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.
Comments
@NeuM said:
Since I don’t know how to play any musical instrument, I’m ok with using shedloads of automation/generators/presets/whatever to speed up the production process. Or indeed to enable it at all. Limits?
Enough is never enough.
There’s still something to be said for having the ear to arrange it all in a pleasant way. Look at an album like Paul’s Boutique. All samples and a masterpiece. Or anything by the Avalanches.
I thought the terms were like synth presets: you can use them in your music but can’t pass the loops (or presets) off as your own?
If one feels an inner drive to create something, just create anyway you want. 👍
I think I must’ve fallen behind with your prodigious output LL. In my mind you’re sat behind a nicely weighted 76 key keyboard doing very musical, two handed things! Fugue Machine is one I don’t have but I’m still shocked!
(All meant in a very light hearted way BTW… too many arguments on ABF lately)
It's all fair game in my eyes, if the end result is dope, who are we to call anyone out for their weapon of choice... Prince Paul and de la soul did great on 3 feet high and rising and that's made almost exclusively of other people's tunes.. and don't get me started on DJ Shadow... I get pure sample envy listening to his stuff..
I suffer from imposter syndrome whenever using such tools, but I think that’s a personal problem, my personal problem, self-esteem, ect.
Ultimately, I feel most music fans only care about the end result and that it’s only the musicians and producers who are concerned with this stuff. This is my broad generalization.
Also what others have already stated about it taking an ear to arrange the stuff and of heeding to the urge of creating and seizing on that moment with whatever tools seem fit.
I will use any and every tool at my disposal to make music. I’ll write stuff with my guitar or keyboard a lot but I feel like the process is too enclosed and railroaded into me making a typical chord progression and then forming that into a song. Using samples and generative stuff gets me out of that box and helps me work more in rhythms rather than just melody and harmony
Actually that's a really good point. Nobody ever chastised David Bowie for having Robert Fripp playing guitar for him. I'd never thought of it like that....
To quote Rush's Spirit of the Radio,
" All this machinery making modern music can still be open hearted..... it's just a question of your honesty."
I use generators, randomizers, drum machines and any other app I can find to create. I do my best to list which apps I use to give credit where credit is due.
I played drums for my church choir in highschool. I played guitar in a band that played clubs in Dallas. I wrote songs that people ( granted, family and friends) still remember. I've done that.
Now I have very limited time. I don't have a group of musicians to play with. So I collaborate with my apps.
No rules. Just fun.
99% of the times, I will just create a sound from scratch. When I load a preset, it's usually to deconstruct it and learn how it was created. I haven't loaded a preset in years up until last week when I started learning MiRack. To be honest, I've put learning MiRack on the backburner. I think I'll go back into Drambo instead and learn how to use that before going back to a hardware emulation.
Evolution, where does the human end and the machine begin…
Music is the place where we meet. The source is beyond all of these apps and samples and loops and instruments and sounds.....I used to think it mattered what was used, but now it's just where I am in this moment that matters.
As the great philosophers once said, “sample it, loop it, fuck it and eat it”.
I do that quite often and I was able to pull off quite a number of inspirational happy accidents while trying something inside Drambo. Coming from hardware synths, it's like "design your own without limits".
Well said. I don't restrict myself to any sources of sound (although I have to admit that I'm neither a fan of algorithmic composition).
Restricting myself to using only one app has been a huge creativity booster for me though.
If my samples can fool the DistroKid algorithms into thinking I don't have to pay royalties (they're quite good at this), I've done a good enough job making that shit my own to not worry about so called "cheating"
There's always those synth presets in every DAW that are immediately recognizable everywhere, and I try to avoid those. If Jpegmafia makes a banger with the rubber mallet ableton preset I don't judge him, dude is a producer powerhouse. And I do almost always tweak the sounds. But in general I look at that stuff like I do my cello or my cornet or my banjo: I did not build those instruments from the ground up from scratch. Like, I'm not stealing from the luthier who crafted my cello by playing it how it is and not radically changing it by filling it up with epoxy or sawing it in half or something. I don't see why synths can't be looked at the same way, at least to some extent
A guitar is a preset…
I used to have a line, but I no longer do. Do whatever you can get away with, short of straight stealing someone else's music.
