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

New App: Gif Music Visualiser

Heya,

I've made a fun little audio visualiser that uses gifs to create a video. I've only spent a few days on it so it's definitely in the "proof of concept" phase.

I wanted to bring it here because I know you guys like new things ;) and I thought you might be able to give me some feedback on features & use-cases. I can imagine it being used for:

  1. Easy way to make a visual accompaniment for your music to post on social media
  2. A visualiser for live music / DJ sets (would need to support MIDI in for this!)

You can check it out here: http://lyzer.alexfoxy.now.sh


You can either use the pre-loaded song or upload your own mp3! Steps to use below:

  1. Hit "Load Audio" and choose an mp3 from your computer, something electronic / dancy is probably best suited
  2. Wait for it to analyse, should take a few seconds
  3. Add your gif search terms on the right hand side
  4. Press play and watch the madness unfold

Sometimes it gets the tempo wrong. Just hit the cog and set the tempo & cue point manually. Also I built it for desktop really, though it should work on iPad.. if you have any mp3s to upload!


Ideas for the future:

  • Better control over gif selection
  • More effects / layer blending / transitions
  • MIDI input to trigger the switching of gifs or match DAW bpm
  • Use video files, though would probably have to be on a desktop version

Look forward to your thoughts :)

Alex

Comments

  • Nice! I tried to upload a song but it crashes after around 30 seconds. But the idea is sweet. Will there be a possibility to record and download or you need to record screen and then crop?. But good and useful idea!

  • @Puma said:
    Nice! I tried to upload a song but it crashes after around 30 seconds. But the idea is sweet. Will there be a possibility to record and download or you need to record screen and then crop?. But good and useful idea!

    That’s odd! Can you send me the track? And what platform you using?

    Yeah, to be truly useful you need to be able to export the video. Bit tricky from the browser I think I’d have to make a desktop app anyway to do stuff like midi.

  • @Alex fox Wow, I would love to have this on iOS :) Really cool, I will follow this thread.
    Thanks for making this!

  • Cool idea here and you have your use cases lined up. But make sure you think carefully about the user workflow. What you describe in terms of MIDI control is good but live setups are all about predictable state saving and recall at the press of a button. If I have to load a song in one place and a video accompaniment in another, I just won't do it. Too many moving parts and ways for things to go wrong on iOS. If you make your tool AUv3 with state saving then I am down with it because I can load a single project with both audio and video pieces. Also makes it easier to construct the video simultaneously with the music.

    BTW, love the GIF angle. Ever since I started working with Glitch Clip (ahem, check it out if you haven't already), I've become a believer that GIFs are the most fun and fast way to build up a video accompaniment. With glitch clip I can knock out a really fun video montage in 15-20 minutes. That's amazing!

  • edited March 2020

    This looks promising. Here’s a video created from a cropped screen recording of the website. No other editing of the screenshot was done. Using slow WiFi and being web based I would think account for some of the glitches in the video where there are black screens as the app was loading in the next GIF. The GIF search terms were Pepsi, Coke, Pelosi, Trump, Covid-19, and Pooh.

  • This is really cool, I’d love to see it as an app

  • @lukesleepwalker said:
    Cool idea here and you have your use cases lined up. But make sure you think carefully about the user workflow. What you describe in terms of MIDI control is good but live setups are all about predictable state saving and recall at the press of a button. If I have to load a song in one place and a video accompaniment in another, I just won't do it. Too many moving parts and ways for things to go wrong on iOS. If you make your tool AUv3 with state saving then I am down with it because I can load a single project with both audio and video pieces. Also makes it easier to construct the video simultaneously with the music.

    BTW, love the GIF angle. Ever since I started working with Glitch Clip (ahem, check it out if you haven't already), I've become a believer that GIFs are the most fun and fast way to build up a video accompaniment. With glitch clip I can knock out a really fun video montage in 15-20 minutes. That's amazing!

    Awesome. Thanks for the feedback. I think there's two uses for midi in:
    1. Simple beat matching for a DJ set, could also work in Ableton Link
    2. Triggering specific gifs with midi notes. This would of course require a fair bit of setup!

    In both cases I'd assume you'd want to save your setup. Whether it's a list of gifs to randomise from or something more specific.

    @InfoCheck said:
    This looks promising. Here’s a video created from a cropped screen recording of the website. No other editing of the screenshot was done. Using slow WiFi and being web based I would think account for some of the glitches in the video where there are black screens as the app was loading in the next GIF. The GIF search terms were Pepsi, Coke, Pelosi, Trump, Covid-19, and Pooh.

    Very cool!! Yes, the Gifs are currently loaded on the fly, which only really works on fast wifi. This can obviously be improved later down the line. Did you match up the music in post?

    @Fingolfinzzz said:
    This is really cool, I’d love to see it as an app

    An app would be nice, however, my concerns are:

    • harder to develop for (but I do have the experience)
    • less horsepower and screen real estate
    • audio / video often resides on a laptop (for most musicians!)

    It's not out of the question just need to hone in on the use cases and market before I invest anymore time into it :)

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