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
This!! Exactly this!! Also, check with the Audiobus guys--they have a Ableton LINK master start setting built into Audiobus. Please make sure it is working with that. That way, everything starts together and no one has to start everything manually. Talk to @MichaelTyson or @Sebastian for details on this. It's an essential feature and one of the things that makes Audiobus so great.
BTW, I beta test for many, many apps, and I've paid full price for both your app (before you lowered the price later that same day), and I paid for the IAP. Please let me be on the beta test team so that I can help test and make sure things are bug free!! This is a great app--especially for iPhone users who don't have a lot of options, and making everything as seamless and as easy to use and as problem free as possible is my total goal.
Excellent!! Thank you!!!!
Yeah, there's now two separate threads going on in here, one on "how do colors relate to everything" and another on "everything's too f*cking dark".
Are you on the iPhone or iPad? We had to make a compromise on the font size on the iPhone to cram in all user interface elements so that it all fits even on the iPhone 5s or SE!
Thank you!
Can someone do a video... please... Xequence for Dummies..
like me..
Thank you..
I'm starting to like it more. I noted some issues above getting it to record notes with an external controller, but that was apparently a mistake on my end, and I corrected it within 5 minutes after the dev gave me the steps.
There's still some little things that I'm having trouble navigating, like how record one part of a track and then switch to a different instrument and get it to do the same. In a DAW, like MultiTrackStudio or Cubasis, you set a MIDI INPUT device that receives note commands for whatever you are working on at that time. So far, it seems like the "tracks" in Xequence are different instrument routes. It wasn't readily apparent to me how to switch on working from one to the other, but again, it's probably in the instructions somewhere and I've only used it on my iPhone 6s, which means the text and controls are quite small. I expect it to get better as I get more used to it.
To be fair, I haven't come across a MIDI app yet on iOS that wasn't plagued by similar problems. Modstep, ProMIDI, etc....these are popular apps with tons of features, but with my somewhat novice skill set, it's often the case that I spend as much time diagnosing and fixing connectivity issues than I do actually using the app. Xequence is simply a continuation of that, even though it seems intuitive enough and I'm actually pretty impressed with the feature set.
Thanks very much, I appreciate it. Yeah, we call Glissando "Glide" in the app, I think. Too many words for the same things.
Please check the online manual, it is always updated and now has a diagram (almost looks like a spaceship) which gives a good overview on routing.
http://www.seven.systems/xequence/manual/
But to be brief: Tracks go to instruments (several tracks can go to the same instrument), and an instrument goes to a synth app or hardware synth via MIDI. If you use MIDI In and MIDI Thru, you should set everything up so that your hardware controller ONLY sends its MIDI to Xequence, NOT to the synth apps etc.. If MIDI Thru is enabled in Xequence, it will take care of the routing so that your hardware keyboard always plays the instrument that is assigned to the current track.
Please feel free to ask any specific questions.
Both, but it's especially noticeable on the iPhone (7). I get the difficulty with cramming everything in on the iPhone. Like I say, having the tiny font size is manageable once you learn where things are.
Link? Oh right, that's the thing i always disable when opening a new app
My vote is for AB3 midi
I haven't used AB3 midi yet. But Link is essential.
THIS
@SevenSystems I saw Nodebeat in your manual. Glad you found it useful.
Damn, got me!
@SevenSystems - Does it handle keychanges and scale changes? And is it possible to do tempo ramping?
No tempo track, sorry... regarding scale / key changes: You could do this with a trick: Set up two instruments with the same MIDI destination, also create two tracks for them, and then just select a different key / scale for each (they are stored per instrument). You could then just switch tracks depending on which key / scale you want to use in a certain part of the song.
There's one caveat: it is currently not possible to select the same MIDI destination AND same channel for two instruments, so one would need to be set to e.g. channel 1 and the other to channel 2. So it would only work if you're sending MIDI to a non-multitimbral instrument which is set to "Omni".
Thinking about it, the restriction "Cannot assign same MIDI channel to multiple instruments with same destination" is stupid, and we'll lift it for the next update.
Hope that helps!
