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
Exactly!
This has been the number one reason why I love the OMB approach. Of course here there are so many pro musicians that can play Bass, Drums, and program everything and it’s pure simplicity for them. Well not for me. Although I’m learning but time, always the dreaded time it takes; and sometimes honestly, since we’re so short on time, by the time I finally get going my inspiration has dried out.
That’s why OMB is perfect cause say I wanna record a basic song based on techno or let’s just say, cha cha cha type of music, just find a great Midi style file that fits the bill and record all my chord progressions in real-time into the built in midi recorder, all with intros, variations, fills, Bass, Pads, leads, all in a single pass! Then export the whole enchilada to X2 which beautifully created separate midi tracks per channel and even the control data per channel, edit it, add, delete and bam! Send now to AUM to any AU instruments you want and there you go, the flesh and bones of a song in minutes not days or weeks!🤯❤️🤗😳
Great info, and really helpful - cheers.
Hi! I'm here!
I'm apprentice musician like these being my tools a Digitech Trio+ (BiaB powered) and GTL... also I dig a lot in Arranger-like tools and this OMB was also sometimes shared in these kind of posts... but anyways... I think there are apps like iBassist and its family very similar to BiaB... I didn't purchased them yet due to price and few arranger-like or backing tracks musicians here to talk about these but here I am Sir!!
How did you load all your midi styles; I can’t seem to be able to do it unless I do it one at a time. I tried zipping via AudioShare and selecting open with but it only loads the folder name and not the styles.
In my investigation today, I have made these assessments at this point:
lack of background audio prevents me from paying for the $30 version
BS-16i seems to have a problem assigning drums from this app I almost spent $20 to see if Sound Canvas is a solution (My Casio keyboard seems to get it right but it has a better arranger function in it)
I might try loading more Styles from the Yamaha, Roland or Korg sites
NOTE: @TheDubbyLabby states that Digitech Trio+ is Band in aBox powered. I'm going to follow that
clue to see if I'd be able to leverage that for live work. I tend to be cautious about complex software solutions for live and would consider a robust hardware alternative.
Digitech Trio+ $329 "learns from your guitar playing" and creates bass/drum accompaniment. Different use case from a Keyboard arranger. Not being a working guitar player I can see how I didn't drill down to this as something I must have. It's something I might test drive at Guitar Center or watch some Youtube videos to get sense if it could work for me or the guitar player I'm rehearsing with now.
I'm rehearsing as a drummer so I haven't pitched any other technical solutions yet. I did loans the Guitar player a Looping pedal but he's not showing much interest. He's really old school and prefers trying to play bass and guitar at the same time on a 9 string hybrid instrument.
I would use an iPad over my Casio PX-560 for live work to save the effort and risk of hauling a heavy and delicate $1000 hardware device around but that beg's the question of what controller I would use. I have
a Casio CTX-700 costing $180 and would probably use it and an Alesis Recital that has 88 keys that cost $200. I'd consider risking either, I guess.
I proceeded to investigate the One Man Band Lite solution for usefulness.
I added AudioBus 3 to the mix and solved the BS-16i drum issue and was able to use AB3 to pipe the
BS-16i audio into AUM to add additional FX to the chain. So, the combination of these 3 is very useful:
One Man Band Lite
AudioBus 3
AUM
with the ability to add FX to the master audio signal output for reverb, EQ, delay
NEXT Steps:
I think it would be wise to pipe OMBL into Xequence 2 and set up an array of Apps in AUM or AB3 as targets for the various MIDI channels.
Additional insights:
OMBL allows you to select and load Soundfonts and Styles. The Soundfonts run in OMBL as a standalone app and the Styles can be used with the OMBL+AB3+AUM+FX chain.
Clicking on the "?" Help feature in OMBL can lead to instructions and links to sound files (some are now stale links) and Styles files from the big vendors and from public domain files sites.
OMBL shows up in the Files app as a "copy to" target for files (sf2 and sty).
