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 Store

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

Absolute BEST iOS apps to use for Boom Bap, Rap Beats (not trap)

SO, I can already do this, to an extent, but i want to be better and form a better workflow.

I have 70$ apple in store credit.

I want to make darker, gritty rap beats (think, more emotional or menacing, where rappers can rap emotionally, story telling rap, not "money girls drugs" hip-pop like thats on the radio) that are both sample based, and non-sample based but SOUND like I flipped some vinyl, AND not only accoustic sounding instruments but what are some of the best synths for rap beats, hip hop?

so, for DAWs i have BM3, Cubasis3, Koala, Segments, Nanostudio2, blocs wave, Zenbeats (having issues with cloud subscription, paid for it, never got it. started a ticket.. unfortunate because i REALLY want to give zenbeats a good solid try), I have AUM, Drambo, Audiobus, all the big ones.

in synths i have Pure Synth, bassilicious 2, model D, flynth, mynth, synth one, numa player, House Mark I, Digitalism, Bass 808

in AU fx i have BLEASS slow machine, mixbox, lo-fly dirt, flytape v2, FAC maximizer, FF Pro Q3, DLYM, Tape Cassette 1 and 2, Beatformer, magic switch, RoughRider3, wider touch, and some other little things here and there.

Apps im considering: more BLEASS apps, a better synth more suited for Hip hop or boom bap, Looperator (or) Effectrix...

I am learning more and more how to saturate and edit sounds to take up the right space harmonically and stuff like that.

If you had 70$ which apps would you buy that were not listed and whats good about those apps?

note: most likely my workflow (unless zenbeats starts working) will still revolve heavily around Koala, BM3, numa player, house mark I, digitalism, model D (although that one is hard to work with sometimes for this specific genre)

THANK YOU so much to anyone who took the time to read this post and respond to it! This community is so amazing! thanks to all for making this forum what it is

Comments

  • I used to make synth-heavy beats (Duke Wonder on Spotify) but I listen to a bit of boom-bap and other styles. I also make LoFi stuff.

    BLEASS Alpha, TB Flowtones, Lagrange, and Continua would be excellent additions to your synth arsenal. Alpha is a great all-around electric synth for creating some quirky, gritty synth sounds. The others can make some pretty solid sounding “real” instrument sounds. I’d prioritize Flowtones and Continua unless you’re looking for universal apps, in which case I’d do Lagrange over Continua.

    EG Pulse is a fantastic drum machine with some great stock samples for hip-hop, including an R&B kit that I love and would be great for Boom-Bap.

    I haven’t used the other cassette emulators, but TB ReelBus is fantastic. Can be extremely subtle as a mastering effect or get really crazy warped stuff. TB Barricade is also a fantastic compressor and limiter which I find essential. 4Pockets TimeMachine is a great app for vinyl emulation too.

  • Oh! And AddStation is great too. I have a loop I’ll post later when I can. Will show off combining Continua, AddStation, Bass 808, and EG Pulse.

  • @ChancedMusic said:
    I used to make synth-heavy beats (Duke Wonder on Spotify) but I listen to a bit of boom-bap and other styles. I also make LoFi stuff.

    BLEASS Alpha, TB Flowtones, Lagrange, and Continua would be excellent additions to your synth arsenal. Alpha is a great all-around electric synth for creating some quirky, gritty synth sounds. The others can make some pretty solid sounding “real” instrument sounds. I’d prioritize Flowtones and Continua unless you’re looking for universal apps, in which case I’d do Lagrange over Continua.

    EG Pulse is a fantastic drum machine with some great stock samples for hip-hop, including an R&B kit that I love and would be great for Boom-Bap.

    I haven’t used the other cassette emulators, but TB ReelBus is fantastic. Can be extremely subtle as a mastering effect or get really crazy warped stuff. TB Barricade is also a fantastic compressor and limiter which I find essential. 4Pockets TimeMachine is a great app for vinyl emulation too.

    thank you! i have EG pulse but with koala never gave it much time. Yeah I kinda want BLEASS samplewiz 2, and i didnt know which would be better, alpha or omega. Ive never heard of the other synths you mentioned so i will have to check them out. Thank you! Can i ask why you prefer TB barricade over say BLEASS compressor?

  • oh i also have Chomplr. Now that you can import samples this thing is so fun.

  • edited March 2022

    Here’s the loop I mentioned. Continua for the pad, AddStation for the plinky bits, Bass 808 for the bass, and EG Pulse for the drums. Composed in Cubasis 3.

