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.
The scale I intend to use for my current song
The song I’m working on currently is to have a scale that goes like this (with a detail boxout).
What I’m trying to do now is make other apps I have conform to this, so that I can compose that music stuff.
Sunrizer reacts appallingly to this, gliding all over the place in a way I don’t intend it to do, and it was quite a nonsensical tortuous process to get it into Sunrizer. Although I created the scale on Scalegen Sunrizer could never actually see it at all. There was just no way of getting the output of one app to be seen by the input of the other app. In the end I had to go into iTunes and hack it by exporting it to my Mac, then cheat and put the same file back into Sunrizer. That shouldn’t have to be.
Ideally, I’d like to see this in VCS3 and iMS-20, which are the synths I‘m most comfortable with, but Terasynth would be good too.
The next step in the process would be to get this into a controller that works in the correct direction for me: increasing frequency increases in the left direction and not the right direction, but that’s a separate problem.
Comments
I get the feeling that the glut of spending in the “Black” week before christmas was all a waste of money. I’m used to seeing keyboards I don’t touch on synths. What I hadn’t realised was that all the sequencers I invested in are in vain too. Lots of sequencers, like midisequencer, msequencer, genome, pro midi, etc. They all work in quantised steps of conventional note values, don’t they. Even iMS-20, which I’d considered superior to my old actual MS-10/MS-20/SQ-10 set turns out to have difficulty being other than western 12 note midi. On my old SQ-10 I could set any value I like with no domineering oppressive dictatorial cultural totalitarian enforcement of restrictiveness.
domineering oppressive dictatorial cultural totalitarian enforcement of restrictiveness
This is a perfectly precise description of my first marriage. Is your name Lisa?
I guess the question must be asked, what did you expect?
Music schools teach twelve tone equal temperament. Any programmer is going to be influenced by the predominant "school of thought", and the tyranny you speak of is actually the tyranny of the schools as far as I can tell. This world is being suffocated by both poor information and lack of access to valuable information, and schools have settled on pathetic and arcane CPP "theory" which they can continually sell to any sucker who can get a college loan...
...all because the broken window fallacy is now the codified operating system of world commerce.
So, you should focus on acquiring systems which already do what you seek, and idevices/iOS is not it.
I use a macbook with proper DAWs on it for this reason. iOS is usually great for digging out unusual samples though, which can usually be pitch shifted. Thumbjam can supposedly do stuff to samples with the scala format though I've never messed with it.
The problem can easily be that thinking Scalegen (a fairly new app) would cause ripples of support throughout the iOS ecosystem is foolhardy at best, when in fact the typically experienced ultra high risk/low turnover of the iOS app market makes it the least likely place to find such support for unconventional theories of any sort.
Don't even get me started on Thor/Figure's braindead music theory "features"...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2380679
Start, by all means…
Maybe you’re correct — the iPad is just a fun place to generate and construct modules and packets of stuff, then bring it back into the Mac for construction time, again.
Also, OSC was mentioned recently in the context of MIDI’s bondage with the piano keyboard. I know almost nothing of that, although I remember it beginning, all those decades ago.
I also bought Wilsonic today. It looks quite appealing and also more useless than I expected. It should be a reasonably ideal controller. What can I control with it? Nothing. There’s no live output. The sounds it makes are merely tones to indicate the status of the selection, there’s no synthesis capability and therefore I won’t use the sound. Nevertheless, it'll teach me further than I've got so far.
Zetagy - yep, precisely why after 15 years I've given up defending Linux, or even suggesting it to anyone. I still use it, but for most of what I want to do, it's remained a poor tool.
Wilsonic description states that it allows you to export Scala files to be imported into other synths. But I agree, I'd rather see it function as a controller. Until it has that, it is just an ear training/exploring tool, at least for my uses.
Well, time for a compromise then, after all, it’s only art. Only the divinity sprinkled selection process of creativity. Only the design process. Well, as a designer, I’m used to emergent criteria. If I can’t easily use the scale I depicted above, I’ve come up with a rather superb idea. I’ll use a subset that fits into the conventional notes, modified somewhat to perform the same task[1], and then, I’ll simply sing parts of it out of tune. I mean, I’ve no idea how I’m going to do that, or even if it’s possible to do so. How am I going to learn to sing out of tune so soon, within the timescale? I expect I’ll manage somehow. I’ll do my best, I suppose, out of duty to the course of future history.
[1] F# G G# A B D F
Singing out of tune is a breeze! ;-)
You don't need to generate MIDI or any note information for microtonal music.
Take Wilsonic, for example: It's an Audiobus-enabled app.
That means we can take the simple tone it generates, and place it in the Audiobus In slot.
Then, we might shape and give character to that tone by putting an app into the Audiobus Effect slot, like Swoopster, or AmpKit.
Finally we can give our sound further character and a sequence by putting an app into the Audiobus Out slot, like Turnado or Flux:fx, or hell maybe even Loopy.
Many of these apps use MIDI not in a tone-generating role, but an effect-sequencing role, accepting MIDI CC to control various parameters. You can sequence the effects with Virtual MIDI using an app like Midi Pattern Sequencer, or Genome.
You may not even want to use a setup that complex, instead routing to a simple delay like R0verb. Before MIDI, Robert Fripp was doing some nicely innovative work with guitars and electronics, aka Frippertronics.
The possibilities are endless. So, you see, rather than going on about tyranny and toys, we can come up with a solution, today, and get the work done. Happy Thinking-!
I used to listen to No Pussyfooting, over and over and over, in 1977 when I lived in Australia. Drove everyone sane. Then again, I also used to listen to Hawkwind far too much, so ever silver lining has a cloud.
OMG. I just watched those videos you posted, and i've gained a certain amount of admiration for you.
