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.
Live Guitar/Live Guitar Free updated to 1.5
Live Guitar and Live Guitar Free have been updated to v1.5. New stuff includes fixed samples for the steel string guitar (no fret buzz.. I liked it, but it annoyed some folks!). The strum area for the iPad has been expanded -- this had been causing some missed notes, depending on how you play. I've tightened up the audio engine, so it should be more responsive on older hardware.
MIDI input support has been improved. Chordion can now play Live Guitar, but there are some problems still -- it seems that Chordion doesn't play nicely with any other Audiobus app that I've tried, so if you don't get sound with both Chordion and Live Guitar on the bus, I suspect the problem is on their end.
A bug in sharing and importing chords through Twitter has been fixed. If you don't have any chord shapes that go past the 10th fret, you probably have not seen it.
Here's a quick demo of the new version (with a screen record of the display, so that you can see exactly where the touches happen). The next version will support the simple single-touch chord selection that apps like Guitarism and OMGuitar are doing, as well as the multi-touch interface that's currently in LG. We've got some other stuff planned as well. Drop me a line if you've got questions!
The demo has me bashing through the riff from Smells Like Teen Spirit; I'm using open string upstrokes, which fill out the rhythm and give a little bit of discord. I've also put in a custom chord shape on the power chord F, so that I can use the top two strings for the drone part. I toggle on JamUp for distortion; it would be easier to do with a stomp box, but....
The demo also has a little chunk of controlling Alchemy through MIDI; I'm really getting a kick out of the Alchemy guitar pack -- some great heavily processed sounds.
(I reposted this as a separate thread -- not sure how the thread ordering is working, or what things get marked as "new").
Comments
Cool - thanks for the update.
"single-touch chord selection .. like Guitarism and OMGuitar" - why?
Because it's easier to use? I really like being able to configure my own chord voicings, but I don't tend to use the multi fingered approach to chord selection because I find it difficult to get it to work reliably. Personally, I will welcome one finger chord selection.
@PaulB's hit the nail on the head. While I like the multi-touch chord interface (it makes the most sense to me), there's a ton of users who prefer the single touch approach. Chordion, Guitarism, GarageBand, actually pretty much any app I'm aware of, does it this way.
The chord selection approach will be user configurable -- a toggle on the config screen between multi-touch or single touch. We'll be adding in left-handed orientations, and a few other things; it's part of a bigger UI overhaul. Most of the serious guitar players I've talked to like the multi-touch, while novices go for the single touch. I'm trying to improve the app so that it gets everyone what they want.
Who are you calling a novice? Lol
Err, what I meant to say was "sophisticated users, who show the good judgment of downloading Live Guitar, and then opting to use a unique, groundbreaking, revolutionary single-touch chord selection interface, the likes of which has never been seen before." :-)
On the iPad, there's no physical bumps to help you keep track of where you are, so it's pretty easy to get lost if you have to move your hand and don't watch the screen. It's the same sort of problem that games have, when the best way to control them would be a joystick and physical buttons -- you slide off the right area, and you're hosed. I did the multi-touch approach so that you could get different chords without ever moving the fretting hand (and the sequence is pretty simple -- 1, 12, 123, 1234, 2, 23, 234, ... and do you really need more than 7 chords for any song?). I can play and switch between chords without looking at the screen, or getting lost; it feels much more "guitar-like" to me.
But.... lots of people are totally cool with watching the screen, and want to play the app from the "front." So, give the people what they want!
"On the iPad, there's no physical bumps to help you keep track of where you are, so it's pretty easy to get lost if you have to move your hand and don't watch the screen." And this is one of the things I like about how Live Guitar does it - I usually pad out the chords so that my first finger is on there most the time which prevents digit creep.
But it is nice that you're providing the option as that's how many other apps do it. For quick things I still resort to iShred as it's so easy to dial in a set of chords.
Fair enough wrt giving users what they want. It just made me wonder what things will be like in a few months when all these apps converge to become the same thing. OMG and guitarism will add custom voicings, LG will have single-touch chords, everyone will have MIDI in/out and 6 guitar types and a few built-in effects. GuitarStudio and iShred will get on the bus. We'll have half a dozen guitar apps that are mostly identical. All making less than minimum wage.
I really admire the way the current LG interface makes a statement about not having to move your fretting fingers to play. I also really admired the way OMGuitar's previous interface made a statement about having the entire instrument (with all the chords) in front of you all the time, no configuration / presets needed. OMG 2 ditched that in favor of the one-button chords, and now LG may be doing the same (though it's good to hear that the current option won't go away). Ironically GarageBand is the most unique of the lot, since it doesn't separate fretting and strumming the way the rest do (but requires a lot more finger movement).
I hope we don't aspire to commoditization
I don't think the apps will converge on functionality -- I've got things that I'll add to LG that I don't think anyone is expecting right now, and I'm sure other developers will do things to keep their apps fresh.
Having lots of developers with similar apps puts pressure on us to innovate. This benefits users, and Apple has certainly designed the iTunes market so that the users are the ones with the power. The gold rush days where you could make a million dollars off of a fart app are loooong gone.
While I'd like to sit back and relax, I've got to both fix shortcomings, and also think of new ideas. I'm trying to hedge my bets -- Live Guitar is fairly "normal," while Spectral Eye is more on the fringe. Audio MIDI Connect has a few competitors, but there are not that many people who understand FFTs, and getting fast pitch detection right is really really hard. I know of only one other app that is anything at all like Voxkit. I'm trying to amortize the time invested in learning iOS hacking (and audio systems, MIDI, GUI, and so on...) across a number of apps, as I don't know for sure which ones will resonate with users, and which will go nowhere. All I can do is my best to come up with useful apps, and hope that users appreciate what I do, but nobody owes me a living.
Fortunately for the devs, there are many appaholics out there...myself included. Maybe not enough to get the devs past minimum wage, but hopefully that will change over time. I really think there should be some prime time advertising to show the world what ios/Audiobus/AB apps are doing for music.
+1for innovation.
"things that ... I don't think anyone is expecting right now" Glad to hear that and looking forward to it!
@funjunkie27 Lots of appaholics but most don't seem to care for virtual guitars (guitarism, LG or OMG). On the other hand Turnado is red-hot in the charts right now - great for non guitar-heads but not very interesting for someone like me.
@Rhism - I must be in the minority then, since I have all of the virt guitar apps on the bus as well as a few that aren't. I can't understand why they're not more popular though. I would think that they would appeal to most musicians....guitarists and non-guitarists.
I have a load of them too, but I only use a select few nowadays.
I tend to use my air guitar as I'm much better at it!
I'll stick to guitar apps, I play too many wrong notes on my air guitar....
Guitar apps are in a tricky spot. While most people are totally cool with keyboards and drums being done electronically, there are a lot of guitar purists who think that the apps are cheating (and frankly, they are). There's a bit of cool factor for playing the real thing. And of course, there's really only one reason to learn to play guitar -- and if the geek factor of an app kills it, what't the point?
http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/guys-holding-guitar-makes-you-more-attractive
@SecretBaseDesign Indeed...
working on the ferry/bus/train