    I haven’t used Omega or SampleWiz, but I love Alpha. Super easy to use.

    TB Barricade is primarily a limiter. It includes a loudness meter and a compressor. BLEASS Compressor is just a compressor I believe. ToneBoosters stuff is akin to the quality of FabFilter but for a fraction of the price. If you’re going to mix and master your own stuff, I would consider something like Barricade a necessity.

  • You already have everything (and more) that you need to make pretty much any kind of music.

    You already have Way too many DAWs (I do too on iOS!) . Pick one, hide the rest and learn what you have inside out.

    Just one of the DAWs you have with its built in sampler and a model D plugin is already more than a lot of the boom bap guys had back in the day. A lot of the 90s stuff was made on something like an ensoniq EPS 16plus Sampler. With 1 MB RAM.

    Nanostudio 2 or BM3 alone are all you actually need — along with a good pair of ears.

    My advice would be to have fun learning to make what you have sound the way you want it to. There are no shortcuts to experience.

  • I strongly agree with @klownshed
    Your next step is to choose which existing tools you’ll focus on, rather than new ones to buy.

    Personally, I find BM3 and Model D to be a great combo for boom-bap beats

  • The user and all related content has been deleted.
  • Hy
    you have everything you need ... you can try Impc pro 2 on Ipad ... a little expensive but good, I use it on iphone 8
    Big up

  • edited March 2022

    As an all iOS boom bap producer, Segments is one I have common to you, and I love to use it for chopping up samples or my own compositions and playing them across octaves (and you can export the slices to EG Pulse if you want them in groovebox-type like Koala does, especially since Segments doesn’t do sequencing in its own. Alternatively you could just sample and chop straight to EG Pulse, but for me chopping is easier with Segments). So that and/or Koala, both of which you own already of course, might be the centerpieces to your setup.

    Everything you got is plenty, as others have already been saying, but yeah, throwing it all through Koala, Segments, BM3, etc. is akin to the legendary boom bap producers running all their sounds and samples through those old sampler grooveboxes like your SP-303, MPC, etc., chopping it all up and throwing it back together. That workflow you noted at the end of your post looks like a good one to me. Nice and simple, like the setups of much of the greatest boom bap producers who oftentimes just have their one machine and a record player feeding into it and that’s basically it, aside from maybe a module or keyboard here and there.

    Everything else is gravy, and you have good DAWs to track it out to and arrange if you need to sequence your patterns out more elaborately. But yeah, you’re set app-wise I’d say myself.

  • edited March 2022

    @pr4y_4_beats said:
    If you had 70$ which apps would you buy that were not listed and whats good about those apps?

    Nothing.

    You already have Drambo and, as we all know, "Drambo can do everything" or so they keep telling me :smiley:

    You have more than enough apps to do what you want.

    If you are still not happy with the results you are getting I would suggest you have a look at adding distortion to some of your sounds and synths to darken them.

    Try feeding a few sounds through the free Build-Your-Own-Distortion (BYOD) app:
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/byod/id1595313287

  • @ChancedMusic said:
    Here’s the loop I mentioned. Continua for the pad, AddStation for the plinky bits, Bass 808 for the bass, and EG Pulse for the drums. Composed in Cubasis 3.

    I haven’t used Omega or SampleWiz, but I love Alpha. Super easy to use.

    TB Barricade is primarily a limiter. It includes a loudness meter and a compressor. BLEASS Compressor is just a compressor I believe. ToneBoosters stuff is akin to the quality of FabFilter but for a fraction of the price. If you’re going to mix and master your own stuff, I would consider something like Barricade a necessity.

    thank you! good to know about TBs quality. i had no idea lol. damn, i just bought BLEASS slowdownmachine and their delay also. if i would have known TB was apparently so good i would have reconsidered lol. i can still use it. help glue things together, then throw a quality limiter on top

    im going to put headphones in and listen to that loop RN

  • @Pandan said:
    As an all iOS boom bap producer, Segments is one I have common to you, and I love to use it for chopping up samples or my own compositions and playing them across octaves (and you can export the slices to EG Pulse if you want them in groovebox-type like Koala does, especially since Segments doesn’t do sequencing in its own. Alternatively you could just sample and chop straight to EG Pulse, but for me chopping is easier with Segments). So that and/or Koala, both of which you own already of course, might be the centerpieces to your setup.