It depends on the task I'm doing, but I'll use anything. I especially love MIDI generators and drum loop generators.
I’m not particularly dogmatic about anything, but I have had moments where I’ll only use the sounds I’ve made with my own homemade valve gear. I’ve been in that rabbit hole a while now, and I’ve got to know folks who even make their own capacitors from paper and wax, though I believe they buy the wax rather than use their own 😬😆
Someone said earlier in this thread that it depends on the type of music she/he writes. I guess I feel the same. If I were to write a pop song, then I'd be concerned with the melody, lyrics, chord progression, and bass line, these kinds of stuff, and I'd try my best to do these things myself. The color part - the arrangement - would be secondary. Once I have the melody, lyrics, and chords with proper inversions, then the song is kind of finished in a sense. a good arrangement helps further of course, but it doesn't really change "the song". So I wouldn't mind using synth presets, sample packs, etc.
Now if I were to write an electroacoustic piece to be performed at Darmstadt along with those young, hotshot composers, then I'd pay attention to textures and colors, and I'd design my own sound as much as I can, patching the modular system, cutting up with LiveCut on my old system, using my own setting for 10 times, then comp those because why not? No sample pack or synth presets are allowed in this case. No major third interval either for that matter or I'd been banned from the city. 😆
@Artj
The city of new music, right? 😂👍🏼
Exactly - last time I was there I played some triads, never been welcomed back since! 😆
"Byoooon" is my philosophy.
Beyond that, whatever I use, I process to make it mine. It's the audio equivalent of young kids licking food to claim ownership over their siblings
I have odd rules with Koala where I only use one single cycle waveform from a sample to make entire tracks, utilising all the resampling options to create all the elements I need, but that's about it.
I mean I'm not a professional, I do this as entertainment for myself. So quite honestly, I don't care, I do whatever I feel like in that moment. I'm going to assume that when I wanted to sell my music, I would take better care. But sometimes I used just random samples to practice sample chopping, and other stuff that isn't cleared like for making a remix. I won't ever be able to publish any of it, but I also don't care.
For sampled Kontakt libraries, I avoid at all cost those that are heavily processed with effects. Indeed, I think that a lot of these are only custom presets of synths with some effects applied in a DAW, that are sampled calling these "instruments". I prefer to do my own chains and distinctive "instruments".
So I only buy real sampled instruments, that are not heavily processed with things like "a tape", or "a processed piano using eurorack modules" or whatever. Because I don't have the talent, the time or the money to acquire and learn to play these instruments.
Even with this, I always prefer to have physically modelled instruments, like Pianoteq Pro or the SWAM collection, so I can modify the sound signature of these instruments. But while I have the money to buy those products, I'm fine with sampled libraries. And there a lot of instruments without physically modelled versions.
For drums, I only use synthesized drums, NEVER SAMPLES, and I always make my own kits. But I cheat with this, because at the end, a lot of my kits are made with Fractal Bits or SKIIID, using its internal randomized functions. But I also design a lot of drum sounds with Ruismaker Noir or Ephemere, tweaking my own presets.
With synths, I always try to create my own presets, because it's a thing that I enjoy A LOT and it serves me to learn. But at the same time, I have zero problems using stock presets. Because at the end of the day, these sounds will be heavily sculpted in the FX chain. Also, presets are great for learning synthesis! Studying a good preset can be incredibly inspiring, giving you future ideas that will translate to other synths.
For modular software like VCV Rack 2 Pro / miRack / Drambo, my philosophy is to never download patches created by others, trying to create mine from scratch. But at the same time, I watch a lot of videos and tutorials, by people that it's much better than me, trying to learn from their techniques.
