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.
Update to organ/bass MIDI pedals
A while back I posted on the subject of possibly converting a set of pedals from an old home organ into a MIDI controller.
Well, I actually found a set from an old Yamaha Electone sitting at the curb! After determining that everything seemed to physically still be connected I brought it to a friend who knows electrical stuff. After some poking we found out that yes it was functional and would work for the intended use we searched online for similar projects and what would be needed.
This is based on an Arduino set-up, and in addition to coding and debugging my friend also had to so some minor electrical work, mainly bridging the resistors to negate them, as in stock format the pedals were transmitting all at once. And he'd dug through his box of ribbon strips and found one with a connector that would fit the organ's, once some trimming was done.
After about four hours of messing around we got it working! I booted up AUM and tried various apps, settling on a pipe organ sound, since its multiple octaves would sound brighter than just a bass sound. In the video you can hear it, though it's only coming out of the small Bluetooth speaker behind the iPad.
More details as we get this thing completed. I need to make a proper cover for it, we need to add switches for changing octaves, and the Arduino needs bus power so we're thinking of just putting in a rechargeable power pack in there instead of requiring a powered hub (which I otherwise rarely use in my portable gigging set-up).
I'll post again once the project is complete. It'll be awesome to be able to play notes, pads, arps, and trigger other midi events with my feet whilst playing keys or hand drums. https://youtube.com/shorts/v7jbr2A0usY
Comments
Oops, looks like I messed up embedding the YouTube clip to show a visual.
That's cool, I'd long wanted to do something similar but don't have a coder friend and sure can't do that myself. But I did come up with something that is at the opposite end of the spectrum from what you have. It's a midi keyboard sitting on the floor.
It feeds in to the Tonality Chord Pads app, for which I've made a few single note 'chords', that are triggered by some of the keys on the keyboard. These keys are chosen for distance from each other, and have some sticky tape labels. They are totally unrelated to the pitch of the actual keyboard. Because only specific key presses will trigger a desired note, I can jam my foot down on a clump of about 5 keys without fear, only 1 will trigger.
It's not as pretty, but it works! It also has one advantage, it's labelled with note scale numbers, not pitches, so I can set it to any key without being disconcerted by any inconsistency with a piano key layout. I guess a pic is in order...