    >
    i sorta do this already, i will throw in some self made melodies into MSXII Chomplr, that app is so fun. idk why but koala has always just clicked for me so much more intuitively than eg pulse. i mean its a good drum machine but its workflow is choppy and hard to get used to for me.. with koala's press-and-hold-to-drag-and-copy to another pad, and then just change the loop points of the sample by grabbing the start point and dragging it after the end point to where the next chop should end and now the end point of the previous pads loop is now the start point, kinda like playing leap frog.. just dragging two lines across your sample and whichever ends up on left is the start point and whichever on the right the end point... genius. and its so smooth and precise and easy to zoom way in quickly and zoom out, all with two fingers and you dont even have to change it to "edit mode" first?! like, cmon... and with multi output now you can apply the same instance of koala to each pad in a bank and then apply specific AUs, to each pad.. it sometimes sounds better than when i try to recreate the same thing in BM3.. or i will sketch something into koala and then try to recreate it in bm3, throw in a few FX in BM3 that i couldnt do in koala, and then go back and compare, to me lots of times, unless i have spent ALOT of time into it and did a PERFECT job mixing, time i dont have often enough, it almost sounds better in koala,, idk if its my ipad or headphones but bm3 just sounds slightly less.. full, and cohesive than the koala version

  • @Simon said:

    @pr4y_4_beats said:
    If you had 70$ which apps would you buy that were not listed and whats good about those apps?

    Nothing.

    You already have Drambo and, as we all know, "Drambo can do everything" or so they keep telling me :smiley:

    You have more than enough apps to do what you want.

    If you are still not happy with the results you are getting I would suggest you have a look at adding distortion to some of your sounds and synths to darken them.

    Try feeding a few sounds through the free Build-Your-Own-Distortion (BYOD) app:
    https://apps.apple.com/us/app/byod/id1595313287

    yeah but this 70 is from gift cards and stuff so its like, what am i gonna buy anyway? so i want to look for the best boom bap apps, and yeah ive tried drambo.. like, just cant seem to get it.

    im happy with my results, i just dont want people suggesting the obvious ones like the ones i have so i thought people might know of some other ones that are good for boom bap, but modern/gritty or what synths i can use to make sounds that sound sampled, or just straight up synths people use for hip hop/ beats instead ... and i had no idea people used model d so much i seem to have trouble with the boom bap stuff and model d.. but i guess ill have to try to learn it better ,

    and thanks for the distortion tip, that and saturation are something i almost literally never use, and i dont know why. gonna try that, thanks!

  • Thats already a healthy list. I have most of the apps you listed so not much to add apart from I do link synthmater 2 because it has such a wide variety of sound options. I always find a place for it

  • Someone asked something similar (more about Lo-Fi, less about boom bap 🤷🏽‍♂️) in the iOSmusicproduction subreddit, here was my reply:

    “ Someone asked a similar question not too long ago on this sub, here was my reply:

    “Like Dj puzzle said, it’s not really the daw that makes it Lo-Fi, it’s more so the sound selection and sound design.

    With that being said, there are some apps I’d turn to first for a “Lo-Fi sound”

    Effects:
    RX-950,
    Time Machine FX,
    Koala Fx,
    PCM2612,
    Flytape V2,
    ChowTape Model,
    Tape Pro,
    TB Reel Bus,
    Woodlofier,
    Lo-Fly Dirt,
    FF Saturn,
    FF Volcano 3
    Bleass Slow Machine, Mixbox has a nice Lo-Fi module

    Synths:
    ID700,
    Mynth/Flynth/Polywave,
    Lo-Fi Tape,
    OB-XD,
    Neo Soul Keys 2,
    MK Sensation Xtreme/Pure Synth
    Electric Vintage

    Mood Units, Bassalicious 2, and Bass 808 are my go-tos for bass needs.

    Samplers: Koala, Chomplr, Segments, Audiolayer, Flip, Samplewiz 2

    Drum Machines/Grooveboxes: Patterning 2, GR-16, Groovebox, Elastic Drums, Hammerhead, EG Pulse

    Using one or a combination in AUM, Apematrix, Gargeband, BM3, Drambo, NS2, Cubasis, Loopy Pro, Zenbeats, Blocs Wave, or in conjunction with Audiobus, you’ll see what resonates with you and culminate a workflow.

    Oh and Gadget has some great sounding modules!”

    As far as hardware goes, I’m using volca sample, volca fm, modal craft synth 2.0, sp-555, keystep, Stratocaster, MPD18, komplete 2x4 interface, bastl kastl, and a handful of pedals. Pretty compact compared to what it used to be in yester years.