Now I'd like to know what the Pro version adds to the capabilities because OBM Lite is great with the caveat that it must be the active "open" app to work and the link to BS-16i may require open BS-16i to get things working after making a change of styles in OMBL.
NOTE" OMBL has a CHORDS map and a Virtual Keyboard (using the same PAD GRID) to trigger notes notes. It also has a MIDI record feature I haven't played with yet. I'm not a big fan of batch processing unless I'm getting paid to use it to produce a deliverable. It's not playing... it's work.
OMB Lite times out and goes silent after 6 seconds so you would need to spend the $30 to work with it but after 10 seconds it's back so you can use it to practice using an arranger stylle approach.
Yo! Trio+ needs simply harmonic material for the learn function the outputs bass line and drum pattern based on it (and style selector). It also has a looper and 5 song's part (and in song mode you can store up to 13 songs by each sd card) so it's similar to arranger but not exactly as yamahas or OMB. I use it as standalone GTL-like machine but also as help for get ideas (and sample riffs) from my piano chords riffs which I can load into GTL or Garageband for compose and live gigging with similar material.
AFAIR iBassist and the drummer apps (I can't remember the name/s) have similar feature to build riffs harmony based. Also Apple's music notepad has similar feature and export into garage/logic so getting backtracks are easy and fun. Just play and get some backing, no need to deal with styles... I will love to see an easy vArranger-like app in iOS but messing with styles and sf2 is 't funny... maybe Camelot app? I remember a post about similar to Mainstage so OMB (or similar with background persistency) and this could be something reliable?
Korg should improve Module a bit more and directly add KMA/Pa50 arranger into it..: just sayin'...
Yep, Lumbeat has the best approach to song creation for me..
IBassist and Future Drummer are the cornerstone of my iOS creativity..
Wish these captain plugins v3 would come to iOS also...🙏
It can zip folder
The trick is the zipped folder should not have another folder within .. just files
Currently I have downloaded most of Yamaha psr libraries since .. however only upload download what’s required .. since the search function in omb is dated
thoughts
thing for me both... Jamman and trio dont midi sync to others ( of course they were never intended to)
Personal taste - Do not like the sound engines to use live consistently
also you cannot set a tempo ( e.g 100, 105), so cant play with bed tracks ( though jam manager has a few work arounds)
So U2 , Christian, Dotted delay stuff out of question
As you said, its best as an idea machine
both of the above are valid limitations
but yeah sound canvas is a better solution for the exact reason you mentioned above ( also some string & Pad patches are lovely)
I'm going to get the sound canvas app.
I have a ton of styles loaded into OMBL and it's good for the lounge shit I would probably need
to work in some local hotels with a singer, etc.
The background audio is a lot less of an issue in practical terms since you can do bank/program selections from this app and you need to have start/stop, intro/ending and potentially the chord page
open when playing.
I downloaded several SF2's and loaded them into OMBL with MuseScore coming out as the best of the lot buy BS-16i sounds better as a rule. I just consider BS-16i to be flakey as a rule and don't trust it.
Hopefully, Sound Canvas is rock solid.
UPDATE: Sound Canvas goes a long way towards making this sound like an arranger keyboard rig. So, $20 for Sound Canvas and $30 for One Man Band and it's a decent arranger set up for IOS. It appears to only load Yahama 9XX Styles but there are a lot available and many are free. Created by users and shared.
Sound Canvas loads into AUM and AB3 but appears to be unreachable and only works for me as a standalone for the OMBL target. I'm going to hold off on OMB and just keep evaluating using One Man Band Lite with some Fake Books to see if I can make a reasonable set list of tunes quickly that I sing. I'd probably want a great singer to work easily. We'll see if my voice comes back after the neck surgeries that gave me some "nodes".
