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 Store

Audiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.

Any good bass apps?

For now, syns I have Sunrizer, Soundprism and Animoog. And I think they are good enough for me.
Drums, I have DM1 and DrumJam. Also enough for me.
But what about bass?
Any good bass apps out there?

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Comments

  • Realistic Bass or Synth Bass?

  • edited January 2013

    iFretless Bass - unparalleled in my opinion. Has finger style and slap style bass guitar sounds as well as a synth bass. Can be used as a MIDI controller too. Configurable numbers of fret lines and strings (I use 9 frets and 9 strings ), choice of intervals between strings (I'm used to 4ths), velocity sensitive with min and max volume control, plus the usual tone and volume controls you'd get on a bass and master pitch tuning.

    http://ifretless.com/

  • Real bass. Sunrizer can make some good synth bass sounds.
    iFretless bass looks interesting.

  • Thumbjam have some bass models in there.

  • edited January 2013

    I'm not an IK fan but you could try Sampletank (free version) it has several real basses.

  • I'm with @Chaplo. Whilst in general I'm not a fan of IK, the electric & acoustic basses in Sampletank IOS are very usable. In fact if memory serves right, many of the examples on the iFretless website are Sampletank bass timbres being played via iFretless (using iFretless as a midi controller via Midi Bridge).

    jm

    http://soundcloud.com/leftside-wobble

  • Ok. Finger style demo here http://snd.sc/X3BdG6

    Slap bass style demo here http://snd.sc/VYWUuA

    Both iFretless internal sounds, untreated, unedited and largely improvised after a 5 minute warm up.

  • I tried to look for iFretless in the appstore and it said it couldn't find it.

  • edited January 2013

    This may be why. The YouTube page says they are updating to v2 the 2nd week in January.

  • Neither did I.
    That is strange. I remember I checked App Store yesterday and it was there.

  • Thanks PaulB for the clips. It is impressive.

  • Wow that is messed up, I was also looking at it on the store yesterday.. Maybe the dev's appstore subscription ended? I thought it looked a lot like geosynth or Cantor.. The video's are impressive for sure.. I was going to pick this up on friday.. How depressing. lol

  • It is already back.

  • So it is. That was odd.

    Here's the appstore link
    https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/ifretless-bass/id512929963?mt=8

  • The thing that will be really interesting (for me at least) with the new version of iFretless will be if it enables you to use it's midi controller features to control your favourite bass sample libraries on a desktop DAW. My favourites are the Scarbee ones by NI for Kontakt. Just purchased the RICKENBACKER library which is my favourite of their's so far.

    http://www.native-instruments.com/#/en/products/?category=1761

    On most Kontakt libraries the articulations are changed via key-zone techniques so it would be great to have a more natural way of accessing these via the midi setup page in iFretless. I don't expect this feature to be there at the launch of V2 but I'm sure the developer will be heading in that direction as it's a natural progression for the app.

    Electric & Acoustic bass is unfortunately one of those timbre groupings that can only be delivered realistically via large sample libraries (far too large for an IOS device at the moment) - that is until some genius works out an algorithmic approach like we have for piano's (thinking of the amazingly expressive Pianoteq plugin here); now that would most certainly be fun on an IOS device!

  • edited January 2013

    I have Scarbee Jay Bass and Scarbee Black bass. They are the best money can buy ATM for sure. Kontakt is amazing.

    @jonmoore you can use ifretless to control Kontakt now I imagine. Should be able to use midi bridge and rtpMIDI. Or are they adding some kind of non-Wi-Fi way to do it?

  • edited January 2013

    You guys convinced me to give a try at iFretless.

    First question: where are all the sounds we can see in the video? The upright bass? I just have 3 sounds in it...
    Second question: is there a way to have scales or something similar (you know ThumbJam like)? Right now I feel a bit lost and need to have the notes displayed on the screen. And I don't want that, I want to be able to select a scale or a chord and just jam with my fingers on the screen without risking to play a wrong note.

    It seems to be a great controller but I just don't get it with the chords settings, seems like they are just different layouts of the notes but doesn't eliminate the notes that are not in the chord so you can still play a wrong note. (I hope I'm clear...)

    I really want to like it, but I feel like I'll have a huge AppRegret with this one. Am I missing something?

    Edit: oh, and I almost forgot: where is the f***** manual?

