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.
4 Neons playing into a Neon Recorder
Every 8 bars another Neon instance is started manually… there are options to make them clip launchers. I’m not there yet. This was another waiting room exercise. All audio generated in Session Band Jazz or Blues apps.
Neon fixes a lot of workflow issues dealing with audio files in AUM.
https://soundcloud.app.goo.gl/thjxRNnL5PrA85G87
Another earlier attempt:
Comments
That's not you playing guitar? Wow, quite a tone!
And please, if it's not too much of a hassle, show your work. I would love to adapt this into my workflow.
I don’t know what “Session Band” is, but I’m assuming it’s sample based?
Yes. They bring studio musicians in and record audio segments to match all the possible chord types and have a walled garden like DAW to render them to your preferred chord progression. There are 19 versions spanning jazz, funk, country, acoustic guitar, piano, EDM, Blues, and House.
Similar to Band in a Box for songwriters and improvisers to create backing tracks.
A good source for “real instrument” audio that you can control. There’s a mixer to decide which if the 3-5 tracks are output.
I saved some trumpet, sax, e-guitar and 1band track to the file system as 8 bar wave file loop fodder.
I loaded 4 tracks into Neon apps in AUM and they have the little activate circles. Then I used Mix Bus A on those 4 lanes and loaded lane 5 with Muxbus A input into the 5th Neon instance set to record in an FX slot in lane 5. There are further optimizations to be worked out involving MIDI learn to start the clips and a sync on sound input to start the recording and some MIDI signal to stop it.
It’s a faster leaner UI than AUM’s menu diving file player function but I’m sure AUM could also get closer… Neon has build-in FX and lots of audio manipulation features. It will likely really help build a media pool of loops and recorded materials using all the AUv3 web and synth apps already purchased.
You can do these overlayed audio constructions in Cubasis but it’s FX and bus architectures are cumbersome on a phone. This had tiny text but i think a few iPad session will help learn the layouts and workflow steps.
This was my 2 experience with Neon after buying it at 1AM. It’s well designed for this use case and gets good reviews for loop slicing and editing.
Very impressive.
There's quite a few app by SessionBand ("SessionBand Jazz", "SessionBand Rock" etc..) and they do go on sale every now and then. I picked some up a few years ago at $1 each. They take up a fair amount of space as they have lots of samples built in. They are easy to use and you can export audio to use as fodder for other projects.
https://apps.apple.com/us/developer/uk-music-apps-ltd/id579320222
Here's Doug's vid on "SessionBand EDM":
Is there an advantage to this approach compared to exporting the loops from SessionBand and putting them in Loopy Pro? Genuine Q, I know almost nothing about Neon.
Good question... how many Loopy Pro instances can you spin up?
For me the recording feature in AUM has always been it's one area where I just get bogged down in menu diving. I just want this one extra feature to make AUM my perfect DAW. I think NS 2 users should be excited about Neon for that huge hole in NS 2 workflows.
Long time followers know I get excited and really sell some new discovery and 3 weeks later move on but
I'll probably never use the file player except to do that "rate" mangling since that's a cool effect and dropping the pitch so many octaves is also often strange in the best ways.
The Session Band thing is NOT something I'll keep doing but one never knows. The audience programs the artist. If I ever had an audience who knows what I'd be doing. Maybe that's why I try not to do the right things to have one.
I think I'll value Loopy Pro more if I start using my instruments again and get up off the couch. There are some reason why I pretty much need to be quiet but I could break out the guitars and loop some creations.
Probably not. But there is if you don't have LoopyPro
Very cool! One of the downsides to Session Band is that the effects are already incorporated into the audio. In some cases that is just fine. Other times, not so much. I have had some luck using the noise gate in the Channel Strip to suppress excessive reverb.
Thank you. This is really a different approach and the results are as surprising as being in the audience but have control of the audio console.
Suppressing the excess reverb is a nice tip... of course you are the master of this but my respect for your results led me to experiment. It's a very process intensive approach that can lead to hours of tweaking.
I can see that assembling and orienting clips on the Cubasis Timeline makes a lot of sense.
The takeaway for me is about the potential to "freeze" sub mixes in AUM using Neon instances for capture and then playback at any time and release resources more resources in the project.
Today I discovered that the iPad Neon view shows the "sync" button but the iPhone version I used yesterday did not have room to show it. I was looking everywhere and the training video placed in near the transport controls but "no sync" button. I thought it got moved in an update. Not sure how this will impact
iPhone sessions in the long run. Maybe there's a workaround.
I seem to remember that Paul said you have to enable the showing of this button in one of the settings (not sure if it was Neon settings or AUM settings). He talked about it and showed how to do it in one of his short videos for Neon. It was not the first video but one of the "new features" videos. Sorry I can't be more precise.
Thanks. I'll look into it deeper and start figuring out how to do more. Every discovery might lead to a new tweak to my workflow process.
Have a quick look at his Neon videos from the 2nd video onwards. He talks about it in the first half of the video. There's only about 4 or 5 so you'll find it pretty quickly.
It appears that sync was there… I just couldn’t read the tiny text without reading glasses. Going after the 2 free Baby Audio apps now.
"It's a very process intensive approach that can lead to hours of tweaking." - and loving every minute of it.
One of my greatest pleasures is sitting out on my patio at sunrise, mug of coffee in hand,and... tweaking!
Giving me ideas again. I got a couple of the Session Bands when during a sale then became a little annoyed when I couldn't mix up the various styles. Now I see a way.