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 Store

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

While we're all cooped up inside, here're some Loopy Pro updates

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Comments

  • @Ben said:

    @syrupcore said:

    @Michael said:

    @Ben said:
    Auto record/loop detection, labeling, groups.
    Wait, did you mention song mode somewhere?
    My head is spinning.

    Song mode stuff (i.e. sequencing, on a timeline) is coming in v1.1, but otherwise yup.

    Until 1.1 lands, if I’m understanding the “leaked” bits correctly, one could pretty easily sequence a song with very minimal external MIDI. Set up a group per song section and assign that group to a midi note. Send notes from an external sequencer. Slowly. :)

    Can a loop be part of more than group?

    Are you asking if a loop can be part of more than one group?
    If that’s the question it’s a very cool thing. Group the loop does that and it’s super time saving.
    Meant to add that it is a simple copy and paste action.

    There are play groups and colours, so that’s two groupings; anything more than that you’d need to do yourself, but that’s fairly easy using the control system.

  • @espiegel123 said:
    In the meantime, I posted a Mozaic script that lets you define 4 groups of any combination of Loopy’s 12 tracks. And also provides discrete mute and unmute via MIDI that one can use while we wait for Michael’s new masterpiece.

    Woa. I totally missed this. That is dead sexy work.

    https://patchstorage.com/loopy-mute-control/

  • @Michael said:

    @Ben said:

    @syrupcore said:
    Until 1.1 lands, if I’m understanding the “leaked” bits correctly, one could pretty easily sequence a song with very minimal external MIDI. Set up a group per song section and assign that group to a midi note. Send notes from an external sequencer. Slowly. :)

    Can a loop be part of more than group?

    Are you asking if a loop can be part of more than one group?
    If that’s the question it’s a very cool thing. Group the loop does that and it’s super time saving.
    Meant to add that it is a simple copy and paste action.

    There are play groups and colours, so that’s two groupings; anything more than that you’d need to do yourself, but that’s fairly easy using the control system.

    Cheers but I'm still a little fuzzy on it. Can a single loop be included in more than one play group? Simple use case: a drum loop that you want to be active for both "Part A" and "Part B" of a song.

  • @syrupcore said:

    @espiegel123 said:
    In the meantime, I posted a Mozaic script that lets you define 4 groups of any combination of Loopy’s 12 tracks. And also provides discrete mute and unmute via MIDI that one can use while we wait for Michael’s new masterpiece.

    Woa. I totally missed this. That is dead sexy work.

    https://patchstorage.com/loopy-mute-control/

    I’ll have am update soon to adjust volume and pan and maybe a couple of other handy features to make my use case more convenient.

  • @syrupcore said:

    @Michael said:

    @Ben said:

    @syrupcore said:
    Until 1.1 lands, if I’m understanding the “leaked” bits correctly, one could pretty easily sequence a song with very minimal external MIDI. Set up a group per song section and assign that group to a midi note. Send notes from an external sequencer. Slowly. :)

    Can a loop be part of more than group?

    Are you asking if a loop can be part of more than one group?
    If that’s the question it’s a very cool thing. Group the loop does that and it’s super time saving.
    Meant to add that it is a simple copy and paste action.

    There are play groups and colours, so that’s two groupings; anything more than that you’d need to do yourself, but that’s fairly easy using the control system.

    Cheers but I'm still a little fuzzy on it. Can a single loop be included in more than one play group? Simple use case: a drum loop that you want to be active for both "Part A" and "Part B" of a song.

    I think you’d just keep said loop outside of the play groups, so it plays through. But yeah, I guess there could be a scenario where there's a loop that's part of A and B, but not C, or whatever, so I'm willing to consider multiple group membership for tracks. It's a matter of weighing up that ability versus the added complexity of managing a many-to-many relationship in the UI; I don't want to make it too complex, as you can make your own groupings using the actions system (as you can define as many actions as you want per widget/midi control/etc, so you can just add play/pause actions for the tracks you want).

  • @Michael said:

    @syrupcore said:

    @Michael said:

    @Ben said:

    @syrupcore said:
    Until 1.1 lands, if I’m understanding the “leaked” bits correctly, one could pretty easily sequence a song with very minimal external MIDI. Set up a group per song section and assign that group to a midi note. Send notes from an external sequencer. Slowly. :)

    Can a loop be part of more than group?

    Are you asking if a loop can be part of more than one group?
    If that’s the question it’s a very cool thing. Group the loop does that and it’s super time saving.
    Meant to add that it is a simple copy and paste action.