I think OMBL might work for making EDM Loops for many here. Check it out. There are some Hip Hop and Techno styles.
you might want to have a look at this if it suits your needs
https://forum.audiob.us/discussion/24130/roland-sound-canvas-to-buy-or-not-to-buy
as for me , I barely tweak anything on it, so works for me
Well (talking about trio+) aside tempo which could be workable but not synced and sound taste (which in addition to dedicated outputs when you plug AMP and MIXER outputs being the looper routed to AMP and BASS/DRUMS to MIXER could be also effectable with xover and I made some tests with AUM to prove its reliability)...
... if you need midi and high quality backing drums then look into BeatBuddy or the new RC10R if you need looping also...
Thanks, but still even if just files the zip created in AudioShare when opened in OMB lite creates only the folder but no styles come up. Weird cause I can open that zip file anywhere else except OMB lite. All other downloaded styles work great!
Maybe I’ll just use the Sweet Midi player and if I hear a style I like, I’ll export that single style into OMB lite to work on.
One thing I wanted you guys to be aware of is that any style can be instantly converted into a midi file by simply changing or renaming it in AudioShare and changing the file extension from .STY to .MID and by doing this you can load the entire style into Xequence 2 and edit it.
Only caveat though is that X2 will group the whole midi file into a single track. I know the dev is considering the option to select whether one Would like to import the midi file into separate midi tracks depending on the channels. I would love this ability.
Note that any midi file recorded in OMB lite is exported as separate midi tracks and thus Xequence 2 separates the midi file into separate midi tracks.
M> @hisdudeness said:
Have no such issues Audioshare to OMB , maybe the lite version is bugged
as for me i prefer simple midi editing in Cubasis ( simple no frills approach) and does general midi assignments like a boss
e.g ireal pro has midi assignments messed up ( all i do in Cubasis is just change a line to match GM).
For some reason I never bonded with Xequence UI , though I have heard X2 is far superior (which i have not purchased)
@Tones4Christ : you could probably use Photon to playback the files and record the output into Xequence with each channel on its own track as a workaround.
I spent some time with Sound Canvas and the full "One Man Band" app. All they styles
I loaded into OMB Lite did not transfer into OMB but that might be good. I can audition
styles and just move over the one's I find useful. I haven't figured out yet how to save/move but
when you down load styles they typically come in as ZIP'ed collections for so get a lot of folders and
hundreds of styles so organizing them will require some effort. I haven't noticed anything like a set list
scheme yet but there might be one there.
One small issue I'm struggling with is trying to mute the left hand chord notes I use to drive the
arranger. I think Sound Canvas which seems to only allow OMNI mode is just playing the input notes from my MIDI controller. If anyone has a tips on getting Sound Canvas to only listen for MIDI from One Man Band, I appreciate the info.
So, it's effectively a "Yamaha PSR, DGX and Tyros Arranger" for $50 on IOS. Seems stable so far.
I think sending the MIDI into Xequence 2 and using great Apps in AB3 for the best available Band sounds is worth pursuing. It would be nice if AB3 could add a standalone app into it's App Switch control which is the coolest tool in IOS ever.
How can we get more hardware arranger players to check this out... buy this app so the Developer gets excited about selling more units and adding enhancements and inter-operability standards. Maybe he is already.
$30 is cheap for an arranger product. Band in a Box sells style packs for $79. Competition lowers prices if there's a market. How can we stimulate this market... maybe it's time to hit up the Digital Piano Forums for their interest. The culture of those Forums brought me here... many, many small minds in a tight cluster: a black(mind)hole.
@McD i think you might need some kind of midi app that can filter out that midi signal from being sent to the Roland App. I think it was one of those issues that never got fixed by Roland from day one. I wonder if Midiflow app could do the job here? Midi gurus anyone?
