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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French Horn?
Just heard a beautiful French horn piece and I thought, Boy, I'd like to steal that theme. Now, I'm not really interested in faithfully creating a brass section, and I'll probably just be using this as a kind of one-off.
I see that there are two SWAM French Horn apps (in different keys, and as a non horn person, I'm like, do you really need both?). I'm sure they sound fantastic, but I don't need that quality for what's probably going to be used once or twice.
So what are my options? Cubasis's microsampler has a French horn, and it could kind of do in a pinch. Chameleon has one that I think sounds really cheesy. Has anyone used Beathawk's Brass Emsembles iap?
Am I missing anything else?
Comments
French horns are pretty tough, IMO. BeatHawk brass French horns are so so. SWAM is best available. I’d get the lower one. @McD might advise here.
Pure Synth Platinum has the "Neo-Soul Flugal" which isn't too bad, and you get loads of other sounds as well.
Any brass instrument without rich expression options is going to sound rather one dimensional. The whole deal with SWAM is the expression options but that's not the only approach. Sample library experts such as Spitfire can breathe life into horns with sophisticated sample switching, but there's nothing of that calibre on iOS. So on balanced SWAM is pretty much your best option as any other sample-based instruments on iOS will sound very static. They're perfectly adequate for background sustains or staccato stabs but that's about the limit of their capabilities.
In many ways, you'd be better off using a good quality virtual analogue to create a brass patch with the characteristics of the french horn as synthesis can create a reasonable range of expressions that approximate a brass instrument. It will be better than an iOS sample-based instrument (even things like Sampletank sound weak when it come to brass instruments), but a VA patch will obviously not be as good as SWAM.
Fyi, here are the preview sounds of all instruments in the BeatHawk Brass Ensembles collection:
Hello my friend! I hope all is well ☺️
So helpful, everyone. Thanks.
Nonsense. It's impossible to blow it with a plugin (without a wind controller, that is).
We are of course talking approximations here.
I realized that what I was imagining owes a great debt to this Hrvatski track from decades ago. (Hrvatski was Keith Fullerton Whitman's drum-n-bass alter ego, if I've got that right.) It's great.
My opinion on the SWAM brass is that all the models are very similar once you start playing. I don’t really need more than two or three across the whole product line. I have many more than that because I found out the hard way.
All good here, hope the same for you.
Don’t mind me ‘twas a pun.
I'd settle for the one on F to get the lowest notes possible in it's range. The Bb skips some notes and then
plays up to the same range on the top. In orchestras all the French Horns are in F and the music is transposed. Computers have made the task of writing out orchestra parts so much easier by automating the transpositions for Trumpets (Bb) and most of the brass and woodwinds.
For the poor saxophonist that must purchase tenor, alto and soprano and (rarely) baritone. The notes and suitable fingerings match up by transposing the actual Bb and Eb instruments.
There are many great french horns available but many are horn sections. The SWAM in F is good for solo
rendering.
Watched a few videos and the Swam French horn does sound really good—it’s not even in the same class S the other apps mentioned. Next question. I’m a poor keyboardist who never plays with a mod wheel. Will this $30 instrument be wasted on me? (Mitigating factor: It is my birthday….)
Actually just realized I neglected to mention iFretless Brass. Which sounds pretty good. And it’s AU.
You can play the SWAMs very well with GeoShred or Velocity Keyboard. That’s all I use.
A SoundFont. I found a free French horn somewhere, it’s no swam but it’s ok.
You can hire my brother, he is an excellent French horn player (French hornist?). I was always amazed at how powerful the instrument is- the whole house would compress when he would play loud notes back when we all still lived there.
It is really good. Good enough to warrant learning how to use controllers to play it expressively because that's where the fun starts. It needs some practice but certainly not as much as learning to play french horn 😄
For actual playing, I would pick the "guitar strings" of ifretless over geoshred any time. I didn't see that coming until I tried.
For the sounds, it's a bit of a hit and miss imho: some are really nice (and, along with the midi control options, may justify the price in themselves) but not all of them, there are a few of the disappointing toy-harmonica persuasion.
Another option for playing expressively is Kai Aras's KB-1 suite. This is a great multi-purpose controller which has an MPE option that's really flexible. I like to set it up with two rows on my iPad Pro so that you get an extended octave range. A bigger difficulty on iOS is having a DAW that both records and allows you to edit MPE performances.
My playing is pretty sloppy so I tend to use the crutch of Ableton 11's MPE editing capabilities (other desktop DAWs have MPE capabilities, but Ableton is my DAW of choice.
I wonder what would be the result of using a StreamByter script (or Mazaic or whatever) to replicate the SWAM Horn over 7 other AU instances, introducing some delays and other randomization. I guess it might be the best horn ensemble ever but I’ve not tried yet…
Just to answer @ExAsperis99 : you can’t play SWAM brass or woodwind faithfully without making an intensive use of the modulation wheel (I am talking about the « Expression » parameter). It’s as if you exploited only 10% of the instrument.
The advantages of GeoShred over ifretless are that you have aftertouch, the X-Y pad, and control over intonation.
Noise also has a nice free keyboard MPE controller app.
This is all great advice. I think I’m more in the market for a sound than an instrument. The iFretless brass has the benefit of a guitar interface, and I fear the abyss of the Swam apps!
That’s a good insight. Your playing style is far more important than which model you use. That’s why I wrote above that I really only need two or three SWAM brass.
Swam horns all the way…
Oh I don't doubt that for a minute - I guess my playing is not sophisticated enough to miss those things 🤷
Also, making a smooth, octave-long saxophone run with just guitar strings, without all that cheap-looking visual fireworks stuff that follows every touch in Geoshred is just satisfying. Again, very subjective, of course.
Settings, Disable Finger Effects… gets rid of fireworks🎇
Interesting reading.
On the topic of control interfaces guys... I know Geo can receive/control input from SWAM, but can that work the other way around?
Geo certainly has its plusses for control, but I'm definitely preferring SWAMs keys now... (I'm not saying it's better, I've just bought more of those SWAM apps!!)