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.
Turns out I’m just as gloomy with hardware… :) My first modular-only piece, ‘The Descent’
…the only trouble is, each ‘app’ here cost just a little bit more than I am used to in iOS world!
Principle modules used: Rings (for doom drum), Grone Drone (a custom cut of Clouds plus oscillator noise and filters) and samples from Radio Music. Lead line, such as it is, from racked Modulor 114 semi modular. (A very cool thing, btw, lots of useful utilities and performance features you don’t find on other semi Modulars)
This is an excerpt from an hour long jam (! - I have spared you the full horror, you see?) which moves through a variety of scenes and is the first thing I’ve done with my modular that I actually wanted to listen back to. I think I might put the full version out on Bandcamp just for ego’s sake.
Comments and critique are of course always welcome as water to one lost in a desert, so… enjoy!:
Comments
Great but dreary start... your future looks bleak and I mean that in the best way possible.
@stown : hey, thanks for the listen, and the comment.
At first I thought I didn’t need the Radio Music for my particular brand of heavy-on-the-random, happy accident ‘composition’, as I already have a TipTop One and a Disting EX which both are sample players, but that is before I understood what Radio Music brings to the party.
TipTop One is great for one shots, bass drums, etc, Disting EX for multi sample instruments, (and a million other things) but Radio Music does something different - long form streaming in ‘stations’ which you can ‘tune into’, exactly mimicking the random, happy accident of integrating actual radio broadcasts or audio streams into your piece.
It comes pre loaded with a vast pool of likely material (discussions about ufos, strange ethnic music clips, lectures on space…) and points you toward other sources for you to populate the SD card with material for your own ‘stations’. And of course you have cv control over the start, and station selection.
For my piece I selected a vocal sample ‘station’ I liked, and just hooked up the start input on the Radio Music to a somewhat random output generated by Pachinko, a cheap(er) Marbles clone. (Side note: I’d now get a Cara instead, also a Marbles clone but a few U smaller. As I’m a set and forget person, not a tweaker, the small pots would do fine, and I’d have a little more room in my rack.)
I used a steady clock from Pam’s New Workout to excite my After Later Audio Rings clone to create the doom drum, and drove the main sequence in the Modulor 114 via it’s integral MIDI interface from Snakebud on the iPad. I took an out from the Modulor into the Maneco Labs Grone Drone:
a weird complete synth voice comprising an algorithmic oscillator, noise source, lfo and filter all feeding into a version of Clouds running Parasites firmware, then rode the freeze button, resonance and filter knob as the sequence ran. Recorded everything live from the Modulor’s headphone out into a tiny Olympus digital dictaphone using the headphone pass through on it to monitor. Loads of fun!
Listening now, don't cheer up whatever you do, this is sounding great!
This reminds me in some way of the movie 'The Lighthouse'. Great watch if you haven't seen it. Also 'Saint Maud' which I have the feeling you would love too.
@Gavinski : thanks for the listen, glad my miserableness appeals
Thanks for the viewing recs too - I saw publicity for both, and you have me accurately pigeonholed. I thought : ‘Mm. my kind of movie…’ Will have to check them both out.
St Maud is one of the best horror movies ever, in my opinion, destined to be a classic for sure
Stunningly disturbing - thanks @Svetlovska
I really don't envy you going down that modular route, mind you. iOS gas is bad enough!
@monch1962 : thank you! ‘Stunningly disturbing’ is what I aim for.
Also: 1962 - what a very good year that was 
@Gavinski: Yes. Spending the inheritance!… I reckon it’s going to take about 3-4 years to get the rig I’m aiming for, depending on how much else I can sell/save in the meantime. This is the latest, all bells and whistles version, aiming to put it into a 7U / 104 HP Intellijel Performance Case:
https://cdn.modulargrid.net/img/racks/modulargrid_1697963.jpg
In other news: I’ve ordered Saint Maud on your recommendation
You're going to love it. And after you have watched it you cna watch this really fantastic youtube analysis of it. Only after though! Not before, contains major spoilers 😉
Satisfyingly grim! I’ve been dabbling in MiRack for a while now, and am starting to worry it’s a gateway drug to bankruptcy as I keep getting hardware urges.
@svetlovska Thank you so much for the extensive breakdown... that was very helpful. While I don't plan to jump into modules anytime soon (gotta get the kids to, and possibly through, college), I look forward to reading about these modules and imagining how they work in the roadmap you supplied. Awesome. Thank you!
@Svetlovska Wow, re Grone Drone never heard of that one before. Cool rack! 😎 Definitely recommend getting an ES-8 + ES-6 in there for mixing things up with iPad.
Great! And inspiring.
Anyone who can afford a car can afford a modular (if he sells the car).
You are just as gloomy with hardware.
I'm glad I don't have to try your cooking
Imagine if you put that money into $BTC today instead of into modular, how much modular gear you could buy with it ten years from now 😜
@Simon : I am justly famed for my fava bean recipe. Goes lovely with a nice Chianti.
