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.
Any smart keyboard apps?
I mostly create music by playing guitars and basses live and don't know how to play the keys. I want to add some keyboards (like electric piano, organ, rhodes) to my songs here and there in my mixes. Nothing fancy though, just the root chords, padding and little playing around... In garageband's smart keyboard, it is easy to assign the chord names and use the touch panel to trigger the chords... Is there an app that plays keyboards like that feature?
Comments
Hi, chordpolypad Can do it. And it can trigger close to any other app via midi.
Cubasis has this feature to.
Sound prism is of cause a very good option too. (Made by the audiobus team
)
There's probably others. These are the ones I know of.
Chordion is another inexpensive one that can do chords internally, or with MIDI out to other synths (I believe).
You can do this right inside of Cubasis also using the chord pads and midi. You can use the chords from inside the DAW or assign your own if you should require. I too am looking at chord poly pad.
Chordion is great at the chords+fixed scale melody. Soundprism and Thumbjam are both worth a look to.
SessionBand piano can do some useful things too.
Yonac's 2: Magellan (synth) and Galileo (organ) have chord players built in. Alchemy has a less impressive one. They don't put out MIDI chords though (if that's an issue)
MusicStudio also has custom chords for the keyboard as well as the pads. Its been a while since I tampered with it and can't remember if it outputs MIDI.
Meant to mention @Ian's suggestion of Magellan. I really like its implementation of 4 octaves per chord for each of the slots available (a dozen or so?).
ChordPolyPad is the most versatile option IMO.
Thanks for all the mentions. Soundprism have a limited free version and it looks nice. I think every ios app should have a free trial version just to get an idea... Anyway, Chordpolypro looks fantastic, but for the price issue I think I'll go with the Chordion first and maybe later switch to it...
Midi Mind is a possibility too: http://www.dyslexiasoft.com/mind.html
The other apps mentioned here I don't know myself, except Soundprism. Chord-based controllers like this may be of use if you want to play chords with a single touch.
@Phil999 - how do you like Konkreet and what makes it special?
@All - sorry to derail...just had wondered about this for some time.
+1 for chordpolypad. You can adjust the loudness of each note in the chord and also has adjustable speed strum of notes in chord. Really good app for non keyboardist
Ok, I guess chordpolypad is not audiobus compatible. If I get chordpolypad, which apps I have to get to get some classical keyboard sounds to trigger from it?
@Mucci said:
Any app that accepts MIDI. iGrand Piano for example, but you can use it with any synth you want as well.
ChordPolyPad is Audiobus combatible, unless you're talking about IOS8?
Changeling is worth a look at as well
Clever features include built in scales, variable voicing for chords and arpegiation all at the press of a key.
It's also possible to record a sequence of chords then have it played back in different keys and modes.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/changeling-sequencer/id506664262?mt=8
@Fitz Good to know. I think I watched an old video review of the app where it said not compatible with audiobus.
@richardyot Ok, now everything makes sense. I'm kinda new to whole concept. And many thanks to all who have and will participate. I learnt a lot of stuff from the audiobus forum to keep me going on...
Thumbjam is a good app with a variety of quality sounds to play with, using midi or the unique playing surface. I don't play chords on it, but great for using a particular scale.
An example of how you might use Midi Mind: You can trigger making a chord from a midi note by velocity. So if you have a melody in your DAW, you could set all of the velocities just below the threshold except for the notes that you want to make into chords. In MM you can set it up to do whatever chord you want... add just the third, the fifth, both, add 7th, 9th, 13th, etc, and it can do inversions, too. You could even do several passes recording the resulting midi back into your DAW each time; the first to make the root chords, and another pass for 1st inversion chords, etc.
I just spoke with the dev and he says he's working on making MM runs a backgound app, which will increase its usefulness even more.
Making and playing chords within Cubasis is easy as pie.
Thanks again for all the answers. So far, I like Chordion for what it basically does. But I have to ask two more questions before I settle down..
1. I still got an eye on Chordpolypad especially for creating custom chords in the keyboard panel. So, does chordpolypad only plays the root chords or does it have the second keyboard panel option to alternate, like Chordion has on the right side?
2. From what I see on the forum, iLectric seems to be the essential app for classical electric keyboard sounds. Any other app that might beat ilectric that you know of?
Neo Soul keys is an alternative to ielectric, I like them both.
With ChordPolyPad you can assign anything to a pad: so if you want to play melodies as well as chords you can assign some pads to be single notes. Pads can be anything, even the weirdest chords, it's the most versatile app of this kind IMO.
Thanks @richardyot I think I'll get them both. Chordpolypad and ilectric.
@Fitz said:
I think Jesse has mentioned having chords on his 'one day' list for Thumbjam. I imagine (hope?) it would work like the current split screen but instead of notes on half the screen, you'd have chord boxes (sized like the drum layouts). Would be swinging.