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.
Drum Synthesising
I’m looking to make my own kicks, snares and hats - I’ve been dabbling in Obsidian but can’t for the life of me figure out how to turn off random phase on the oscillators (probably can’t) and I’m having the same problem with Synth Master 1 - anyone have any hints for non-drum machine synths with this ability? Preferably one with more than 3 OSCs. I’m on iPhone. 🙏🏻
Comments
Are you sure about SynthMaster One? The oscs have a Phase control. Don't they always start at that phase?
Drambo oscs can be synced, but don't have an initial phase adjustment.
Sometimes the random phase on the oscillators is a blessing since the timbre subtly changes with each hit, making it come off as more natural rather than static. Or if you're looking to create your own sample set, lay out about 12 hits (or more), render the wav, and use an audio editor like TwistedWave to keep the instance(s) you like.
And when synthesising drums, FAC Transient, an EQ, and a limiter of some sort will probably be your best friends. NS2 has two of the three already built in, and FAC Transient is great for making drums more punchy prior to feeding into a limiter.
What genre are you looking to produce exactly mate?
Drum & bass is my game - so I need really tight hits and Obsidian was nearly the one as you can have one OSC dedicated to a sample player for added “real life” sounds to the layers. One transient Osc and one noise Osc plus the sample player didn’t really cut it, though I could have used the 3rd Osc for the main tone of the sound. Most of the tutorials I’ve seen have people using Serum. It may be that I’m just not experienced enough using Synth Master yet!
I did get one decent snare out of Obsidian and bounced it down to audio to load into Slate, and I figure if I can’t find an alternative I’ll just keep that going 😎
Hey sweet! Yeah I've never tried producing D&B before, but I do love listening to the genre to get me firing on all cylinders on those mornings where I feel more sluggish than usual! 😅
@KRPT I know you mentioned “non drum machine” but have you peeped FAC DrumKit? It checks a lot of boxes and is really fun to sculpt drum hits with.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/fac-drumkit/id1552568814
How does FAC drumkit compare to splat to clat’s editing capabilities? Or is the latter mostly a library? Thanks!
By the way @KRPT , your music on Spotify is awesome! I love what you've made more than what I've recently heard in the Beatport DnB top 10.
Hey thanks so much! That means a lot 😎 all tracks produced and arranged in NS2 with Obsidian and the Yonac synths and mixed in Logic. I’m really trying to push this system as far as it will go and usually max out my phones capabilities in NS2. Liberal amounts of Beef usually applied too!
Yeah I think I might have to bite the bullet, not sure why I’ve been putting it off as I have most of the other FAC plugs. Might just do a little more investigation…
For sure fac drum kit would be better with ProgramChange for changing kits , @FredAntonCorvest can you consider to add this feature, please? In Drambo there is no possible to change preset other by Program Change.
AUM, loopyPro allows for assign internal presets to midi, but Drambo didn’t. So it is a reason for such request, asking, pleasing.
Oh I love Beef. What a great plugin! Anyways, I quickly cacked out an example of DnB drum synthesis in NS2. It's rather simple and kinda sucks due to being rushed between productions, lol. 😅 But it should give the gist of it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2fbjczzx2e6p4ny/110722a.wav?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/g4fgklo8p8igrf0/110722a.nsa?dl=0
100% Obsidian, all stock effects. Cheers mate.
Tera Pro has the ability to adjust the osc phase and has more than 3 oscs, wavetable, subharmonic, spectrum, and Karplus strong
Thanks a lot for this, just checking out the project and it’s really helpful to see how you’ve put all these sounds together! Love the hihats and the kick layers. I’ve gone through and shortened a few of the envelopes and upped the BPM a touch. The only problem is the oscillating sine wave on the snare but it’s great to be able to see how it’s made. I wonder if I could use that OSC as a sample player and just play a sampled sine wave instead, same starting point each time…
Thanks again!
Yeah I was watching the promo video last night - unfortunately not available for iPhone! Otherwise it looks perfect 👍🏻
True, but the wavetable oscillator has control over the start-phase and a lot of other nice mangling tools to boot
Cheers mate. The kick was an example of using multiple instances of Obsidian to form a sound, whereas the high hat and snare show you how to do it with once instance.
Yes of course mate.
The project is yours to do with as you please. 🙂
Of course mate. ❤️
Drum Computer
FAC Drumkit
Are two I like a lot for this. Because they load samples as well as have synth engines.
Ruismakerfm, Hammerhead, ruismaker noir are all great as well for synthesized drums.
IAA
Drum Lab
I watched Jakob’s video on Drumkit again today and I have to say the way the envelopes are implemented is really impressive - think I’m gonna have to go with this as an second option to working with Obsidian
Actually I think I'll give Drumkit a shot too.
I bought it simply to support @FredAntonCorvest , but now I'm super curious to play around with it.
Check the update log on the App Store, Fred made some updates, and I think they might have been after that video, but not sure.
Yea the envelopes are real nice. You can randomize them too. There’s 13 kits, I think, on Patchstorage. You can also randomize or dial in the synth sounds. You can use just the synths, just samples or a hybrid of both, and gui is clean, & clear. FAc DK is pretty lightweight too, especially compared to drum computer which also has a sequencer, so that’ll take up some cpu, fac DK does not. There’s tons of great sequencing apps though.
IAA EasticDrums is nice sounding, SeekBeats also (this one I didnt buy yet).
Drambo is a real powerhouse for drum synthesis but it needs your time and dedication.
I've listened to your DnB tracks @KRPT, love them!!
To be honest, for DnB, I would rather work with layered and re-pitched samples, envelopes and EQs.
A good sample engine will allow for phase coherent playback, and such exists outside Drambo as well
+1 on Drum Computer for snappy, organic hits or metals/hats. Get 2 or 3 out of an instance of DC and they’d be good for layering.
Not so keen on the Kicks in DC though, can’t seem to get anything heavy or bassy out of it myself. The parameters are pretty non-standard, so it’s a bit of trial and error and I’m far too impatient for that.
You might have more luck just jabbing away at the randomiser, that’s the best bit of the app.
I am a big fan of the FM and synthesized drums in TR-6S with iPhone/iPad
I'm interested. Any way to hear sound examples?
I was going to mention both of these after recently remembering them.
FAC Drumkit is really fantastic! Very intuitive to learn it, and I love the drums I can make in it from scratch. 🙂 Cheers.
I found this tutorial on how to make a proper kick sound in Drum Computer. It's a bit long, but I was able to get a good basic kick preset that I can pull into projects as needed, and the info's useful for learning how to bend DC to your will generally.
CHOWKick is free!
Addstation allows you to adjust phase in level, pitch, filter, and noise.
Ruismaker FM is amazing for making 808s!