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.
Anyone using a Push 2 AND a Launchpad together?
I bought a Push 2 to use alongside my Octatrack and Ableton 11. It replaced a Launchpad Pro mk3, which I planned to sell, but I may end up keeping it.
The Push is fantastic, and pairs really well with the Octatrack. But I don’t like how the Push’s note mode (its melodic keyboard grid) always follows the selected track.
If I’m using it to play chromatic notes into a soft synth, for example, I can’t switch tracks in Ableton, or the MIDI control to the synth may stop.
The Launchpad adds another controller, and it also lets me use its MIDI mode to lock it to a MIDI channel.
Also, the LaunchPad works Loopy Pro etc, which the Push does not.
Anyone else using both? If so, how?
Comments
I bought a second hand AKAI APC 40, which is kind of similar to the Push, and I already have a Launchpad X. Now I more and more use the APC as a DAW controller and the LPX in Midi mode. Playing on the LPX is so different from a normal keyboard so I really come up with different melodies and I like how you can use velocity and aftertouch with it. I never really learned to play the piano and I like the scale modes on the LPX.
When using this setup with Bitwig I have also many more options and scales when using the „Driven by Moss“ controller script which goes far beyond the factory support for the LPX. I don’t know if there is a comparable alternative controller script for Ableton. I find the scales of the LPX Midi mode quite limited.
On the iPad I tried to use both controllers with the combination of Loopy Pro and LK. The APC controlling Loopy and the LPX controlling LK but it doesn’t work because LK always grabs the APC too. I think I need to file a bug report to Imaginando. When using Atom 2 I think there could be great ways of using both controllers when utilizing the custom controller scripting with JavaScript but I don‘t find time for that. It’s a pity that this hasn’t been used by the community. Bitwig also uses JavaScript for this and there are quite a lot of community scripts.
I use both a Push 2 and LaunchPad Pro Mk3 and find they play well with each other. I prefer the feel of the pads on the LP so use that for performing notes/chords etc and use the Push 2 for most other things that don't involve performance with the pads. But most of all I build bespoke setups via Push Hacker.
https://cdm.link/2021/06/push-hacker-transforms-ableton-push-max-for-live-plug-in-shortcuts/
This is really great for creating bespoke bindings for specific workflows/instruments/fx and suchlike.
I'm a bit of a controller freak, and have multiple Novation Remote Zero SL's, a Novation Launch Contol XL, an Akai Fire (with the CrossFire script for Ableton use), multiple Behringer BCR 2000's, and even a Behringer X-Touch Midi. The Novations have Automap (not the Launch Control) and everything else has control scripts (both bundled with Ableton and third party) with bespoke mappings created with PrEditor 2. I use overlays for certain controller/instrument mappings, as only the Remote Zero's and Push 2 have LED screens displaying the various parameters.
The great thing with Ableton is that it's smart enough to allow many different controllers to operate simultaneously without conflicts as it's all SysEx under the hood, so there are no MIDI conflicts. With Arturia instruments, I make use of their own MIDI mappings and lock a particular controller to a specific instrument (and mainly use the Behringer BCR2000s for this, as they have 32 mappable knobs).
Believe it or not, I still have a MidiFighter Twister on my shopping list. But these are overpriced at the moment for UK customers, so I'm planning to pick one up next time I'm in San Francisco.
There is one major downer ref these control scripts and that's that many of the scripts haven't been updated to work with Ableton 11. The biggest miss is PrEditor as this provides AutoMap style mapping to non-Novation controllers. It's apparently being worked on, but there were apparently some major API changes in Ableton 11 so it's taking longer than originally planned. Luckily, Automap works perfectly with Ableton 11 and the other Sigabort script "LAUNCHCONTROL XXL", works perfectly, and this is great for mapping the maximum 16 parameters that Ableton 11 introduced to its drum, instrument and FX Racks.
On the iPad front, both the Novation LP and LC get commandeered for a variety of use cases inclusive of Loopy Pro
A computer musician can never have too many controllers!
EDIT... With all those controllers I forgot to mention one of the most important - Maschine Mk3. Which ironically gets used most often as a performance device, when playing Ableton drum Racks, FXpansion's Geist, NI Battery, and other percussion plugins. The playability of the Mk3 pads are a major improvement on older Maschine hardware.
One of the reasons I chose the Push 2 was because I’d had enough of messing around with setting up midi controllers, mapping knobs, and wondering why they weren’t working. I just wanted something that would work.
The Launchpad Pro did exactly that, but I still missed the knobs like I have on my Octatrack, with a screen to see what they do.
The neat thing about using them both, for me, is that they both Just Work™. I find I prefer the LP’s pads too.
Your setup @jonmoore sounds incredible, but doesn’t it need a lot of brainpower to keep on top of it all?
Not really. There's definitely a configuration learning curve upfront. But the beauty of things like Automap and PrEditor is that once you've set things up, things just work from that point forward.
And with bespoke MIDI configs for things like Arturia synths, I follow a similar pattern no matter the synth. If I'm having a brain fade, the overlays act as a mental crutch.
There's a chap in Germany that makes bespoke blank overlays via eBay for just about any MIDI controller. These are especially useful for the Behringer BCR2000s as these have 32 mappable knobs. But if you follow the same pattern when creating configurations e.g. always map envelopes, filters, and common modulation settings to the same knobs no matter the synth, things remain very intuitive.
The final aspect of Ableton that makes this approach even more flexible, is that MIDI controllers are intrinsically bound to selected tracks even when the MIDI bindings are set up in the synth itself. So the same MIDI controller will e.g. swap between a Jupiter and a Juno depending on which track is selected. That's when utilizing the same config patterns on BCR2000s really pays dividends.