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.
Comments
Haha... Reminds me of the game Spore, a little bit. But I think at some point you'd want to, you know, turn off the creatures.
Yeah, I like the simplicity of it, but I don't need all that wiggling going on when I need to wrangle a part. So I'll pass and wait for the MidiSequencer sequel
Seaquencer only runs in the foreground which makes it problematic for MIDI use. Basically you have to open up the app you're sending MIDI to and tell it which MIDI channels to listen to. It doesn't have a virtual MIDI port that shows up in apps that you can use to configure your MIDI routing so consequently the app will only work with some apps like the Virsyn synths and Model 15 but others like Animoog won't work. The developer seems be unfamiliar with common iOS music work flows. I'll be disappointed if they don't add background MIDI and add virtual MIDI ports you can configure to the app. Will need to setup a MIDI pass through option so I can get the most out of it in the meantime.
At the bare minimum it needs proper midi/background audio. It is fun though. One of the presets is a nice cover of the theme song from Stranger Things. Matter of fact many of the presets are quite impressive.
Fun little app with a nice sounding synth engine.
When it has AB/IAA and can play in the background, I will gladly pony up the 6.99. Until then, its limitations outweigh its charms.
Garageband is designed to work in landscape mode and I never once thought twice about it. And then I think of apps like ThumbJam that are designed to work in portrait mode. I think each mode fits its particular UI.
I'm kinda in the same boat. Though, I think it's fun and want to support the developer too. Holding out for the next update I think.
Haven't played that much yet, but one thing I noticed about those creatures that's pretty cool, is if you position them toward the edge of the screen or just off screen, they kind of wander off and back into the aural field, making for kind of an interesting generative component. If you drag around the "aural field" it extends a fair distance away from what's on screen. You could have loads of those lil' buggers all wandering in and out of aural range within the entire field. Could be interesting to play with.
Yeah I'm thinking it'd be fun to populate the whole screen. Using the solo button to calm things down when it gets messy. You can have as many patterns as you like it seems, but only 8 will be audible at a time. So zipping around a full screen could get nuts
Am I reading this right – I can't even adjust the BPM until I pay $6.99?
My ipad stand always falls over when in portrait mode on uneven terrain (couch, bed, blankets, stomach etc). Also when using other apps having to rotate when switching is a pain.
+1 for Spore!
YES. Another man prepared to come out with the uneven stomach admission! We are few, but we are mighty. And proud!
Kinda.
Get used to it
Hope this gets more refinements.
I think it has a lot of potential but it needs more options for controlling the creatures. I feel like it could be like a borderlands granular for midi/sequencing but being tied to the sea creature idea might make it a bit too restricted overall. I like that you can freeze the creatures, but would be better if when in this mode you can also move them around for controlling a mix easier. Also if you could define the path of each creature that would be great.
Also in the global overview you could mix those in and out in different ways for more advanced compositions.
Reminds a bit of Poly, which I wish also had different scenes you could mix in and out of.
The internal synth sounds really nice though.
But I did buy the iap.
Worth noting that external clock sync only works via an external device, not an external app on the same ipad.
Deleted because I'm giving the app another chance for me to gel with how it does things. Apologies
Yeah, I have to agree. The marine biologist in the developer group should be ousted. Glad I didn't spring for it since it was something new.
To be perfectly fair, it's not my thing, but if someone wanted to put it to the test, my suggestion would be to just keep cloning patterns and then changing them, keeping in mind that no matter what, only 8 patterns will be heard simultaneously. So fill up the screen without thinking about what goes where and pan around, see what happens. If it's interesting let us know.
I think it's not for us. I would much rather see people aimlessly noodling on Seqquence during their morning subway ride than gazing pathetically at Candy Crush...
For people who want complete control of their setup, Seaquence is not the sequencer for them. If on the other hand you would like to play with creating a balance between control and variable elements in your compositions then Seaquence would be worth looking into. For me, the app will be much more functional when background processing and virtual MIDI are added to the app so I can integrate it with other app setups. Link and IAA would be even better.
I'll have to break out the iRig MIDI and USB audio interface to hook up to external gear.
The sea creatures aren't just some random wriggly things, their behavior reflects the underlying audio parameters of the music being generated so learning to understand their behavior seems useful for getting the most out of the app. I do agree with others that adding more controls to the app with respect to how the sea creatures move through their environment would be very useful and add another layer of compositional tools to the app.
+1 agree with all this, especially the part about there being more to these sea creatures than meets the eye.
Played with it last night and got a little bored fairly quickly, but I think there's something here worth keeping an eye on. I didn't go for the IAP, but I may after I see what the first update brings.
How do you clone the creatures? Is that only available after the IAP upgrade?
how do you access midi out, and background audio menu? is there one. i want to send out midi to other apps and not hear seaquence rd internal synth
Hey. Ryan here (1/2 Seaquence devs). I'm loving all this feedback.
MIDI is a Seaquence Complete feature. After upgrading you can enable note send/receive and change the clock sync mode in the Settings app.
Creatures can be cloned by long-pressing on the "new creature" button while editing a creature.
We started a guide here, which has some more info. It's a work in progress:
http://okaynokay.xyz/seaquence/guide
i have upgraded, but none of those setting show up
Make sure you have send/receive enabled in the Settings app. The voice channel selectors won't show up otherwise.
i'm sure i am just being dumb, but where are the settings located in the app?
never mind..... iphone settings... lol i knew i was being dumb.
is the a background audio option so that you can be in another app, while seaquence is sending out midi?. currently it stops sending midi when i switch over to my synth app
Currently Seaquence only plays in the foreground. I know it's a big limitation and working on a fix for this..
@notlion I noticed that when I pause and restart the sequence, it starts from the second step.
Ah yeah I see that. The first note is actually played but the playhead doesn't update. Thanks.