darn thread is now giving me the needle…

    Ouch!

    Never miss an opportunity for puns! 😂

  • @gusgranite said:

    @NeuM said:

    @gusgranite said:
    OK, this darn thread is now giving me the needle…

    Ouch!

    Never miss an opportunity for puns! 😂

    Punishment!

  • @gusgranite said:
    OK, this darn thread is now giving me the needle…

    Darn!

  • edited July 2021

    @ashh said:
    Hi all, I noticed that a lot of artists I like have used the same sounds for more than one tune. I felt much more empathetic with this approach after spending all day putting together a drumkit I want to use. Workflow, to me, is a bit like preparation when you're painting the house. I spend very little time actually putting on the paint but how good it looks is directly related to how long I spend preparing the surfaces it's used on. Maybe this isn't the best analogy, what do you think?

    Often (especially in electronic music, and especially especially in electronic dance music) artists has it's characteristic set of sounds. He uses similiar sounds in multiple tracks to get more consisten overall sound of whole album - which is good for most listeners, because they ofthen like that artist because of his particular set of sounds or composition details he tend to re-use across tracks.

    Even cery experimental creators (like aphex twin or squarepusher) are doing this more or less intentionally or unintentionaly.

    But in my understanding this has nothing to do with "workflow". Workflow is set of methods and routines you use when working with your favourite tools (apps or physical instruments) to materialise your musical ideas in the way, that you can stay as much as possible in the stage of creative flow, without need of thinking too much "how i should do this or that".

    Simly you're running more on "autopilot", using lot of muscle memory, minimalising of thinking about "how i'm doing it" and concentrating more on "what i'm doing"

  • Y’all weave an interesting yarn. I’m having a ball.

  • edited July 2021

    @dendy said:

    But in my understanding this has nothing to do with "workflow". Workflow is set of methods and routines you use when working with your favourite tools (apps or physical instruments) to materialise your musical ideas in the way, that you can stay as much as possible in the stage of creative flow, without need of thinking too much "how i should do this or that".

    Simly you're running more on "autopilot", using lot of muscle memory, minimalising of thinking about "how i'm doing it" and concentrating more on "what i'm doing"

    +1
    You said it better than I did with my steps listed out...

    @McM said:
    The workflow I used on my album was basically this:
    1. Play around on the piano to find a melody or 2
    2. Come up with a chord progression
    3. Put that into Gadget
    4. develop other sections to fill out the piece
    5. roughly mix in gadget
    6. mix down the rough Gadget mix
    7. Export the gadget stems with no FX
    8. import stems into Auria to mix with Fabfilter plugins
    9. Try to create a mix down in Auria w/Fabfilter that is close to the Gadget mix down
    10. Master the track in Auria (new project) with Fabfilter plugins (ProQ, ProC, Pro MB, Pro L, Saturn)

  • Before joining this forum I had never heard of musician talking about workflow. Help me understand why it’s important.

    Are you talking about:

    How ou get inspired?
    How you enter music in you DaW?
    The whole process ?

  • Workflow is simply a way of doing things. In this regard, it's a way of making music. If you've never heard of the term before that's ok. You can simply do something else. If it irritates you that's ok too. I'll have a think about what you can do but it might not be something I want to post here.

  • @dendy said:

    @ashh said:
    Hi all, I noticed that a lot of artists I like have used the same sounds for more than one tune. I felt much more empathetic with this approach after spending all day putting together a drumkit I want to use. Workflow, to me, is a bit like preparation when you're painting the house. I spend very little time actually putting on the paint but how good it looks is directly related to how long I spend preparing the surfaces it's used on. Maybe this isn't the best analogy, what do you think?

    Often (especially in electronic music, and especially especially in electronic dance music) artists has it's characteristic set of sounds. He uses similiar sounds in multiple tracks to get more consisten overall sound of whole album - which is good for most listeners, because they ofthen like that artist because of his particular set of sounds or composition details he tend to re-use across tracks.

    Even cery experimental creators (like aphex twin or squarepusher) are doing this more or less intentionally or unintentionaly.

    But in my understanding this has nothing to do with "workflow". Workflow is set of methods and routines you use when working with your favourite tools (apps or physical instruments) to materialise your musical ideas in the way, that you can stay as much as possible in the stage of creative flow, without need of thinking too much "how i should do this or that".