Bet you use black beans
nice work , digging the doom drum
@barabajagal : hey, thanks for the listen.
doom drums are cool! 
Actually, my cheap(ish) Rings clone, by , er, ‘Jack Plug’ is the best bang for buck I’ve bought so far. It’s’ physical modelling can cover a vast range of tones from guitars to clangs and bells to thuds and bangs, it’s got loads to tweak and modulate, it’s very immediate to understand, and as per the current example, you can feed it audio to ‘excite’ it as well as triggers, letting you do wild and woolly things to any sound you have. Definitely my joint fave rack purchase at the mo, up there with Radio Music as part of my grand plan to build a rack focussed on audio mangling, randomising, and generative sequencing. (I.e. my S.O.P for iPad translated across.)
I really like the sound and experimental possibilities of physical modelling (.i.e. not trying to replicate real world instruments, but applying the techniques to found sound, etc.)
in the context of modular. P.M. does things which seem very hard to capture with conventional synths, which is after all the whole point of going the modular route. In this vein there is After Later Audio’s Atom, a (slightly) smaller-than-the-original clone of Elements out there too, which I’m interested in, but it still takes up a lot of rack space. Might be worth it though.
At this point I’m pretty much of the opinion that any design by Mutable Instruments is going to end up in my rack eventually, albeit most likely in smaller, cheaper clone form for reasons of space and finance. I do have a genuine Ears though- which, needless to say, is another brilliant little thing. And I will probably spring for a genuine Stages, as there is no clone equivalent at present. Emilie is a genius.
Nice!
I’ve always wanted a modular Eurorack system like that to play with and learn things on. I think I’m with @Gavinski though, in that I don’t envy the amount of money you’re investing. I think I’ve settled on the idea that VCV rack and MiRack will have to suffice for now, for if and when I need my modular fix. All bets are off though if I ever run into a bunch of money burning a hole in my pocket!
@Edward_Alexander : yes, @Gavinski has a point, and I am fortunate to be able to afford this currently. (I just took in a lodger). But there are a couple of things which make the daunting sums involved less murderous upfront.
Firstly, there is a lot of second hand stuff out there, and a healthy resale market for any modules you decide later you don’t want, so outlays don’t have to be huge. Basic things like the Nifty cases from Cre8 and modules from the likes of Doepfer are relatively cheap, too. If you don’t have a bee in your bonnet about Behringer, their range of modules is pretty cool too. Check this mini rig by Tim Shoebridge, less than £500 all in:
Secondly, a lot of the very best sexy stuff (that is, Mutable Instruments, there, I’ve said it) are available in smaller, cheaper clone versions, which are fine if you don’t need big knobs for live performance tweak frenzies; and
Thirdly, and most importantly, unlike a big synth or guitar purchase which is a huge dollop of cash up front, you can just buy one little module at a time, for the price of a guitar pedal - even build some, if you have the soldering chops which I don’t (but might try soon) - and then spread the cost across three or four zero interest payments. PayPal Credit and Klarna are your friends. (But only if you don’t, ever, miss an instalment.)
Because Modulars are, well, modular, this means they can grow slowly like a part work or something, one module every month or two. Sure, the combined cost over time will likely take your breath away, but hey…
It really has been revelatory for me, as a non musician, how much fun I can have with this stuff, replicating my random, generative, what-does-this-thing do? approach to apps with actual, tweakable, hardware, in a relatively compact, away from the DAW, sofa-surfable form. Sonic Lego!
I’ve lost track of how much I have spent on individual synths and standalone gadgets over the years which I didn’t have the skills or talent to use creatively and just ended up frustrated and disappointed with. I haven’t got any more talented over time, but I have now found a thing which pairs brilliantly with what I already do on iPad, and which has literally endless potential for play.
Seems like a good deal to me.
@Svetlovska I think you are making some really good noise / music here. Why not aim towards performing it live, you could also make some money back that way and there is for sure a market for experimental stuff like this. Hainbach certainly does OK from it!
@Gavinski : thank you, that is very flattering/heartening.
I’m not averse to live performance per se, I’ve even been known to read some of my short stories to live audiences, but the truth of the matter is my musical er ‘method’ doesn’t really lend itself to live performance now, or, likely, ever - A case of ‘like the sausage, don’t ask to tour the sausage factory’.
Making my noises is a slow, error-strewn iterative process with much back and forth, dead ends and such like before something emerges that I like. I am in awe of people like Mylar Melodies and, of course, the sainted Hainbach, blessed be his name, who are so in control of their tech that they can pursue a direction and a through narrative in an evolving piece in real time whilst keeping all the constituent parts on the journey engaging.
I am so far from that, especially with the modular, that it isn’t even funny.That may change as I mess with it more and more, but - don’t hold your breath, is all I’m saying