Oh, i also wanted to confirm whether you are able to zip a style folder in AudioShare then load it to OMB lite and see if it loads up the styles? I can provide a link for some zipped styles from my Dropbox. I just want to make sure and see if AudioShare is not corrupting them somehow.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/pcd45x2x29zgy8l/disk1.zip?dl=0
Quite a few apps listen to any attached midi hardware. Typically, if you want such an app not to be controlled by the midi hardware, you set the app to non-Omni mode and make sure it isn't listening on the channel the keyboard sends on.
It's always something, isn't it. I'm going to see how connecting the MIDI controller via Bluetooth impacts the situation as well. Sound Canvas has 3 Core MIDI settings:
OMNI
Network
I have every MIDI Tool imaginable. I started to see if MIDfire would help but the OMNI issue made it clear
I need to turn that off in SoundCanvas to interpose any filtering solution.
I need to understand what "Network" and Bluetooth will contribute to the situation. I have a Yamaha BT-01 can use. Maybe I should run Sound Canvas on an iPhone and consider Wi-Fi or BT MIDI to the iPad.
Always something...
FYI: One Man Band Live and Sound Canvas are Universal apps. The GUI's a pain but it could be coded to
use fewer larger PAD's. One of the current features is the ability of the user to "program" the layout of the pad's and allow multi-level layouts. So, 8 pads on an iPhone might work to make a really small arranger module. So, many already have invested in an iPhone so for $50 they can a portable arranger.
They would also need the Apple CCK adapter ($40) of course or a Korg PlugKey for 5-PIN MIDI ($80) but they also gets a better digital-to-audio output chip with a volume knob.
Once you learn to trigger chords with the left hand you just need to trigger fills, intros, endings and it's a live performing device. It does have a chord menu for those that just what to trigger the chord progression. I suppose it could be enhanced similar to KRFT to trigger MIDI loops.
There's a lot to like about this sleeper app for live work. People can create new styles and some of the
dance styles are pretty good, IMHO but many are probably dreadful as is the case with most "user programmable" musical technologies.
Yeah, I used to own the Korg i30 Arranger Workstation and it was such an amazing arranger! But I really used it to death to the point where the buttons didn’t work anymore.😪
Well, sold it and found OMB online, but always wanted something portable. So glad it’s available now on the iPad and iphone. Hopefully it gets further developed and I think it will since Jos Maas the developer loves this stuff!
I’ll save up for the full version but for now will continue to use the lite one to test styles and weed out the messed up ones. Really wish there was a way to edit the styles onboard though at least to make them sound better but if you find some good ones, it’s worth it especially if you’re planning to use it to play back live.
Can you recommend any sites for Styles collections or specific style authors that do good work?
It’s been a long time since I looked for styles. I basically have the bunch that I downloaded back when I used OMB. Basically I downloaded anything from the Jos Maas links he provided on his website. All were free so some sound like trash but others might be just right!
Thing is testing each and saving the good ones in a separate folder so you know you tested them and they work great!
most yamaha styles can be found here
https://psrtutorial.com/sty/yamaha/psr-s970.html
Thanks man! There’s a lot of gold in there! Most sound perfect even with the Lite OMB version!
The Mega Styles are great too and I can see myself getting tons of great drum loops about of them!
I just noticed that On Man Band Live supports IOS 9 so I downloaded in to my iPad 2.
Sound Canvas indicates it supports IOS8 but it won't install on the iPad 2 so I'm trying the
small SF2's loaded directly into OMBL. It all works but the SF2's are pretty cheesy like you would
expect.
Still haven't tested the split OMBL on one device and SoundCanvas on another. Can tips on using
Networked MIDI appreciated to save time climbing the learning curve hill. I'm assuming at this point that
readers are also interested in the potential use cases for this app.
Hey everyone, I was just wondering if anyone can tell me if there is a way to create your own styles using OMB lite or the full version or at least edit styles? I do have Cubasis, so also wondering if that might work for editing existing styles (is it possible to convert a style to a Midi file and then change the extension back to a Yamaha style extension format, after making edits in Cubasis to the tracks?). Any feedback would be much appreciated.