    There are play groups and colours, so that’s two groupings; anything more than that you’d need to do yourself, but that’s fairly easy using the control system.

    Cheers but I'm still a little fuzzy on it. Can a single loop be included in more than one play group? Simple use case: a drum loop that you want to be active for both "Part A" and "Part B" of a song.

    I think you’d just keep said loop outside of the play groups, so it plays through. But yeah, I guess there could be a scenario where there's a loop that's part of A and B, but not C, or whatever, so I'm willing to consider multiple group membership for tracks. It's a matter of weighing up that ability versus the added complexity of managing a many-to-many relationship in the UI; I don't want to make it too complex, as you can make your own groupings using the actions system (as you can define as many actions as you want per widget/midi control/etc, so you can just add play/pause actions for the tracks you want).

    I see this scenario @syrupcore points out very clearly, and it’d be super useful. If I’m not mistaken you could achieve the same using actions to trigger whatever loops, but doing so in groups sounds easier.
    Can’t wait!. Be warned that my expectations are skyrocket high with all these teasers. I’m holding back from buying the Akai Force to see if the new Loopy provides a much needed proper audio clip workflow. It’s sort of ridiculous that I’m thinking of spending that amount of money on a huge piece of gear because there’s nothing (outside of a daw) in current iOS (auv3 and so on) that just works for audio.

  • @ruggedsmooth said:
    Need this “Loopy 4K”
    If we send you money will it be finished faster, lol

    You’ll need to talk to mrs Tyson I think.

  • @Michael said:

    @ExAsperis99 said:
    Dare I ask if there is any easy integration with any of the various launchpad products?

    There will be, yeah - already it's pretty easy, with a built-in MIDI learn which has MIDI feedback for all controls, so the buttons light up. I'll be adding color selection and stuff soon, too, and probably it'll ship with some projects that have the grid all set up.

    Love this!

  • What are ‘follow actions’?

  • edited February 2021

    @robosardine said:
    What are ‘follow actions’?

    In Ableton, you can set up behaviours that happen after a clip is played and these are called follow actions. For example, it could just go to the next clip, a specific clip, play the same one again in reverse, go to a completely random clip, etc. And you can set different actions on every clip. There's loads of stuff you can do.

  • edited February 2021

    @tahiche said:
    I see this scenario @syrupcore points out very clearly, and it’d be super useful. If I’m not mistaken you could achieve the same using actions to trigger whatever loops, but doing so in groups sounds easier.

    I’ll have a think about it. The under-the-hood part is trivially easy, but the UI part is harder.

    I’m holding back from buying the Akai Force to see if the new Loopy provides a much needed proper audio clip workflow.

    Would you tell me more about the workflow specifics you have in mind?

  • @Michael_R_Grant said:

    @robosardine said:
    What are ‘follow actions’?

    In Ableton, you can set up behaviours that happen after a clip is played and these are called follow actions. For example, it could just go to the next clip, a specific clip, play the same one again in reverse, go to a completely random clip, etc. And you can set different actions on every clip. There's loads of stuff you can do.

    Ah right! Of course, thanks, - a bit like some of the units in the Rozeta suite. I had been imagining all sorts of weird and wonderful things, I’m glad I didn’t ask for examples 😄

    This sounds fantastic even on its own... but multiple instances as Audio Units!..... the mind boggles.

  • edited February 2021

    @Michael said:

    @tahiche said:
    I see this scenario @syrupcore points out very clearly, and it’d be super useful. If I’m not mistaken you could achieve the same using actions to trigger whatever loops, but doing so in groups sounds easier.

    I’ll have a think about it. The under-the-hood part is trivially easy, but the UI part is harder.

    Actually, can you give me some more examples? I’m still not convinced the all-out many-to-many grouping is necessary, as you can still have tracks outside of play groups, and you can have arbitrary sets of mutually-exclusive play groups.

  • @Michael said:

    @Michael said:

    @tahiche said:
    I see this scenario @syrupcore points out very clearly, and it’d be super useful. If I’m not mistaken you could achieve the same using actions to trigger whatever loops, but doing so in groups sounds easier.

    I’ll have a think about it. The under-the-hood part is trivially easy, but the UI part is harder.

    Actually, can you give me some more examples? I’m still not convinced the all-out many-to-many grouping is necessary, as you can still have tracks outside of play groups, and you can have arbitrary sets of mutually-exclusive play groups.

    I’m thinking of the scene/tracks scenario ala Ableton (or LK, Zenbeats...) . Where you have tracks and scenes. I’m seeing the groups sort of like scenes, or parts of a song. Like these song parts and loops:.

