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.
Little Night time piano improv (as a test mostly)
Used MIDI Tape recorder + AUM to setup a little environment to do some quick night time piano improv when can't sleeping. Love the simplicity of MIDI Tape recorder. This is just a some sample chords to get the sounds married good. Plan to start making more serious recordings using this simple 4 track setup. Used the Soundfonts app for the soundfont sounds.
Track 1: Piano (Ravenscroft tweaked)
Track 2: Finger Bass (Soundfont)
Track 3: DX7+Pad (Soundfont)
Track 4: Light Percussion (Soundfont)
Comments
I love the choices you make… there are pleasant harmonic surprises that just carry me along like a walk through nature.
Very relaxing and some beautiful chords in there. Would like to hear more!
Thank you @McD and @AlterEgo_UK. I’m having fun playing with this simple 4 track live recording setup today. Limited to 4 MIDI tracks, can do punch-in but no editing. What you play is what it is.. Takes me back to the beginning of Tascam 4-track cassette recorder days. Makes me focus on the music more. Sometimes being simple is more I guess.
Thanks for listening. I’ll try to post something more substantial later.
It sounds like you have the chops for laying down compelling music without a lot of extra steps.
Thanks. I just tried to stack another instance of MIDI Tape recorder in AUM, routed more intstrumets to that, and both MIDI Tape Recorders seem to sync up together recording/playing. Would be easy to do this in a DAW, but think it’s neat to do it all in AUM.
Edit: I’m hitting DSP max sometimes in AUM stacking two MIDI Tape Recorders with the 8 instruments.
I'm going to stay with the 4 track for improv recording, but wanted to see how far I could push making a MIDI Tape Recorder (MTR) song in AUM on my iPad 9th Gen. Looks like it can handle 2 instances of MTR giving 8 MIDI tracks. Added some plugins for effects, made a total of 46 Nodes opened in AUM. Any more than that it starts clipping. Used some large soundfonts, so that probably hurt on memory. There's no Quantization in MTR, or overdubbing, makes playing percussion a bigger challenge. When running two MTR, have to make sure looping is off on both, just use AUM controls for starting and rewinding.
Here's a simple test of an 8 track MIDI Tape Recorder for the curious. Not meant to be polished, just threw some bossa nova chords down. Overly busy, but wanted to keep all tracks going for a test.
Extremely good! I love how this develops. Each chord change was a surprise but, at the same time… not. It just flows seamlessly. It just works. I am trying to imagine what your horn part will sound like! I can listen to this for hours.
I started with one of these back in 1983…
I hear similarities between your choices of chord voicings and mine. lol, that’s a good thing. You’re a jazz player.
Another beautiful creation… really inspiring chord choices. Like the surprizes in a Donald Fagen ballad like “Maxine”. I look for artists that can create this type of harmonic artistry consistently. Stevie Wonder has the most consistent ability to find new paths through traditional harmonic material that no one has assembled before. Neo-soul keyboardists are the genre that seem to keep mining harmonic adventures.
Keep sharing your efforts please.
@Paulieworld: I remember seeing that fostex. Those were very good. My first 4-track was a Tascam 244, traded up to a Tascam 688, then I got a couple Alesis ADAT’s - then got married and stopped altogether for many years. The iPad, and this forum with all the great tracks, rekindled my interest in recording.
@LinearLineman: Listening to your stuff has influenced me for sure. Not trying to butter you up, but you are the most unique improviser I've ever heard. When I listen to your stuff, I never know what direction you're going and I don't mind either - I just sit back for a great ride. Also, listening to it over seems just as fresh to my ears as the first time. Never boring.
@McD: Thank you! Funny you should mention Stevie Wonder, I've been practicing singing one of his songs today for a Valentines Day gig Wednesday ("l just called to say, I love you").
Oh my… not that Stevie Wonder song. (Sorry… just haven’t got over the disappointment of that song).
Yeah, you’d be surprised how often that one is requested at retirement communities.
Oh… that makes sense. It’s right up there with “Sweet Caroline” for requests. (“Bah bah bah” everytime).
And Bobby Brown by Frank Zappa 🤦🏻♂️😄
Wonderful work @Dav! 😊
Some lovely work here… more please !
Thanks, @rs2000 & @GeoTony. I appreciate the listen. This is where the real joy of music is, sharing it with people.
Here's another night time improv piece, more complete. Was playing and looking out the window, losing myself in the great nature view I have overlooking the woods and a path by a creek. Started with piano, improving to some ideas I've been playing with the last few days, added bass and 2 other tracks. Couldn't really play with mixing/balancing too much in AUM. I'm DSP maxing out with only 4 instruments with a few plugins for some reason. Crackled when I tweaked things. I think it must be the large soundfont I had loaded. I saved the piano MIDI file in case I want to redo this later in MultiTrackStudio.
MIDI Tape Recorder (4 tracks):
Track 1: Piano (Ravenscroft)
Track 2: Pad Tine EP (Korg Module Pro)
Track 3: Bass (iFretless Bass)
Track 4: Ice Rain (soundfont)