    Simly you're running more on "autopilot", using lot of muscle memory, minimalising of thinking about "how i'm doing it" and concentrating more on "what i'm doing"

    To me, your explanation of Workflow is also an explanation of why an artist would reuse sounds. Actually, I feel like we're getting closer to a deeper understanding of Workflow. Workflow. I just said it again because it is clearly annoying some people. Workflow isn't the making of sounds.

  • @Samu said:
    With extreme workflow focus sooner or later everything starts to sound the same...
    ...but maybe that's something that some people are after? (Ie. create a 'sound' and make tons of tracks with the same 'sound').

    This is likely why most modern music is so boring, same few teams same producers different 'cover people' and everyone sounds more or less the same...
    (And we'll there are certain genres that even use the same sample-packs because the sound is 'in' at the moment).

    All in all the best workflow is one that doesn't feel like 'work'.

    You see, you say stuff that I find fascinating and then you say something like "most modern music is boring" Will you do me a favour, Samu? Please tell me what you think of Trust in the Lifeforce of the Deep Mind by The Comet is Coming? Please tell me what you think of Sault? Please tell me what you think of Fuck Buttons? Please, tell me.

  • edited July 2021

    My God, it's full of stars.

  • My interpretation of workflow is when one can move onto the next step without a pause for a thought.
    Sound design is always intuition based for me, mixing is experience based, requires a good understanding of the physics of music and trained ears. So for me workflow is not how I choose to move on, but what the tool used suggests, therefore it’s crucial that you find the best tool that suits your needs with a workflow that you can ‘relate’ to.

  • edited July 2021

    When I was a professional photographer my workflow was basically:
    1. Go down to the studio (unless it was a location shoot, but I didn’t do much of that personally)
    2. Set up background
    3. Set up rig to hold the subject in place (subject was not a person, I was an industrial photog)
    4. Set up lighting
    5. Position camera (5x4 camera for most shots, Hasselblad 500c infrequently)
    6. Load sheet film into darkslide in darkroom
    7. Meter the lighting from subject position (incident)
    8. Point the camera at subject and frame it in the ground glass
    9. Set focus, aperture, shutter
    10. Shoot the fucker
    11. Take the dark slide with 2 sheets of film in (one at exposure, one at +1 stop) into the darkroom
    12. Developer tank was on replenishment basis, might need rep, usually didn’t, but if so, rep the dev, check temp
    13. Load sheet film from darkslide into sheet film holder in the dark (following steps are in the dark):
    14. Dev for certain amount of minutes (based on temp)
    15. Fix for certain amount of minutes
    16. Wash for certain amount of minutes (can turn light on now)
    17. Hang up to dry
    18. Load resulting negative film in enlarger
    19. Focus, frame up image on baseboard
    20. Expose a test strip on photo paper
    21. Develop the test strip (we had an old automatic print developing machine thing)
    22. Ascertain exposure for desired tonal range
    23. Expose sheet of photo paper
    24. Develop the print
    25. Take dried print into other darkroom
    26. Make screen bromide (or PMT - photo-mechanical transfer) on process camera (using a dot screen)
    27. Develop and rinse and dry the PMT
    28. Send it out to repro house

    (This was all in the 80s, before computers came in)

    Each of these workflow steps were repeated each time. If you miss any steps out, you’ve fucked it up and won’t get the result. If you do it in the incorrect order, you’ve fucked it up. If you do all this you get the result. At each stage, there’s room for expertise, mastery and discretion. At some stages there’s even room for creativity - in fact it relies on it at the correct stages (but not at every stage, or you’ve fucked it up again). The main thing is that it becomes second nature, it sinks into your muscle memory or unconscious, you become reliable and professional, and give good creative results that you can make a living from.

  • edited July 2021

    @ashh said:

    @dendy said:

    @ashh said:
    Hi all, I noticed that a lot of artists I like have used the same sounds for more than one tune. I felt much more empathetic with this approach after spending all day putting together a drumkit I want to use. Workflow, to me, is a bit like preparation when you're painting the house. I spend very little time actually putting on the paint but how good it looks is directly related to how long I spend preparing the surfaces it's used on. Maybe this isn't the best analogy, what do you think?

    Often (especially in electronic music, and especially especially in electronic dance music) artists has it's characteristic set of sounds. He uses similiar sounds in multiple tracks to get more consisten overall sound of whole album - which is good for most listeners, because they ofthen like that artist because of his particular set of sounds or composition details he tend to re-use across tracks.