I will never use a loop created by other in a song. And regarding individual samples, I have zero problems using field recordings from things like cities or nature, dowloaded from freesound.org, it can save me a lot of time. Or sounds sampled from real things. While I create a lot of samples using WebSDR, and I plan to purchase a Soma Ether V2, to create my own weird sounds. I find fascinating the sounds of radio frequencies.
I use assisted composition tools like Piano Motiffs all the time (and then I mess with the probability of the notes in Bitwig), random sequencers and I design A LOT of MIDI generative patches.
All of this is not based in personal principles, but in a question of the things that I enjoy. The most fun part of creating music for me is exploring how to sculpt, create new sounds. How to transform a single irritating beep noise in a complete orchestra that has musicality, by creating hundred of buses multiplying the sound and applying effects.
At the same time, I respect A LOT artists working only with samples. I find the idea fascinating, taking other's sounds, and creating weird and experimental Frankenstein compositions. I think that DJ'ing in a live session, creating your own composition using recordings by others is a form of art.
But the form of work, the part that I enjoy, the workflow that captivates me, it's what it is.
I will never judge the workflow of others!
The only thing that matters is end result. Limitations bread creativity but rules can ruin art.
The sound design aspect of music has always interested me the most but oddly, most of my favourite music is heavily sample based. Despite that, it took me years to understand the art of sampling and to really appreciate it.
When I started making music I had very similar thoughts on sampling in general. If I ever used a sample, I had to make sure I processed it beyond recognition. My music 100% suffered because of it. I spent soooo long on tracks, grinding them into oblivion just to make sure I didn’t feel like I was “cheating”.
It’s very easy to think of it as cheating but look at it in the context of art, there are countless examples of paintings or photographs where your immediate thought might be “I could have done that”….. but you didn’t.
Look at hip hop, some of the beats ever made are super simple sample chops. Are Madlib and The Alchemist just dirty cheats? I could (and will) argue that they are two of most important producers alive.
Is this cheating?
I just wish I was better at sampling….
I don’t think using or not using presets or loops or samples has any inherent status with regards to originality, “artistic value” and authorship. It probably has more to do with what you see yourself as trying to do in terms of creating something. What your focus is. Using these things requires no justification or defence unless it bothers you. If it does nag at you it’s probably because of what you see your focus and creative process/output as actually being.
In retrospect, when I was younger, I really failed to clearly distinguish between sound design, “production” and songwriting/composition. I was always, without knowing it utterly focused on or driven by the atmosphere and aesthetics of the sound of records I liked. I barely listened to lyrics and had no understanding of chords, scales, melodies harmonies and how basslines actually worked independently from the production. Of course I appreciated beautiful chords and scales and melodies etc. I just had no idea how they worked. This was pre-internet and I had no mentors either. I had no fucking idea what I was doing. Inwas just really good at developing 8 bar loops made up of many tightly interconnected sounds.
However when tge time came to break the loop out into structured compositions it nearly always fell apart. I didn't even know what I didn't know about songwriting, arranging etc. I didn't know why the 20 interconnected sounds and loops had very little power to move the track along on their own when stripped down and isolated. I had no idea which would work for a bridge, or a chorus or a main theme (or which of those they actually were without my knowing it).
So my actual creative musical output was about feel, atmosphere, groove and basic idea and ultimately production/sound design. Using unchopped breaks, loops and presets would have bothered me.
Seems to me that sampling is an art in itself. It's just that the really talented people who do it make it look easy, but to me it looks daunting to know what to pick and then how to actually use it.
I came to a similar conclusion when listening to Massive Attack way back when. Their creativity seemed to revolve as much around the collaborations they came up with as the songs themselves.
Also, the segment about auditioning drummers for “Peg” in the “Making of Aja” documentary was pretty eye opening for me when I realized just how much Bernard Purdy ended up contributing to the feel of that track.
100%. One thing that seems to ring through from all the sampling greats is that they just know what's enough and when to stop too.