  • @ryan

    You can use it at the moment but it would be interesting if you could configure some of the controller information (CC/NRPN) to take into account the touch-screen interface of iFretless. It might necessitate NI building support into into Kontakt too but I'm really excited about 'joining the dot's' between the things I do on my IOS devices and what I do in my actual studio. I make a lot of use of apps like Lemur and have recently started to use Animoog as a midi controller for some of the analog/digital hardware (and software instruments) in my studio. The stuff you can do with Animoog as a controller could only be achieved before with an innovative controller like the Haken Audio 'Coninuum' (at over $5k for the full size model, something I've never been able to justify).

    http://www.hakenaudio.com/Continuum/index.html

    And with things like the Lenovo Horizon coming to market this summer, the future for touch screen devices that are studio friendly looks very bright indeed (if Apple don't keep up, it looks like I'll finally be making the move to PC in my studio).

    http://ces.cnet.com/8301-34439_1-57563532/best-of-ces-pcs-and-tablets-lenovo-horizon-table-pc/

    I'm currently beta testing Ableton Live 9 and am in discussions with the dev team about building touch support into the program for this new generation of touch devices (devices that seemed an unaffordable dream only a year or two ago). The Ableton interface is already incredibly touch friendly so it's not such a far reach.

    But as usual, I digress just a tad... :)

  • edited January 2013

    @Chapalo
    1) That's in the next update, due imminently.
    2) No scales, just chromatic strings, but you can set the intervals between strings.

    What chord settings? Do you mean where it says fourths, tritones, fifths (violin) in the control panel? That's the intervals between strings. This app isn't supposed to be like Thumbjam or a GarageBand smart instrument, it's designed to be a bass guitar for iOS devices, but without the crippling limitations of all the other guitar apps. Learn a few scale patterns, play by ear over some simple chords and you'll quickly get to love it.

    There's no manual. Press the ? (bottom left) when you have the control panel open and select the YouTube icon from the pop up. That'll take you to a tutorials page.

    Sorry you're having issues, but persevere, it's worth it.

  • edited January 2013

    Thanks @PaulB

    At least I can use it as a controller for other apps with a scale lock function.
    I didn't understand that it wasn't a smart instrument, otherwise I didn't bought it. If I want to play a real instrument then I'll use my own bass, or my upright bass. I love the concept of smart instruments. After all we are in the 21st century...

    Anyway, they may update it in the future so I didn't waste my money.

    PS: about the "tutorials", gangnam style? As a tutorial? And twice! Be serious...

  • @Chapalo
    I think they have demos on that page too, but yeah. :P

    Most of the functionality is fairly obvious, with a bit of experimenting, but if you have any questions, I'll be happy to try and help.

    BTW, if you play bass already, the fingering of scales on iFretless shouldn't be a problem for you. I'm a fairly good bass player anyway, but I can play so much better on this app than on my guitars. Being able to play two handed is a game changer and mostly all I'm doing is using one or two fingers on my left hand and two, sometimes three fingers on my right hand.
    Fast scales are usually LRR, LRR, LRR where the comma is a string change. Widdly arpeggiated or repeating patterns I use whatever fingers work best. Geo Synth playing technique tutorials on YouTube apply just as well to iFretless.

  • @PaulB

    Thanks for your help. I'll give it another try and will have a look at the Geo Synth tutorials ;-)

  • Okay, i picked it up and i'm a little bit dissapointed. For sure, it works fine and i like the idea behind. But only 3 basses...??? Where are all the other basses we see in the video??? Ahhh okay, in the next update!? And when will be released the next update??? It will be nice to know......

  • edited January 2013

    I did say, but here's the page where I found that video. Read the developer's comments and replies to questions.

  • There was an iFretless Bass update today, was totally hoping for AB support but nope. Some of the new bass sounds are really good if you have it check it out.

    I asked the dev, Blue Mangoo, about Audiobus. They want to add it but don't have access to the SDK till it goes public. Kind of a bummer, but oh well. lol

  • Got it, love it, will wait eagerly for Audiobus. : )

  • Well Blue Mangoo did say "Thanks. We are planning to support audiobus as soon as the API goes public. It's currently available only to developers that AudioBus chooses to work with. It probably wouldn't hurt if you let the AudioBus team know that you're interested in seeing iFretless included in the AudioBus community. Either way, I expect them to make the API public in the near future." so I'm not sure if the AB team is giving out the SDK anymore or not.. But if they are, that was one of the nicest ways of asking for it, ever. lol @Sebastian is the SDK off limits until it goes public?

  • I'm also looking for an excellent acoustic bass / electric bass for Jazz usage. I am a saxophonist and pianist. I'm NOT a bassist, and a bass type interface is useless to me.

    Can the iFretless app be controlled via a piano type interface (I have the IK iRig and CME iKeys ones).

    If not , what's the best ACOUSTIC bass(also electric, but I mean bass, not synth bass) for iPad out there that will allow keyboard input?

    Thanks!

  • moog model 15 has some great synth bass patches

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