You really are doing your own thing-!
The singing might take some getting used to, but By God, don't ever change-! You're a true artist.
Well, I looked up “singing” on wikipedia, and what it says it is, is what I’m doing, therefore I’m a singer, by definition. Thanks, all, much appreciated praise. I’d better get on and write the third song in that series, which will become an album, called Risk Navigator, which will become the soundtrack to a stage performance thing involving the audience controlling the sequence of events using their illusion of free will, also featuring history redefinition in multiple paths, and a message that there are many paths to an outcome and some are functionally equivalent (and some are not). Kind of a way of destroying the contemporary trope of if you do something, the future goes one way, and had you done something else, the future goes a totally different way with no way of undoing.
My message in Risk Navigator blows open the ideas of luck, fate, resigning yourself to the path you ended up on, etc. If it was possible in the past to have become a pop star in your teens or 20s, get signed, get a few hits, be on the cover of mags, get famous, then take up a more background career and then appear on the scene again now that the wreckage of record companies has settled in the dust, then who’s to tell whether or not you were famous a couple of decades ago? Maybe you were, in an alternate outcome path, and maybe you weren’t in this one, but the potential was there, and it doesn’t matter anyway, they both join up at this node, so lying about being famous ages ago isn’t really lying, it’s reinventing history based on possibility, and in a different history, it actually did happen. Feel better now? Thought so. Everybody is a star, doesn’t matter who you are.
I just realized that you didn't mention gestrument in the topic starter which is made by the same dev of Scalegen. Did you try that out?
Now, in terms of doing this systematically, to practice singing out of tune, you just need a guitar and a strobe tuner. This scale isn't too esoteric since it is bringing in tones at +50 cents splitting a semitone. With a guitar, set your lowest string to standard at whatever frequency you chose, but make the next string +50 cents from standard, then do the same process for the next 4 strings. The idea would be to play single tone melodies to get a sense of the differences and possibilities there.
Also, considering the various issues arising from the construction of a guitar, it makes most sense to tune and sing to open strings instead of fretted ones, since there are large cent variances based on the amount of finger pressure. I'd try to lay out most of the scale to the open strings themselves.
When I first started playing guitar, I always intentionally played -50 cent standard tuning because it sounded so great to me, as the overtones kiss the standard tuning anyway, and I had the ears to appreciate it. Having one guitar tuned standard and another with this variance is a great way to dig into the difference.
Also, I haven't seen anyone mention WorldScales. MIDI in and setting each key +/- 100 cents.
WorldScales by Kelfar Technologies
https://appsto.re/us/HIJgE.i
Have you looked at Bismark left handed?
It is interesting — I’ve had it in my wish list for a while, and next time there’s a price drop I’ll go for it (it has dropped in the past).
What I’m doing a lot, at the moment, is using Gestrument upside down. As I’m only learning it, and am unfamiliar with it anyway, it’s slow progress when there’s otherwise a song to be made. But I can see I’d quite like a suitably laid out Gestrument in the future. All it takes is to flip the entire user interface of Gestrument (left-right; top-bottom), but with the typography remaining the correct way up.
Exactly, the original impetus for the scale I presented from ScaleGen came from running a lyric line past my guitar, and finding that I quite like the tiny differences in tone in a small cluster, caused by playing peacefully up and down only two strings and bending the string to about halfway between the next fret’s frequency, each intermediate step. I was playing on the B and E strings, but the open string is harder to bend accurately so I started at the first fret position of those strings, for four or five frets. The rest of the scale is a kind of little bit of decorative relief of wider spans in which to jump and stretch and yelp, and then sit back down and be thoughtful and wait for winter to pass. Why haven’t my snowdrops come up this year? The crocuses are starting to flower already. Must’ve bought cheap faulty snowdrops. I haven’t the patience for proper gardening anyway.
Then I thought I’d better make it more compatible with most of the iOS synths I’ve spent too much money on, so I banged it into a more keyboard friendly shape. I’m finding
F# G G# A B D F
quite playful and comfortable on a keyboard and also guitar, so I’ll give that a try, and get back to implementing a fully left-handed workflow later in the year (otherwise nothing will get done if I have to wait for that).
Could there be a Wilsonic guitar?
Well, there is a movement known as microtonalism, and there are a few paths taken in approaching it, usually by guitarists (string players) since their instruments are the least tied to 12-tone ET construction while being easiest to tune (in the acoustic space).
One path is to have a microtonal fretboard which would split each semitone in half, giving you 24 unique tones per octave rather than 12. However, there are many other divisions possible, some based on just intonation, others on equal divisions. Check this out: http://www.h-pi.com/eop-guitars.html
Another path is to go fretless, but the easiest path in that case is to play lap steel guitar by converting a junk acoustic. I consider the lap steel route much more logical because the construction of the guitar destroys the tonal accuracy of any of the fretted methods. Fretless/lap steel forces you to develop and depend on your ears to get what you want.
And another path, is to practice pressure variances and string pulling or pushing (not just as bends vertically, but pull or push horizontally).
A book used to get deeply into understanding relationships between just intonation and ET on stringed instruments is Harmonic Experience: Tonal Harmony from Its Natural Origins to Its Modern Expression by W. A. Mathieu. http://www.amazon.com/Harmonic-Experience-Harmony-Natural-Expression-ebook/dp/B00IUOGV6K/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423573082&sr=8-1&keywords=Harmonic+experience
There's a guitarist named Steve Kimock who is deeply into the second two approaches, so check him out. I built my own philosophy out of my reaction to both Matthieu and Kimock, and I definitely recommend anyone else interested in breaking from standard theory to take some clues there.
Of course, the voice is in fact the cheapest completely variable instrument available, but the culturally brainwashed must run even that into 12TET through auto-tune.