    Even cery experimental creators (like aphex twin or squarepusher) are doing this more or less intentionally or unintentionaly.

    But in my understanding this has nothing to do with "workflow". Workflow is set of methods and routines you use when working with your favourite tools (apps or physical instruments) to materialise your musical ideas in the way, that you can stay as much as possible in the stage of creative flow, without need of thinking too much "how i should do this or that".

    Simly you're running more on "autopilot", using lot of muscle memory, minimalising of thinking about "how i'm doing it" and concentrating more on "what i'm doing"

    To me, your explanation of Workflow is also an explanation of why an artist would reuse sounds. Actually, I feel like we're getting closer to a deeper understanding of Workflow. Workflow. I just said it again because it is clearly annoying some people. Workflow isn't the making of sounds.

    I can (and often i do) use completely different workflows when i work on track (different apps, different HWs) , but i use same kind of sounds and harmonic structures (which are crucial for my musical style).

    So for me these two things (workflow and musical footprint) are completely separated unrelated things

  • @u0421793 Great example!

    It also demonstrates that a "workflow" can be one of many ways to achieve a certain result, so when we talk about workflow, It could be a good idea to talk about the desired result first.

    For decades, taking and developing pictures had to follow this workflow.
    Then someone invented digital imaging and after years of refinement in both the capture and the reproduction process, we can now say that the workflow has changed a lot, but it has also widened our choices:
    You can still have a digital image printed on paper, printed by a thermal transfer or ink jet or laser printer, but you can also have a digitally exposed photo print developed by the same old chemical process.
    And then we have yet another choice: Tablets, smart phones, computers, monitors, TV sets or even just the built-in color screen of a digital camera. And I would say these are even better because with current "Retina" screens, the print resolution is excellent and we can view images totally independent from room illumination, always with the same color.

    In a similar way, we now have more choices regarding music:

    Is it just music?
    Sing a melody and you're done.

    Is it classical music?
    I guess we could talk about possible workflows, from composition to audio, for months.
    The old school workflow using pen and paper, writing and copying score sheets, practicing and finally playing the concert and, not to forget, paying the musicians.
    Or the modern workflow using sequencing software and a good sound library that lets you play any instrument on a piano keyboard and lay track by track on a tiny workstation.
    If done right, the result is virtually identical from the perspective of the audience but the workflows couldn't be more different.

    Now which one is better? No question that the latter is faster but it's not better in every aspect.

  • @ashh A while back you had written a heartfelt ode to your love of hardware (the DRM1 but that’s not essential here). If you can translate or “invest” that passion into a single jam session on the DRM1 - or any app / hardware / plugin for that matter - and it’s something that has You grooving / feeling / glad to be alive and you can capture (record it), that’s a workflow.

    Refining that capture by further editing and processing may or may not be extensions of that workflow but the more time I put into making music the more I realize that the personal “vibe investment” into a preferably simple or singular target (one single instrument or app at a time) is the starting point for the Good Stuff - the stuff that you yourself (and others) might want to hear again (and again).

    Stay simple with your tools and just try to summon One killer audio event at a time. If more come keep getting that lightning in a bottle and build from there in whatever way is most natural to you.

  • If the term “workflow” is annoying to anyone, just imagine it as an alternative word for “production”.

  • edited July 2021

    @NeuM said:
    If the term “workflow” is annoying to anyone, just imagine it as an alternative word for “production”.

    Yah pretty much. As a generalization I think for people who just want to make music in the moment and are not so intent on the creation of a perfect recorded final master blah blah that ‘workflow’ sounds buzzkilly. For folks who are into production then workflow as a term is probably par for the course.

    I do get that it can be a crap term for some. I still hate hearing ‘content’ especially ‘consuming content’.

  • I LOLed at #10 :D

  • @0tolerance4silence said:
    My interpretation of workflow is when one can move onto the next step without a pause for a thought.

    But you could also say that about improvisation. There are plenty of times I’ve sat with other musicians and one of us has just started playing and the others follow - there aren’t really any steps, we’ve jus known instinctively what will work and what won’t.

    Workflow doesn’t necessarily need to be a continuous process - there could certainly be pauses in it (or at least in the ways I have seen workflow defined in the past).

  • @McM said:
    I LOLed at #10 :D

    :lol: Just saw that!