    Intro: drum A, guitar A, bass A
    Verse: drum B, guitar A, bass B
    Bridge: drum B, guitar B, bass C
    Chorus: drum C, guitar C, bass D
    Verse 2: no drum, guitar D, bass B

    In my mind and from what I’m reading here, but obviously I can’t see workflow, you could do that with actions. But to me it’s either groups OR actions. So I define what plays where via UI (groups) or programming (actions). But again, I’m just guessing. The goal is to make songs “on the go” but having sets of loops that go together and you can launch all at once. So the parts of the “song” above could be preset groups that go together.
    I’m confused about how that would work with actions... would the actions be triggered by one loop?. Again, without seeing it... but I would rather keep the “what goes with what” on a superior level (groups or song actions), not tied to a loop that’s actually just a part of that group... I don’t know if it makes sense!.
    It’s all about being able to do/perform a song. Maybe my use case or desired workflow is “just me” and like, you say, it’d over complicate things. But what’s really important is that we get the new Loopy soon!!.

  • In my eyes, the easiest thing to do would just be to copy/paste the part into multiple groups. That's how i do it in ableton.

  • @sloJordan said:
    In my eyes, the easiest thing to do would just be to copy/paste the part into multiple groups. That's how i do it in ableton.

    Yes, but one of my least favorite things to do in Ableton. I mean, how many extra mouse clicks that are completely unnecessary if you were able to do the inverse (assign a track to various scenes)?

  • This is going be a game changer, keep at it Michael!

  • @sloJordan said:
    In my eyes, the easiest thing to do would just be to copy/paste the part into multiple groups. That's how i do it in ableton.

    So all we really need Michael to build is a “follow action” that could be programmed to duplicate a track into other groups? Would that do it?

  • I'm very happy to hear Loopy Pro will record and play MIDI too.
    Instabuy!

    Also hoping Loopy Pro ends up including a MIDI composing feature (a MIDI history buffer) that utilizes perpetual overwriting using a pre-selectable-length loop. That allows for experimental composing without needing to remain aware of any fixed-loop start and end points.

    To me that would be the greatest new workflow capability in iOS next to Drambo's modularity.

  • I’m going to assume that edit functions will be added a’la Samplebot?

  • edited February 2021

    @tahiche said:
    I’m thinking of the scene/tracks scenario ala Ableton (or LK, Zenbeats...) . Where you have tracks and scenes. I’m seeing the groups sort of like scenes, or parts of a song. Like these song parts and loops:.

    Intro: drum A, guitar A, bass A
    Verse: drum B, guitar A, bass B
    Bridge: drum B, guitar B, bass C
    Chorus: drum C, guitar C, bass D
    Verse 2: no drum, guitar D, bass B

    Got it, that makes sense - thanks! I'd be very happy to hear suggestions, but I can't yet think of a neat way to facilitate tracks being a member of multiple groups, without the actual setup UI becoming unmanageable.

    Here's what it looks like right now:

    But given that tracks are actually visually represented in space, having, say, the top left track being part of every group would be very visually confusing, I think. You can do this with colours, of course, but they're typically used for configurations of tracks of the same type (e.g. bass, guitar, drums, with specific effects for each, etc), rather then song sections.

    I think @Hmtx has the right idea:

    @Hmtx said:

    @sloJordan said:
    In my eyes, the easiest thing to do would just be to copy/paste the part into multiple groups. That's how i do it in ableton.

    So all we really need Michael to build is a “follow action” that could be programmed to duplicate a track into other groups? Would that do it?

    It's also quite easy to copy tracks - it's a two-finger drag from one track to another.

    I’m confused about how that would work with actions... would the actions be triggered by one loop?. Again, without seeing it... but I would rather keep the “what goes with what” on a superior level (groups or song actions), not tied to a loop that’s actually just a part of that group... I don’t know if it makes sense!.

    Follow actions will appear in the setup screen for each track, divided into sections for each event: start record, finish record, start playback, finish playback, whatever else I think of along the way. In each section you can put one or more actions, selected from the same list of actions as for MIDI learn and widgets. So, in this example, you could add an action to the "finish record" event which will copy the track over to your target track.

    I'm actually wondering, too, whether it might be worth my adding a "mirror track", which automatically mirrors the contents of another track, so you can add it to other groups/colours but have the same content, and have it filled automatically upon record or import. Again, it's a balance between functionality and adding complexity. You'll still be able to do this using follow actions as above.

    Not wanting to rip off someone else's work, but:

    @Ben said:
    Are you asking if a loop can be part of more than one group?
    If that’s the question it’s a very cool thing. Group the loop does that and it’s super time saving.
    Meant to add that it is a simple copy and paste action.

