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.
A lot of interesting IMO tricks for looping lovers
I've been really digging my new looping rig and I thought I'd share some of the tricks I've been coming up whole jamming. Check it out. Here's the preset I'm using
Audiobus preset 'Click 3 Mics 2': http://preset.audiob.us/tJ4G3TQlVimfPl3
Comments
Hey, thanks for posting. Great funky sounds, nice to hear your setup evolve. I also like your "topoftheworld"-camera setup. Cheers, t
Cheers @animal.
By the way, if anyone has any questions about what's happening in the video just fire away.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around using Loopey as a simple guitar looper to jam along with myself. Any tuts that you know of to help a rank beginner? I guess the audiobus multi route is key and for guitar use, some sort of foot controller would be nice. Then it get to be too much for my old brain cells to handle....thanks
Me too. Never can quite get seamless at the loop point. Not even using count-in. Also keeping in mind just what is on which loop. Need a smal aircraft level of complexity in knobby bits.
Like this btw.
I'd imagine supadom has been looping for a long time to be that good.
I would really appreciate some insight on your midi controller hookup...like the Arturia, how do you use it.
Nice video:-).
Thanks
C'mon @supadom, we want you to give it all away, a masterclass about your as yet unreleased Looping in the Loft series...
I haven't done it much, but Blueboard MIDI foot controller seems to be a good way to control looping with Loopy. I use one midi command that will start and stop each loop and another command to go to the next loop.
I wish I was as mentally organised as Doug to get a proper tutorial going @JohnnyGoodyear Too much prep too
In the past my arturia loopy bindings were all over the place and would run horizontally:
Pad 1 = rec without count in (punch in)
Pad 2 = rec with count in
Pad 3 = delete track. Etc
This wasn't very intuitive but thanks to @Michael who added hold feature in the new update of loopy now I'm able to do this with 2 buttons instead of 3 i.e.
Pad 1 = rec without count in
Pad 9 = rec with count in (if track empty)/ mute (if track full)/ delete (long press)
1 and 9 because they're immediately above each other so the next track would have 2 and 10
The last 4 pads on the right are reserved for
7 = mute track 12 (4 on the floor kick)
8 = mute all tracks (I can mute them all to only leave samplr playing for dynamic effect)
15 = this is bound to magellan's volume on=100 off=0. I use magellan as a vocal effect and this way I can mute the mic to avoid spillage when I'm recording other instruments.
16 = finally this one is bound to session stop/restart.
I used to get confused with what's on which track too @dwarman (my memory sucks too) so I started using one specific track for bass, one for backing vocals, one for the guitar and the others for other less important bits. Out of 12 tracks I effectively only use the first 6. Others are for prerecorded loops of: click for the drummer, four on the floor kick drum, 16s hihat, and snare with other 2 reserved in case I run out of tracks and are bound to akai lpd 8's pads in cc mode.
Nappy break
...so this would look like this
I think in terms of getting it right with recording loops has a lot to do with one's timing. It's so easy to speed up ever so slightly and that will show in the recording. One thing I found that helps is to play the first note of the loop again as the loop starts playing back. That kind of covers up any potential jumps but might introduce a bit of phasing from doubled sound.
@Johow if you are a guitarist or play an instrument with both hands foot pedal of sorts comes in real handy. I used to use Ik Blueboard but found the switches being a bit hit and miss and opted out for boss fc50 which I plug into my midi interface's midi in. Some people swear by behringer fcb1010, I personally find it too big as it wouldn't fit between me and the stand where my gear is mounted. I actually very often find myself just pressing the count in recording and waiting for the start of the bar which saves me from messing with foot pedals or when I forget to bring one with me.
Another cool trick I think, is to quickly press 'rec without count in' for like a sec while singing or playing and let the thing evolve rhythmically in the background. Whether it will fit into your particular style is another story.
Also @soundklinik arturia sends start and stop messages that samplr responds to. I only use stop as start will start beatstep's internal sequencer which I don't want. This is cool for stopping samplr to let some air into the mix. Then when I want to come back with the full mix I just restart loopy in time with the beat and it all comes back with the vengeance. You can see it happen at: 8.58 (stop samplr via beatstep) and 9.55 (restart loopy to bring samplr back).
Good stuff Dom, thanks for the breakdown.
^ So. Much. This.
It's not related to Loopy at all—I got this advice from the Looper's Delight mailing list in the 90s because I was having similar problems. Tried it and suddenly I was cooking with gas.
If possible, at least until you've practiced a whole lot, you want to be playing when the loop starts recording and still playing when the loop stops recording. You will get much better loop points.
As a silly pants example with ABCD beats...
Or at least:
It's like hitting a baseball: pull back a little extra first and then follow all the way through.
We didn't have baseball at my school (lots of silly pants mind you...)
Dude... this is really good!
You're a time lord! lol
What are you using for your vocal F/x & processing?
What apps are you using for the synths?
What are you using for your monitor for guitar-just the headphones or an external unit?
Vocals = Magellan, synth = sunrizer, samplr. Guitar uses iPhone as amp sim via line6 sonic port that goes into EIE via audio in
^ now this is interesting. I always imagined that chaining two audio interfaces together would make too much latency for live looping. Is it difficult to work with?
I'd imagine if you were direct monitoring through the EIE there would be no additional latency.
@supadom - loving the tornado effects on your vocals. What combination of effects are they please? (If that's not giving too much away!)
Not at all @Matt_Fletcher_2000 here's the screenshot
Yes @Hmtx there is a slight increase in latency but I can live with it. I'm not using direct monitoring as also needed to hear the sunrizer and other things so it was either this or that and blending doesn't sound great when it sort of flanges.
Maybe a good use case for a LoopyME feature request: Direct Monitoring toggle per track. That way you could have it on for everything except your guitar. I often use my iPhone as a preprocessor as well.
What I'm really hoping for is some of the Masterpiece features I.e. IAA effects will come to loopy as well, hopefully even before the release of the big boy. I'm certainly looking forward to ME which should in theory put an end to many AB related issues. Saying that, ever since the beginning of iOS music there has been a lot of waiting for this or that so I'm not holding my breath.