    As a drummer, there are some apps I feel would be more interesting, stuff like Sector or Different Drummer, Loadker, Drum Beats + is great for practice, FAC Drumkit 2.0 is amazing for meticulously crafting drum sounds, there is a sampler and drum synth in which you can mix and create completely new drum sounds, I think of it as an Ableton Drum Rack and Operator in its own unique Instrument rack, kind of…Concentric is cool for polyrhythms and Euclidean sequencing, Playbeat3 is an awesome drum sequencer, capable of some very interesting ratcheting, density settings, etc…

    sampling drums into Endlesss could prove very interesting as it’s a multi player community where users jam, and in the next phase of the app, there will be a marketplace and a blockchain and all those NFT buzzwords, minting? That’s what they do, right? “Mint on the block-chain” haha, here’s the transition statement

    The concept sounds cool for someone like me, whose barrier of entry into Web3 stuff is a transaction, in which I’m simply not capable of, but making music is something I can do!”

  • @taeo said:
    Someone asked something similar (more about Lo-Fi, less about boom bap 🤷🏽‍♂️) in the iOSmusicproduction subreddit, here was my reply:

    “ Someone asked a similar question not too long ago on this sub, here was my reply:

    “Like Dj puzzle said, it’s not really the daw that makes it Lo-Fi, it’s more so the sound selection and sound design.

    With that being said, there are some apps I’d turn to first for a “Lo-Fi sound”

    Effects:
    RX-950,
    Time Machine FX,
    Koala Fx,
    PCM2612,
    Flytape V2,
    ChowTape Model,
    Tape Pro,
    TB Reel Bus,
    Woodlofier,
    Lo-Fly Dirt,
    FF Saturn,
    FF Volcano 3
    Bleass Slow Machine, Mixbox has a nice Lo-Fi module

    Synths:
    ID700,
    Mynth/Flynth/Polywave,
    Lo-Fi Tape,
    OB-XD,
    Neo Soul Keys 2,
    MK Sensation Xtreme/Pure Synth
    Electric Vintage

    Mood Units, Bassalicious 2, and Bass 808 are my go-tos for bass needs.

    Samplers: Koala, Chomplr, Segments, Audiolayer, Flip, Samplewiz 2

    Drum Machines/Grooveboxes: Patterning 2, GR-16, Groovebox, Elastic Drums, Hammerhead, EG Pulse

    Using one or a combination in AUM, Apematrix, Gargeband, BM3, Drambo, NS2, Cubasis, Loopy Pro, Zenbeats, Blocs Wave, or in conjunction with Audiobus, you’ll see what resonates with you and culminate a workflow.

    Oh and Gadget has some great sounding modules!”

    As far as hardware goes, I’m using volca sample, volca fm, modal craft synth 2.0, sp-555, keystep, Stratocaster, MPD18, komplete 2x4 interface, bastl kastl, and a handful of pedals. Pretty compact compared to what it used to be in yester years.

    As a drummer, there are some apps I feel would be more interesting, stuff like Sector or Different Drummer, Loadker, Drum Beats + is great for practice, FAC Drumkit 2.0 is amazing for meticulously crafting drum sounds, there is a sampler and drum synth in which you can mix and create completely new drum sounds, I think of it as an Ableton Drum Rack and Operator in its own unique Instrument rack, kind of…Concentric is cool for polyrhythms and Euclidean sequencing, Playbeat3 is an awesome drum sequencer, capable of some very interesting ratcheting, density settings, etc…

    sampling drums into Endlesss could prove very interesting as it’s a multi player community where users jam, and in the next phase of the app, there will be a marketplace and a blockchain and all those NFT buzzwords, minting? That’s what they do, right? “Mint on the block-chain” haha, here’s the transition statement

    The concept sounds cool for someone like me, whose barrier of entry into Web3 stuff is a transaction, in which I’m simply not capable of, but making music is something I can do!”

    thank you!

  • @Pandan said:
    As an all iOS boom bap producer, Segments is one I have common to you, and I love to use it for chopping up samples or my own compositions and playing them across octaves (and you can export the slices to EG Pulse if you want them in groovebox-type like Koala does, especially since Segments doesn’t do sequencing in its own. Alternatively you could just sample and chop straight to EG Pulse, but for me chopping is easier with Segments). So that and/or Koala, both of which you own already of course, might be the centerpieces to your setup.

    So I hear people say this a lot (chop up samples and play them across octaves) what does this mean exactly? Playing across octaves? Like when i chop a sample I just sometimes either tune it all down or up and octave or maybe one or two of the chops… when someone says to chop a sample and play it across octaves, what exactly are you referring too? Thanks

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