@SevenSystems You asked to report about issues using external HW, so here's something! There seems to be something worth checking out in the MIDI sync to external interface. What I have set up, for testing purposes:
What happens is that the iPolysix starts playing, but the Volca starts about (but not quite) one bar later and while in the same tempo, not in the same time.
To rule out quirks in the Volca, it starts precisely when needed using some other (iPad-less) external sync. I tested with an Arturia KeyStep, and have used it with Reface CS's looper before - just press play and Volca is immediately on board. To check if the iPad or the UM-1X is the issue, I tested with ModStep using the same interface, and it worked fine.
Keep up the good work!
It seems to great app, but I want to see some video, to see the workflow - please make one/two and You will have lots of clients
Thanks for the report! We don't have a Volca available here, so we need your help:
The synced device starts a little bit later, that is as intended -- it first gets sent the song position, then is given a little time to actually get there, and then it is told to start playing on the next beat. So, if you hit "Play" in Xequence while the song position pointer is on a bar boundary (gridline), the Volca should start playing exactly 1 beat (not bar) later. Is that the case?
Is there any way on the Volca that lets you see what idea of the current song position it has? (Bars/Beats)... that would be important for me to investigate. If you move the song position in Xequence to say, bar 7... is it on bar 7 on the Volca as well? (you don't need to hit Play, it should be enough to use the ruler to change the song position, and the Volca should acquire it)
How big is the offset between Xequence and Volca? 1 beat? 1 bar? Or something in between? Don't even know if the Volca has a timeline but anyway...
You said that it plays in the same tempo, so, if there's a way for you to see what idea of current BPM the Volca has: if you set BPM to 90 in Xequence and then hit play, does the Volca switch to 90? If you then stop Xequence, set the BPM to 100, and start playing again, is the Volca now set to 100?
There might be a problem with time signatures. Can you try setting both Xequence and the Volca (if possible) to 4/4, and try again?
This is all that I can think of right now. Thanks for the help
EDIT: A short video might also be helpful!
@SevenSystems - does it handle time signature changes? Or can you only have one time signature?
No time signature or tempo changes, sorry.
The developer said an arp is likely in a future update which would be an amazing addition. Already loving this app. Thanks again for giving iphone users a sequencer (finally!)
Thank you! Arp is definitely on the cards, it will probably be a very moderately priced IAP. Our plan is to make something comparable in features to Sunrizer's or Poison-202's arp.
StepPolyArp would be a great example of the perfect arp.
Yes I know and like that one too. Though I never remember if it's StepPolyArp or PolyStepArp
Sadly iPad only
Rather than trying to replicate a great piece of software then, I wonder if a well thought out tutorial of how to use both apps together would be better for all concer? Maybe better integration is what we need rather than a features competition?
Any plans to implement these?
Noble goal, but that means no money for the developer!
Speaking of: I think you'll be surprised at how sales will blossom with a decent video tutorial. I think there are many like me who remain on the fence without visual encouragement.
And finally: how much is this thing? There's an initial price for four tracks? And then an IAP for...more tracks? It's a little unclear.
Yes on the simple straightforward vid. Not only encourage buyers, but also turns slow users (self) into salesmen etc.
As mentioned above, StepPolyArp is iPad only. Some of us iPhone-only users can only dream of such a luxury. We have to eat the scraps at the table that is iOS Music. Please don’t consider this as a replication of any sort—for us, it isn’t.
Getting StepPolyArp's note output into Xequence should be relatively easy, please have a look at the Quickstart manual's "MIDI In" chapter:
http://www.seven.systems/xequence/manual/#midi-in
It doesn't specifically deal with StepPolyArp but we're going to include this in the forthcoming "Example Setups" chapter!
I have to be clear on this one: supporting these introduces significant complexity in the design of a sequencer and many things have to be implemented completely differently. We took the decision to go the "one tempo, one time signature" route because, as useful as they may be, tempo and time signature changes seem to be quite rare and we couldn't justify the additional investment so far. If this feature comes, it will not be very soon because it would require rewriting large parts of the app.
The IAP is for unlimited tracks and is $9.99. Unfortunately with iOS 11, Apple decided not to show IAP pricing anymore on the product page (except if developers go through additional hoops), and we didn't catch that in time. Otherwise we would have included that fact, and we will in the next update.