  • edited July 2021

    @michael_m said:

    @McM said:
    I LOLed at #10 :D

    :lol: Just saw that!

    …also it emphasises that the actual taking of the photo is such a tiny part of the whole process.

    No. 3 you wouldn't believe. In order to make a thing stand up that won't stand up, against what appears to be a smooth gradient ski-slope type of background (which typically runs behind several metres to drop away from the main overhead fish fryer light for the background) we'd end up with all sorts of hacky contraptions such a bits of broken umbrella shaft emerging from behind the background paper poked through a hole you can't see from camera position (you can't see any of this rigging from camera view, that's the point) and G-clamps holding it all in place on the desk the other side of the background paper, blue-tack on the subject side, etc. Anything - just to make the thing stand how you want without it collapsing. That, and lighting and arranging the background was where the most time was spent. Then lighting the subject. The bit that involved the camera was so predictable and routine I could do all that in a few mins, just wheel the camera in (was on a nice studio stand) and position it, compose, adjust the risers for the front lens board and rear board where the dark slide goes (the bellows between the movable boards allows for some nice unnoticed Scheimpflug effect where you need it), grab the flash meter, expose from the subject pointing back at the camera (incident light, not reflected light like most cameras rely on in their internal meters) and set the focus aperture and shutter, all that is 5 mins at the most unless you've never seen a camera before.

    The main thing I wanted to emphasise with that workflow itemisation is that I've not specified how you shoot, how you compose, how you arrange the subject, how you light it, I've not specified any of the creative or skill elements at all - purely the mechanical process steps, not the content. Workflow does not dictate content.

  • edited July 2021

    I have 2 workflows now.

    Workflow 1: Use Nanostudio 2
    Workflow 2: Use Beatmaker 3

    But basically I just use NS2 for most stuff UNLESS:

    A. I want to use audio clips longer than 4 bars or
    B. I’m just really really craving some BM3 roll function action

  • @tahiche said:

    .... So I have a workflow that works, but if you can’t answer this…

    Who is my music for? Do I even need to record it? What is music? Who am I?

    Why do you want a workflow?.

    I thought this was an interesting and well intentioned post. It made me think about the things I do, the way i 'work' and how it's often self defeating for actually achieving something.

    But yes the point is - do I even know what I want to achieve? any idea of an end goal is flexible and can change daily between something achievable but requiring hard work, and thus a workflow; and where it currently is where it feels pointless to do anything, so I don't; and the usual in-between state where I need to buy that new drum machine so I can include it in my semi-productive ever-evolving workflow, which will actually probably delay any workflow from being established.

  • My current starting workflow is:

    Open GR-16
    TAP A TEMPO
    lay a simple beat
    select the sounds scrolling thru them from my samples
    select a key - scale
    start playing a melody or chords with some of my one shots
    ...
    profit

    You know what, I will record it BRB...

    Here you have it, this is how I make ideas fast and fun:

  • edited July 2021

    @SimonSomeone said:

    @tahiche said:

    .... So I have a workflow that works, but if you can’t answer this…

    Who is my music for? Do I even need to record it? What is music? Who am I?

    Why do you want a workflow?.

    I thought this was an interesting and well intentioned post. It made me think about the things I do, the way i 'work' and how it's often self defeating for actually achieving something.

    But yes the point is - do I even know what I want to achieve? any idea of an end goal is flexible and can change daily between something achievable but requiring hard work, and thus a workflow; and where it currently is where it feels pointless to do anything, so I don't; and the usual in-between state where I need to buy that new drum machine so I can include it in my semi-productive ever-evolving workflow, which will actually probably delay any workflow from being established.

    Hi!.
    Exactly. A workflow as such would be something pretty solid and thus static that optimizes time and effort to produce music. So with a workflow you’d be cautious and analytical in introducing new disruptive elements.
    Which I’d say is literally the opposite of what 90% of the users in this forum are here for. And it’s ok!. Cos we don’t need a workflow as much as we want to have fun.
    Say you make a living with video editing and do iOS music as a hobby. You have no problem and are actually eager to try a new iOS DAW, in contrast, you would never switch from Final Cut to Adobe Premiere unless you weren’t absolutely sure, had a roadmap and a schedule to adapt.
    Yes, we like to fuck up our workflow. And we love it!.
    The OP took it personally, even after I insisted in that it obviously wasn’t about him. Whatever…
    Cheers!

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