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.
All session band apps currently half price.
Thought it was worth a new thread.
Comments
Just deciding which ones now they do take space but half off damn I can always reload a couple later!
The original one is also half priced. I wonder why they're still selling it.
I took it off my iPad / no AB or IAA. I got the country one last night on sale but my first impression was it is pretty Lame! I listened to the one video show showing it and for some reason the two do not seem to match. It was late so I am checking it out more this morning. I pretty much use it just for drums. The pianos on this sound like something I would play myself and trust me I am nothing to write home about when it come to piano playing ability!
I found it very uninspiring.
How do folks like the EDM version? I'm kind of interested but I wonder if people think it's worth the price.
@Munibeast FWIW I find this to be the least useful/good of this set. But then I'm not really about EDM. With the others I can transmute the playing for my own uses, EDM doesn't really fit the same proposition and feels more like a loop collection. Which is all well and good, but there are lots of those. No doubt useful to those who might chime in to explain why it works for them, but doesn't seem a natural fit for this collection or the idea behind it. Could I make something with it if so charged? Sure. Have I opened/do I go to it? No. I don't.
@Tritonman Haha, it's certainly no Jerry Lee Lewis playing that ole' piano!
It's all pretty basic stuff, perhaps necessarily so for putting together the chords. BIAB is certainly better, particularly with their 'Realtracks'.
Ah well, the SB stuff serves well as backing tracks for practice purposes, just because they are so simple and open.
Has to be said that I opened up the EDM earlier and noticed, as I had yesterday with the Jazz set, that audiocopying 'loops' doesn't actually produce perfect loops. There seems to be a slight pause at the start of the sample, yes they can be trimmed in AS, but it feels stupid, annoying and like a particularly facile fail. /grump
@thesoundtestroom did the EDM video, maybe other packs too, not sure
Can the patterns in the style presets be edited or is each style preset fixed to its own pattern ?
I got the rock one guys and I'm not too impressed. Here is my scoop. Its alright. But you can definitely hear the reduction in quality specially the drums when you either slow or speed up the tracks.
Most styles are high speed and so for me, I wanted a way to have a virtual bass player specially since I'm able to select the chords. But I guess nothing beats your own playing at least if you don't know how to play at all, it helps to have something like this to jam with.
I got the acoustic as well and I did like it. Only thing is I thought that by getting the rock pack, the acoustic would integrate but like the videos I watched of the original SB app, which is at .99 cents. I might just get that just to jam with and perhaps come up with some ideas. I know it doesn't do AB, but with UCA222 I might find a workaround by recording my output. So far the acoustic is my favorite, the Piano is nice too, but its separate from acoustic so they don't play together as one app. You can only rum either the acoustic or piano at one time. I wish you could import from each other. Either way I think its a great buy to jam with and get your ideas going.
I have Jazz 2 and 3. And piano.
I agree with all of the above. But this is my approach:
The Jazz ones have quite a few varied real jazz drum patterns that can be tempo adjusted. Particularly jazz 3 which has lots of varations within each jazz sub genre. Jazz also has some quite nice upright bass patterns - although admitly only really one per sub genre as far as I can see.
However, I've had some success recording out to audiobus, just the drums and then unmuting just a note or two of the bass and maybe a stab or two of piano or brass. You have to try it a few times to get it right.
This produces a reasonable, kind of unique, jazz break in the chord or chords you've chosen. Not perfect probably - but good enough for slicing and mangling.
This is then taken into Gadget Abu for slicing and rearranging and funking up. Would also work well in Sector or Egotist I'm sure.
I feel this is as good as buying a load of loop samples to use and feels a bit more flexible. And at £2.99 probably it's cheaper.
The piano one I think I'll likely use just as a quick way to try out chord progressions quickly... Then jam over the top with another app. More of a sketch tool. Then I'll probably recreate that chord progression from scratch in Gadget.
@Matt_Fletcher_2000 I think between the twin poles of marketing and damnation you've got it about right for most of us there...
I tried to purchase the complete bundle for 2.99 for the original app but i cant find the option for it inside the app. Any ideas guys?
I figured it out. When you try to download a demo, it asks you to unlock then you have the option to but the complete bundle.
wow, the complete bundle in the original is pretty good man. Acoustic and others are nice in there too.
Is there a way to copy the chords of a song in SB acoustic into e.g SB piano? So I won't have to put them in manually in each SB app I want to use?
@Jakersjaw If you export a song and choose the 'SB' option you can copy it and then open in another iteration of SB.
However (and this may just be an anomaly) I did just do this with a single C Maj chord in 'Piano' and opened it in Jazz3 and it came in as C Maj7(9). Not tested it any further. Would be interested to hear of your experiences if you try it out.
OOPS. No. You can only copy/save your piece or arrangement for opening in another version of the same SB app. Which is disappointing. Very. See below:
Thanks @johnnygoodyear. It would be very handy, if they would allow SB copy across their apps. Should maybe ask them on Facebook.
Hmm, just noticed that there is a metronome click in many of the samples from both acoustic and piano. Was it always there, or is it just in the newest update?
You can turn off the metronome in the mixer.
@tritonman yeah I found out. My bad
just never heard it before, so thought it was a mistake.
The acoustic guitar one is more useful than any of the others because it offers something fairly unique in iOS, i.e. the ability to construct your own chord progressions with real strummed guitar. It sounds decent in a mix. Avoid big tempo adjustments (although they claim to have improved this feature). As for the rest, the problem is that you are only ever going to get cheesy melodic phrases because the need to translate to different chords necessitates the use of root, third and fifth notes.