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.
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Best place for filtering effects in chains?
I have a guitar background, and have the fundamentals of how arrange effects in a guitar signal chain. However, when it comes to electronic music, it seems to be a different beast, and when I’m arranging effects, I often get undesirable outcomes, probably largely from trying to use too many. I’m all about experimenting, but in your opinion, where in the effects chain, in electronic music, is generally going to give me the best results, as far as where I add filters? Thank you in advance!
P.S. I should mention, that WoW Filterbox is my main goto choice of filter effects.
Comments
I don't think there are really any hard and fast rules. What sorts of problems have you encountered? That might be a good place to start the discussion.
Thank you very much for the reply, one of the biggest issues I’ve been having, is after adding aggressive filtering from Wow Filterbox, is that the notes keep playing long after I release a key. This of course only happens occasionally, and I’m guessing it’s just the nature of certain presets. However, more to the point, certain effects that sound great on their own, will sound horrible when I stack them up, and so I’m thinking I’m probably putting them in the wrong order.
I came from a guitar/stomp box background, too.
With electric guitar, the raw signal is pretty plain sounding. You add FX and distortions to liven up the signal.
With synths, you can create a lot more diversity in the signal right in the synth. Synths have built in modules to do the same types of modifications that you need those stomp boxes for when using a guitar. So if you add the same FX chain to a raw guitar, it sounds good, but on a synth with an already fat, modulating signal this same FX chain will most likely be overkill.
I think of the raw guitar signal as similar to the Osc in a synth. The FX chain does the work of the built in synth modules.
The built in filters on a synth are to help sculpt your sound, as well as creating modulating filter effects. For me, a filter placed in an external FX chain that has a synth as the input is more useful for modulating, FX type of filtering. If I need to sculpt the sound, I usually look back to the internal synth filters.
If I want to sculpt the sound of the synth and the FX chain, I would probably use an EQ.
This is just what I found from experimenting, and my own judgement of what works for me. So, I try to do as much in the synth as I can, and don’t use as many FX as I tend to do with guitar. Hope this helps.
Thank you very much for taking the time to give such a detailed reply. I generally do rely on the synth, or other apps themselves, however, when it comes to filtering, to my ears, nothing else comes close to what Wow can do, so I almost always add it to the first effects slot in Auria Pro for most channels. I do generally end up with a mess whenever I try to add more effects on top. I just purchased many 4Pockets.com effects, and so I want to try them out every chance I get. I suppose it’s a case of less is more in electronic music.
If you bypass the effects do you still get the stuck notes?
If you are talking about stuck notes from a synth being controlled by MIDI -- that issue is probably separate from the other issues you mention.
Sculpting sound requires some patient experimentation with each of the effects you are using both on their own and in combination. And it helps to understand what the effect and its parameters due to the signal.
Sometimes effect order makes a huge difference and sometimes it doesn't. Experimentation will show you.
The levels can make a huge difference. If one effect has a really "hot" output, it might make a difference to the next effect in the chain.
All of this is true whether you are talking about synths or guitars or stompboxes. Sometimes one has a lot of experience with particular stomp boxes and so you just know (from your experience) how the stomp boxes you have interact.
I remember when I got my first wah-wah pedal. It took a lot of experimenting for me to figure out where in my simple effects chain (Octavia distortion pedal, some cheapo phaser and the morley wah) I liked it best.
That was a long way of saying, get to know the individual effects. And if adding another effect sounds bad -- experiment with all the settings to see way. Try not to hear "bad" and try to identify the aspect of the sound that you don't like. Is it muddy, shrill, overdriven, or whatever.
Not sure if that was helpful or not.
If you are getting stuck midi notes, it would be worthwhile figuring that out. A precise description of the setup leading to the stuck notes can be helpful.
Thank you very much for your reply, it is in fact very helpful, as it confirms what I suspected. At this point, being so new to iOS, everything is an experiment, and I’ve had many failures along the way, but when things work, it’s an awesome feeling, much more challenging, and rewarding than making music on pc has been. I haven’t touched my pc, except to work in Maschine for percussion, for over two weeks.
Chain smoking filters? This is the extent of my knowledge on this. But, hey, it’s Saturday nite, I feel like partying!
Put another filter after, to tamp down the hanging notes.
Thank you, I never would’ve thought of that, and it makes perfect sense!