    @Ben, how does GTL do this? As far as I can tell it's just got a 'master group' (which would be the equivalent of a series of ungrouped tracks in Loopy Pro, or tracks in a group which isn't set as mutually exclusive), and other groups.

  • @horsetrainer said:
    I'm very happy to hear Loopy Pro will record and play MIDI too.
    Instabuy!

    Also hoping Loopy Pro ends up including a MIDI composing feature (a MIDI history buffer) that utilizes perpetual overwriting using a pre-selectable-length loop. That allows for experimental composing without needing to remain aware of any fixed-loop start and end points.

    To me that would be the greatest new workflow capability in iOS next to Drambo's modularity.

    Yep! Note that this'll be v1.1, though - MIDI tracks won't be there at launch, cos I just wanna get the damn thing out the door 😄 But MIDI tracks will behave exactly the same as the audio ones, so they'll have overdub (is that what you're describing?).

  • edited February 2021

    @Ben said:
    I’m going to assume that edit functions will be added a’la Samplebot?

    Yup, and for the initial loop of a session, there's both auto loop detection and trimming, and a way to manually edit the loop start and endpoints.

  • I cannot take this thread. There is just too much coolness going on in it. The new Loopy app looks brilliant. Good luck as it gets closer to a release date :)

  • edited February 2021

    @Michael How would the "mirrored track" be different from the two fingered copy from one track to another? Is it copying the actual audio file in the second instance so you end up with two audio files instead of one? I think the "mutually exclusive" feature actually handles a fair bit of the challenges here. By turning that off, you'd essentially be putting that group in the "master track". The challenge, I think, is that many of us think of multiple master tracks for sections of a song. That's where the ability to quickly duplicate tracks would be helpful.

  • @echoopera said:
    I cannot take this thread.

    Yes. Epididymal Hypertension ensues.

  • @echoopera said:
    I cannot take this thread. There is just too much coolness going on in it. The new Loopy app looks brilliant. Good luck as it gets closer to a release date :)

    @McD said:
    Yes. Epididymal Hypertension ensues.

    Thank you! 😄 I'm rather excited myself - after 6 years basically working in isolation, I can't wait to show it to someone! Bugger me, I can't believe it's been 6 years. How embarrassing.

    @lukesleepwalker said:
    @Michael How would the "mirrored track" be different from the two fingered copy from one track to another? Is it copying the actual audio file in the second instance so you end up with two audio files instead of one? I think the "mutually exclusive" feature actually handles a fair bit of the challenges here. By turning that off, you'd essentially be putting that group in the "master track". The challenge, I think, is that many of us think of multiple master tracks for sections of a song. That's where the ability to quickly duplicate tracks would be helpful.

    It won't be different at all, really - it'd just be automated, which is important if those loops are being recorded live; you don't want to be doing stuff like copying tracks around during a performance.

    The challenge, I think, is that many of us think of multiple master tracks for sections of a song. That's where the ability to quickly duplicate tracks would be helpful.

    Exactly, yeah; just having a master group/ungrouped tracks probably won't cut it for that use case. But I have a feeling that follow actions may be sufficient to make this work neatly (rather than having a 'mirror track') , and without too much configuration overhead; just have it copy the track over upon record. I might just provide specific instructions for that use case in the manual.

  • I think mirror tracks makes sense to me, especially if it mirrored any changes to fx or auv3 chains set up for that track. That is, if fx are on a per-track basis in loopy?

  • @michael: i, too, am in that camp where I would like to be able to record loops and be able to define some groups arbitrarily from the loops I've recorded -- without having had to plan ahead about how they would be used. I often want to use the same loop in multiple 'groups'. I wouldn't want to copy the loops because I want with one fell swoop to be able to record over the loop and have the new recording be used.

    What about some group buttons where you can add any loop to any group and tapping a group plays the loops assigned to it?

    Or maybe that is a task for a Mozaic script? I create a script to do just that. When I have a set of loops playing, tap one of 4 empty 'loopset' buttons which captures the mute state of the loops. Any loopset can play any set of loops. Once a set has been assigned, tapping it recalls the settings for all the loops (mute, volume, pan)

    I'd be psyched to have the option to have one less row of loops than shown in the video and have a row of loopset buttons in their place.

  • @sloJordan said:
    I think mirror tracks makes sense to me, especially if it mirrored any changes to fx or auv3 chains set up for that track. That is, if fx are on a per-track basis in loopy?

    FX are per colour (or on input channels), so that'll already be covered.

This discussion has been closed.